Built in 1927 and modeled after a castle in the Loire Valley of France the Chateau Marmont Hotel exudes a combination of mystery, serene beauty and Hollywood history. This famous hideaway is sought out by celebrities seeking rest, play and inspiration. A persistent legend states that a tunnel underneath Marmont Lane connects the hotel to Preston Sturges‘s 1940 nightclub, Players, to allow celebrities to exit either business without having to deal with police or news people. There is a bricked-up tunnel in the basement of the nightclub, most recently is a night club called Shelter.
The Chateau has a legacy of being a muse for generations of artists, photographers, novelists and screenwriters. Hunter S. Thompson, Annie Leibovitz, Dorothy Parker, Bruce Weber, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tim Burton, Jay McInerney, Sofia Coppola, among others, all have produced work from within the hotel’s walls. Infamous stories include James Dean hopping in through a window in the hotel to audition with Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo for Rebel Without a Cause, Jim Morrison used up what he called “the eighth of my nine lives” after he hurt his back there dangling from a drain pipe and falling onto a shed while trying to swing from the roof into the window of his hotel room and sadly on March 5, 1982, John Belushi died of a drug overdose in one of its garden bungalows