GREG IN HOLLYWOOD

celebs! hugging! greg!

LATEST

GREG YOUR WAY

Take the feed! Subscribe

Get GIH news via Twitter

Follow Greg: Twitter Facebook

Greg on Flickr:

Dominick Dunne dies at 83

He may have been 83 years old, but Dominick Dunne still had plenty he wanted to do.

So it is very sad that the Vanity Fair contributing editor died today after a long battle with cancer.

He was the author of such books as The Two Mrs. Grenvilles, People Like Us, An Inconvenient Woman, A Season in Purgatory, and Another City, Not My Own. He had recently completed the novel Too Much Money and was working o n his memoirs.

I remember reading Another City, Not My Own cover-to-cover in a single day and would go straight to whatever Mr. Dunne had written for Vanity Fair. The magazine’s web site posted a tribute today about his decades of work for them:

Dunne—who joined Vanity Fair in 1984 as a contributing editor and was named special correspondent in 1993—famously covered the trials of O. J. Simpson, the Menendez brothers, Michael Skakel, William Kennedy Smith, and Phil Spector, as well as the impeachment of President Bill Clinton.

http://www.vanityfair.com/images/culture/cuar01_dunne.jpg

He wrote memorable profiles on numerous personalities, among them Imelda Marcos, Robert Mapplethorpe, Elizabeth Taylor, Claus von Bülow, Adnan Khashoggi, and Warren Beatty and Annette Bening. His monthly column provided a glimpse inside high society, and captivated readers.

His first article for the magazine appeared in March 1984—an account of the trial of the man who murdered his daughter Dominique. Throughout his life, Dunne was a vocal advocate for victims’ rights.

“If you go through what I went through, losing my daughter, you have strong, strong feelings of revenge,” Dunne said in 1990 in discussing his novel, People Like Us, in which the protagonist shoots the man convicted of killing his daughter. “As a novelist, I could create a situation in which I could do in the book what I couldn’t do in real life. I intended for Gus (the character in the book) to kill the guy. But when I got to that part I couldn’t write it. He wounds him and goes to prison himself for a couple of years.”

Here is a LINK to the archive page for all of Dunne’s pieces for Vanity Fair.

http://www.kathyamerman.com/kathyamerman_com/jpgs_dominick_dunne/smile-dd-selectA-048.jpg

I have a little Dominick Dunne story of my own.

It was around nine years ago and I had just been hired by The Hollywood Reporter. My first big celebrity party was for a Vanity Fair coffee table book. It was hosted by Graydon Carter at the home of Kelly Lynch and Mitch Glazer.

I remember seeing Anjelica Huston, Jackie Collins, Lisa Kudrow and scores of other celebs there and I could not quite believe I was there among them. I kind of felt like Lucy Ricardo in a Hollywood episode of I Love Lucy.

Since Mr. Dunne had written the forward for the book, I was told by my editor to get a few quotes from him. I finally got my moment alone with him and asked for his thoughts on the book. He started to give a rambling answer then confessed that he didn’t know where the hell he was going with it.

He laughed wanted to start over.

Just then, Entertainment Tonight’s Mary Hart, smiling of course, cheerfully interrupted us so she could greet Mr. Dunne. I never got another moment with him. To add to my feelings of failure, I had driven my 1995 Saturn to the event which was not running so great. Jennifer Love Hewitt was standing right next to me in the valet area when my noisy car, exhaust coming out the back, trudged up the hill and there was nothing I could do but admit it was mine, get in, and drive away into the night.

FILE UNDER: Books

Comments

(All comments are reviewed before being published, and I review submissions several times per day.)

One Remark

  1. August 27th, 2009 at 6:26 am
    Jason Carpp says:

    I was more than saddened to hear that Dominick Dunne passed away. I remember watching the Court TV series Power, Privilege and Justice. That was one of my favourite tv shows. I didn’t know about his daughter’s murder until watching another show. Talk about a tragic life he’s had!

Leave a Reply