Located in the heart of Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, the Studio Club was run by the YWCA and housed some 10,000 women during its 59-year existence.

It was the home at various times to many Hollywood celebrities, including Marilyn Monroe, Ayn Rand, Donna Reed, Kim Novak, Maureen O'Sullivan, Rita Moreno, Barbara Eden, and Sharon Tate.

It began with a group of young women trying to break into the movies who gathered in the basement of the Hollywood Public Library to read plays.

[4] A librarian, Mrs. Eleanor Jones, worried about the young women living in cheap hotels and rooming houses with no place to study or practice their craft.

A dominant note is the refining touch of home life and sense of protection, with assurance of assistance, not only in material way when need arises, but in one's work, as well.

"[5] In the early 1920s, Hollywood became embroiled in scandals, including the 1921 case involving Fatty Arbuckle and his role in the death of young actress, Virginia Rappe.

[9] In March 1923, aviator and movie star Andree Peyre conducted an aerial acrobatic exhibition and airplane race over Hollywood to help raise funds for the new home.

"[13] Julia Morgan designed the Studio Club in a Mediterranean style with interiors decorated in "pistache green, rose coral, and tan.

[4][8] The only qualification needed for admittance to the Studio Club was that the applicant had to be seeking a career in the motion picture business, whether as an actress, singer, script girl, cutter, writer, designer, dancer or secretary.

[15] Some referred to it as a sorority, and the Studio Club also offered classes in various aspects of the performing arts, as well as hosting dances, teas, dinners and occasional plays, fashion shows and stunt nights.

The club also provided residents with two meals a day, sewing machines, hair driers, laundry equipment, typewriters, theater literature, practice rooms, stage and sundeck.

[16] Former resident Rosemary Breckler recalled, "At the Studio Club, when we had a date, he waited anxiously and almost reverently downstairs, and then, dressed like princesses, we floated down those gorgeous stairs.

"[18] Another article in 1959 referred to the club as a "colony" of students and described the atmosphere this way: "You may hear the wail of a clarinet, the vocal exercise of a balladeer ... and seen in a quiet corner, the silent gestures of a rehearsing ingenue with a script.

"[19] In 2000, Susan Spano wrote in the Los Angeles Times: "The handsome Italianate building, designed in 1926 by architect Julia Morgan (of Hearst Castle fame), still evokes the good old days when a mother could send her daughter to Hollywood to become a star without worrying that her offspring would go astray.

[4]Other residents of the Studio Club included Donna Reed (star of It's A Wonderful Life and The Donna Reed Show and Oscar winner for From Here to Eternity),[26] Rita Moreno (winner of an Academy Award in 1961 for West Side Story, a Grammy Award in 1972, a Tony Award in 1975, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004), Linda Darnell (star of Forever Amber, Unfaithfully Yours and A Letter to Three Wives in the late 1940s), Nancy Kwan (star of The World of Suzie Wong and Flower Drum Song in the early 1960s), Barbara Rush (Golden Globe winner for It Came from Outer Space and star of The Young Philadelphians), Janet Blair (movie star in the 1940s in films including Three Girls About Town, Broadway, and Gallant Journey), Elvia Allman (voice of Clarabelle Cow in 28 Disney cartoons, the homely woman pursuing Bob Hope in Road to Singapore, Cora Dithers in the Blondie radio series, and the aggressive forelady in the chocolate candy conveyor belt episode of I Love Lucy who yells, "Speed'er up a little!

"), Barbara Britton (star of Captain Kidd and The Virginian in the mid-1940s), Gale Storm (star of the 1950s television series My Little Margie and The Gale Storm Show and singer of the hit song Dark Moon), Evelyn Keyes (Scarlet O'Hara's younger sister in Gone with the Wind and real-life spouse of Charles Vidor, John Huston and Artie Shaw), Ann B. Davis (two-time Emmy Award winner as "Schultzy" in The Bob Cummings Show and housekeeper Alice in The Brady Bunch), and Sally Struthers (Gloria from All in the Family), Farrah Fawcett (four-time Primetime Emmy Award nominee and six-time Golden Globe Award nominee, rose to international fame when she played a starring role in the 1976 first season of the television series Charlie's Angels).