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1820 Albany Ave, West Hartford, CT 06117
116 Ferry Rd, Lyme, CT 06371
714 Walden Dr, Beverly Hills, CA 90210
Cove Cemetery
Hadlyme, New London County, Connecticut, USA
Dominick John Dunne[1] (October 29, 1925 – August 26, 2009)[2] was an American writer, investigative journalist, and producer. He began his career in film and television as a producer of the pioneering gay film
The Boys in the Band (1970) and as the producer of the award-winning drug film The Panic in Needle Park (1971). He turned to writing in the early 1970s, and after the 1982 killing of his daughter, Dominique, he began to focus on the ways in which wealth and high society interact with the judicial system. Dunne was a frequent contributor to Vanity Fair, and from the 1980s, he appeared regularly on television discussing crime.
Dunne was born in 1925 in Hartford, Connecticut, the second of six children of Richard Edwin Dunne, a hospital chief of staff and heart surgeon, and Dorothy Frances Burns.[3][4] His maternal grandfather, Dominick Francis Burns (1857–1940), was a successful grocer, who, in 1919, co-founded the Park Street Trust Company, a neighborhood savings bank.[5] Although his Irish Catholic family was affluent, Dunne recalled feeling like an outsider in the predominantly WASP West Hartford suburb where he grew up.[3]
As a boy, Dunne was known as Nicky. He attended the Kingswood School and the Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut,[6] but was drafted into the Army during his senior year of high school. Dunne served in World War II and received the Bronze Star for heroism during the Battle of Metz. After the war, he attended Williams College, from which he graduated in 1949.
Dunne was the older brother of writer John Gregory Dunne (1932–2003), a screenwriter and critic who married the writer Joan Didion. The brothers wrote a column for The Saturday Evening Post and collaborated on The Panic in Needle Park. Didion and John Gregory Dunne wrote the screenplay, while Dominick Dunne produced the film (which featured Al Pacino in his first leading role).
After graduating from Williams College, Dunne moved to New York City, where he became a stage manager for television. Later, Humphrey Bogart brought him to Hollywood to work on the television version of The Petrified Forest. Dunne worked on Playhouse 90 and became vice president of Four Star Television. He frequently socialized with Hollywood's elite, including
Elizabeth Taylor, but in 1979, beset with addictions, he left Hollywood and moved to rural Oregon. There, he said, he overcame his personal demons and wrote his first book, The Two Mrs. Grenvilles.
Dunne was married to Ellen Beatriz Griffin from 1954 to 1965.[17] He was the father of Alexander Dunne and the actors Griffin Dunne and Dominique Dunne, as well as two daughters who died in infancy.[7]
Dominique Dunne, most known for her role in the film Poltergeist, was strangled to death by her ex-boyfriend, John Sweeney, on November 4, 1982.[7] Dominick Dunne covered Sweeney's trial for Vanity Fair, and alongside the rest of his family, was outraged when Sweeney was acquitted of second-degree murder in favor of voluntary manslaughter.[18]
Dunne threw grand parties attended by celebrities such as Dennis Hopper, Natalie Wood, Tuesday Weld, Paul Newman, and Steve McQueen. Unfortunately, drugs and alcohol became an unmanageable part of his life, and in 1974 he escaped to a cabin in Oregon (without a phone or television), where after six months he regained sobriety and began a career as a writer, at the age of 50. When he learned of his brother’s suicide, he moved back to New York City.
Dunne’s country house in Hadlyme, Connecticut, was featured in Architectural Digest in May, 1992. The colonial-style home on five acres included a garage apartment, which Dunne turned into an office and work space for writing. Although he lived alone, he had frequent house guests from all over the world and made close connections with local citizens.
In September 2008, Dunne disclosed that he was being treated for bladder cancer.[11] At the time of his death, he was working on Too Much Money.[12] On September 22, 2008, Dunne complained of intense pain, and was taken by ambulance to Valley Hospital.[13] He died on August 26, 2009, at his home in Manhattan[14] and was buried at Cove Cemetery, in the shadow of Gillette Castle in Hadlyme, Connecticut.
On October 29, 2009 (what would have been Dunne's 84th birthday), many of his family and friends gathered at the Chateau Marmont to celebrate his life.[15] Vanity Fair paid tribute to Dunne and his extensive contributions to the magazine in its November 2009 issue.[16]
Shortly after Dunne died, his son Griffin outed him publicly as a "bisexual" during an interview on Good Morning America, as he was promoting his father’s last book (Too Much Money). In the semi-autobiographical book Dunne wrote, “I’m nervous about the kids, even though they are middle-aged men now, not that they don’t already know. I just don’t talk about it. It’s been a life-long problem.” In Frank Langella’s tell-all book, Dropped Names – Famous Men and Women As I Knew Them, Langella devotes a chapter to Dunne, who commiserates with the author about the agonies of being a closeted gay man.
Griffin said it was just like his dad to “finally come out and then leave. It was hardly a big deal either way.” His son said that when Dunne was getting stem cell treatments in Germany to fight his fatal cancer, a man named Norman was “looking after him,” and that they obviously had a “long loving relationship.”
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