SUMMER READING: From the Pages of "CIGARS: A Culture"

Before CIGARS: A Culture arrives this autumn, here’s a taste: a lightly edited excerpt from the “PEOPLE” chapter plus a bonus anecdote rescued from the cutting-room floor.

Sylvester Stallone, Edward Sahakian, and the author at Davidoff London

BY PEOPLE, I mean famous people—historic figures, cultural icons, silver-screen legends—not mere mortals such as you and I.

Though I’ve lived in New York City longer than anywhere else, I was born and raised in Los Angeles. L.A., especially then, was steeped in Tinseltown. Celebrity culture wasn’t an abstraction; it was ambient. And cigar culture—specifically, celebrity cigar culture—entered my life curiously early.

My father owned a succession of Jaguars—mostly V12s—all in various shades of blue or black. Some of our drives together were routine: dropping me at my grandparents’ bungalow in Studio City. Others took us “over the hill” to Alfred Dunhill in Beverly Hills. His first Jag, a 1976 Wedgwood-blue Series II XJ12, would purr over Coldwater Canyon or Laurel Canyon. On hot days, my legs stuck to the Connolly Vaumol leather seats, while the walnut trim and Wilton wool carpets seemed oddly impervious to the Southern California sun. He’d turn on the radio—classic rock—and light a cigar, typically a Dunhill Montecruz, though a Jamaican-rolled Macanudo Vintage Cabinet Selection No. 1 found its way into his cigar rotation too. He wasn’t brand-loyal. Anything “good” would do.

At Dunhill, the humidor manager knew my father by name. I was simply “young man.” I remember the leather chairs, pipe tobacco in tall apothecary jars, the famed Humidor Room of course, the intoxicating mélange (think Tom Ford’s Tobacco Vanille) and the walls lined with framed, autographed black-and-white photographs. I didn’t know who the men in the photos were. My father waved them off as “old stars.” Later I learned otherwise: Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, Yul Brynner, Groucho Marx, George Peppard—a rogues’ gallery of cinematic cigar devotees.

The original Dunhill Beverly Hills outpost, a 1951 midcentury architectural jewel box at 136 South Rodeo Drive, stood near Romanoff’s, the legendary Classic Hollywood haute continental cuisine haunt. By the early ’60s, Romanoff’s—and many of its stars—were gone, though the stogie stalwarts remained at Dunhill. Over the years, Dunhill’s clientele included all of the above, as well as Frank Sinatra and Golden Age of Television stars Milton “Uncle Miltie” Berle—with whom I had cigars more than once; it was an experience—and George Burns (lighters and humidors only; he famously favored El Producto Queens).

Years later, in graduate school and just after, I managed the West Coast Davidoff flagship, also in Beverly Hills, tucked along Via Rodeo—a block-long fantasy of Paris as imagined by Hollywood. Davidoff drew a different New Hollywood and Blockbuster Era cast: Johnny Depp, Pierce Brosnan, Tom Selleck, Whoopi Goldberg, Gregory Hines, Joe Pesci, the perpetually elegant Michael Nouri. Stallone and Schwarzenegger held court up the street at Nazareth’s Fine Cigars; Mel Gibson preferred the Grand Havana Room. So, when I say people, this is who I mean.

I HAVE NEVER been especially drawn to celebrity for celebrity’s sake. When you shake hands with John Wayne at the ripe old age of 11—his hand was seemingly the size a baseball mitt—it rather ruins the novelty. I mean, it was the fucking Duke.

Later, while still single and living in L.A. before moving to the right coast for good, I flirted (unsuccessfully) with a few A- and B-list actresses and dated the occasional D-list starlet. Suffice it to say that, in my admittedly limited sample, narcissism with a dash of plain old batshit crazy was not in short supply. I attended more than a few premieres and Hollywood parties. At one rooftop gathering in Westwood, I watched actor and comedian Chris Farley—so spectacularly out of his mind that I couldn’t begin to imagine what he had taken—face-plant through a table. Now, as to whether the pratfall was part shtick and part inebriation or it was all intoxication I haven’t a clue, but it hurt in the following morning regardless. Truthfully, it was equal parts horrifying and tragic. Life in the fast lane. RIP.

Over the years I’ve shared cocktails and cigars with my fair share of actors. Kurt Russell is every bit as likeable as you’d hope. Pierce Brosnan is a genuine gentleman—a mensch, really. Chris Noth was always gracious to me and, in my opinion, received an unfair public flogging. As for smoking a joint with James Coburn . . . that remains one of my life’s greatest experiences. Quite simply, he was the coolest man in any room he entered.

I mention none of this to impress. Quite the opposite. It is merely context. When you grow up in a company town, and that company is Hollywood, celebrity becomes oddly ordinary. Perhaps that explains why I have always been more interested in objects than people. I dabble in Hollywood memorabilia, though almost exclusively where it intersects with cigars.

One of my greatest collecting regrets was missing the opportunity to acquire Walt Disney’s personal humidor, which eventually found its way into Disneyland’s exclusive Club 33. Years later, when cigar smoking at the club came to an end, the humidor quietly surfaced in a private sale, I simply couldn’t afford it at the time. C’est la vie.

There have been happier acquisitions. A handful of Jamaican-made Nat Sherman No. 11 cigars from Sylvester Stallone’s personal collection. The historic bespoke Santa Maria Havana (Julieta No. 2), housed in a personalized aluminum tube inscribed the right honourable winston churchill, which Winnie himself presented to the megalomaniacal The Ten Commandments (1956) auteur Cecil B. DeMille—a remarkable piece I picked up at auction and discussed at length in The Impossible Collection of Cigars.

Then there are three complete boxes of Yul Brynner’s Dunhill Don Cándido Dunhill Selección Suprema No. 500—a grand corona (6½ in x 48 rg) vitola—which even after smoking my share of I have never written about.

Until now.

When I managed the Davidoff Beverly Hills flagship, certain high-profile clients occasionally requested cigars we simply did not stock. Nor were they stocked in the United States. Naturally, we did our best to accommodate them. Discreetly. You have to give the people what they want.

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