Chateau Marmont

The Chateau Marmont at 8221 Sunset was built in 1927 as apartments in a Norman castle style — turrets, steeply pitched rooflines, a facade that looks faintly European from the boulevard below. Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures told his stars to stay here if they wanted to misbehave; the advice was taken seriously for the next seventy years.

The hotel is still operating and still private — the bar and restaurant are notionally open to the public but in practice require knowing someone or looking the right way. Worth seeing from outside in any case: the drive up the steep approach gives the best view of the facade, and the billboard across Sunset is always one of the most watched on the Strip.

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A story
John Belushi died in bungalow 3 on 5 March 1982. Jim Morrison tried to swing from the roof by his fingers. Led Zeppelin rode motorcycles through the lobby. The hotel's policy of complete discretion — no photographs, staff trained to forget what they saw — made it the place where the industry came to misbehave, and it still operates on that understanding today.

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