Twelve-Day Mural

A great comfort and convenience to the 120 legislators of California is Sacramento's ornate neo-Spanish Hotel Senator, whose very private dining rooms are much favored for the sort of political conferences that do best away from the sharp ears of the press. The Hotel Senator's 86-ft. bar is much favored by Sacramento's legislators in their more public moments of relaxation. Month ago, just before the Legislature convened, Proprietor Tom Hall called his architect, Gustav Albert Lansburgh, designer of San Francisco's Opera House. He said he had decided to redecorate his bar, rename it The Empire Room.

Not Empire but a sort of Roxified Renaissance is the Hotel Senator bar, and Architect Lansburgh had just two weeks to get the work done. Puzzling this problem he called in the fastest-working firm of mural painters he could think of, the Heinsbergen Decorating Co. of Los Angeles, and last week the job was done. Before the startled eyes of Empire Room drinkers appeared two 9-ft. panels, the first known murals on the subject of the Love of Edward VIII and Mrs. Simpson.

"There was nothing French Empire about the room," explained Muralist Heinsbergen, "so we did the most empire-shaking event of recent history."

With most of the figures dressed in huge playing cards, the first panel shows Edward on his throne, vacillating, a kneeling Stanley Baldwin offering him a crown. Mrs. Simpson waits at the garden gate with her pet dog while the Archbishop of Canterbury and Queen Mary look on in horror. In the second panel, Edward in raincoat with Mrs. Simpson on his arm is marching over a bridge. Queen and Archbishop are still horrified, while Stanley Baldwin as the Jack of Clubs sits completely dejected on a stone beside a sorrowing Knave who might be Anthony Eden. In both panels prances a mischievous Cupid.

To get all this done in twelve days, Muralist Erwin Neumann went to work with both hands on the backgrounds. Candelario Rivas worked furiously on the faces, while Chief Muralist Heinsbergen and an assistant named Vsevelot Ulianoss acted as roving centres. The paint was scarcely dry when the hotel received one protest, from Mrs. Jack Merriam, secretary of the Beta Sigma Chapter of the Delphian Society.

"It is in poor taste," said she, "and might cause ill feelings on the part of British visitors to the capital city of California."

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