Hollywood's Most Notorious Hotel: The Castle on Sunset by Shawn Levy

This is a very interesting, well-researched and well-paced book. The subject is the Chateau Marmont Hotel in Los Angeles, but it is also a commentary on the development of that city, the movie and music industries, and includes many intriguing anecdotes about the hotel's famous residents and guests. 

The hotel was originally built as an apartment house in the late 1920s, and its location made it a bit of a boondoggle, as it was just off what was then the unpaved Sunset Boulevard, but between Hollywood and Beverly Hills, on an unincorporated piece of real estate that wasn't particularly convenient to anything at the time. You could even say it was the Dakota of its time and place, much like the once out-of-the way building in New York.

Over the decades, it became the discreet getaway of the film industry's stars and executives, along with many others in the arts industries. Over time, and with various owners, it became a hotel, more for long-term tenants, though there were transient ones, and accommodations in the form of housekeeping bungalows were gradually added. 

As the fortunes of what became the Sunset Strip waxed and waned, and then waxed again, so did the Chateau. It became much more known to the greater public in the 1980s, when actor and writer John Belushi died of an overdose there, but there were many other famous residents who indulged in excesses of many types but managed to fly under the radar.

The property has also been owned and managed by equally colorful and intriguing businesspeople, and that is another aspect of its story. All in all, the Chateau is probably the most famous hotel that most people, aside from those with an interest in Hollywood and Los Angeles history, have never heard of.

If you have that interest, you will most likely enjoy this book, and learn a lot. The author, Shawn Levy, has created a really fine journalistic work, and resisted the temptation to merely write a tell-all, sensationalist piece. He has framed the story of the hotel against the background of its milieu, and his hard work shines.