1913 to WWII[edit]
After the death of Helen Carte in 1913, Rupert D'Oyly Carte became the controlling stockholder of the hotel group.[27] In 1919, he sold the Grand Hotel, Rome, which his father had acquired in 1894 at the urging of Ritz. For the Savoy, he hired a new chef, François Latry, who served from 1919 to 1942.[28] In the 1920s he ensured that the Savoy continued to attract a fashionable clientele by a continuous programme of modernisation and the introduction of dancing in the large restaurants. It also became the first hotel with air conditioning, steam-heating and soundproofed windows in the rooms, 24-hour room service and telephones in every bathroom. It also manufactured its own mattresses.[22] One famous incident during Rupert's early years was the 1923 shooting, at the hotel, of a wealthy young Egyptian, Prince Fahmy Bey, by his French wife, Marguerite. The widow was acquitted of murder after it was revealed that her husband had treated her with extreme cruelty throughout the six-month marriage and had stated that he was going to kill her.[29][30]
Savoy Hotel letterhead, 1939
Until the 1930s, the Savoy group had not thought it necessary to advertise, but Carte and Reeves-Smith changed their approach. "We are endeavouring by intensive propaganda work to get more customers; this work is going on in the U.S.A., in Canada, in the Argentine and in Europe."[31] In 1938 Hugh Wontner joined the Savoy hotel group as Reeves-Smith's assistant, and he became managing director in 1941.[1][32]
During World War II, Wontner and his staff had to cope with bomb damage, food rationing, manpower shortage and a serious decline in the number of foreign visitors. After the US entered the war, business picked up as the Savoy Hotel became a favourite of American officers, diplomats, journalists and others.[33] The hotel became a meeting place for war leaders: Winston Churchill often took his cabinet to lunch at the hotel, Lord Mountbatten, Charles de Gaulle, Jan Masaryk and General Wavell were among the regular Grill Room diners, and the hotel's air-raid shelters were "the smartest in London".[1] Wontner cooperated fully with the government's wartime restrictions, helping to draw up an order imposing a five-shilling limit on the price of a restaurant meal.[33][34]