The Man Who Served Marilyn Monroe Her Last Supper
Jean León, although that was not her name. He was Cantabrian. He lived between 1929 and 1996. He was a taxi driver, a bartender, he worked for Frank Sinatra in a local. Little by little, he made his way until he set up his own business in Beverly Hills, which had among its guests the brightest faces in Hollywood: from Liz Taylor to Truman Capote. He served the blonde Marilyn Monroe what would be his last supper. It is about Ángel Ceferino Carrión Madrazo.
A book by Sebastián Moreno, Jean Leon. The King of Beverly Hills (Ediciones B), published a few years ago, tells the story of the man born in Santander and raised in Barcelona and France, who got into the hold of a ship that sailed from Le Havre with a diamond to New York , a city where he arrived without money or any idea of English. It was the forties. The postwar period was punishing and he was a gutsy boy.
The theft of his wallet when he arrived in the Big Apple was the excuse, they say, to change his name to Justo Ramón León, which he mutated in the shortest and most French-style Jean León. He worked as a plate boy at Rockefeller Center, but fleeing an Army draft to enlist in the Korean War, he moved to California. José Cansino, Rita Hayworth's uncle, became his godfather.
He began working as a waiter, a trade in which he met countless stars, from Gary Cooper to Natalie Wood. But if someone opened the way for him, it was Frank Sinatra, in those days involved in a murky fight. Leon testified in his defense. He gave her an alibi. The singer could not be involved in any strange fact. The night the fight in which he was accused of participating occurred, the singer did not even move from Villa Capri, the restaurant where León worked. That's what the clever Cantabrian said. The favor to Sinatra added points to his lucky star.
In 1957 he founded La Scala in Beverly Hills, which would become the restaurant for Hollywood stars. Mediterranean cuisine, French atmosphere and a parade of great figures made the place shine in the cinematographic galaxy: Joan Collins, Natalie Wood, Truman Capote ... Marilyn Monroe. The place still exists, not in its original location, but it maintains its name and his spirit -now nostalgic gesture-.
Skilled businessman, owner of wit and picaresque, Jean León paid tribute to his most frequent clients. Not only with attention to service. She even dedicated dishes from the menu to them: fettuccini a la Marilyn -the dish that the blonde drank the most-, chicken Dean Martin style and even caneloni a la Liz Taylor, which on occasion Jean León brought the diva to plane to the Savoy hotel in London. The current dishes, it is worth saying, no longer retain the names of that time.
Billy Wilder, Ernest Hemingway, Orson Welles, Marlon Brando, James Stewart ... However, one episode marked his history. The night before Marilyn Monroe's death, on August 4, 1962, the actress called the restaurant to have dinner delivered to her home. He never got around to clarifying it, but legend has it that Monroe ordered pasta, the fettuccini. She took Jean Leon in person to Bretonwood.
León was one of the last people to see her alive. Her testimony was one of the first to which the police resorted to clarify what could have happened to the actress, found without clothes and next to a vacuum flask of Nembutal. Jean Leon wine, manufactured and bottled in the Penedès since 1963, was the reason why it began to be known in Spain in the eighties. The reason? Ronald Reagan chose his wine for the inauguration banquets.
