Hollywood & Crime: The Death of Dominique Dunne (And Her Father’s Reporting on Her Murder)
A rising star was murdered by her boyfriend. His light sentence caused outrage among Hollywood, and her father's reporting broke new ground in true crime.
The history of Hollywood is unfortunately littered with the brutalization of women, much of which went unpunished and left the victims without recourse or justice. But it was still shocking when a young rising star from a prominent industry family was murdered by her boyfriend and the killer received a slap on the wrist from the courts. This miscarriage of justice ended up inspiring the victim's father to explore his grief through the written word and to pen some of the era's most piercing true crime reports.
Dominique Dunne seemed destined for fame. Her father, Dominick, was a writer and producer who had credits on The Boys in the Band and The Panic in Needle Park. Her aunt and uncle were the legendary John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion. Her brother Griffin is an actor best known for After Hours and An American Werewolf in London. After studying acting at Milton Katselas' Workshop, with a teacher who had worked with Lee Strasberg, Dominique had started to pick up credits on TV shows like Fame and Lou Grant.
While she worked towards her big break, she loved to home stray and injured animals, and hosted weekly gatherings for her family and friends in her back garden. Fellow jobbing young actors like George Clooney would hang out and share stories of auditions gone wrong and roles they hoped to one day play. Dominique was close to her family. She cared for her mother, Ellen Griffin, who struggled with MS, and often became a kind ear for her father, who was a struggling power player in a tough business and who remained a closeted bisexual for almost his entire life. Said Griffin of her, “It was like she’d been born already built.”
She landed her first feature film role with Poltergeist, Tobe Hooper's supernatural horror that would haunt a generation (including my mum, who is still terrified of this film.) She had also landed a major role in V, an upcoming sci-fi miniseries that's widely considered one of the era's best. Everyone who knew Dominique thought she was destined for big things. The only roadblock, it seemed, was her boyfriend.
