Chateau Marmont Hotel

Chateau Marmont
L.A. Historic-Cultural Monument  #151
Location:	8225 Marmont Lane and , 8221 Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood, California
Coordinates:	34°5′53″N 118°22′07″W
Built/Founded:	1927
Designated as LAHCM:	1976
Governing body:	private

The Chateau Marmont is a hotel at 8221 Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, California. Built in 1927, and modeled loosely after the Château d'Amboise, in France's Loire Valley, it has served as the backdrop for a number of events in the lives of well-known rock stars and actors.

History

Fred Horowitz, a local attorney, began construction of the hotel in 1927. His project turned into the Chateau Marmont, named for the street running across the back of the property. The Chateau Marmont opened in February 1929 as an apartment house, but high rents and the Depression kept renters away. In 1931 the building was changed to a hotel, the apartments becoming suites with kitchens and living rooms. Nine Spanish cottages and four bungalows beside the pool were added later. The hotel was bought in 1990 and is currently owned and managed by Hotels AB, run by hotelier Andre Balazs.

The Chateau has a legacy as muse for generations of artists, photographers, novelists and screenwriters. Hunter S. Thompson, Annie Leibovitz, Dorothy Parker, Bruce Weber, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tim Burton, Jay McInerney, Sofia Coppola, among others, all have produced work from within the hotel’s walls.

Building

The Chateau Marmont was designed and constructed as earthquake proof, and has survived major earthquakes in 1933, 1953, 1971, 1987 and 1994 without sustaining any major structural damage. Nine cottages were built next to the hotel in the 1930s and were acquired by the hotel in the 1940s. Two of the four bungalows were designed by Craig Ellwood in 1956, after he completed Case Study Houses. Theys are like miniature case study houses. The pool area is accessed via a locked gate and hidden from Sunset Strip behind vegetation.

The hotel has a restaurant featuring California cuisine. The chef is Carolynn Spence, originally of New York's Spotted Pig.

There is a persistent legend that a tunnel was constructed underneath Marmont Lane to Preston Sturges's 1940 nightclub Players, to allow celebrities to exit either business without having to deal with police or newspeople. There is in fact a bricked-up tunnel in the basement of the nightclub, most recently called Miyagi's, then Shelter.

Notable people and events

The Chateau Marmont has catered to a large celebrity clientele over its 80-year history.

• It is reported that Keanu Reeves lived in the hotel after his rise to stardom until 2003, when he purchased a home in the Hollywood Hills.
• The Chateau Marmont is featured on the cover of Gram Parsons' solo album, GP, released in 1973. Parsons also lived there for a time in the early 1970s.
• In 1982, John Belushi died of a drug overdose in one of its garden bungalows.
• Jim Morrison used up what he called "the eighth of my nine lives" after he hurt his back here dangling from a drain pipe and falling onto a shed while trying to swing from the roof into the window of his hotel room.
• James Dean hopped in through a window to audition with Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo for Rebel Without a Cause.
• Director Nicholas Ray had a bungalow here in 1953, according to Shelley Winters' autobiography.
• In 1992, Demi Moore, Annie Leibovitz and Joanne Gair shot Demi's Birthday Suit at the hotel.
• Johnnie Ray lived within walking distance of the hotel.
• Led Zeppelin band members rode their motorcycles through the lobby one evening to cheering guests, causing modest damage.
• When Montgomery Clift was almost killed in a 1956 auto accident near her home, Elizabeth Taylor brought him to the Chateau Marmont, where she leased the penthouse as a place for him to recuperate.
• Greta Garbo loved to stay in the Chateau Marmont for weeks during her infamous seclusion period and would not leave her room for days. She also attended many lavish and glamorous parties here in her movie star days.
• Fashion photographer Helmut Newton died on January 23, 2004, after his car crashed into a wall on the driveway of the hotel.
• Judy Garland sang by the lobby's grand piano with Kay Thompson during a party held by director George Cukor, where she exclaimed to Thompson, "Oh, Kay, let's just sing real loud!"
• Vivien Leigh, estranged from her husband Laurence Olivier, nevertheless had every surface space in her suite, 5D, covered with photographs of the great actor. In the bedroom, however, she displayed only one: on a side table near her pillow was a photograph of her and Olivier together during happier times.
• German actress and model Christiane Schmidtmer met Michel Thomas at the hotel in August 1965. They were engaged for a short while thereafter.
• Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist John Frusciante briefly resided in the hotel in 1996. During this period, Frusciante was dealing with a serious drug addiction that almost claimed his life. The New Times LA interviewed Frusciante at the hotel and published an article about the musician in which his physical appearance was described as "a skeleton covered in thin skin," whose flesh was noticeably scarred and bruised from injecting himself repeatedly with heroin and cocaine. Frusciante was kicked out of the hotel shortly after the interview.
• Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers recorded his vocals for "By the Way" in this hotel.
• Jean Harlow spent her honeymoon with cinematographer Harold Rosson in the hotel and was a regular guest.
• The hotel is where FOX series 'Fastlane' character "Officer Donovan Ray" lives in order to maintain his undercover alias, "Van Strummer."
• It appears in the HBO series Entourage, when director "Billy Walsh" meets with "Vincent Chase" to discuss Queens Boulevard.
• It was briefly managed by former silent-film actress Ann Little in her later years.
• The hotel is referenced in the Grateful Dead song "West LA Fadeaway"
• Hunter S. Thompson was often a guest at the hotel.
• Writer/Director Dustin Lane filmed the short film Blue Skied an' Clear in Room 79.
• Howard Hughes moved into the attic of the hotel and would spy on beautiful women in the pool area using prism binoculars.
• Harry Cohn, founder of Columbia Pictures, told William Holden and Glenn Ford, "If you are going to get in trouble, do it at the Chateau Marmont."
• Lindsay Lohan stayed at the hotel following her July 24, 2007, arrest for drunk driving. She also resided at the hotel for approximately two and a half years.
• English author Nigel Williams documents his stay at the hotel in his 1994 travelogue, From Wimbledon to Waco.
• Singer Ville Valo of the Finnish rock group HIM recorded the song "Song or Suicide" at this hotel for the group's 2007 album Venus Doom.
• Niki Stevens, a fictional character from television's The L Word, lived at the Chateau Marmont in Season 6.
• F. Scott Fitzgerald suffered a heart attack at the Chateau Marmont.
• In a video shown by The Insider and Entertainment Tonight on January 30, 2008, Heath Ledger is seen at a party where other people appear to be taking drugs. Eventually only promos were shown out of respect for his friends and family. Ledger had died a week earlier.
• Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman of Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention make recorded reference to the Hotel in the infamous "Groupie Routine" at UCLA's Pauley Pavilion, on July 7, 1971. Recording found on the 1988 album You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 1 (performance date corrected in the You Can't Do That on Stage Anymore, Vol. 2 liner notes).
• British singer Lily Allen wrote the song "Batman, Guess Who?", for her second album, in the hotel.
• Before Rock Hudson became famous, he met his first live-in lover Kenneth G Hodge, who was living in the penthouse managing the Chateau Marmont for his aunt Bernadette. Hodge and Hudson then moved together to Hollywood to launch his career.
• English playwright Charles Wood set his playAcross From the Garden of Allah in the hotel. It starred Glenda Jackson and Nigel Hawthorne.
• The hotel was the site where actress Milla Jovovich said she was going to begin shooting the fourth installment of the popular Resident Evil film series at the end of 2009.
• Evan Rachel Wood and Marilyn Manson met there for the first time.
• The Eagles song "Hotel California" has been thought to have been written about Chateau Marmont.
• Leonard Cohen's 1978 book Death of a Lady's Man depicts, in its central piece "My Life in Art", Cohen's life in Chateau Marmont in the mid-1970s.
• Sofia Coppola's fourth film, Somewhere, (2010) was filmed and is set at the Chateau Marmont.
• The hotel is where Keira Knightley checks in at the end of the film London Boulevard (2010), directed by William Monahan, screenwriter for The Departed and Body of lies.
• Footage of the Chateau Marmont can be seen in the music video for the song "Video Games" by Lana Del Rey.

See also

• Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments in Hollywood

External links

• Chateau Marmont official website
• Chateau Marmont Hotel Review by Gayot.com