Why Chateau Marmont, where Hollywood myth and legend is made, is turning into a members-only hotel

No hotel has ever established the kind of legend quite like that of Chateau Marmont, the famed faux-gothic castle on Sunset Boulevard. The Hollywood address is infamous for raucous parties and behaviour so bad it would be inexcusable anywhere but here. "If you must get into trouble, go to the Marmont," Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn once said.

Opened on February 1, 1929, the castle was built to be earthquake-and-scandal-proof, modelled on Château d'Amboise in France. Its staff has always been rigorously tight-lipped, but over 91 years of service a few eye-popping stories have slipped out of its corridors and straight into Hollywood folklore. So fabled are these incidents that separating fact from myth is near impossible.

And all these years on, it is still home to the stars, if a little diluted by the growing number of posers and tourists arriving to stay in its hallowed halls - that was all pre-Covid-19 and its temporary shutdown, of course. But it’s about to get harder than craning one’s neck to see if Gwyneth Paltrow is, in fact, crunching on raw veg and washing it down with kombucha. Owner André Balazs has announced that the hotel will become a private members club by the end of the year.

Approved, fee-paying members will be able to buy into “a piece of a portfolio of the best real estate in the world”, the Los Angeles Times reported. They will be granted access to a private dining area, a personal butler and the freedom to leave their belongings and come and go during extended stays, according to a statement from the hotel. For punters, a public restaurant and bar area will remain open.

But the shift might not spell out such a huge change after all - pre-lockdown, 70 percent of the hotel’s guests were repeat customers. “There is something to be said for knowing people,” Balazs told the Wall Street Journal. One can expect, however, that the membership will exclusively comprise the super rich and famous who already hold the hotel dear, perhaps including the newly neighbouring Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

The history of Marmont is alluring to buy into. Some say that it’s the inspiration for the Eagles song Hotel California, and it’s a common theme in Lana Del Rey’s music. “It parallels the story of Hollywood so thoroughly as to be inseparable from it,” wrote Shawn Levy in his book The Castle on Sunset.  And so, the story of Marmont is a dramatic tale of glamorous stars and the sex, drugs and tragic death that all too often follows stratospheric success.

It has been not just a hotel but acted as a long-term home for many big names, including Paul Newman and Robert de Niro. Indeed, the 1969 Manson murders took place just six months after Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski departed from the safety of their residence at the chateau, moving into the fateful Cielo Drive mansion, high up in Benedict Canyon. In these happier times at the Marmont, they would host Friday night parties for Warren Beatty, Jack Nicholson, and Mia Farrow. Marilyn Monroe was a regular guest in the 50s, spending most of her time in Bungalow 1A (it’s now known as the Marilyn Monroe bungalow).

The chateau is where John Bonham allegedly drove his Harley Davidson through the lobby; where Lindsay Lohan is said to have racked up a $46,000 bill over her two-month stay, subsequently being barred; and where Jim Morrison fell off the roof (or balcony or terrace - the record is unclear).

And then there are the myriad sex scandals. Scarlett Johansson and Benicio del Toro were said to have got intimate in the elevator following a 2004 Oscar party. In 2008, Marmont was reportedly one of the scenes of Sienna Miller and Balthazar Getty’s liaison. These modern upstarts follow a grand tradition; in 1933, Jean Harlow was said to have had an affair with Clark Gable while staying at the hotel with her new husband Harold Rosson.

Death may befall us all but at the castle on Sunset it goes down in history. In 2004 at age 83, fashion photographer Helmut Newton suffered heart failure whilst leaving the property in his Cadillac SRX, crashing fatally into a wall on the driveway. In 1982, 33-year-old actor John Belushi was killed by speedball injection (a mixture of heroin and cocaine) in his room; one of many reported overdoses at the legendary address.

But the fear that the chateau’s glittering clientele harboured for gossip has now been superseded by the risk of infection with Covid-19. It is Balazs’ hope that this newly limited-access will instill a feeling of safety among his most important clients. The question is, will it still feel like the playpen palace where Hollywood’s hedonists could get up to no good without impunity?

As Levy put it, Marmont is, “a clubhouse for people too rich and famous to belong to clubs, a bolt-hole, a trysting place, a recovery room, a hideaway, an opium den, an atelier, a last resort.” As its future becomes even more shrouded in mystery, all we can do is guess - and hope that one day our membership is approved.

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