Monterey History Talks at the Middlebury Institute featuring Neal Hotelling

Join us for a free public talk with Neal Hotelling about the “Monterey Peninsula: Hollywood’s Playground.” The Monterey Peninsula has long been an attraction to artists. When the new medium of motion pictures became an art form it attracted those artists as well. The Peninsula’s diverse settings are ideal for depicting locations around the world. When he stars came to film, they quickly realized it was also an idyllic getaway and became Hollywood’s Playground.

For more than 30 years, Neal Hotelling has displayed his broad understanding of the historic tapestry of the Monterey Peninsula through lectures, books, documentaries, and since 2019 through his weekly History Beat column in the Carmel Pine Cone. As President of the Cannery Row Foundation, in 1995 he arranged for the Steinbeck monument in front of the MIIS’ Lara-Soto Adobe and the Ricketts bust at Drake and Wave. Hotelling is also a film buff and touched on Hollywood’s love of the Monterey Peninsula in his first book, “Pebble Beach Golf Links: The Official History”, which was awarded the 1999 Book of the Year by the International Network of Golf.