Shawn Levy’s History of the Chateau Marmont Is Like Hollywood Babylon Happening in One Hotel

DOUBLEDAY / AUTHOR PHOTO BY VINCENT LEVY

The core argument of The Castle on Sunset: Life, Death, Love, Art, and Scandal at Hollywood’s Chateau Marmont, Shawn Levy’s fantastic new history of the storied Los Angeles hotel, doesn’t arrive until the last page of the book. “In its way,” Levy writes, “Chateau Marmont has been essential and inevitable, its impact on its neighborhood and the business of show inestimable, its legend both likely and undeniable.”