Hamburger Hamlet

Opened in 1950 by actor Harry Lewis with his future wife Marilyn (m.1952),[1][2] it grew to a chain of 24 locations, including the Chicago and Washington, D.C. metro areas,[3] before they were all either sold or closed down.

[4] In Hollywood biographies of both Peggy Lee and Alfred Hitchcock,[5] Hamburger Hamlet is mentioned as a favorite haunt.

In the novel American Dream Machine, author Matthew Specktor mourns the closing of the Sunset Boulevard Hamlet as the passing of a bygone era of Old Hollywood glamour.

[6] In 2014, Los Angeles Magazine published the article Vintage Los Angeles: The Tragedy of Hamburger Hamlet, where author Alison Martino wrote:[7] It was where you bumped into celebrities and industry moguls in a casual environment, dining in darkly lit giant red leather chairs.

I remember Francis and Diahann Carroll discussing chord progressions in the lobby.Robert B. Parker in his 1981 detective novel A Savage Place, mentions the Hamlet on Sunset as a place Spenser the detective mentions he would like to return to while in Los Angeles, saying that it is because he is a "fancy", but "plain", and "big" eater.

In that year a New York investment firm, Weatherly Private Capital, Inc., bought the restaurant chain for $33.1 million in a leveraged buyout.