Marmont Monday: Dominick Dunne and Room 38

Dominick Dunne first hit my radar with the 1987 TV movie, “The Two Mrs. Grenvilles.” The Claudette Colbert/Ann-Margret movie was based on Dunne’s best-selling novel which heavily borrowed from a true-crime event that occurred in 1955. Dunne was famous for covering many high-profile celebrity crime cases for Vanity Fair. His obsession with these court cases began after the verdict for his daughter’s murder resulted in an acquittal for the second-degree murder charge, but resulted in a guilty verdict for the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter. This changed the writer’s life forever and gave him a new purpose.



In the 2008 documentary, “Dominick Dunne: After the Party,” Dunne gave interviews from his room at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood and his Central Park apartment. At the beginning of the documentary, Dunne calls attention to the helicopters that have been flying overhead since 5am because of the Paris Hilton trial that was going on at the time for violating her probation from an alcohol-related reckless driving case. “This is a great story,” the writer tells the cameras. “She’s one of the most famous women in the world for going to parties. It’s a great story.…I only cover the trials of the rich, powerful, and famous because it is different for them than for other people, because they’ve got the bucks to spend on the million dollar lawyers, and they’ve got the bucks to bring in the expert witnesses. Jurors fall for those expert witnesses every time. I call them the whores of the court, because they can be bought by either side.…I started out at Vanity Fair magazine with the trial of the man with the Hollywood murder trial, the man who killed my daughter, and I think I’m going to end it with the Phil Spector trial.” The opening shots of Dunne in his bedroom watching television revealed to me that he was staying in Room 38.



I stayed in the same room in September 2022, approximately fifteen years after Dunne did. Obviously, the headboard has changed, but many of the other furnishings (and the drapes which I love!) remained the same.



Dunne stayed at the Chateau frequently. “The nice thing about the Chateau Marmont is that it’s not just a room,” he stated while giving a tour of his room. “…and it’s not like a suite, it’s like a little apartment here, which I really like. And I don’t know how to cook, but I love having the place to make coffee if I want to make coffee, which I don’t even know how to make.”

The author continued into the dining room area, opening a door that revealed a tiny balcony. “There’s a little terrace here, which I sometimes sit out at and smoke a joint…heh heh heh.”



My shot from 2022 lines up!



In this screenshot from the documentary, you can see that Dunne has taped his notes and photos from the trial to the wall.



Below, you can see a long shot of the living room area where Dunne was being interviewed.



The same desk:



Dunne sits in the comfortably overstuffed living room chair:



Not surprisingly, it has been recovered with a different fabric. The lamp and end table are the same.



Sitting at the dining room table:



The same table:



Dunne strolls into the living room, about to sit on the couch to continue his interview:



The furnishings and art on the wall have changed a bit. The Dali print above the couch is the same, though.



Sitting at his desk, we have a better view of the living room:



Which pretty much matches up with my 2022 photo:



This shot from the documentary was achieved by walking up the winding street behind the Chateau:



In a case of serendipity, I was able to get virtually the same shot back in 2013 when there was construction of a new home going on. This view would be almost impossible to duplicate now.



Dunne’s story is a somewhat sad one that occurs all too often. “I just never felt that I belonged anywhere. Even in my family, I was an outsider of the six kids.…There was something about me that drove [my father] crazy. He beat me with a riding crop. I had welts on my ass and my thighs. He mimicked me. He called me a sissy. Sissy is a tough word; it may not sound tough, but it’s a word that hurts terribly and lingers. It can linger for a lifetime, that kind of hurt. It may seem like nothing now, but it’s awful to hurt a child. It’s a terrible thing. I still haven’t totally eliminated all that hurt. My opinion of myself was nothing. I believed that I was everything that he said. I got to a point where I thought, ‘I will never let him make me cry again, no matter what. I’ll never cry.’”



Oddly enough, it was Humphrey Bogart who changed things for Dunne. Employed as a floor manager for “Robert Montgomery Presents” in New York City, Dunne was able to meet a wide variety of celebrities, including the legendary Bogie. “Bogart got a kick out of me, and I really just worshipped him. So I said to him once, ‘God, I love to look at movie stars!’ And he said, ‘What are you doing Friday? Come to dinner!’ Sinatra sang, Judy Garland sang, and Lana Turner lived next door. Lana Turner was so fantastic at that time. And Spencer Tracy was there that night, and David Niven was there that night, and Hank Fonda was there that night. And it went on and on…I thought that I had died and gone to heaven. And they just sort of took me in and accepted me, like I was one of them. I was so up there was no way I was going to go to sleep. I called Lenny [his wife] and said, ‘We’ve got to move to Hollywood! It’s incredible, you won’t believe it!’ It was everything I wanted.”

And so they did. In this frame from a Dunne home movie, Rock Hudson is shown, but you can also clearly see Judy Garland lighting up a cig. For Dunne, this was the acceptance he had failed to achieve from his father and it consumed him. The tragic death of his daughter shifted his focus but still kept him in the celebrity spotlight, which he craved.



See more Chateau Marmont photos at my main website.

Monday with Monroe, McKay, and Martin

One of my recent rabbit hole excursions involved Gardner McKay. I first heard about him through a book and a documentary on writer Dominick Dunne. McKay was a somewhat lost soul who was picked by Dunne to star in the 1959-1962 TV series, “Adventures in Paradise” for his looks and knowledge about sailing. But mainly the looks. In Dunne’s own words from a 1999 Vanity Fair article:

In 1959, I was the co-executive producer of a television series called Adventures in Paradise, created by the late James Michener and starring the then unknown Gardner McKay as the captain-for-hire of a schooner called the Tiki, which sailed the islands of the South Pacific. There are several versions of how Gardner got the part, but I was there and this is the correct one. We were screen-testing all the best-looking young actors in Hollywood for the coveted part of Captain Adam Troy. Ron Ely, who later played Tarzan on TV, had the inside track on the part, but we were still testing. One day in a coffee shop, I saw, sitting at a nearby table in a languid pose, reading a book of poetry, a startlingly handsome young man with attitude, whom I later described to Martin Manulis, the head of television at Fox, as “a little Gary Cooper, a little Cary Grant, a little Ty Power and a lot of Errol Flynn.” He was at the time, in the parlance of the town, nobody, absolutely nobody, but his attitude declared that he was somebody. I dropped my Fox business card on his table and said, “If you’re interested in discussing a television series, call me.” He did, and we tested him. Gardner’s test was certainly not among the top three or four in the acting department, but as the production staff sat in the projection room, we’d keep going back to it, and one of us would say, “This guy’s got something.” Finally, we gave him the part. 

McKay even landed a 1959 LIFE magazine cover before the show was aired:



Dunne would go on to comment about how McKay gave up Hollywood:

The series lasted three years. Then Gardner did a very interesting thing: he ended his acting career ... the very next day he had a call from George Cukor, who ... asked Gardner to play the romantic lead opposite Monroe. It was the dream of an actor’s lifetime — the great George Cukor, the legendary Marilyn Monroe — but it came a day too late. Gardner had made up his mind. He declined the role. Cukor was flabbergasted.



How did I not hear about this? As far as I knew, Dean Martin was the one and only consideration to play opposite Marilyn in her ill-fated/unfinished final film, “Somethings’s Got to Give.” In his autobiography, Journey Without a Map, McKay gives his version:

You have to know when to discard. Stand up and step away from the table. Push away from it. The table will always be there. Marilyn Monroe would call. Not because I was a star but because I didn’t want to be one anymore. I was leaving. I didn’t want to be in Hollywood. And by not wanting to be there, I had turned her down. She would call. She seemed so intelligent. She sounded like a jilted lover, she spoke clearly and well. I was the only one who could play the part. I felt that I had dislodged something balanced in her. But I was leaving. The director George Cukor, legends galore, did not call. But he was livid. He told someone, “McKay doesn’t even know how to walk.” Which meant, I imagine that I was not a proper star, which I wasn’t, and that I shambled which I did. And, anyway, television did not turn down features. After a hundred of these episodes [Adventures in Paradise], when Frank Neill [public relations man at 20th Century-Fox assigned to McKay] found out I was quitting Paradise, he thought it odd. He came to me and told me that because it had been such a hit and had meant so much to so many people and that because I was getting more fan mail at 20th Century-Fox than anyone, including Marilyn Monroe he would tell me, that he could arrange for me to have my name set in brass letters, in terrazzo, bordered by a brass star and placed on the sidewalk of Hollywood Boulevard. On the sidewalk! He said it would cost $640. I don’t know if I was expected to grab the check.

This just didn’t sound right to me. Further digging showed that James Garner had been the original choice by Fox, but he chose a different project. Marilyn’s top choice was always Martin.



The May 9 publicity blurb that accompanied the below shot:

Funnymen Dean Martin (left) and Phil Silvers pretend to watch the other actors at work as they clowned at the door of Martin’s dressing room between scenes of “Something’s Got to Give,” at Hollywood at 20th Century-Fox studio. Silvers, returning briefly to the studio where he spent eight of his youthful years, is playing a cameo role in the film.



So where did McKay fit in? In the same film, there was a much smaller role of Stephen Burkett, the hunky man who was stranded on a desert island with Marilyn’s character, Ellen Arden. This role was played by Tom Tryon.



It would be a stretch to call this role the romantic lead, but based on what was required of the character (looking good shirtless), this was most likely the “romantic lead” that McKay and Dunne were referring to.

If you’re considering reading McKay’s book, I can’t say I would recommend it. He comes off as a somewhat self-centered yet un-centered soul who experienced a lot of adventures but rarely had happiness. The memoir is somewhat rambling, which could be explained by the fact that he died before it was published, so that task fell to his widow, Madeleine.

See more classic Movie & TV photos at my main website.

The Two Mrs. Grenvilles

Going through my movie library for something to watch while eating dinner, I rediscovered this gem from 1987, “The Two Mrs. Grenvilles.” Released as a splashy two-part TV movie, it was based on a novel by Dominick Dunne, who very closely based his story on true life events. In fact, so true-to-life, I’m not quite sure why Dunne didn’t just write a true crime story about the 1955 William Woodward murder case instead; Truman Capote had already written a fictional account back in 1975.

The main characters for the TV movie were perfectly cast with Claudette Colbert and Ann-Margret, playing a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law combo. The only bond these two share is the marriage that Colbert’s character, Alice Grenville, was forced to except when her son wed a very captivating showgirl, Ann Arden (Ann-Margret). At age 84 in her last acting role, Colbert’s screen power had not diminished one iota. She lights up the (little) screen with the charged scenes between her and Ann-Margret. Colbert displays a quiet but extremely powerful reserve, whereas Ann-Margret effectively chews up the scenery.

The first scene between the two is when Ann gets a tour of Alice’s residence, which Ann refers to as a mansion, but is quickly corrected by her sweetheart, Junior Grenville (well-played by Stephen Collins). “We don’t use the word ‘mansion.’ It’s a home.” A quick study, Ann learns to ditch that most favorite word from her vocabulary! Alice’s not-so-subtle passive aggressive comments against her future daughter-in-law set the stage for what is to come, as they share an afternoon tea.



It is established that Ann is a good shot; viewers, don’t forget this as it plays a pivotal point in a key scene of the movie!



But for now, don’t they look fantastic together in the outfits from their first meeting at a New York City Night Club in the forties?



Doesn’t Claudette look fantastic? She needs few words, as her face expresses it all.



Besides the acting, the sets, costumes, and especially the music make this film worth seeing.

See more Ann-Margret photos at my main website.