Money, Murder, and Dominick Dunne: A Life in Several Acts

by Robert Hofler

  At the hospital, Jack Cummings found that Dominick, despite being gravely ill, responded positively to having people around him, and the assistant asked old friends to come visit. “Tina Brown sat on the hospital bed and they dished for three hours. It brought him right back to life,” said Alex Dunne. Dominick told his former editor, “I wish I could do Conrad Murray’s trial.” He firmly believed Michael Jackson’s doctor was responsible for the pop singer’s death; Dr. Murray would later be found guilty of involuntary manslaughter. After her visit, Brown told Cummings, “He seems in great shape.”

  Another good day for him at the hospital was when his new editors at Crown Publishing, Tina Constable and Suzanne O’Neill, came to show Dominick mock-ups for the cover of his new novel, A Solo Act, retitled Too Much Money. They planned to publish it that autumn and were doing some last-minute editing. Dominick told another visitor, actor Frank Langella, “I did it. I finished my book.”

  Even old enemies like Andrea Reynolds Plunket showed up to wish him well. “I was the last person to see him alive in the hospital,” said the former mistress of Claus von Bülow.

  She was not the last visitor. After a few days in the hospital, Dominick moved back into his apartment on East Forty-Ninth Street, where a hospital bed had been set up in the living room. The attorney Michael Griffith inquired if Ted Maher might want to be Dominick’s nurse. The offer surprised Dominick. “Edmond Safra’s nurse?!” he asked in total astonishment.

  Again, Jack Cummings made sure to keep the visitors coming. If Dominick happened to be sleeping when people arrived at the apartment, his assistant took the guests to the temporary waiting room. “I sat there with Reinaldo and Carolina Herrera in the bedroom, waiting for Dominick to wake up,” Cummings recalled. He thought, “My life is so bizarre.” Dominick had not spoken to Betty Prashker for two years, but when Cummings phoned her, she came to visit. A request to visit was not made to Dominick’s other estranged editor, Wayne Lawson.

  Freddy Eberstadt, who had known Dominick since their days at NBC, made his final trip to 155 East Forty-Ninth Street to see his old friend. It always amazed him that the men running the elevator never failed to comment on what a nice man Mr. Dunne was. “How many times does that happen?” thought Eberstadt. “And I’ve ridden in a lot of elevators.” When he walked into the living room, Dominick was sleeping, but after a few moments he opened his eyes to ask his friend, “Am I still alive?”

  Griffin Dunne phoned Jesse Kornbluth to ask if he could bring some medicinal marijuana for his father to smoke to ease the pain. When Kornbluth arrived, Alex Dunne thought he was a drug dealer and sent him away. Griffin had to make apologies and quickly retrieve the grass. When Kornbluth returned to give Dominick the marijuana, he warned, “It’s strong stuff. It might kill you.” They shared a similar macabre sense of humor. “Life amused Dominick in the way that it amuses people who are really, really sad,” said Kornbluth.

  Mart Crowley was another regular visitor at the end. One afternoon he arrived to find a journalist friend reading the obituary he had written, to be published in a newspaper as soon as Dominick passed way. The obit’s subject, as usual, was sleeping—or appeared to be. “Don’t stop reading,” Crowley insisted. He wanted to hear the obit. Besides, “Dominick likes to hear about himself,” Crowley added.

  Dominick opened his eyes. “That’s true,” he whispered.

  On another visit, Crowley looked across his friend’s bed to see Stephen Sondheim. Even though the two Williams College men had not seen each other much in recent years, Jack Cummings knew Dominick wanted to see his friend and phoned Sondheim to request a visit. The two men used to enjoy their postcollege quarter-annual ritual lunch at the Four Seasons, but classmates Howard Erskine and Chuck Hollerith had passed away and they had not kept up their restaurant tradition. Dominick said of Sondheim, “We almost never see each other, except at large parties. We hug and say we should get together, but we never seem to.” Despite those words, Sondheim remained one of the few constants on Dominick’s ever-changing list of honorary pallbearers.

  Dominick made one last-minute change to his funeral arrangements. He put Graydon Carter’s name back on that list of pallbearers. “I don’t want any ick at the funeral,” he explained to Jack Cummings.

  Dominick Dunne died on August 26, 2009. The family did not immediately release the news. Edward Kennedy had passed away the day before, and it seemed better not to compete for obit space against such an American icon. When Griffin Dunne finally contacted the funeral home, he was asked if the family wanted special security, to keep away what undertakers call “professional mourners.” Griffin’s immediate thought was to call his father to tell him they now had a name for one of his favorite pastimes, being a professional mourner.

  The next point of duty was to phone all the people Dominick had requested to be honorary pallbearers and speakers at his funeral. Jack Cummings phoned Dominick’s composer friend.

  “But I don’t have a suit,” Stephen Sondheim replied.

  “Can you buy one?” asked Cummings.

  The phone call to Graydon Carter proved much more time-consuming. After putting in the initial request, Cummings received multiple calls from the editor’s office. The questions asked ran the gamut from what were the names of the other pallbearers to what order would the pallbearers file into the church. It was so very Vanity Fair.

  Dominick wanted to begin the funeral with Cole Porter’s “Anything Goes” and end it with “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Those songs, however, posed a problem. Father Daniel Morrisey told the family that no secular music could be sung during the Mass itself, but friends and relatives would be allowed to speak then. A compromise was reached regarding Dominick’s music. “Anything Goes” could be sung before the Mass began and “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” could be sung after it had finished. The priest’s edict, however, created a dilemma for Dominick’s granddaughter. Hannah Dunne wanted to finish her eulogy by singing “My Funny Valentine.” The song held special significance because it referenced Dominick’s Valentine’s Day tradition of sending his granddaughter flowers with a note signed “Your secret admirer.” It fell to Griffin to tell Hannah that the priest would not allow her to sing the Rodgers and Hart show tune during High Mass.

  “I don’t care,” she insisted. “They’ll have to drag me off the stage. The priest will have to drag me off.”

  Griffin cautioned, “Honey, first of all, it is called an altar.” Fortunately, he came up with an easy, slightly devious solution. “I have you listed as a speaker and you speak about the flowers and then you just start to sing,” he advised.

  Long before Dominick died, he had sent Jesse Kornbluth a letter asking him to be a pallbearer at his funeral. Kornbluth wrote back, “I’m honored. Not soon, please.” He did not give Dominick’s request much thought until September 10 when he arrived at the Church of St. Vincent Ferrer on Lexington Avenue. At the funeral, he saw the lineup of honorary pallbearers and found it “fucking amusing” that Graydon Carter was among them.

  Stephen Sondheim, in the end, did buy a suit to wear to the funeral but caused something of a ruckus when he began to complain loudly about the singing of “Anything Goes.” During the Mass, Dominick’s two sons spoke, as did Liz Smith, Tina Brown, and Joan Didion, who, true to form as the person Dominick used to call Frail, could not be heard beyond the first row of pews. And Hannah Dunne defied the priest to sing “My Funny Valentine” a cappella. She created what her father called “an incredible moment. I’m sure Poppy heard it no matter where he is.”

  Dominick was buried in Cove Cemetery, only a quarter mile from his house in Hadlyme, Connecticut. It is a tiny cemetery, and he had purchased the last available plot from a friend who chose to have his remains buried elsewhere. Dominick’s dark marble tombstone reads “Father—Writer—Advocate for Justice.”

  Griffin Dunne found it too difficult to go through his father’s belongings at the house called Clouds, so he asked Mart Crowley and Jack Cum
mings if they would make the trip to Hadlyme. Dominick’s papers needed to be assembled and sent to the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History. Dominick took it as a great honor that the prestigious library at the University of Texas at Austin sought permission to include his manuscripts, letters, diaries, and other correspondence in their vast collection. Over fifty boxes of his papers were to be archived there along with those of Walter Cronkite, Harry Reasoner, and other great figures in the media. While clearing out one closet, Cummings found a dusty white plastic bag filled with old documents. It had been placed in the back on the floor. Cummings opened it to find the police report on Dominique Dunne’s attack. “That brought home what he went through,” said Cummings.

  Sometime after her friend’s death, Wendy Stark made a phone call to inquire about repurchasing the old fireplace fender. As agreed upon with Dominick, she wanted to buy back the antique for $800, the price she had paid in 1980 and the price Dominick had paid to buy it back a few years later. She was informed of the item’s new price: $3,000. It later sold at a Stair Galleries auction for $2,900.

  In November 2009 Dominick’s last book, Too Much Money, was published. And as promised, Gus Bailey comes out of the closet. In the novel, Bailey believes a billionaire widow has planted a young boy in his hotel room to blackmail him into not writing about the mysterious death of her banker husband. Rather than submitting to her threat, Bailey admits to being homosexual. “But I’ve been celibate for almost twenty years,” says the character, who goes on to reveal his true sexual orientation. Bailey explains, “Can’t die with a secret, you know. I’m nervous about the kids, even though they’re middle-aged men now. Not that they don’t already know. I just never talk about it. It’s been a lifelong problem.”

  Griffin Dunne helped promote the novel. Two of his more high-profile interviews were with George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America and Terry Gross on Fresh Air. Both Stephanopoulos and Gross asked an innocuous first question and then got right to it with their second one, which included a reading of the above quote from Gus Bailey about his children.

  Both interviewers asked Dominick’s son how he felt reading that passage.

  “It is so typical for him to come out and then leave,” Griffin Dunne replied. “And here I am being asked and answering the question. It’s just perfect.”

  When told of the interview, Alex Dunne had to agree with his brother. “So true,” he said. “So true.”

  Acknowledgments

  This book began with an e-mail to Griffin Dunne, asking if he had any objections to my writing a biography of his father. He responded that, for various reasons, he did not want to authorize such a biography. I wrote back that I did not want to write an authorized biography, which in essence would give the estate the right to edit the book. Griffin and I met briefly to discuss the book. He answered a number of questions I had about his father and then wished me well. In the following year, we exchanged a few e-mails. Sometimes he answered my questions; sometimes he did not. I talked to more than 180 people for this book. Interviewees would often tell me, “I talked to Griffin first, and he said it was OK to talk to you.” I thank Griffin Dunne for that support.

  At the heart of any good biography are the people who speak to you. I wish to thank the following for talking to me in person, on the phone, or via e-mail. They include Dan Abrams, Marvin Adelson, Elizabeth Ashley, Barry Avrich, Don Bachardy, Shawn Baldwin, Arthur Barens, Steven Barshop, Peter Bart, Gordon Basichis, Keith Baxter, Adam Belanoff, Aimee Bell, Robert Berger, Patricia Bosworth, Scotty Bowers, Pamela Bozanich, Marie Brenner, Tracy Breton, Tita Cahn, Norman Carby, Mia Certic, George Christy, Craig Cignarelli, Harry Clein, Eden Collingsworth, David Patrick Columbia, Laura Nappi Connolly, Doug Cramer, Mart Crowley, Jack Cummings III, Bruce Cutler, Joe Danisi, Robert von Dassanowsky, Kirsty de Garis, Alan Dershowitz, Linda Deutsch, Jack Donahue, Tom Downey, James Duff, Timothy Dumas, Alex Dunne, Freddy Eberstadt, Henry Edwards, Jack Egan, John Erman, Patti Jo Fairbanks, Charles Feldman, Preston Stephen Fischer, Heidi Fleiss, David Friend, Jonathan Friendly, Gil Garcetti, Lucianne Goldberg, Kim Goldman, Michael Griffith, Lawrence Grobel, Anthony Haden-Guest, Billy Hale, Joseph Hardy, Art Harris, Hudson Hickman, Judy Hilsinger, Michael Hogan, Chuck Hollerith, Peter Hong, Anthony Horn, John Johnson, Richard Johnson, Beth Karas, Philip Kearney, Tom Keller, Brian Kellow, Brad Kelly, Tony Kiser, Neil Koenigsberg, Jesse Kornbluth, Jill Krementz, David Kuhn, Sherry Lansing, Moira Lasch, Dr. Henry C. Lee, Dick Lehr, Leonard Levitt, Paul LiCalsi, Tim A. Lovejoy, Shoreen Maghame, Susan Magrino, Donald Manasse, William Mann, David Margolick, Asa Maynor, Clifford McCormick, Ciaran McEvoy, Steven Mikulan, Susanna Moore, Chris Morano, Paul Morrissey, Dorthy Moxley, Bruce Nelson, Barbara Nevins Taylor, Norma Novelli, Robert Osborne, Allan Parachini, Larry Peerce, Shirley Perlman, Andrea Reynolds Plunket, Sue Pollock, Gary L. Pudney, Dotson Rader, Robert Rand, Joan Ransohoff, Ira Reiner, Luanne Rice, Markham Roberts, Howard Rosenman, Betsy A. Ross, Bonnie Russell, Harriet Ryan, James Sansum, Jerry Schatzberg, Lawrence Schiller, Henry Schleiff, Joel Schumacher, Jessica Seigel, Kevin Sessums, Mickey Sherman, Ronald G. Shipp, John Simon, Chris Smith, Liz Smith, Valerie Smith, Judalon Smyth, Gary Spector, Wendy Stark, Arnold Stiefel, Sheila Sullivan, Patrick Taulere, Tim Teeman, Michael P. Thomas, Mike Tipping, Andrew Tobias, Jeffrey Toobin, Philip Truelove, Richard Turley, Matt Tyrnauer, Marc Vanasse, E. Duke Vincent, Joyce Wadler, Marc Watts, Edmund White, Peter White, Caroline Whitman, Angus Wilkie, Jim Willwerth, Kitty Winn, William Baldwin Young, Bobby Zarem, Dr. Harvey Zarem, and a few anonymous sources. My most special thanks go to Alex Dunne. Not everyone on this list is quoted in the book or referenced in the notes. Several people gave me information that, in fact, led me to delete errors or avoid misconceptions.

  I wrote this book, but I did not build the libraries that helped make it possible. I am proud to pay taxes that support the Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, the Los Angeles Public Library, and the New York Public Library. The work of their librarians is essential to any reporter. Also crucial to the research for this biography is the Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills and the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin. Margaret L. Schankley at the Briscoe Center provided invaluable help, as did the Austin-based researcher Anne Gaines Rodriguez.

  In November 2015 I traveled to Connecticut and Massachusetts to visit the schools Dominick Dunne attended in his youth. It was an invaluable research trip and one that turned into a minivacation thanks to Meghan Kurtich at the Kingswood School, Katie Nash at Williams College, and Samuel Register at the Canterbury School.

  Peter Bloch, Stephen M. Silverman, and Nanette Varian are friends who read early versions of the book. They offered great suggestions and corrected many errors.

  Barbara Carroll, Ginny de Liagre, Holly Millea, Sue Pollock, Jordan Rodman, and Laurence Sutter are also friends who delivered amazing advice, help, info, and tips.

  Last and foremost, I thank Raphael Kadushin, Sheila McMahon, and Amber Rose at the University of Wisconsin Press; my agent, Eric Myers at Dystel & Goderich Literary Management; and my photo guru, Howard Mandelbaum at Photofest.

  Notes

  Dominick Dunne’s papers are archived at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin. For the purposes of these notes, the Dunne papers are referenced in two ways, as quotes/facts taken from either a “Briscoe journal” or a “Briscoe letter.” Where possible, the date of the material is given.

  A number of people were interviewed multiple times for this book. The date given is that of the first interview, whether it was conducted in person, on the phone, or via e-mail.

  Chapter 1

  Quotes from Norman Carby (May 23, 2015), Mart Crowley (February 5, 2015), James Duff (March 4, 2015), Alex Dunne (May 21, 2016), Joseph Hardy (January 19, 2016), Chuck Hollerith (January 11, 2016), Meghan Kurtich (November 15, 2015), Shoreen Maghame (April 29, 2015), Clifford McCormick (December 1, 2015), Robert Rand (October 20, 2015)
, Luanne Rice (April 7, 2016), and Matt Tyrnauer (January 9, 2016) are from interviews with the author. Dominick Dunne quotes are from the documentary Dominick Dunne: After the Party, except where noted.

  4 pet-ferret/“dummy”/“We’re not talking”: Seth Mydans, “Stories of Sexual Abuse Transform Trial,” New York Times, September 12, 1993.

  — Menendez and Lansing quotes: Court transcript, September 11, 1993.

  5 “I wonder if I’m wrong”: Maghame to author; Rand to author.

  6 “Dad, I knew lots”: Linda Deutsch, “Trial Resembles Dominick Dunne Novel,” Associated Press, July 24, 1993.

  — both his sons later denied: A. Dunne to author; Griffin Dunne (March 11, 2016) to author.

  6 “fascinated”: D. Dunne letter, September 7, 2001, Robert Rand collection.

  7 “ought to have been a girl”/“rescue”: Briscoe letter, March 7, 1980.

  — “Your dress is awfully cute”: James H. Hyde, “Dominick Dunne,” NewEnglandTimes.com, 2009.

  8 verse/“physical chill”: Didion, The White Album, 19.

  — “incipient fairyism”: Briscoe letter, November 6, 1979.

  — interrupt his thrashing: Griffin Dunne, Fresh Air interview, December 15, 2009.

  — “invent”/“perfect Christ child”: Briscoe letter, October 30, 1979.

  9 “steerage to suburbia”/“Poppa”: J. G. Dunne, Harp, 34.

  — “Papa”: Hyde, “Dominick Dunne.”

  — “He had an enormous influence”: Dominick Dunne, “A Death in the Family,” Vanity Fair, March 2004.