Studio City Myth Exposed: RFK’s Stay at the Sportsmen’s Lodge—the Truth is Finally Out

How do rumors get started? You know how it goes: he said, she said, and before you know it, some obtuse fact has snowballed into something else entirely.  Such is the case with the coveted rumor about Robert F. Kennedy's supposed stay at the Sportsmen's Lodge the night before his assassination.  

This myth has been circulating around Studio City for several decades. Several sources claimed that RFK occupied the fifth floor of the Sportsmen's Lodge, overlooking the pool. There were claims that Sirhan Sirhan—the man convicted of shooting the presidential candidate—even tried to gain access to the floor, but he was denied for security reasons. And the myth still circulates, until now.

The Lodge has no records of RFK's stay. The manager of the front desk said that all of that information was no longer available, since Weintraub Financial now owns the hotel. Documents going back that far were proprietary information, and the property of the former owners of the lodge. 

Thanks to some local help, Patch tracked down the former owner of the lodge, Len Harlig who set the record straight.

"I don't know where RFK stayed the night before his assassination, but I can assure you he did NOT stay at the Sportsmen's Lodge," Harlig said in an exclusive interview. "Part of the reason this myth was perpetuated might have been because RFK wanted to have his event here, but we didn't have a large enough room to accommodate him, as it was already booked. So RFK decided to hold his event at the Ambassador Hotel."

He added, "Believe me, if RFK had stayed at the lodge, (we only have 200 rooms) with all his secret service men, we would have known about it!"

Director John Frankenheimer wrote in his autobiography that Kennedy and his family stayed with him at his estate in Malibu the night before he was shot. Frankenheimer, who had directed the 1962 film The Manchurian Candidate, was a close friend of Kennedy's. The candidate and his family stayed with Frankenheimer the night before the primary, after a marathon day of campaigning in the three major cities of California. He spent his day swimming and relaxing.

The Kennedys and Frankenheimer dined together on election night, before being driven by Frankenheimer to the Ambassador Hotel. Frankenheimer was to have taken the Kennedys to a nightspot after Kennedy met with the press. The director watched Kennedy's victory speech from backstage and went to retrieve his car, learning of the shooting from the radio.

How did the rumor get started? Maybe someone got wind of RFK's potential interest in the Sportsmen's Lodge. Maybe someone whispered something to someone, and over the years the myth grew until it became larger than life. 

But now we know, thanks to Len Harlig, the mystery has finally been solved.

Read the celebrity profile of the Sportsmen's Lodge.