Inside LA’s infamous Chateau Marmont where Kate Moss and Johnny Depp ‘romped in every room’
From John Belushi’s fatal drug binge to sex scandals, this hotel has seen it all
ITS walls hid the scandalous secrets of Hollywood stars – some more explosive than any big-screen blockbuster.
From John Belushi’s fatal drug binge to Johnny Depp romping with Kate Moss in each of its 63 rooms, Chateau Marmont has seen it all.
Now a new book about the French-styled hotel has blown open the X-rated misdeeds of our movie heroes for the first time in its 90-year history.
In The Castle On Sunset, author Shawn Levy describes the rock’n’roll hangout — which could have inspired the Eagles’ hit Hotel California — as “a haven, a place where conventional moral judgement held little or no sway”.
He calls it a spot “where guests’ proclivities for sex, booze, drugs or unusual work habits weren’t merely abided . . . but accepted”.
It gained a reputation for debauchery from the early sexploits of screen stars Jean Harlow, Natalie Wood and, later, Warren Beatty.
After the 2004 Academy Awards, Scarlett Johansson — then a rising star aged just 19 — invited Oscar nominee Benicio del Toro back to her suite at the hotel, where they reportedly had sex in a lift.
Neither star has denied the rumour, while Scarlett told a mag: “Apparently, there was somebody with us in an elevator and we were making out or having sex or something, which I think is very unsanitary.”
SCANDALOUS SECRETS
Benicio, who is 18 years Scarlett’s senior, added: “Let’s leave that to somebody’s imagination. I’m sure it has happened before. It might not be the last, either.”
Joking about the Marmont’s eight floors, he said: “I’d still be struggling out of my leather jacket by the second floor and wouldn’t have my shirt off by the seventh.”
Hell-raising actor Johnny Depp once boasted that he and his ex Kate Moss had had sex in all 63 rooms at the Marmont over four years.
He was introduced to the hotel by hard-drinking writer Hunter S Thompson, whose book Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas was made into a Depp movie. The Marmont, which hosted Leonardo Di Caprio’s 21st birthday bash in 1995, has been overhauled many times.
Led Zeppelin held a riotous party in a Marmont bungalow, borrowing a food trolley to transfer naked girls between rooms
It was built in 1929 as apartments inspired by a chateau in the Loire Valley of France.
Set on a hill overlooking Sunset Boulevard, it was not the most luxurious but it promised privacy.
Guests and their visitors could drive into the underground garage and head straight to their rooms, while staff would turn a blind eye to any excesses.
Columbia Pictures boss Harry Cohn kept a suite there for affairs with starlets and advised his actors: “If you must get into trouble, go to the Marmont.”
Plenty did. Thirties sex-symbol Jean Harlow — famed for putting ice cubes on her nipples between takes to perk them up — picked up men on her honeymoon there.
Aged 22 and already on her third husband, she had a separate door installed in the master suite to smuggle in visitors — including Red Dust co-star Clark Gable.
‘BLIND TO ANY EXCESSES’
Levy claims Harlow would trawl Sunset Boulevard looking for lovers after hanging a “Gone Fishing” sign on her hotel room door.
He also claims actress Grace Kelly bedded her married High Noon co-star Gary Cooper there, writing: “Kelly was known by staff to have a notable appetite for men, particularly other guests, whose room numbers she would try to wheedle out of desk clerks.”
Warren Beatty, who lived at the hotel early in his Hollywood career, is said to have “ran up conquests as impressively as he did unpaid bills”.
In the 1970s, rock gods Led Zeppelin held a riotous party in a Marmont bungalow, borrowing a food trolley to transfer naked girls between rooms and pouring baked beans over their road manager as he writhed on a bed with a groupie.
John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Vivien Leigh and Paul Newman are all said to have met lovers there. Bette Davis once accidentally set her room alight and had screaming rows with her actor husband Gary Merrill.
Closeted gay celebs such as Psycho star Anthony Perkins met lovers there. Perkins kept a suite at the Marmont even after marrying and having children. Other A-listers checked in for months or years at a time.
Disgraced film director Roman Polanski said: “You could sense, walking down its corridors, the place had its quota of real-life dramas, of slashed wrists and overdoses, just as you could almost get stoned from sniffing the haze that seeped through the various keyholes.”
In 1982, Saturday Night Live legend John Belushi died in a Marmont bungalow after taking a “speedball” of heroin and cocaine.
The Marmont’s management remodeled Belushi’s room and replaced the furniture to prevent the site becoming a grim cult symbol.
SEX, DRUGS AND ROCK ‘N’ ROLL
But Levy, a former film critic, writes: “More than three decades after Belushi’s death, the tragedy was still synonymous with Chateau Marmont.
“Almost every article about the hotel would mention the connection and even for many in the Hollywood community, the comedian’s overdose was considered a feature of the hotel and not a sad fact from its past.”
Many rooms are associated with a particular celebrity. Reclusive movie mogul Howard Hughes hired a penthouse overlooking the pool so he could leer at sunbathers.
Fifties star Montgomery Clift recuperated from a near-fatal car crash in room 36 following a party thrown by Liz Taylor. After downing painkillers and alcohol, he would wander on to the terrace naked and swearing.
In bungalow two, director Nicholas Ray rehearsed for 1955’s Rebel Without A Cause with teenage stars Natalie Wood and Dennis Hopper.
Britney Spears shocked her fellow guests — including Victoria Beckham — by smearing food over her face in the hotel restaurant
He was conducting an affair with Wood and moved to the hotel after finding his actress wife Gloria Grahame in bed with his 13-year-old son from an earlier marriage.
Ray lived in the bungalow for six years, entertaining lovers including Marilyn Monroe, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Joan Crawford, as well as a string of young men.
Wood reportedly started an affair with Hopper, who was jealous of Ray and crept around the Marmont armed with a gun, hoping to catch him with Wood.
Incredibly, some stars have been thrown out of the Marmont.
Irish actor Richard Harris got his marching orders in the early Sixties after returning from a drinking spree at 2am, banging on doors and shouting that nuclear war had started.
Brit Rupert Everett avoided getting chucked out after substituting presents left under a Christmas tree with sex toys in festive wrapping. In 2007, singer Britney Spears shocked her fellow guests — including Victoria Beckham — by smearing food over her face in the hotel restaurant.
HARD DRINKING
Levy writes: “When she started to play dress-up with her dinner, she was escorted from her table and informed she was no longer welcome on the hotel grounds.
“The restriction was lifted after Spears cleaned herself up, and she was back in the restaurant two years later celebrating her 28th birthday.”
Three years later, hard-partying Lindsay Lohan was thrown out after running up a staggering bill, running to 16 pages, of more than £36,000, in less than two months.
Levy writes: “She spent 3,000-plus dollars each on room service, hotel restaurant bills and mini-bar charges, in addition to more than 700 dollars on cigarettes, 600-plus dollars on laundry, nearly 400 dollars on pay- per-view movies and more than 100 dollars on magazines and iPhone chargers from the hotel gift shop.
“She kept insisting to hotel management, which was understandably enquiring after payment, that she was not responsible for it.”
And the hotel shows no sign of going out of fashion.
Jay-Z and wife Beyonce held a secret Oscars-night bash for 150 guests in its garage last year. The pop-up club was meant to “mind-f*** everyone”, according to an insider.
Fully 90 years after it opened, the Chateau Marmont has not lost the ability to shock.
- The Castle On Sunset: Love, Fame, Death & Scandal At Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont, by Shawn Levy, is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20.
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