The dark pall cast over the Chateau Marmont has been ongoing since 2020, when The Hollywood Reporter published a damning article in September entitled “Rot at Hollywood’s ‘Playground’: Chateau Marmont Staff Allege Racial Discrimination, Sexual Misconduct and Neglectful Management.” The “neglectful management” in question was ultimately attributed to hotelier and, yes, manager André Balazs, who bought the Chateau in 1990. Sixty-one years after the hotel—at that time, an apartment building—opened. For it was in February 1929, eight months before the infamous stock market crash, that the Chateau Marmont opened to the public. Described as, “Los Angeles’ newest, finest and most exclusive apartment house… [it is] superbly situated, close enough to active businesses to be accessible and far enough away to ensure quiet and privacy.”
That assurance of privacy is what has captivated the hotel’s celebrity clientele for years. And the timing of the eventual hotel’s opening as lavish apartment residences seemed unexpectedly fortuitous in that the Great Depression era that arose soon after forced its original owner, Fred Horowitz, to sell the building to Alfred E. Smith for $750,000 in cash. This was in 1931, just a year before the 1932 Olympics would be hosted in L.A. Thus, Smith’s decision to convert the fledgling apartment building (which no one could pay the rent on during the Depression) into a hotel proved to be a business savvy maneuver—and cement the hotel’s reputation as a haven for privacy for decades to come.
But privacy in the celebrity realm often becomes code for: turning a blind eye to egregious behavior. As Harry Cohn grossly said, “If you must get into trouble, go to the Marmont.” And many have heeded that advice, even if only “harmlessly” (see: Lindsay Lohan not paying her bill). In the wake of that aforementioned The Hollywood Reporter article, the barrage of information and testimonies gathered from employees about what cost to “the little people” that “privacy” has come at prompted a certain business associate (who preferred to remain anonymous, of course) of Balazs’ to remark to THR, “I’m reconsidering the Chateau through a totally different lens now. All of the talk of it being a ‘playground,’ of it exalting ‘privacy.’ It really was just a system that protected white men in power.” Maybe that person was genuine in their statement… or just trying to “adapt or die” in a climate that can’t help but increasingly roll its eyes at white men. At best. At worst, shame them into oblivion—granted, that’s pretty hard as most white men have no sense of shame.
Least of all Balazs, who coined the illustrious aphorism: “All good hotels tend to lead people to do things they wouldn’t necessarily do at home.” Even though a lot of rich people probably do treat “the help” like shit at home as well, maybe they feel obliged to delight in such degradation more so when the help isn’t actually “theirs.” Like, say, Sonia Molina Sanchez, one of the subjects of the THR article and a Chateau housekeeper for roughly ten years at the time of the piece’s publication. Per THR, Sanchez “tells of an incident six years ago in which a male guest began masturbating while she was cleaning his room. She reported what happened to her manager, hoping the man would be barred from the hotel. However, the guest continued to visit (she didn’t service his room again). ‘[Management] made me believe that they were going to deal with it, but they didn’t do anything… They made me feel unsafe at work. Every time I saw him, I was reliving my experience. I felt abused again.’”
This particular subject and scenario feels especially poignant when taking into account that the latest high-profile celebrity to turn a blind eye to the Chateau’s sordid past and business practices, Taylor Swift, has been a vocal proponent for victims of sexual harassment, having been one herself “thanks to” sleazy ex radio DJ David Mueller, who groped her during a 2013 meet-and-greet. Upon immediately reporting the incident to her mother, management and security team, Mueller was fired from the station soon after. And yet, being a white man, he figured he could gaslight her into believing she had imagined the whole thing, countersuing her for “defamation”—despite some very strong photographic evidence of the incident. A photograph that Swift did not want shown to the public, but then TMZ went and shot that to shit, leaking the photo that very much revealed some untoward behavior on Mueller’s part.
Perhaps if Swift had had the Chateau on her side, she might have maintained some privacy vis-à-vis the photo. And yet, it is an institution like the Chateau that protects the very people that Swift has sought to call out on songs like “The Man,” wherein she asks, “When everyone believes ya, what’s that like?” Despite Balazs’ cushion of power (a byproduct of wealth), it was easy for many to believe the “low-level” employee who said of Balazs’ erratic mood swings spurred by drug-taking in THR, “It’s like having an alcoholic, drug-addicted father, but it’s your CEO.” Surely, Swift can empathize with that as well, what with her whole Scooter Braun debacle (of which she described as being subject to his “incessant, manipulative bullying”).
Another interviewee for the article was an unnamed producer who noted, “The Chateau is such a long-running show. It’s this weird beast that kind of slipped by and shouldn’t exist as it is, but it does. But if you were to say, ‘It needs better HR and proper compliances and codes and egalitarianism at the door,’ it loses its touch.” One could say the same of celebrities themselves becoming truly “moral” in a manner that would require them to actually “walk the talk” (instead of just talking the talk), as it were. For Swift isn’t unaware of the controversy that surrounds the hotel, nor the implications of choosing to ignore its legacy.
The same went for Beyoncé and Jay-Z when they threw an Oscars after-party at the Chateau in 2022 amid a hospitality workers’ union boycott of the establishment that began after the flagrant mistreatment of the staff came to light via THR. While the duo might have cited—if they actually cared to exhibit a guilty conscience—the fact that Bar Marmont, where the party was held, constitutes a “separate” property from the Chateau, it is nonetheless part of the same holdings company, owned by Balazs. Jay-Z also tried to mitigate the “bad look” with the consolation that he’d be bringing in “his own team” to “staff the after-party.” How kind of him. Besides, what does a New York loyal care about the rights of L.A. workers? Or Swift, another New York loyal (though not born there), for that matter?
The answer has been made clear yet again by the latter’s decision to host a Grammys after-party at the Chateau. As Unite Here Local 11 co-president Kurt Peterson said of Jayoncé’s Oscars after-party, it’s “not morally good.” But celebrities, who have flocked to the amoral Chateau Marmont for the past two centuries, go there precisely for that reason. Whether they want to admit it or not. This includes even the “pure” ones, like Swift. Who, for whatever reason, remains unbesmirchable. We saw that much after all the controversy over Swift being the worst offender for private jet use quickly blew over. Sometimes, all it takes is an album release for people to forgive even the worst of sins. And Swift has been forgiven repeatedly for all of hers, including her country roots that unavoidably touted a white bread existence, even if not “directly.”
For it wasn’t until Swift started to transition to pop, moved to New York and become “correctly woke” that she finally saw fit to include people of color occasionally in her music videos (this includes the “unwittingly” Black Mirror-esque video for 2019’s “Lover”). Shit, she even threw in a fair quota for the aggressively white and heteronormative “All Too Well” video. And so, being “racially aware” all of the sudden now that she spent some time living (in a bubble) in New York, one would think that, if the sexual harassment the Chateau allows to flourish wouldn’t make Swift think twice about having her Grammys party there, then maybe the history of racial discrimination toward its employees would. Embodying an Abercrombie & Fitch practice of only allowing white employees “on the floor” and POC employees in the proverbial back, the same thing that went on at many an A&F store would also go down when Balazs showed up, with supervisors girding their loins in anticipation for his arrival ensuring that the “right” (read: white) employees were up front and center.
A more recent article (from The Atlantic) on the dilemma posed for celebrities in continuing to relish the “experiences” provided by the Marmont asked: “Can debauchery and decency co-exist? Can luxury accommodate fair labor practices and still feel luxurious?” The response is obvious to any celebrity willing to be truthful: no. Though an ostensibly fair deal struck between Balazs and his employees, with the former capitulating to the establishment of a union, would like to make people believe otherwise. Thus, a happy ending for all that allows celebrities like Swift to feel comfortable turning a blind eye to the Chateau’s notorious track record. One that isn’t likely to dissipate just because, golly gee whiz, there’s a union now.
In that same The Atlantic article, writer Xochitl Gonzalez notes realistically, “I also couldn’t help wondering how much the contract will change workers’ experience on the job. They’re better-compensated; they have retirement benefits and other protections. But the agreement does little to shield them from entitled or inebriated guests. It did what I used to do: it threw money at the problem.” And because of that, more “wholesome” celebrities like Swift can feel good about supporting the institution, indulging in the type of reverie that only it can provide. With a “Marmo lover” like Lana Del Rey (Swift’s musical “scissor sister,” of sorts, thanks to a shared man in Jack Antonoff that resulted in a flaccid collaboration like “Snow on the Beach”) also showing up to the after-party.
But then, that particular chanteuse has been a long-time supporter of the Old Hollywood “glamor” the Chateau represents (openly licking its asshole at the beginning of her career with a song lyric that declared, “Likes to watch me in the glass room, bathroom, Chateau Marmont” and an interview or two filmed there to play up the “glamorous” vibe she was going for back then…before devolving her “persona” into an uncharacteristic deadbeat soccer mom aesthetic). So have many people who just can’t let go of the inanimate L.A. icon. Especially now that it’s “cleaned up” its act, surely. Though it seems rather convenient that it did so just in time for the many after-parties of the 2023 awards season (with the union contract ratified in December of 2022).
Gonzalez isn’t so naïve about the concession to a union either, concluding in her The Atlantic piece, “I’m not sure whether a great place for the wealthy can ever be a great place for those who serve them. In a business where the key word is yes, unions can police employers, but the whole point of a luxury experience is that no one polices the guests.” Even ones as “tame” and “dulcet” as Swift and her ilk.
Genna Rivieccio
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