Shortly after their marriage, actor Dennis Hopper and Hollywood royal Brooke Hayward moved to LA in 1961. After a Bel Air fire destroyed their first home, the couple moved to 1712 North Crescent Heights Boulevard, where they began acquiring and displaying art from Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Frank Stella, and Ed Ruscha.
During their eight-year marriage, the art and artists they celebrated made an indelible impression on Los Angeles. That’s the focus of a new book: “Everybody Thought We Were Crazy: Dennis Hopper, Brooke Hayward, and 1960s Los Angeles” by Mark Rozzo.
The couple always agreed on what they were going to purchase for their home. Rozzo says, “Brooke really saw the big picture, she saw the totality of what 1712 could be.” She was often arranging and rearranging the artwork and furniture, but she also painted and tiled areas of the house.
“Her best friend Jane Fonda said, ‘It was really a magical house,’” Rozzo says. “And Dennis took his hat off to how much work Brooke did on this place. And it made an impression on everyone who came though the front door.”
He adds, “Andy Warhol said, ‘It was like walking into an amusement park.’ He’d never been to any house like that in his life.”
Rozzo spoke to Hayward, who is still alive and residing in Connecticut, several times for the book. She told Rozzo that those years were “the most wonderful and the most awful time of her life.”
He says, “I was just fascinated by how the shape of their marriage so utterly conformed with the shape of the decade — going from that youthful idealism and creativity to this colorful plateau, and then to things going a bit pear-shaped toward the end for a variety of reasons.”
“I was just fascinated by how the shape of their marriage so utterly conformed with the shape of the decade — going from that youthful idealism and creativity to this colorful plateau, and then to things going a bit pear-shaped toward the end for a variety of reasons,” says author Mark Rozzo. Photo by Jonathan Becker.