Chateau Marmont - Hollywood's Celebrity Hideout Hotel

The Chateau Marmont Hotel in West Hollywood will unfortunately always be remembered as the place where Saturday Night Live comedian John Belushi died of a drug overdose. Fortunately, Chateau Marmont is also known as a lush hideaway for the rich and famous in the center of the bustling and legendary Sunset Strip.

Schwab's Drugstore, the Brown Derby restaurant, the Trocadero and Mocambo nightclubs are all gone. The Chateau Marmont Hotel is one of the few survivors left from Hollywood's golden age in the 1930s. In fact, the Chateau is still a cutting edge place for the rich and famous, thanks to boutique hotelier Andre Belazs acquiring the property in 1991. Thankfully, he renovated the Hotel without losing its historic beauty and character. He upgraded its services by actually adding room service (yes, the Chateau Marmont never had room service) and a small restaurant specializing in "French-California cuisine."

When the Chateau Marmont was built in 1927, it was intended to be an upscale apartment building, modeled after the Chateau d'Ambroise, a castle in France's Loire Valley where Leonardo DaVinci spent the last three years of his life. Back in the thirties, the Chateau Marmont only turned into a hotel because the high rents couldn't draw enough residents during the Depression.

Since the Chateau Marmont was originally built as apartments, this has worked to its advantage because each room has the homey feel of an apartment as opposed to the sterile feel of a typical hotel room. Another advantage: the building's structure, unique for its time, was designed to be earthquake-proof, and indeed it survived five major Southern California earthquakes, including the devastating 1994 Northridge earthquake. These attributes, along with its tales of Hollywood glory and debauchery, have made the Chateau Marmont a home away from home for so many celebrities who check in for months at a time.