A wonderful antique circa 1920s Silver Plated fish poacher from the famed Ciro’s club in Hollywood, California! Ciro's, which is now the comedy club The Comedy Store, was a famous hangout for movie stars, film execs, and gossip columnists of the 1940s and 1950s.
Louis Adlon, grandson of the proprietor of Berlin’s Hotel Adlon opened Hollywood’s first iteration of Ciro’s in 1934 on Hollywood Boulevard, the club was informally part of a chain with locations in London, Paris and Berlin. The Hollywood Ciro’s was not a success, apparently, because it soon folded.
The second Hollywood Ciro’s was much more successful, this one opened in 1940 by Billy Wilkerson, publisher of the Hollywood Reporter and proprietor of the Trocadero. It was one of the places to be seen and guaranteed being written about in the gossip columns of Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons, and Florabel Muir. Ciro’s combined a luxe baroque interior and an unadorned, unassuming exterior and for the first few years wasn’t open to the public as a “celebrities-only” club. Among the celebrities who frequented Ciro's were Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, Frank Sinatra, James Dean, Ava Gardner, Sidney Poitier, Anita Ekberg, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Joan Crawford, Betty Grable, Marlene Dietrich, Ginger Rogers, Ronald Reagan, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Mickey Rooney, Cary Grant, George Raft, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Judy Garland, June Allyson and Dick Powell, Mamie Van Doren, Jimmy Stewart, Jack Benny, Peter Lawford, and Lana Turner (who often said Ciro's was her favorite nightspot) among many others. During his first visit to Hollywood in the late 1940s, future President John F. Kennedy dined at Ciro's.
This silver over nickel three-piece fish poacher is in excellent condition, no big dents or damage, just small marks and bumps that you would expect from old cookware that was used frequently in a commercial kitchen setting. It has polished up beautifully, with some thinning of the silver plate on one end near the handle and on the lid. All three figural dolphin handles are intact and without any breakage, the interior strainer is in perfect working order.
Measures approximately 23 inches long, including handles, by 6.5 inches tall to the top of the finial by 7.5 inches wide. Interior measurements are 18 inches long by 4 inches deep by 7 inches wide.
Marked on the base with the Ciro’s logo, along with a crossed through hotel name, which appears to be the Park Central hotel. That would make sense as the Park Central hotel in New York opened in the 1920s in the era when this piece was made, and was sold to the Sheraton brand in the 1940s, Sheraton probably would’ve cleaned house and sold off or auctioned off some fixtures, right around the time Ciro’s would have been looking for items for their new club.
The final two images are a postcard I came across while researching this piece and a menu from the opening year 1940 that lists a trout dish that very well may have been prepared in a poacher like this, they are provided for historical purposes only and are not included with purchase of the poacher.
