El Rancho - We Sun

The Hirsch sings, talks about singing, then sings some more. First, in its heyday, the 1940s and 50s, the El Rancho Hotel in Gallup, New Mexico put up more than 300 movie stars as guests. But as the popularity of Westerns faded, so did the Grand Hotel. They weren't making movies like that there anymore. They're still not, but the El Rancho is having a comeback. A local entrepreneur and some Gallup supporters have reopened the hotel to tourists along the old Route 66, the door of every guest room bears the name of the movie star who once slept there. Marcos Martinez of Member Station KUNM reports. When the El Rancho Hotel went on the auction block in October of 1987, the town of Gallup, New Mexico held its breath to see what the fate of its 50-year-old landmark would be. Armand Ortega, who grew up in the area, had come to the auction to bid on antiques. In a moment of nostalgia, he bid half a million dollars on the El Rancho.

Now nearly two years, and another half million dollars later, Ortega proudly shows off the hotel he calls his latest sweetheart. Ortega studied three decades worth of guest registers to determine which room each star occupied. Joseph Cotton, Jack Benny, this one has a pay phone in it, a pay telephone. We always say that. John Wayne, Seal Ball, Jack O'Kee, Doris Day, Zachary Scott, Gregory Peck, Eddie Hatton. The hotel was built in 1937 by D.W. Griffith's brother. Eventually, every western film star has stayed at the El Rancho at one time or another, including Ronald Reagan. As a B-actor, he probably occupied one of the smaller rooms. But today, the most luxurious suite is the Ronald Reagan room, with rustic-looking western furnishings, a wagon wheel headboard, and a cavernous stone-walled bathroom. Ortega got his first glimpse of the hotel as a 13-year-old boy.

He recalls the two-story lobby with its massive stone hearth and grand split-log stairway. But as Ortega remembers it, it was not the furnishings or the movie stars, but the hotel's gambling hall that fascinated him the most as a boy. The gambling, the silver dollars they were bidding at the dash tables and the 21 tables and the roll-out wheels and the slot machines. All the money being changed in hands and the silver dollars, they didn't use chips. They used silver dollars when they gambled the dash table, when they shot the dice. And that impressed me very much. Ortega had silver dollars embedded in the hotel lobby's new front desk. But today, it's the sound of an electronic cash register, instead of the sound of silver dollars, that signals the hotel's success. In 1937, when Hollywood first found its way to Gallup, the El Rancho was one of four luxury hotels on Route 66, Armando Ortega. From 1939 to 1960, there was nothing but these little auto camps or little motels, you

know, 20 rooms. And all of a sudden, you'd come to this jewel in the desert from Los Angeles going all the way to Chicago. Today, Interstate 40 bypasses Gallup and old Route 66 is lined by chain motels and fast food businesses. Halfway through town, the El Rancho's new marquee flashes home of the stars. The El Rancho, once built as the world's largest ranch house, is hemmed in between a mini mall and a gas station. The three-story building is outlined in pink neon. In blue neon is written the original motto, Charm of yesterday, Convenience of Tomorrow. Gallup old timers remember the aura of glamour surrounding the hotel. Albertine Manini remembers getting up at four in the morning to make box lunches for the movie crews filming in the New Mexico desert. John Wayne, one time says he sure likes coming in here to eat his dinner, nobody bothers him for autographs because they don't like to be bothered for autographs when they're having dinner or after looking coming in from location.

I didn't collect autographs and they always looked for you for different waitresses so they can be served individual girls because they knew that if this girl was serving them, she wouldn't let anybody bother them while they're eating. The El Rancho is the only three-story hotel in Gallup and Ortega still marvels at the original hand-crank elevator. It works perfect, it's so smooth, it's just smooth, we're on the first floor right there, here's a second, see if I can stop on it, yep, pretty good, see, sometimes I miss it, you know, you can go back and forth, there's my third floor. The elevator, the restored western style lobby, the reappearance of daily Route 66 tourist traffic. All the signs of new life at the Orancho have lifted the spirits of this economically depressed town.

Armando Ortega's first order of business after restoring the hotel in May of 1988 was to open it to all the people of Gallup. Maxine Scott, who has returned to her job at the El Rancho where she worked as a waitress for 27 years, shares the town's sense of pride at the rebirth of the hotel. They were on pins and needles, they all thought it was going to be tore down and this has always been the landmark, you know, they can't believe it, that something was so far gone and he had gone back. So keep on smiling, that's when you're smiling, the whole world smiles like you. For National Public Radio, this is Marcos Martinez.