Tinseltown!

About Tinseltown! Tour

The screen may be silver, but the itinerary we’ve lined up for this fall’s tour of Classic Hollywood and the City of Angels is pure gold. As the name suggests it’s really two trips in one. For movie lovers there’s the stunning new Academy of Motion Pictures Museum, 300,000 square feet of cinematic history; the new TCM–Warner Brothers studio tour; a visit to the famed Paramount lot; dinner at Charlie Chaplin’s favorite watering hole (Bogie and Bacall, too); lunch at the Roosevelt Hotel, scene of the first Academy Awards; a tour of the Dolby Theater, site of today’s Oscars; and the final resting places of Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe, Mickey Rooney, Fanny Brice, Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau, George C. Scott and many more.

But there’s much more to see in southern California than the Hollywood Sign. The Watts Towers and the mission church of San Juan Capistrano. The recently renovated Nixon Library and Birthplace. Will Rogers’ Ranch and Paul Getty’s astonishing Roman villa. The Griffith Observatory – remember it from LaLa Land? – and the La Brea Tar Pits, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hollyhock House and the thought provoking, state of the art Museum of Tolerance.

And maybe the best attraction of all. Our home for seven nights – the newly restored Queen Mary, now permanently docked in Long Beach, a short drive from L.A. Perhaps the most famous of all the great Cunard liners, a thousand feet of Art Deco and prewar nostalgia.

Your staterooms are waiting. Just follow the Yellow Brick Road…

Tour Itinerary

Day 1

November

Grand Salon

We meet as a group this morning in the Grand Salon on the RMS Queen Mary, now permanently moored in Long Beach Harbor. Our first stop today is the stunning new Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. The largest museum of its kind in the U.S. with some 300,000 sq. ft devoted to the history, science, and cultural impact of the film industry. Lunch today is at the Roosevelt Hotel. Site of the very first Academy Awards in the 1920’s, the hotel is situated across the street from Mann's Chinese Theater and the Hollywood Walk of Fame. This afternoon we visit Westwood Village Memorial Park, final resting place of Marilyn Monroe, Dean Martin, Farrah Fawcett, Frank Zappa, Walter Matthau, Fanny Brice, Truman Capote, Jack Lemmon, George C. Scott and hundreds more Hollywood favorites. A special Welcome Dinner this evening is planned.

Day 2

November

Museum of Tolerance

We’ll breakfast on The Queen this morning before visiting the Museum of Tolerance, a world-renowned facility that utilizes interactive exhibits, multiple galleries, and two theaters to examine the Holocaust and more recent examples of man's inhumanity to man. After lunch we explore Watts Towers, an island of whimsy in the middle of an urban landscape. Built by one man over 34 years, its seventeen towering spires are embedded with shells, tiles, soda bottles, mirrors, and shards of pottery. A public art installation unlike anything else, anywhere else. This afternoon we’ve planned a backstage tour of Hollywood’s legendary Dolby Theatre. Inspired by the elegance of European opera houses, this venue has been host to many of the world's top performers and is best known as the site of the annual Oscars telecast.

Day 3

November

Mission San Juan Capistrano

Breakfast on The Queen before exploring Mission San Juan Capistrano, the famed Spanish outpost in Orange County, CA. Founded in 1776 in what was then colonial Las Californias by Spanish Catholic missionaries of the Franciscan Order, it was named for Saint John of Capistrano. Secularized by the Mexican government in 1833, the mission was finally returned to the Roman Catholic Church by the U.S. government in 1865. Today it’s celebrated as the annual destination to which flocks of Swallows return on or around March 19 – St. Joseph’s Day. Fast forward 150 years, and a visit to Christ Cathedral (formerly the Crystal Cathedral). Constructed from more than 10,000 plates of glass, the cathedral welcomes some 2700 seated worshipers every Sunday. An architectural masterpiece attributed to the late Phillip Johnson, the cathedral is most known in its former guise, as the home of Dr. Robert H. Schuller's “Hour of Power” television show. After lunch we travel the short distance to Yorba Linda, CA and the newly renovated Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library & Museum. Here, we explore Nixon's fascinating life and still debated legacy. The museum also boasts an authentic recreation of the White House’s elegant East Room. The Nixon’s are buried steps away from the modest birthplace of the 37th president.

Day 4

November

Hollywood Museum

After breakfast on the ship we begin today at the Hollywood Museum housed in the old Max Factor Building on where else… Sunset Boulevard. Lunch today is at Hollywood’s famed Beverly Hills Hotel, a favorite haunt of movie stars, producers, and other mainstays of the film industry. This afternoon we’ll enjoy a private guided tram tour of Warner Bros. Studios for a revealing look at how shows and movies are made at this classic studio. No two rides through this atmospheric backlot are alike. Besides sets used for such classics as East of Eden and The Music Man, lucky visitors may even spot a celebrity or two on set!

Day 5

November

Hollyhock House

We’ll enjoy breakfast on The Queen, with the entire morning free to relax, shop, or explore this vast ocean liner at leisure. After lunch today we visit Hollyhock House, a 1923 Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece originally built for oil heiress Aline Barnsdall. This afternoon the legendary La Brea Tar Pits enable us to go back to a time when mammoths, saber-toothed cats and giant sloths roamed Ice Age Los Angeles. We’ll also get up close and personal with the excavators and scientists that are still digging up the past. An early dinner this evening before a nighttime visit to the vast Griffith Observatory, familiar to anyone who has seen Rebel Without a Cause or La La Land and the best spot in town to see the HOLLYWOOD sign.

Day 6

November

Will Roger's Ranch

After breakfast on The Queen we’ll explore Will Roger’s Ranch and Historical Park overlooking the Pacific north of L.A.. The 186-acre ranch features the Rogers ranch house, barns and outbuildings, trails, and a stunning landscape. Nearby we visit The Getty Villa in Malibu, CA, a museum dedicated to the study of the arts and cultures of ancient Greece, Rome, and Etruria. A painstakingly recreated Roman estate houses thousands of antiquities illustrating ancient women and children, gods and goddesses. The Villa also boasts gorgeous Roman gardens. Our last stop today is Santa Monica Pier. Perched over the Pacific Ocean the Pier attracts millions annually (for one thing, Cirque du Soleil pitches their tent on the beach here). In addition to the many restaurants and souvenir stands, the Pier boasts a self-contained amusement park complete with roller coaster, Ferris wheel, carousel, and arcade.

Day 7

November

Paramount Pictures Studios

We’ll breakfast on the ship before taking a comprehensive tram tour of Paramount Pictures Studio. Lunch today is at Hollywood’s famed Musso & Frank Grill, a favorite of Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo and Humphrey Bogart, not to mention home to the original Fettuccine Alfredo as brought back from Rome by Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford. To conclude our foray into Hollywood history, we venture on to the grounds of Hollywood Forever Cemetery. One of the most fascinating landmarks in Tinseltown, Hollywood Forever is the final resting place of Tyrone Power, Mel Blanc, Mickey Rooney, Cecil B. DeMille, Rudolph Valentino, and Marion Davies, to name but a few. Judy Garland, originally interred at Ferncliff Cemetery in Greenburgh, NY, was relocated to Hollywood Forever and given her own stunning mausoleum in 2017. A special Farewell Dinner this evening.

Day 8

Meet Your Host

Richard Norton Smith is a nationally recognized authority on the American presidency and a familiar face to viewers of C-SPAN, as well as The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Following graduation from Harvard in 1975, he worked as a White House intern and a speech writer for Massachusetts Senator Edward Brooke. In 1979 he went to work for Senator Bob Dole, with whom he collaborated on several volumes of autobiography and political humor.

Smith’s first major book, Thomas E. Dewey and His Times, was a finalist for the 1983 Pulitzer Prize. He has also written An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover (1984), The Harvard Century: The Making of a University to a Nation (1986), Patriarch: George Washington and the New American Nation (1993), The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick, which received the prestigious Goldsmith Prize awarded by Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School, and has been described by Hilton Kramer as “the best book ever written about the press.” In October 2014 Random House published On His Own Terms, a monumental life of Nelson Rockefeller described by Douglas Brinkley as “one of the greatest cradle to grave biographies written in the past 50 years,” and tagged in advance by Amazon as one of the fall’s Twenty Big Books in Biography and Memoir.

Between 1987 and 2001, Mr. Smith served as Director of the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum in West Branch, Iowa; the Dwight D. Eisenhower Center in Abilene, Kansas; the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and the Reagan Center for Public Affairs in Simi Valley, California; the Gerald R. Ford Museum and Library in Grand Rapids and Ann Arbor, Michigan respectively.

In December, 2001 Mr. Smith became director of the new Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. There he supervised construction of the Institute’s $11.3 million permanent home and launched a Presidential Lecture Series and other high profile programs. In October, 2003 he was appointed the first Executive Director of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, a four building complex in Springfield, Illinois. The Library opened to the public in 2004 and the Museum opened the next year.

Much in demand as a speaker, in 2009 Smith was invited by Congress to be one of two historians addressing it on the two hundred anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth. Earlier, millions of television viewers heard him deliver the final eulogy at Gerald Ford’s Michigan funeral, a role he repeated at Betty Ford’s request when she was laid to rest beside her husband in 2011. Smith is currently at work on a biography of President Ford. Twice a year he personally leads historical tours (www.presidentsandpatriots.com) emphasizing American presidents and history rarely found in the text books.

Book Now!

Total for 1 Traveler:	$6,435
Today's Deposit:	$1,000

Total for 2 Travelers:	$10,790
Total per Traveler:	$5,395 x 2
Today's Deposit (2 Travelers):	$2,000

Total per Traveler:	$5,395 x 2
Total for 2 Travelers:	$10,790

Trip total
Total per traveler:	$5,395 x 2
Total for 2 travelers:	$10,790

Deposit total
Deposit (per traveler):	$1,000 x 2
CC Fee:	$60.00
Today's deposit payment:	$2,060.00

Trip total
Total for 1 traveler:	$6,435.00

Deposit total
Deposit:	$1,000
CC Fee:	$30.00
Today's deposit payment:	$1,030.00

Total for 2 travelers:	$10,790.00
CC fee:	$323.70
Total trip payment:	$11,113.70

Total for 1 traveler:	$6,435.00
CC fee:	$193.05
Total trip payment:	$6,628.05

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November 12, 2024 - November 19, 2024

Tinseltown!

Classic Hollywood and the City of Angels

About Tinseltown! Tour

Tour Itinerary

Meet Your Host

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