this time, the shop had begun to attract many screenwriters and novelists, who came seeking not just books, but also the congenial company of their fellows and of Rose himself, but the move to the Hollywood Boulevard location helped to solidify its status as a kind of unofficial “clubhouse” for writers. California historian Kevin Starr has written: “The bookshop and the bar [at Musso & Frank] operated together with superb synergy, creating a welcomed sense of community for screenwriters suffering from an understandable sense of displacement.” (Less often mentioned, but also important, was the fact that the Screen Writers' Guild was located directly across the boulevard.) Among the writers known to have been regular patrons of the Rose shop were William Saroyan, William Faulkner, Nathanael West, Jim Tully, Gene Fowler, James M. Cain, Frank Fenton, Horace McCoy, Erskine Caldwell, John Fante, Louis Adamic, A. I. Bezzerides, and Budd Schulberg. Many others have had their names linked with the shop by various historians and biographers, despite having probably been no more than occasional customers; in this group are Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, John O'Hara, Dorothy Parker, Aldous Huxley, Ben Hecht, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Rose also cultivated a well-heeled clientele from other segments of the Hollywood community; the actors and other prominent celebrities who frequented the shop included Charlie Chaplin, John Barrymore, Edward G. Robinson, W. C. Fields, Marion Davies, Jean Harlow, and Marlene Dietrich. “Back room” The “back room” of Rose’s shop is a central element of the legend surrounding the shop. This small area served variously as an art gallery, informal discussion room, and unlicensed bar (where Rose would serve orange wine to his friends); in Budd Schulberg’s memorable phrase, it was “the nearest thing we had to a salon (and also a saloon).” Because Musso & Frank’s restaurant had its own semiprivate rear dining area/bar, which also catered to writers, the two “back rooms” are referred to almost interchangeably in many historical accounts and memoirs of the period. These writer-friendly environments inspired the title of Edmund Wilson's 1941 monograph, The Boys in the Back Room: Notes on California Novelists, in which the work of Cain, O’Hara, Saroyan, West, and Schulberg, among others, is discussed. The art gallery, for its part, was regarded as one of the more receptive venues in Los Angeles for avant garde or modernist works, and presented some of the earliest exhibits by American artists