Monroe, Bogart, Jackie Kennedy, and Elizabeth Taylor occupied its stylish banquettes. Now five perfumes aim to bottle El Morocco’s frothy spirit

By Celia Ellenberg

H

umphrey Bogart was simply minding his own business when a 23-year-old model tried to steal one of his pandas. The panda in question was stuffed and seated beside the actor in a banquette at El Morocco, the legendary New York nightclub. “I only touched it,” Robin Roberts told the judge afterward. What followed was an alleged-shoving-match-turned-assault case against Bogart. When asked if he had been drunk at the time, Bogart reportedly replied, “Isn’t everyone at four a.m.?” The case was promptly dismissed to cheers—and some boos—outside a New York courthouse in 1949. Bogart’s lifetime ban from El Morocco, however, proved harder to overturn. READ ON