Cocatoo Inn was a hotel and restaurant located at 4334 W. Imperial Highway in Hawthorne, CA.

The Cockatoo was opened as a cocktail lounge and restaurant in 1946 by a mob boss. After the property burned down in 1958, the mob boss had it rebuilt and added the 213 room hotel three years later that was built in the style of a rural British lodge.The hotel was a notable celebrity hangout in its heyday in the 50s and 60s, with guests such as Marilyn Monroe and JFK regularly frequenting it. The hotel was also popular over the years with politicians and jockeys as well as spectators who would come to nearby Hollywood Park. The fact that the inn was not only of the the nicest hotels in the area it was a straight shot from the Los Angeles International Airport. The owner sold the property in 1970 and it has been in decline ever since then. It was still regularly used for corporate conventions into the 80s, but the hotel was becoming run down and attracted prostitution and drug dealings. By the early 90s the occupancy rate had dropped to only 40 percent, despite rooms being priced at bargain prices. It was then that the military subcontracted with the Cockatoo to house soldiers in training while taking their exams, and in 1994 nearly half of all the rooms in the hotel were occupied by these trainees. It was also in that year that the Cockatoo completed a renovation in an attempt to revive the property, but nevertheless in November of that year they announced they would close down before the end of the year. Then a Chinese company bought it and it was used for some time to house tour groups from China. The hotel finally closed down in the early 2000s and the main buildings were torn down in 2004. Only the tall freestanding signs with the fancy Old English writing and a clay cockatoo on top and the hotel's old parking lot remain. The city of Hawthorne was planning on resurrecting the hotel in 2004 as a modern 550-room facility, but that appears unlikely to happen now.

For many years the Hawthorne Kiwanis Club held their weekly lunch meetings there.

There were various proposals raised for the Hawthorne School District to purchase the property (perhaps using Eminent domain), but they were dropped.

The hotel property and the single family residents that were directly behind the inn have been purchased by the Hawthorne school district and a school is being built as of now 2/2/2007

Trivia

Some scenes of Quentin Tarantino's 1997 Jackie Brown were set and shot at the Cockatoo Inn.<ref>http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0119396/locations</ref>

Notes

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