Ambassador Hotel (3400 Wilshire Blvd)

One, two, three, four I am the night watchman I stand by the door Some fifteen thousand nights I have stood here for For all of you actuaries That's forty-six years They'll be closing up the hotel When the morning sun appears Wilshire was a wilderness When they thought to build this place But soon the starlets were arriving Like they were runners to a race Now twenty-one summers On a steep descending slope Since that midnight in the pantry When the country lost its hope Cut the lights off in the nightclub Strip the linens from the bed Tell the busboys and the bellman They better get it through their head That they won't be back tomorrow And it grieves me to tell you why The Ambassador's been bleeding out And now they've let her die A saturnalia every Saturday In the salad day's long gone Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford Would be wrestling on the lawn I shook hands with seven presidents I may have flirted with their wives But my heart is in the hotel When the wrecking ball arrives Cut the lights off in the nightclub Strip the linens from the bed Tell the busboys and the bellman They better get it through their head That they won't be back tomorrow And it grieves me to tell you why The Ambassador's been bleeding out And now they've let her die 1968, I won't mention for the hurt Except to quote the one who wrote That doom was woven on his shirt I am a statue in the doorway There are no guests, there is no sound But for the rasp of plastic palm trees And a seagull on the ground If they could bury me in the ballroom I'd be content to fade away With the ghosts as my companions Right beyond my dying day Cut the lights off in the nightclub Hear the walls begin to sing Of olden days and golden days When Valentino was the king No I won't be back tomorrow And grieves me to tell you why The Ambassador's been bleeding out And now they've let her die The Ambassador's been bleeding out And now they've let her die The Ambassador's been bleeding out And now they've let her die