 The Ritz became popular with film stars and executives when staying in London , although the hotel has kept most of the names of many of its luminaries a secret in its records . Douglas Fairbanks was known though to frequent the Ritz in the 1920s , and director Alexander Korda 's talent scout held a table at the Ritz in the 1930s . Noël Coward , also a regular diner at the Ritz in the 1920s and 1930s , met with Michael Arlen in the restaurant in 1924 to discuss the urgent problem of generating the funding for his new play , The Vortex . Arlen gave Coward a cheque for $ 250 without question , and The Vortex would go on to be his first major success . Coward 's song , " Children of the Ritz " , which featured in the 1932 revue Words and Music was penned while Coward was lunching in the Ritz with Beverley Nichols . Numerous authors began to meet at the Ritz during the same period , and it began to creep into literature itself . In Michael Arlen 's 1922 novel Piracy , the hotel was described as a " very stout and solid building in the manner of the old Bastille , originally conceived no doubt with a fearful eye on class prejudice " , and R. Firbank had a running gag in his novels about there being " fleas in the Ritz " . Later , the hotel appears in Anthony Powell 's A Dance to the Music of Time . The narrator Nicholas Jenkins meets poet Mark Members at the Ritz , and the golden nymph in the Palm Court of the hotel is mentioned . 
