“I have always been intrigued by the kind of people who call their lawyers before they call the police after a murder. It is a rich-people thing.”
Dominick Dunne
Dominick Dunne
Dominick Dunne at the Stork Club with His Wife Lenny
Who says Americans do not have second acts? In his first one, Dominick Dunne was a minor player in the entertainment industry but a major firmament on the Hollywood social scene, hosting and attending the most talked-about parties in Beverly Hills, circa the super-glam 1960s. However, that was mere prologue to his second act. He returned to New York in the 1980s and became a star journalist for Vanity Fair, reporting on crimes committed by the rich and famous. He also moonlighted as a novelist, fictionalizing the sensational murders he wrote about in Vanity Fair.
Dominick Dunne’s The Way We Live Then chronicles his Beverly Hills years. It is the closest Dunne came to writing his memoirs (though in his swan song novel--Too Much Money—he is clearly the narrator Gus Bailey). The home he shared with wife Lenny and three children became a hub for a glittering but cultivated Hollywood set. Regulars included Natalie Wood, Billy and Audrey Wilder, Jennifer Jones, Roddy McDowall, and the agent Freddie Fields. Occasionally their circle expanded to include Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Cecil Beaton, Princess Margaret, Lauren Bacall, Jane Fonda, Paul Newman and many others. Filled with black & white photographs, most shot by Dunne, the book offers the imagery one expects from a coffee table book but is smaller, making it easy to pick up and read the text.
Dominick Dunne’s The Way We Live Then chronicles his Beverly Hills years. It is the closest Dunne came to writing his memoirs (though in his swan song novel--Too Much Money—he is clearly the narrator Gus Bailey). The home he shared with wife Lenny and three children became a hub for a glittering but cultivated Hollywood set. Regulars included Natalie Wood, Billy and Audrey Wilder, Jennifer Jones, Roddy McDowall, and the agent Freddie Fields. Occasionally their circle expanded to include Ronald and Nancy Reagan, Cecil Beaton, Princess Margaret, Lauren Bacall, Jane Fonda, Paul Newman and many others. Filled with black & white photographs, most shot by Dunne, the book offers the imagery one expects from a coffee table book but is smaller, making it easy to pick up and read the text.
 The Way We Lived Then |  Dominick and Lenny Dunne at Their Black & White Ball |
Dominick and Lenny Dunne defied the primary rule of the entertainment industry. Generally in Hollywood, one’s popularity is directly proportional to one’s box office. Not so the Dunnes. His C-List career miraculously translated into an A-List social life. Perhaps that was because they gave such memorable parties. In fact, their most celebrated was a formal dance in which the ladies were requested to dress in black or white. Truman Capote attended and then copied the theme for his famed Black and White Ball to which the Dunnes were not invited.
Dunne was the master of the society roman à clef. His novel People Like Us covered the excesses of Manhattan's Nouvelle Society. The book created a stir when both the old guard and the social climbers caught on that Dunne had pilfered from their lives to create the book's memorable characters. There is no doubt Glenn Bernbaum, of Mortimer’s fame, was the model for Chick. Chick was proprietor of Clarence’s, the society restaurant where the characters regularly dined. Nick Harvill Libraries acquired (and quickly sold) Bernbaum’s copy of People Like Us. In it, Dunne warmly inscribed, “For Glenn, aka Chick, there’s not too many people like you around, with great affection, Dominick Dunne, June 20, 1988.”
 Mortimers, Glenn Bernbaum (Standing) |  People Like Us Signed to Glenn Bernbaum |
Occasionally books from Dominick Dunne’s own library appear on the resale market. They are noted with a “From the Estate of Dominick Dunne” stamp. One such book is currently available from Nick Harvill Libraries. It is Slim Keith’s memoir Slim, Memories of a Rich and Imperfect Life. Sadly, Slim died prior to its publication, but this copy is signed to Dunne by the book’s co-writer who was a colleague at Vanity Fair. It is warmly inscribed, “For Dominick, The godfather, guru, and all-time chronicler of rich & imperfect lives. All my love, Annette.”
 Slim, Signed to Dominick Dunne by Annette Tapert with His Estate Stamp |  "Slim, Memories of a Rich and Imperfect Life" |
In 2012, Nick Harvill Libraries sold a copy of The Way We Lived Then in which a program from Dominick Dunne’s memorial service was laid in. His Vanity Fair boss Tina Brown was one of the speakers. How great it would have been to witness her eulogize one of the journalists with whom she captured the zeitgeist of go-go 1980s.
Dominick Dunne Memorial Service Program
Dominick Dunne Memorial Service Program
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