The Castle on Sunset
Love, Fame, Death and Scandal at Hollywood's Chateau Marmont
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- €3.99
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- €3.99
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Levy (Rat Pack Confidential) recounts the evolution of Chateau Marmont from bohemian haven to glitterati hot spot in this engrossing account of the L.A. hotel's 90-year history of decadence. Weaving together historical research and firsthand accounts, the author examines the transformation of the high-end apartment building into a world-famous hotel often inhabited by itinerant Hollywood directors and actors: "The Chateau has spent nearly a century perched on the eastern edge of the Sunset Strip like the Rock of Gibraltar, a landmark defining a transition, a way station giving harbor to vagabonds, a milestone, a sentinel, a keep." It's served as the repository of gossip and innuendo for decades: director Nicholas Ray stayed there while creating Rebel Without a Cause and sleeping with 16-year-old Natalie Wood; rising stars Tab Hunter and Anthony Perkins met poolside and began a secret love affair; and rocker Jim Morrison swung from balconies while drunk. More recently, the hotel has attracted the likes of troubled actress Lindsay Lohan and filmmaker Sofia Coppola, who filmed Somewhere there. This eye-popping and entertainingly lurid tale of Hollywood scandal and intrigue will delight readers.
