Hollywood's famous Chateau Marmont hotel has been a sanctuary for film stars, writers, artists, celebrities, and rock stars to let loose for almost a century. From Bette Davis to Britney Spears, and Led Zeppelin to Lindsay Lohan, every famous visitor has a Chateau Marmont story to tell, from wild parties and scandalous love affairs to creative breakthroughs, breakups, breakdowns… even murder and nuclear annihilation!
Architect William Douglas Lee modeled the unmistakable Los Angeles landmark on Château Royal d'Amboise, a castle in France’s stunning Loire Valley. The venue originally opened in February 1929 as luxury apartments. That same October, the Wall Street Crash fueled the Great Depression, and the building became a hotel in 1931. And almost as soon as the spooky-looking hotel opened its doors at 8221 Sunset Boulevard, its proximity to Hollywood studios attracted all sorts of salacious sex scandals.
So join us as we check into the world’s most rock n’ roll hotel where anything goes, the celebrity haunt where guests can famously "Dial 0 for anything." We’ll discover which rocker rode his motorbike through the lobby, which rebel jumped through a window, and which iconic singer fell two storeys doing his best Tarzan impression instead of using the doors.
JEAN HARLOW & CLARK GABLE
In 1933, while on honeymoon with her third husband, 22-year-old Jean Harlow installed a door in her suite to smuggle in her many male visitors, including her Red Dust co-star Clark Gable. Harlow would hang a “Gone Fishing” sign on her door and trawl Sunset Boulevard looking for lovers.
Just four years later, while filming Saratoga, Gable noticed the smell of urine on Harlow's breath. The blonde starlet was suffering from severe uremia, causing a buildup of toxins in her body and waste products in her bloodstream. She died from uremic poisoning (acute kidney failure) and cerebral edema on June 7, 1937, at the age of 26.
HARRY COHN
One of the first people to raise hell at Chateau Marmont wasn’t a film star; it was Columbia boss Harry Cohn, aka the Meanest Man in Hollywood. Long before Harvey Weinstein came along, Cohn was famous for being the original Tinseltown tyrant, giving aspiring actresses parts in films and a chance at stardom in exchange for sexual favors. He even kept a suite at the hotel for extramarital meetings with his starlets in the 1930s.
Cohn told his actors: “If you must get into trouble, do it at the Marmont,” which suggests that the hotel staff were already party to many secrets.
GLENN FORD & WILLIAM HOLDEN
After 1934’s Hays Code transformed Hollywood from the Wild West, its stars had to be seen as bastions of virtue. But some actors, like Glenn Ford (pictured, right) and William Holden (left), were known as hell-raising party animals. So, studio boss and sexual predator Harry Cohn installed the pair at Chateau Marmont to keep them out of the way at the foot of the Hollywood Hills, where Laurel Canyon meets the Sunset Strip.
For three years, Ford, Holden, David Niven, Humphrey Bogart, Errol Flynn, and John Barrymore threw wild parties at their bachelor pad at Cohn and Columbia’s expense.
ERROL FLYNN
Dashing, debonair Australian-American actor Errol Flynn was most famous for playing heroes in swashbucklers like 1938's The Adventures of Robin Hood opposite Olivia DeHavilland (pictured). According to the Daily Mail, he romanced all three of his wives - Lili Damita, Nora Eddington, and Patrice Wymore - at Chateau Marmont. But he quickly got bored of them and moved on to German actress Marlene Dietrich, French actress Lili Damita, and Mexican actress Lupe Vélez!
In 1959, the alcoholic actor famously went on a drunken rampage in Bungalow 3. A week later, he traveled to Vancouver to sell his yacht as he was so in debt, but the liver-damaged, syphilis-riddled, alcohol-pickled actor passed away from a heart attack at just 50.
ROBERT DE NIRO
In 1974, after playing Vito Corleone in The Godfather: Part II, one of the world's most famous actors, Robert De Niro, approached Chateau Marmont’s front desk to ask if he could rent the penthouse. But the hotel manager mistook the unshaven actor for “a bum” and threw him out!
But there was a happy ending. The misunderstanding was quickly cleared up, and De Niro went on to live in Hollywood’s most notorious hotel for hellraisers! And to say sorry, the manager let him store his car in the garage and have all his laundry done in-house for free.
JIM MORRISON
Jim Morrison was well-known for swinging between windows, roofs, and balconies on tree branches and drainpipes. The Doors lead singer lived at the Marmont in 1970 when he tried out his Tarzan-like escapades on the seven-storey building, as seen in Oliver Stone’s excellent 1991 biopic, The Doors. But one night, Jim fell two storeys, badly injuring his back. He may even have exclaimed, “I am the Lizard King, and I can do anything!” Except climb walls… like a lizard!
Morrison said his time at the hotel had used up "eight of my nine lives." He was right because, within a year, he died from a heroin overdose in Paris.
PEARL BAILEY
Jim Morrison wasn’t the only famous person to fall from one of the renowned hotel’s balconies. You may not have heard of her, but Pearl Bailey was an actress, singer, dancer, comedian, author, and later in life, a Doctor of Theology and President Nixon’s Ambassador of Love! Having started her career in Vaudeville, she was one of the first African American entertainers to break into Hollywood. By the 1950s, she was rich and famous enough to stay at Chateau Marmont. But two decades before Jim Morrison, Pearl also fell from a balcony.
Thankfully, Pearl was more fortunate than Jim. Legend says she landed on a canvas awning, where she fell asleep!
LED ZEPPELIN
Led Zeppelin, aka singer Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, bassist John Paul Jones, and drummer John Bonham, stayed at the Marmont in 1968. However, the English heavy metal band’s loud partying, constant flow of scantily clad groupies, racing through the halls on bellhop trolleys, and pouring tins of baked beans over their road manager got them moved into a bungalow.
Now, if you know anything about rock n’ roll, you’ll know that drummers are always the craziest band members, just like goalkeepers are the maddest mofos in a soccer team. Zeppelin’s drummer, John Bonham, once drove a Harley-Davidson motorbike through the hotel’s lobby!
BRITNEY SPEARS
In 2007, Britney Spears was kicked out of Los Angeles’ most famous celebrity hangout for acting out around the time the vulnerable pop singer famously shaved her head. Other diners there that fateful night, including fellow pop star Victoria Beckham from The Spice Girls, alerted staff that Britney was “acting weird.”
But Britney wasn’t done yet. She made a fool of herself by smearing food across her face, so hotel management had to escort the “Toxic” singer off the premises and told her she was no longer welcome. Hotel staff welcomed Britney back two years later, but she wasn't done yet...
Around midnight on May 1, 2024, LAPD and paramedics arrived at the luxury hotel following a report that a female had been injured following a physical altercation in Spears' room. She was photographed leaving the hotel barefoot, wrapped in a blanket, alongside her boyfriend, Paul Richard Soliz. Britney took to Instagram to deny reports of a fight, calling the news "fake" and saying she had injured her ankle by leaping across her room.
LINDSAY LOHAN
Britney wasn’t the only troubled star to get kicked out of the Chateau Marmont Hotel. In 2012, wild child Lindsay Lohan was kicked out and permanently banned over her unpaid bills. It should be noted that a penthouse at the West Hollywood hotel can cost $5,000 a night.
Throughout her 47-day residency, the notorious wild child had racked up a 16-page, $46,350.04 bill. The hotel’s manager diplomatically informed Lohan that he could not host her until she had fully settled the account.
GRACE KELLY & GARY COOPER
In Shawn Levy's brilliant tell-all book, The Castle on Sunset: Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood's Chateau Marmont, he claims 22-year-old actress Grace Kelly had an affair with her 51-year-old High Noon (1952) co-star, all-American cowboy Gary Cooper, at the hotel. It was a scandal because at the time, Cooper was still married to Patricia Neal.
Deadpool and Wolverine director Shawn Levy also wrote: “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.” Not the behavior one expects from a future Princess!
RICHARD HARRIS
Irish actor, professional drinker, and hellraiser Richard Harris often frequented the West Hollywood hotel. He was famous for British New Wave cinema and playing Professor Albus Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter films. He was also known as a rabble-rouser, and the last time he stayed at the hotel was in the early 1960s, at the height of the Cold War.
One night when Harris was a little worse for wear (which was basically every night!) he went from door to door, screaming that a nuclear bomb had dropped. As a result, he was banned forever from the property.
HEATH LEDGER
The late, great Australian actor Heath Ledger partied at Chateau Marmont in his final days. Allegedly consumed by darkness by immersing himself in the role of The Joker in The Dark Knight, the troubled actor was caught on camera partying and getting up to no good in the hotel.
On the tape, recorded in the second week of January, 2008, Heath states, "I'm going to get serious s*** from my girlfriend; we had a baby three months ago. I shouldn't be here at all." Within a week, the brilliant Heath Ledger was dead.
BENICIO DEL TORO & SCARLETT JOHANSSON
In an interview Benicio del Toro gave in 2005, he implied that he and Scarlett Johansson had hooked up in the Chateau Marmont hotel elevator after the previous year’s Academy Awards. In a later interview, Scarlett described the idea of getting fruity in an elevator as “very unsanitary.”
Eighteen years later, Scarlett finally denied the story, saying, “I’m a person who’s terrified of being caught doing something I’m not supposed to be doing. So that made the story even that much more absurd to me.”
ELIZABETH TAYLOR & MONTGOMERY CLIFT
In 1956, Montgomery Clift crashed his car near Elizabeth Taylor’s driveway after leaving the English actress’s dinner party. She found Clift under the shattered dashboard, conscious but in a bad way. Legend says Liz pulled a tooth out of his tongue before paramedics took him off in an ambulance.
Liz brought Montgomery to the Chateau Marmont, where she leased Penthouse 36 to nurse him back to health. But more often than not, the drunken actor would emerge on the terrace to shout obscenities in the nude! Taylor was heartbroken when her soulmate Clift died in 1966.
SHARON TATE & ROMAN POLANSKI
Newlyweds Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski lived in Bungalow 54 in the late sixties. The American actress and Polish director used to host wild, raucous parties every Friday night, and attendees included Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, and Mia Farrow. When Sharon became pregnant in early 1969, the two moved into a proper house a few miles to the west.
That fateful house was 10050 Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon. The property became one of the most infamous addresses in American history, even more famous than Chateau Marmont. There, Charles Manson’s cult, The Family, murdered Sharon Tate and four others. Esteemed journalist Joan Didion wrote, "The Sixties ended abruptly on August 9th, 1969."
TAB HUNTER & ANTHONY PERKINS
So many stars have conducted illicit love affairs at the hotel. Even Marilyn Monroe had her tryst with married writer Arthur Miller in the Marmont. But in Shawn Levy's book, the author uncovers the hotel's scandalous and sometimes tragic history. Levy wrote that “Gay Hollywood hung out at the pool,” while author Gore Vidal called the pool “a navel filled with sweat.”
Levy recounts how 1950s heartthrob: “Tab Hunter - stopping by for a dip on his way home from horseback riding in the Valley - met Anthony Perkins there, and they began a two-year affair.” John Krasinski and Aaron Sorkin planned to adapt Levy’s book into an HBO mini-series, but the project has been staying at that other famous Hollywood destination... Development Hell!
RICK JAMES
Funk musician and 1970s disco legend Rick James was another musician who liked to party at the “No-Tell Hotel.” The Super Freak and Mary Jane singer once partied so hard at the Chateau that – according to Shawn Levy –“He had to be revived while staying at the hotel.”
Apparently, Rick James liked to stay in Bungalow 3. And he wasn’t the only one. As more and more ghoul tours stopped outside, artist Jean-Michel Basquiat also preferred to stay in the room where James Belushi perished. More on Belushi later…
HELMUT NEWTON
Famed German-Australian photographer Helmut Newton took some of Vogue magazine’s most iconic photos. The New York Times described him as a "prolific, widely imitated fashion photographer whose provocative, erotically charged black-and-white photos were a mainstay of Vogue and other publications.”
Helmut had wintered at Chateau Marmont every year since 1957. On January 23rd, 2004, the 83-year-old lost control of his silver Cadillac SRX while leaving the hotel and slammed into a wall. He passed away later the same day at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
JOHNNY DEPP & KATE MOSS
Legendary gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson introduced Johnny Depp after the hell-raising actor played him in Terry Gilliam’s 1998 insane movie Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. Johnny instantly fell in love with the Californian hotel. Speaking of which, it’s believed that Chateau Marmont was probably the inspiration for the Eagles’ megahit "Hotel California".
Depp loved the place so much that he once boasted that he and his then-girlfriend, English model Kate Moss, had made love in all 63 of the hotel’s rooms!
HOWARD HUGHES
From the 1930s onwards, businessman, aviator, film producer, and philanthropist Howard Hughes was one of the world's richest and most influential people. He was also one of the most eccentric. The germaphobe once spent four naked months in a dark screening room, watching films and eating nothing but chicken, chocolate, and drinking milk.
Hughes would always rent the penthouse or Room 64, a two-bedroom villa, directly overlooking the swimming pool. He always stayed in that particular bungalow as it afforded him the perfect view to spy on starlets sunbathing by the pool with his binoculars!
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
F. Scott Fitzgerald is most famous for writing the Great American Novel, The Great Gatsby. But when the Wall Street Crash occurred in 1929, and the Great Depression devastated the United States, his popularity waned, and his book sales plummeted. So, the alcoholic author moved to Hollywood to try and make it as a screenwriter. Writer and director Billy Wilder described Fitzgerald's short foray into Hollywood as "a great sculptor who is hired to do a plumbing job."
In the late 1930s, after suffering many rejections in Hollywood, the author had a heart attack in the grounds of Chateau Marmont. He died a few hundred yards up the street at 1443 Hayworth Avenue, West Hollywood, aged 44 in 1940 from another heart attack.
BILLY WILDER
Billy Wilder became one of Hollywood’s most famous filmmakers by writing and directing classics like The Seven Year Itch, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot, and The Apartment. But when he first arrived in the City of Angels after escaping the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party in Germany in the 1930s, he was penniless. At first, the aspiring screenwriter stayed in Chateau Marmont’s cheapest windowless room.
The next time Wilder stayed at 8221 Sunset Boulevard, he had to stay in a closet-sized antechamber of the women's lobby restroom. After he was rich and famous, he joked, "It was a small room, but it had six toilets!"
DESI ARNAZ & LUCILLE BALL
Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball famously played married sweethearts in the hugely popular early US sitcom I Love Lucy. But behind the scenes, their marriage was a rollercoaster. Desi constantly cheated on Lucille, and every time she found out, they would end up fighting, and he would slink away to a suite at Chateau Marmont.
According to legend, one time, Lucille and Desi were arguing on the terrace of his doghouse suite when a briefcase came crashing down from the balcony. The case burst open mid-air, and a shower of hundred dollar bills rained down on Sunset Boulevard!
NICHOLAS RAY
Did you know Nicholas Ray co-wrote the seminal 1955 movie Rebel Without a Cause at Chateau Marmont? In 1952, the writer-director rented a bungalow after finding his second wife, actress Gloria Grahame, in bed with his young son Tony from his first marriage. After this craziness, Warner Bros greenlit his project, and he met young actor James Dean.
Nicholas Ray and screenwriter Stewart Stern worked on the screenplay and used his bungalow as a rehearsal space for the iconic film.
NATALIE WOOD
After appearing as a child actress in movies like Miracle on 34th Street (1947), Natalie Wood was desperate to shed her goody-two-shoes image and land a plum role in Rebel Without A Cause, which chronicled the moral decay of American youth and critiqued parental styles. The 17-year-old starlet was so desperate to land the part of Judy that she followed 44-year-old co-writer and director Nicolas Ray around like a puppy.
The two went out for dinner dates, became lovers, and shacked up together in his bungalow. Needless to say, Natalie won the role!
JAMES DEAN
James Dean also rehearsed at Nicolas Ray’s Chateau Marmont room for Rebel Without a Cause. While trying to impress the director to land his breakout role, Jimmy Dean jumped through a window. It must have worked as he got the part!
Oh, and after Natalie Wood’s dalliance with Nicolas Ray, she got it on with her young co-star Dennis Hopper. The lovers Natalie and 18-year-old Dennis Hopper crashed their car returning to Marmont. In the hospital, Natalie asked doctors to call her director. When Ray arrived, she said, "They called me a goddamn juvenile delinquent. Now do I get the part?"
BETTE DAVIS
Veteran Hollywood actress Bette Davis had screaming rows with her husband, Gary Merrill, at the Marmont. In 1958, the 50-year-old fell asleep in her bungalow while smoking and watching one of her movies on TV, accidentally setting her room on fire. Luckily, actor Lou Jacobi was staying in the bungalow next door. He saw smoke coming out of Bette’s window, and ran inside to save her life.
A few years later, Davis was again staying at the hotel when an electrical short in her room set off an alarm. That was the last time she stayed there!
SALMA HAYEK
In 2009, stunning actress Salma Hayek tried to get a table at Marmont's restaurant but didn’t have a reservation. The staff asked her to wait because the patio was full. And that’s when the Mexican-American actress’s fiery Latin side kicked in! According to eyewitnesses, she fully lost the plot and started screaming at the hostess in Spanish.
Her girlfriends tried to placate her, but Salma only calmed down when a table became available. This was years before Salma lost the plot in the Black Mirror episode Joan Is Awful.
PEACHES GELDOF & COURTNEY LOVE
Columnist and model Peaches Geldof was Boomtown Rats singer and Band-Aid creator Bob Geldof’s troubled daughter. In 2010, Peaches and a friend visited Courtney Love's Chateau Marmont room with a bag of "500 prescription opiate pills, including OxyContin." Courtney “tried to help” Peaches (whose mom, British TV presenter Paula Yates died of a heroin overdose) with her struggles surrounding dependencies but eventually had to physically push Peaches and her buddy out of the door.
And when Courtney Love is the person telling you to get your act together, you know your life is on the wrong path! Tragically, just like her mother, Peaches died from a heroin overdose four years later in 2014.
LILY ALLEN & JAMES BLUNT
If you’re not familiar with British singers Lily Allen and James Blunt, Lily is a pop singer who exposed ex-husband David Harbour's awful behavior, while James is an ex-British soldier who topped the charts with “You’re Beautiful”. Nowadays, James is almost as famous for being boring and even has a hilarious Twitter account where he parodies his own boringness.
But the singing soldier wasn’t boring the night Lily Allen walked in on him having sex with an unknown beautiful lady in the foyer of her hotel suite. It turns out James Blunt isn’t as boring as he seems!
SOFIA COPPOLA
In 2009, director Sofia Coppola spent three weeks filming the movie Somewhere at the Chateau Marmont. But it wasn’t her first visit. Her father, director Francis Ford Coppola, would write there, meaning she was a regular since she was 11. Colin Farrell crashed one of her sleepovers.
Sofia loved the hotel and threw a raucous 21st birthday party there. “Back then, everything wasn’t documented – thankfully. You could do things, and nothing was being recorded... except in the hotel log.” And it’s probably a good job that events at Chateau Marmont aren’t documented!
#METOO MOVEMENT
During the #MeToo Movement in 2017, the New York Times published an article detailing numerous allegations against Chateau Marmont’s owner Andre Balazs. In January 2018, the Times ran another story alleging Peruvian fashion photographer Mario Testino (pictured) – who was given the Order of the British Empire for photographing the British Royal Family – used his room at the Chateau as ground zero for his unsavory behaviors.
Male model Jason Fedele said, “If you wanted to work with Mario, you needed to do a nude shoot at the Chateau Marmont.”
JOHN BELUSHI
No hotel story would be complete without an Agatha Christie-style murder, and John Belushi died in the famous hotel. The actor, musician, and comedian was one of Saturday Night Live's seven original cast members, and made up one-half of The Blues Brothers with Dan Aykroyd. However, the weight of fame lay heavily on his shoulders, and he spiraled into an abyss of mental health struggles and chronic dependencies.
While filming Neighbors, Belushi checked into Chateau Marmont’s Bungalow 3 on February 28th, 1982. On the night of March 4th, Belushi, Robin Williams, Robert De Niro, and Canadian singer, groupie and drug dealer Cathy Smith all visited his bungalow separately. Tragically, around noon the next day, his fitness trainer, Bill Wallace, found Belushi dead from a speedball overdose... (that’s a cocaine and heroin concoction.)
The same afternoon, as Belushi lay dead in his bungalow, Cathy Smith was arrested for possessing narcotics after driving the wrong way into the hotel’s one-way exit on Sunset Strip while driving Belushi's rental Mercedes. After admitting she had been with the comedian on the night of his death in a May '82 National Enquirer interview, she returned to Canada, but was extradited and charged with second-degree murder. Cathy Smith pleaded no contest to involuntary manslaughter and three counts of furnishing and administering controlled substances to Belushi in the hours before he was found dead and served fifteen months in prison.
BILLY IDOL
Months before he released his "White Wedding" single, English punk rocker Billy Idol smashed up and destroyed his Marmont bungalow, then stood naked on his verandah. When the police arrived, the nude ex-Generation X singer surrendered. Yet, in a bizarre twist, LAPD’s finest weren't responding to calls about Billy Idol; they were responding to calls about John Belushi, who had died in the hotel that same night.
However, that’s not William Michael Albert Broad, aka Billy Idol’s most rock n’ roll hotel moment. During a non-stop, three-week binge party at the Bangkok Oriental Hotel, he caused $250,000 worth of damage. The only way to get the hellraiser out of the hotel was to call in the Thai army. But even they didn’t know what to do! Eventually, the army removed Billy with the aid of a tranquilizer dart and a stretcher!
IS CHATEAU MARMONT HAUNTED?
Led Zep and The Doors aren’t the only bands to cause havoc at the hotel. In 2012, weird, angry, experimental hip-hop group Death Grips moved into the hotel after recording their second album, No Love Deep Web. They described Chateau Marmont thus: "There's another energy within that building. It sounds cliché, and everybody says it's haunted, but we felt like the building was talking to us on a minute-to-minute basis."
Staff have long reported pictures falling off walls, phantom voices from empty kitchens, and moving furniture in Room 79. Some guests have reported seeing a ghost wearing a blue robe. Lady Victoria Hervey, who stayed in the bungalow one New Year’s Eve, says her friend saw Belushi’s ghost sitting on the edge of the bathtub. Oh, and a toddler kept laughing at an unseen "funny man" while staying in Bungalow 3. The young child later identified the funny man as John Belushi from a photo!
TIME TO CHECK OUT
So, now we’ve got to know the rooms and corridors, and kitchens and bungalows of the world’s most rock n’ roll hotel. Sadly, it’s time to check out. But how do we say goodbye? Hollywood chronicler Eve Babitz once lamented that leaving the hotel was harder than leaving a lover.
She once wrote, “I had almost a year frequenting the Chateau Marmont as the girlfriend of someone who lived there. In fact, breaking up with him, my worst regret was that I’d broken up with the Chateau Marmont too.” We couldn’t have said it better, Eve.
You don't have to be rich and famous to stay at Chateau Marmont. Well, okay, you need to be rich - a Queen Room costs around $700 per night.
Or, to find out for yourself if the hotel is really haunted, why not check out Los Angeles Ghost Tour's website.