For nearly ninety years, Hollywood’s brightest stars have favoured the Chateau Marmont as a home away from home. Filled with deep secrets but hidden in plain sight, its evolution parallels the growth of Hollywood itself.
Perched above the Sunset Strip like a fairy-tale castle, the Chateau seems to come from another world entirely. An apartment-house-turned-hotel, it has been the backdrop for generations of gossip and folklore: 1930s bombshell Jean Harlow took lovers during her third honeymoon there; director Nicholas Ray slept with his sixteen-year-old Rebel Without a Cause star Natalie Wood; Anthony Perkins and Tab Hunter met poolside and began a secret affair; Jim Morrison swung from the balconies, once nearly falling to his death; John Belushi suffered a fatal overdose in a private bungalow; Lindsay Lohan got the boot after racking up nearly $50,000 in charges in less than two months.
Much of what’s happened inside the Chateau’s walls has eluded the public eye – until now. With wit and prowess, Shawn Levy recounts the wild parties and scandalous liaisons, creative breakthroughs and marital breakdowns, births and untimely deaths that the Chateau Marmont has given rise to. Vivid, salacious and richly informed, the book is a glittering tribute to Hollywood as seen from the suites and bungalows of its most hallowed hotel.
Perched above the Sunset Strip like a fairy-tale castle, the Chateau seems to come from another world entirely. An apartment-house-turned-hotel, it has been the backdrop for generations of gossip and folklore: 1930s bombshell Jean Harlow took lovers during her third honeymoon there; director Nicholas Ray slept with his sixteen-year-old Rebel Without a Cause star Natalie Wood; Anthony Perkins and Tab Hunter met poolside and began a secret affair; Jim Morrison swung from the balconies, once nearly falling to his death; John Belushi suffered a fatal overdose in a private bungalow; Lindsay Lohan got the boot after racking up nearly $50,000 in charges in less than two months.
Much of what’s happened inside the Chateau’s walls has eluded the public eye – until now. With wit and prowess, Shawn Levy recounts the wild parties and scandalous liaisons, creative breakthroughs and marital breakdowns, births and untimely deaths that the Chateau Marmont has given rise to. Vivid, salacious and richly informed, the book is a glittering tribute to Hollywood as seen from the suites and bungalows of its most hallowed hotel.
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Reviews
A fabulously fizzy account
Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood is unquestionably one of the most dauntingly glamorous hotels in the world [and this book is] an exuberant record of its life and times . . . Levy's pages teem with extraordinary and extreme personalities
I felt like I was sneaking around the hallways of the Chateau after midnight and peering through keyholes in history . . . Lovingly researched and wonderfully dishy
Fascinating, dishy, and glimmering with insight, THE CASTLE ON SUNSET is a must-read for anyone interested in the rich and racy history of Tinseltown. Shawn Levy's entertaining and deeply researched biography of a building chronicles experiences both glamorous and sordid, historical and contemporary. This is the definitive book about Hollywood's most storied hotel
Hollywood and Beverly Hills were separated by two miles of unpaved road when the Chateau Marmont - modelled on a Loire Valley castle by its owner Fred Horowitz - was completed in 1929. Levy's witty, intimate account describes how the flowering of hotspots on the Sunset Strip beginning in the 1930s made the Marmont a show-business magnet
I want to live inside this book!
As elegant and naughty as the hotel's guests . . . tells a secret history of American film, fame and decadence. It's a spellbinding read
An irresistible, deliciously dishy deep-dive . . . told in prose so witty and alive, you feel you're sitting at the bar with Dominick Dunne. This is a book worthy of its glamorous, alluring subject
A fascinating exposé of wild nights and celebrity scandals at Hollywood's iconic hotel