Cary Grant's Sexy Secret Started The Chocolate on Your Hotel Pillow Tradition
It all began after the actor's secret romantic rendezvous at a St. Louis hotel.
The little chocolate you often find perched on your pillow at luxury hotels didn’t start as a courtesy - it was born from a scandalous 1950s Hollywood affair orchestrated by screen legend Cary Grant. According to Amanda Clark, a public historian with the Missouri Historical Society, before the actor became a Hollywood mega-star, a young Grant (born Archibald Leach) toured the U.S. as a 1920s vaudeville performer, spending a summer residency in St. Louis, and fell in love with the city.
By the time Grant returned in the 1950s, he could afford to stay in luxury hotels. Of all the bustling downtown hotspots in St. Louis, one luxury hotel stood out to the star. “The Mayfair was the one of the premiere hotels,” Clark says. “It’s the first one with a rooftop pool and a five-star restaurant … so it had that class.”
Over the course of numerous visits, Grant developed a close bond with a hotel manager, who helped the actor dodge crowds by sneaking him through the property’s freight elevator. But as legend has it, during one infamous trip in the early 1950s - while married to his third wife, Betsy Drake - Grant rented out the penthouse suite for a secret romantic rendezvous.
“The lore behind it is that he didn’t leave one chocolate on somebody’s pillowcase,” Clark says. “He left a trail of chocolates from one room to the other, leading to the bedroom.”
Luckily for the actor, the scheme largely went undetected. What could have become a high-profile scandal only caught the attention of the hotel manager - who went on to turn the stunt into a five-star amenity, placing a daily chocolate on guests’ pillows. “What’s fascinating to me, the hotel manager was like, ‘That’s a great idea’ and starts this cultural journey, you know, becomes a cultural touchstone,” Clark says.
Over the years, properties all over the world began implementing the practice, cementing it as a common perk at luxury hotels.
