Chateau Marmont - Hollywood's Celebrity Hideout Hotel

The Chateau Marmont Hotel in West Hollywood will unfortunately always be remembered as the place where Saturday Night Live comedian John Belushi died of a drug overdose. Fortunately, Chateau Marmont is also known as a lush hideaway for the rich and famous in the center of the bustling and legendary Sunset Strip.

Schwab's Drugstore, the Brown Derby restaurant, the Trocadero and Mocambo nightclubs are all gone. The Chateau Marmont Hotel is one of the few survivors left from Hollywood's golden age in the 1930s. In fact, the Chateau is still a cutting edge place for the rich and famous, thanks to boutique hotelier Andre Belazs acquiring the property in 1991. Thankfully, he renovated the Hotel without losing its historic beauty and character. He upgraded its services by actually adding room service (yes, the Chateau Marmont never had room service) and a small restaurant specializing in "French-California cuisine."

When the Chateau Marmont was built in 1927, it was intended to be an upscale apartment building, modeled after the Chateau d'Ambroise, a castle in France's Loire Valley where Leonardo DaVinci spent the last three years of his life. Back in the thirties, the Chateau Marmont only turned into a hotel because the high rents couldn't draw enough residents during the Depression.

Since the Chateau Marmont was originally built as apartments, this has worked to its advantage because each room has the homey feel of an apartment as opposed to the sterile feel of a typical hotel room. Another advantage: the building's structure, unique for its time, was designed to be earthquake-proof, and indeed it survived five major Southern California earthquakes, including the devastating 1994 Northridge earthquake. These attributes, along with its tales of Hollywood glory and debauchery, have made the Chateau Marmont a home away from home for so many celebrities who check in for months at a time.

According to the Hotel's own press release, "Chateau Marmont is the kind of place where you can avoid leaving your room for weeks on end and no one will think anything of it." The Chateau's physical layout lends itself to privacy, its residents being able to skirt around all public places on their way to their cars. And there are "green" views on all sides, successfully muffling the fact of the Hotel's proximity to the Sunset Strip.

Actor Robert DeNiro lived at the Chateau for two years. Boris Karloff lived here for five years. In the fifties, billionaire Howard Hughes occupied the penthouse, bringing a succession of mistresses here. In the forties, Columbia Studios head Harry Cohn advised his hard partying male stars, such as William Holden and Glenn Ford, "If you are going to get in trouble, do it at the Chateau Marmont."

Director Oliver Stone shot a part of "The Doors" movie at the Chateau, re-enacting Jim Morrison's tumble off the roof of his bungalow. Members of the rock group Led Zeppelin once rode their motorcycles through the hotel lobby. Screenwriter William Goldman wrote "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" here. James Dean climbed through the window of director Nicholas Ray's suite to audition for "Rebel Without a Cause."

The Hotel consists of fifty rooms and suites, four bungalows, and nine cottages. Room rates start at $199 a night for a single room.

Address: 8221 Sunset Boulevard, West Hollywood 90046

Phone: (323) 656-1010

SOURCES:

http://www.andrebalazsproperties.com/pressarticles/marmont-independent_199405.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chateau_Marmont

http://www.andrebalazsproperties.com/pressarticles/marmont-independent_199405.html

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,312166,00.html

"Perfect stage-set for fantasy", A.M. Homes, Financial Times, URL: (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/d73d0ea0-65a4-11db-a4fc-0000779e2340.html)