EARLY last year Michael Romanoff, who was building a new restaurant in Beverly Hills, Calif., found himself in need of more funds to finish the job. With his usual aplomb, Mr. Romanoff cabled his old friend Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, then vacationing in Honolulu, and asked if he might borrow $25,000. The money arrived the next morning, accompanied by a note which read: "I'm always pleased to serve my King."
It is a tribute to Mike Romanoff that some of his friends have now elevated him to the rank of king, and that anyone is willing to lend him anything like $25,000. Twenty years ago, the New Yorker published a five-part Profile on him because he then had the dubious honor of being the most fabulous and incredible impostor alive, with the added distinction of having just been deported to France for allegedly defrauding some tourists. But even as far back as 1932, the facts of his life had been so liberally larded with fiction, frequently with his aid and consent, that the history of Mike Romanoff had solidified into an almost impenetrable legend. Although U.S. immigration authorities and some friends insist he is not an American, the most persistently recurring version of his background is that he was born Harry F. Gerguson in Brooklyn some time before the turn of the century, that he escaped from six successive orphanages, that he was farmed out to various individuals who tried to straighten him out, that he once worked in London, that he often landed in jail after scrapes with the law, that he was by turns a stowaway, a farmer and a movie extra, and that he early assumed the first of a long line of aliases, finally settling, more or less permanently, on Prince Michael Romanoff.
During his reign in the '20s and '30s, Prince Mike was sometimes broke enough to sleep on park benches, but often as not he was to be found weekending with the very rich on Long Island or at Newport, a majestic little tramp, a peerless raconteur, an engaging and enigmatic character who read a great deal, played excellent chess and, when sober, was a perfect gentleman.
ALL that was a long time ago. Many people have forgotten, if they ever knew, what Mike's earlier career was like. And his friends no longer care. He is now the successful proprietor and chief stockholder in one of the most famous restaurants in the U.S. It is called, with aristocratic simplicity, Romanoff's, and for any person of consequence in Hollywood not to eat there regularly would be as unthinkable as it would be for Mike, now one of the town's first citizens, to be seen having lunch at a Beverly Hills drive-in.
The restaurant started off modestly. The two largest sponsors —Jock Whitney and the late Bob Benchley, whom Mike had known during his New York nightlife era—subscribed only $350 apiece; Darryl Zanuck and Joseph Schenck, only $300 each. The total take was $7,200, $1,800 short of what Mike had hoped for.
Romanoff's early menu was a choice of two main dishes. During the first three months the restaurant consistently lost money. "There was," Mike has since admitted, "the question of credit. Considering my reputation in those days I could do little about it." But when some credit was eventually extended, "We were meticulous about our obligations."