“If you must get in trouble, do it at the Chateau Marmont”. This sagely piece of advice was given to Glenn Ford and William Holden 50 years ago by Colombia Pictures boss, Harry Cohn, when he hired a couple of bungalows there for his talents’ appetites. The reputation for decadence and excess at the Chateau is as good today, where the moody, bordello like environment of this LA institution still brings out the excess in the stars who come here to let their hair down.
 
The hotel on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles occupies the unique role of celebrity in itself.  The west coast equivalent of the Chelsea Hotel, Chateau Marmont is as renowned for its discretion as much as its reputation for open hedonism and very wild parties.
 
At the top of a small winding road, the Chateau is a discreet hacienda style building covered by huge trees, through which you get occasional glimpses of LA and the Sunset Strip below. Set in lush grounds dripping in bougainvilla and eucalyptus, the 64 room hotel was inspired by the Chateau Royal d’Amboise in the Loire Valley, where European royalty used to vacation and where Leonardo da Vinci died. 
 
Romance and scandal have flourished here since the place first opened in 1929. For some stars who have lived here, the Chateau Marmont was either the place where they lost their minds or found themselves, or both.  The comic John Belushi, who was a long time resident, died here of a heroin overdose in 1982. His ghost is said to still haunt the grounds. Roman Polanksi who spent a lot of time here with Sharon Tate, before her horrific murder by Charles Manson, said you could get stoned from “sniffing the haze that comes through the various keyholes.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, who wrote “The Last Tycoon” here, described it as “a hanging garden of Babylon”. Indeed Fitzgerald had a heart-attack which later killed him when he went across the road from the hotel to buy cigarettes.  Many writers like Gore Vidal and Jay McInerney have made the Chateau their LA home for long periods of time, using it as a refuge from the city as well as a source of inspiration and entertainment.  “The Day of the Locust” was written here, as was “Sunset Boulevard”.
 
“ It’s the kind of place where you feel over-dressed in a tie and underdressed without a cigarette,” said Jay McInerney, who wrote the screenplay for his novel, “Bright Lights, Big City” here.  “You’d expect to see Boris Karloff loom out of the shadows.  In a city of bright sunshine, this was a dark corner where it somehow always seemed to be twilight, even at the pool.  For that reason, it was the home of night people – New Yorkers, Europeans and rock and rollers; people who deplore the concept of a breakfast meeting.”

During the 1950’s, the eccentric billionaire, Howard Hughes lived in a large penthouse at the Chateau for three years. He had originally taken the sixth floor penthouse for rising starlet Mitzi Gaynor and her mother. After he dumped her, the Hughes suite became notorious and he would reputedly spend the day ogling the starlets at the pool through binoculars from him room, from where he would summon them at night for “screen tests” and “auditions”.
 
Johnny Depp stayed here for long periods and first met and romanced Winona Ryder at the Chateau.  It was also the setting for his affair with Kate Moss and some of their wildest parties.  Depp said he and Moss had “probably made love in every room in the house.”
 
Scarlett Johanssen and Benito del Torro didn’t quite make it to a room to do the unmentionable, during a pre Oscars party a few years ago.  The two made out openly in lobby before disappearing into one of the lifts where the deed was presumably consummated.
 
“ We were making out or having sex or something, which I think is very unsanitary,” she said, somewhat unnecessarily, later.

Paul Newman met his wife Joanne Woodward here.  Natalie Wood first met James Dean here during a reading of “Rebel Without a Cause” in Bungalow 2. Jean Harlow came here for her affair with Clark Gable, during her honeymoon.

During the 1960’s and 70’s, the Chateau was the LA home of the Beatles, the Kinks and the Rolling Stones.  There was one famous night when Led Zeppelin raced motor bikes up the windy road, into the lobby of the hotel and down the halls.  Jim Morrison fell out a window here and Oliver Stone filmed some of his Doors’ movie at the Chateau.  Janis Joplin wandered the corridors in a stoned stupor.

By the time the current owner Andre Balazs bought the hotel in 1990, the image of the Chateau had become a lot more tawdry than sensational.  Keeping the ornate Gothic exterior and lobby, he revived and refurbished the interior without moving it too far from its signature 1940’s style.  He is rightly credited with transforming the place from a fading Hollywood legend into a more elegant artistic hideaway.
 
“ The hotels I love inspire excess in human behaviour,” he said.  “Hotels unleash passions in people.  You enter and leave your past behind, but the mystery comes out of how much the place allows you to indulge in something new.”
 
When he took over, he decided to evoke the past, but to make it quirky.
 
In 1996 Balazs published “The Chateau Marmont Hollywood Handbook”, which includes contributions from long term residents like Anthony Haden Guest and Jay McInerney.  Full of Chateau lore more than Hollywood data, most of the stories are about long dead stars and reveals that the Marmont has always kept “staff notes” on the guests at the hotel, to keep the hothouse inhabitants happy.

The notes on Orson Welles pre Citizen Kane read: “Dining room will need to note: Breakfasts on fresh tomatoes (he’s a hypochondriac!”)

Sandra Bullock describes it as her favourite hotel.  “It has an incredibly seductive atmosphere.  No wonder people come here to have affairs – it’s got that air of history, where you know a lot of people did things they weren’t supposed to do.”
 


It remains a place where people come and hole up for long periods at a time, some not leaving their rooms for weeks at a time.  Keanu Reeves comes and stays for months on end.  Beck stays here for long stretches.  The reclusive Robert de Niro has secluded himself for months on end in one of the bungalows.
 
Greta Garbo came here to disappear, registering as “Harriet Brown” and Dorothy Parker also stayed for long stretches in the 1930’s.
Jim Sheridan often stays here when he’s in LA and Bono is another regular guest.  Colin Farrell managed the usually unmanageable when he was photographed making out with Britney Spears on the balcony of his penthouse a few years ago.  John Lennon spent much of his year long “lost weekend” floating through a world of daytime tv and darkened rooms.

These days you are as likely to see Francis Ford Coppola or John Waters or Wim Wenders meeting by the pool or over drinks in the garden.  One thing you won’t see here is hyper-active producers on three mobile phones simultaneously or paparazzi. The Chateau Marmont, is described by its owner as “a place for people with vivid inner lives”.