Infamous history of Chateau Marmont as legendary LA hotel closes to guests

When Hollywood’s most hardcore hellraisers wanted to party in secret, the Chateau Marmont was top of the list.

But now, after 90 years of celebrity excess, it’s shutting its doors to guests.

The white castle on the hill above Sunset Boulevard is being turned into a private members club, a plan hastened by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Famous clientele are already clamouring to join so they can keep living it up in La La Land’s legendary haunt.

“There is something to be said for knowing people,” says owner Andre Balazs, who bought the hotel in 1990.

“You can chat with them, you know where they have been.” Greta Garbo, Errol Flynn, Led Zeppelin and Lindsay Lohan are among the stars to have relied on its discreet staff not to blab.

What happens in the Marmont stays in the Marmont… unless, of course, leaking it is good for the celeb’s image.

“If you must get into trouble, do it at the Chateau Marmont,” said Columbia Pictures founder Harry Cohn.

Author Shawn Levy called it “a bolt- hole, a trysting place, a recovery room, a hideaway, an opium den and a last resort” in his recent book The Castle on Sunset.

Built in 1929 for an LA lawyer, the property became a 63-room hotel in 1931.

Here are its most eye-popping stories…

In 1952 writer-director Nicholas Ray moved into a hotel bungalow after finding wife Gloria Grahame in bed with his son, 13, from a previous marriage.

He consoled himself there with stars such as Joan Crawford, Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and Zsa Zsa Gabor.

Using the bungalow to cast Rebel Without a Cause, he began an affair with actress Natalie Wood, 16. Ray was 27 years her senior. But Wood took a liking to the 18-year-old Dennis Hopper.

Carly Simon was famously pursued there by Warren Beatty, who spent so much time wooing in the hotel he said: “I’m going to buy this goddamn joint.”

Johnny Depp said he had sex with Kate Moss in every room of the hotel and Scarlett Johansson and Benicio del Toro allegedly had a tryst in a lift in 2004.

Actress Jean Harlow is said to have sneaked a succession of toyboy lovers through a separate door to her room while her husband slept on a bed in the living room.

She spent the last of her three honeymoons in Suite 32-33 but it is not clear if the same arrangements applied.

In 1935 before he became a bigshot filmmaker, Billy Wilder said he would “rather sleep in a bathroom than in another hotel”. When the Chateau was full he persuaded staff to put him up in the lobby of a ladies’ cloakroom. “It was a small room,” Wilder noted. “But it had six toilets.”

Reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes lived like a hermit in Penthouse 64 in the 50s. He’d use binoculars to spy on girls by the pool and then ring the concierge to go and proposition them on his behalf.

In 1956 heartthrob actor Montgomery Clift hid out there after falling asleep at the wheel of his car and crashing as he left a party at Elizabeth Taylor’s home. He would occasionally be seen on the terrace screaming obscenities in the nude.

Three years later Errol Flynn went into a drunken rampage in Bungalow Three a week before he died of a heart attack and cirrhosis.

In 1958, Bette Davis fell asleep with a lit cigarette while watching one of her own movies on TV and almost burned the place down.

An actor staying next door saw smoke coming out of the window and probably saved her life. She never went back.

In an escapade that he said took “the eighth of my nine lives”, Doors frontman Jim Morrison tried to leap from the roof of the Chateau into his room with only a drainpipe for assistance while high on drugs.

Other witnesses claim he jumped out of a fourth floor window but, either way, he permanently injured his back.

And it’s not entirely true that rock group Led Zeppelin roared along the corridors on motorbikes.

It was actually just their drummer John Bonham who rode his Harley Davidson into the lobby, ruining the carpet.

Alice Cooper and his roadies played naked footie in the lobby and the cast of Hair rehearsed starkers in the drawing room.

And Pink Floyd’s all-night skinny-dipping parties were so loud that the neighbours complained.

In 1982, actor and comedian John Belushi, 33, died at the hotel from an overdose. After a night on the town with a groupie drug dealer, he carried on the party at the hotel, entertaining occasional visitors, including actors Robert De Niro and Robin Williams.

At some point, Belushi was given an injection of cocaine and heroin, and the deadly “speedball” killed him. Belushi’s personal trainer found him the next morning.

In a twist of fate, that same night punk rocker Billy Idol was in a nearby room on a tequila bender that sparked psychotic nightmares.He revealed in 2014 that when a pal pinched his booze he smashed the hotel windows with his elbows, destroyed the TV and was “nude and covered in blood going nuts”.

The distraction of the Belushi drama meant he got away with just an apology. In 2004 fashion, photographer Helmut Newton, 83, crashed his car while driving out of the hotel and died later in hospital.

Director Roman Polanski and his wife, the actress Sharon Tate, lived at the hotel before moving to a home in Cielo Drive in early 1969.

Six months later Tate, heavily pregnant with their son, was brutally murdered by the followers of Charles Manson.

During her famous meltdown in 2007, Britney Spears was seen smearing her face with food while eating in the dining room.

Fellow guests, including a reportedly disgusted Victoria Beckham, complained to staff and Britney was temporarily barred from the hotel.

Lindsay Lohan lived at the Marmont for two-and-a-half years during her naughty Noughties. But, aware of her party reputation, staff put her in room 16 which faced on to the front desk so they could keep an eye on her.

Then, in 2012, she was barred from the premises after failing to pay £35,000 she’d racked up on mini bar charges, ciggies and scented candles.

She claimed she thought movie producers were paying and it all got sorted eventually.

Chateau Marmont is where anyone who is anyone went to be seen. As a showbiz reporter in LA, you could always pick up a story from the wannabes, party crashers and A-lister’s who haunted its corridors.

Inside it felt like an intimate French castle with a roaring fire in the winter, maroon velvet sofas and dark, cavernous corners. I once got stuck in Leonardo DiCaprio’s suite where child-size bottles of Dom Perignon we’re getting popped. But with only a handful of people in the room, I soon got politely asked to leave.

Then, there was Beyonce and Jay-Z ’s 2019 candle-lit bash where caviar was served by the bucketload and Jennifer Lopez was twerking on the dancefloor. Phones were put in lockers with hawkish staff on the look-out for guests and their prying cameras.

Celeb spotting was always glorious at the Chateau. I remember Brad Pitt brushing past me before cosying up to a group of doe-eyed women following his split from Angelina Jolie.

Sadly, I never made it into the villa where parties could go on for 24 hours but I once was the last person standing at a bash in the ivy entwined garden.

It was an exceptional night although I can’t remember much, which is how most nights ended at the Chateau.

Now, alas, these spontaneous, wild and raucous moments could be consigned to history.