Living it up in the hotel California
Anyone who's anyone in hollywood has stayed at the famous chateau marmont. Now the hotel has a lead role in Sofia Coppola's latest award-winning movie
Words: Gillian Orr Photographs: Bloomberg, Getty
Lindsay Lohan
Stephen Dorff
Led Zeppelin
Natalie Wood and James Dean, stars of 'Rebel Without a Cause'
Jean Harlow
John Belushi
Scarlett Johansson
Two weeks ago Sofia Coppola won the Venice Film Festival Golden Lion for best film with her much-anticipated latest offering, Somewhere, which stars Stephen Dorff as a jaded but successful movie star called Johnny Marco. He is a man coasting through life, one who has fallen victim to the hedonistic side of Hollywood celebrity, his days filled with parties, drugs, girls and loneliness.
And where else should Marco be living out this debauched existence but the Chateau Marmont, naturally? The famous hotel, located on Sunset Boulevard, is a Hollywood institution and, in a fickle town like Los Angeles, it remains one spot that has never really gone out of style, despite its many different incarnations.
Coppola says of Somewhere: "I started with this character of Johnny Marco. I thought, 'he lives at the Chateau Marmont', because it seems like every young actor I've talked to has a story about living at the Chateau. They've all done a stint there: 'oh yeah, I lived there a year', or, 'I lived at the Chateau for a couple of months'. It's kind of a rite of passage; it's so linked with making it in Hollywood while showing that you're still down to earth." She has even described the chic yet shabby hotel as the third main character in the film.
Chateau Marmont was opened as an apartment block in 1929 by a local attorney, Fred Horowitz, but high rates kept renters away and it was turned into a hotel in 1931. Because of the large suites and full kitchens that feature in many of the rooms, as well as the numerous bungalows and cottages in the grounds, it makes sense that someone shooting a film, writing a book or recording an album would stay there.
André Balazs took over the hotel in 1990 and has said: "The hotels I love inspire excess in human behaviour. Hotels unleash passions in people."
For Somewhere, Coppola thought Chateau Marmont would capture her lead character's alienation from the world. Some of the most revealing moments come "when he's alone with himself at the Chateau; that moment of having to look at yourself, which is always scary for anyone".
On any visit to the Chateau Marmont you are guaranteed to spot a star enjoying some lunch, a swim in the pool, or maybe a cocktail in the bar, perhaps being serenaded on guitar by one of the elderly and much-loved members of staff. It is frequently referenced in Entourage, the television show charting the exploits of a rising Hollywood actor and his friends. And Dorff checked in to the hotel for four or five months in 1996 and held a suitably boisterous party for his 21st birthday.
"It has an incredibly seductive atmosphere," Sandra Bullock once said. "No wonder people come here to have affairs – it's got that air of history, where you know a lot of people did things they weren't supposed to do."
The Chateau has its moment each decade. Recently, it was Lindsay Lohan's destination for her first night out after leaving rehab. In the 1990s, Johnny Depp claimed that he and Kate Moss had made love in just about every room. The writer Jay McInerney moved there from New York in the 1980s to write the screenplay for his hit debut novel, Bright Lights, Big City. Led Zeppelin rode their motorcycles down the hotel hallways in the 1970s. The Rolling Stones and the Beatles caused chaos there throughout the 1960s. Natalie Wood and James Dean were introduced at a script read-through of Rebel Without a Cause in Bungalow Two in 1955.
But its legacy stretches right back. In 1939, the Columbia Pictures boss, Harry Cohn, used to tell his stars: "If you must get in trouble, do it at the Chateau Marmont", a piece of advice that still appears to hold weight.
Suite History: Rich And Famous Guests
In 1978, the director Roman Polanski stayed at Chateau Marmont for his last few days in the United States in an attempt to avoid reporters, before fleeing to Europe following statutory rape charges against him. A frequent guest at the hotel, 10 years earlier Polanski had commented that "you can almost get stoned from sniffing the haze that seeps through the various keyholes".
Jean Harlow was a regular at the Chateau Marmont in 1933, when she had an affair with Clark Gable at the same time as she was honeymooning with her third husband, the cinematographer Harold Rosson. Legend has it that she would leave "gone fishing" messages at the front desk, which meant she had gone to pick up men.
Greta Garbo would stay at the Marmont for weeks at a time during her notorious periods of seclusion, going for days without leaving her room, which added further intrigue to the life of the film star.
During the 1950s, the billionaire movie mogul Howard Hughes took up residence in one of the largest penthouses. He would spy on the pool with binoculars in the hope of finding new talent before inviting a selection of beauties up to his room for screen tests.
The much-loved comedian John Belushi, star of Saturday Night Live and The Blues Brothers died in Bungalow Three at the Chateau Marmont after he overdosed on heroin and cocaine on 5 March 1982. He was 33.
A lift at the Marmont was the setting for an alleged steamy encounter between Benicio Del Toro and Scarlett Johansson at an Oscars party in 2004. Johansson, who was 19 at the time, denied it, although the following year Del Toro told Esquire magazine: "Did I ever have sex in an elevator with Scarlett Johansson? I kind of like, you know, I, well. I don't know. Let's leave that to somebody's imagination. Let's not promote it. I'm sure it has happened before."
September 26, 2010
Advertise here
Click to create
Website by Maithú™
Searching
Print
E-mail
del.icio.us
digg
Facebook
Google
