Dominick Dunne (1925-2009): A Lovely Man Who Took No Prisoners -- Starting with Himself

Dominick Dunne, who died this morning, was Vanity Fair's brightest star for more than two decades. If you don't know the real story, that is how you'll remember him. A success. A winner.

The Vanity Fair pieces and the bestselling novels and the TV show all occur in Act II. But at the end of Act I, Nick Dunne was a total loser -- and when he was on top again, he didn't try to hide that fact at all. You can see how brutally honest he was in the first minute of a documentary called Dominick Dunne: After the Party:

He's on a stage, giving what others would call a lecture and he'd call telling stories. This one is about Frank Sinatra, in a time long past, when Dunne was married and living in Beverly Hills and working in the movie business.

"Frank Sinatra picked on me," Dunne begins.

The audience titters.

Dunne goes on to recall a night at the Daisy, a club in Beverly Hills. He and his wife Lenny are there. Frank Sinatra and his crew show up. Nick and Frank go way back, but they're no longer friends -- Sinatra, says Dunne, likes to tell Lenny Dunne that she's married to a "loser". Now Sinatra sends the maitre d' over. "I'm so sorry about this, Mr. Dunne," the man says, "but Mr. Sinatra made me do it."

And with that he punches Dunne in the face.

The audience laughs.

"I was the amusement for Sinatra," Dunne continues. "My humiliation was his fun."

The audience, still not getting it, laughs again.

I can understand that laughter -- these fans of his articles and novels don't know how to process the information they're being given. That's because they're clueless about the first half century of his life, which is about out-of-control ambition, deep insecurity and the constant threat of humiliation. And they have no idea how his worst fears came to pass, how he drank and drugged and lost everything.

So they laugh.

"I hated him from that moment on," Dunne says, and now the audience is with him, because they are very familiar with Dominick Dunne as a professional hater, a scourge of the rich and criminal, a judge with a pen. O. J. Simpson, Claus von Bulow, the Menendez brothers, Phil Spector -- regardless of the legal verdict, Dunne convicted them all.

The big surprise of this documentary: Dunne convicts himself.

"The reason I can write assholes so well," he says, looking right into the camera, "is that I used to be an asshole."

This is riveting viewing -- I dare you to look away -- but that is not to say After the Party is amusing. It's something else: a man coming clean, ripping off layer after layer of pretense, telling the truth about himself in a way you never expect from any member of the America celebrity class.

The story is no puzzle -- if Dunne's account is remotely accurate, the recipe for early success and midlife failure was developed at home. Here's Dunne:

My father was this famous heart surgeon, a wonderful man...but there was something about me that drove him crazy. He mimicked me, he called me sissy. It may seem like nothing now but it's awful to hurt a child. It's a terrible thing. My opinion of myself was nothing...I believed I was everything he said.

Dunne was, by his own account, an unlikely hero in World War II -- could that have anything to do with the memory of his father whipping him? And his obsession with being accepted at the highest level of Hollywood -- could there be any better way to show his father he was worthy? And the movies he produced -- who wouldn't be proud of making Al Pacino's first movie and the adaptation of the best-known novel of his sister-in-law, Joan Didion?

When the crash came, it was total: no marriage, no career, no money. Dunne retreated to a one-room cabin, without telephone or television, in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon, and, at 50, began to write. A few years later, his daughter, Dominique, was strangled to death by a former boyfriend. A chance meeting with Tina Brown led to an invitation to write about the trial for Vanity Fair. Here's Dunne:

I had never attended a trial until my daughter's murder trial. What I witnessed in that courtroom enraged and redirected me. It wouldn't be necessary to hire a killer to kill the killer of my daughter, as I had contemplated. I could write about it.

Tina Brown published that piece and offered Dunne a job. "I couldn't sign that contract with Vanity Fair quick enough," he says. "I was 59 at the time."

For most of the film, the camera stays tight on Dunne, as the Irish Catholic raconteur builds the case against himself. There are a few witnesses for spice -- his son Griffin, Liz Smith, Tina Brown, producer Bob Evans, Joan Didion -- but they don't exonerate him so much as they confirm the accuracy of his memories.

"I had to admit, I cried a lot," Dunne said after his first viewing of the film. "It really shows my life completely, the fakery of the early me --- and I'm not embarrassed a bit."

I met Dominick Dunne in 1975, just before he took a high dive into the failure pool. We re-connected after his daughter's murder, were colleagues at Vanity Fair, friends since. I mention our relationship not as a name-drop, but because it means I knew pretty much everything in this documentary.

Knowing and seeing are very different, however, and the movie hit me hard. But if I cried -- and I did, and you will too -- I also laughed and cheered. Because as much as we like the Rocky myth of a nobody getting somewhere, we also thrill to the story of a guy who got somewhere, lost it and fought his way back -- and then, until almost his dying day, made his living and his life by trying, as best he could, to tell the truth.

Comments

[devans00]

I've read a couple of Mr. Dunne's books and articles over the years. I enjoyed his TV shows too.

I hope he finds the peace now that acceptance no longer matters. RIP.

[lisakaz2]

I so enjoyed Dunne's "Power, Privilege and Justice" show and had read his articles before. I'll miss him.

[raker]

It would be interesting to know why Sinatra hated him so much. Did Sinatra believe he had a reason to hate Dunne?

[marykennedy]

This is a wonderful tribute to Dominick Dunne, so glad you posted it. I'm a huge fan of his books, especially The Two Mrs. Grenvilles and People Like Us. I actually wrote a "walk-on" role for him in one of my teen novels that was set in Hollywood. (Tales of Hollywood Gossip Queen) Thanks so much for posting this.

[jessicajuliette]

great writer-really had conections in old hollywood in his youth. produced elizabeth taylor's movie ash wednesday, wrote of his experiences with all the hollywood insiders in hisbook, PEOPLE LIKE US..great read, i think i have read almost everything he has written..
i have missed his VANITY FAIR columns as of late, and now to find out why he has not been in the pages recently..
talented family, brother writer JOHN GREGORY DUNNE, JOHN'S WIFE JOAN DIDION, CHILDREN WERE ACTORS DOMINIQUE DUNNE AND GRIFFIN DUNNE...
HE WILL BE MISSED....

[Nina Mcgrane]

i will miss his writing i loved reading his stuff and the fact that he came back after really screwing up his life. i only wish i could have met the man rip

[MGLLC]

I'll miss him. A great writer, and a greater man.
RIP

[chapeauetbarbe]

R.I.P. D.D.

[eliteandproud]

I consider myself so lucky to have had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Dunne at a JFK bar in March, when we were both fearful that our flights would be canceled due to snow. It was all I could do not to blurt out that his sister-in-law is one of my greatest personal heroes, but he swept me along in easy conversation as if we'd just been introduced by an important mutual acquaintance. As I tried not to let on how much I knew about him, he was asking me about my own life, and letting my dog lick ice cubes from his hand. We were both thankful that our flights did get out in time, but I don't think he ever suspected just how grateful I was to have passed the time in his delightful company. He was someone who was one of the great Keepers of the Past, and yet somehow remained so current. Thanks a million, D.D.

[sparky09]

Thanks for that story E&P...It re-enforces my knowledge of the down to earth man Dominick was. Years ago my best friend was having lunch at the Plaza hotel in NYC when Mr. Dunne & Faye Resnick sat at the table next to him. When Mr. Dunne found out my friend was eating alone, he invited him to join them, then preceeded to entertain everyone with his wry wit & stories. To this day my friend says that was the best lunch he ever had.

[hopefulnana]

Thanks, both of you, for your stories. What an interesting man he was. RIP, Mr. Dunne.

[lisakaz2]

Thanks for your story.

[ccairnes]

I was already missing Dominick Dunne since he stopped writing for Vanity Fair. I don't much care for crime stories, but he was such a good writer, I always read him anyway.

[TAIsabel]

Having been a fan of his for quite a long time I was surprised and overjoyed one day when I came face to face with him on a flight from LA to NY. I greeted him and he smiled, looked straight into my eyes and said hello back. He was gracious and down to earth.

He is now reunited with his beloved daughter. Good night Mr. Dunne, sleep tight.

[FreedomCorpse]

Mr Dunne always came across to me as a very real and honest man in his narratives on television. In this day and age, I cannot say that about very many people in television media (< 10). Rest in peace Dominick.

[Roxanna]

I always enjoyed reading Dominick Dunne is earnest forthrightness who say for through veneers.
He will be missed.

[Geraldine Savatorelli]

This was a fabulous and fitting article about Dominick Dunne -- a voice readers knew they could trust. As a memoir writerm I took great pleasure in Dunne's style -- openness, truth and authenticity which often breed hardship and pain as well as love, joy and freedom. I love writers with the nerve to dispel myths about how the other half live. Thanks Dom. www.Geraldeena.com

[Juanx]

Mr. Dunne will be sorely missed. His voice was one you could trust. I always marveled at his ability to put events in prespective. When his reporting of events were not on point he took full responsibility in reporting the corrected outcome.

Prehaps Vanity Fair could publish his life story in a special edition.