"His story is remarkable, it's stranger than fiction"
- Robert Evans

Born in Hartford, Connecticut in 1925, Dominick Dunne grew up in a large, well-to-do Catholic family. He was the second of six children and always had a passion for dance, theatre and Hollywood. "I just never felt that I belonged anywhere," he recalls of his childhood. "Even in my own family I was an outsider of the six kids." His relationship with his father was often difficult. The prominent surgeon struggled to accept his son's lack of interest in sports and other 'masculine' pursuits. At times, he beat him with a riding crop. "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 enlisted in the army and served in World War II where he distinguished himself by running towards approaching German forces to rescue two injured American soldiers. "It was a black night, there was artillery over our heads and he bled so all over me. I was covered with his blood. He reached out and he took my hand and he squeezed it, like this, and that was to say thank you to me. I never saw him again. I don't know if he lived or died." For his bravery Dunne was awarded the Bronze Star. "It was so odd with my family because I had an older brother who was the glamour one, the football team...he was in officers' training school and the sissy brother, that was me, I came home with a medal."

When the war ended Dunne moved to New York City and studied at Williams College. After graduating, he secured a position as floor manager for The Howdy Doody Show and then for Robert Montgomery Presents. "They would cut to me and I'd be in the middle of Studio 8H at NBC at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York. And I'd say, 'one minute Mr Montgomery'. And he'd be in a balcony and he'd say, 'Thank you Dominick and good evening ladies and gentlemen'. I was like a star!"

Soon Dunne met the beautiful Ellen "Lenny" Griffin. "I married the most wonderful lady. She was going out with my college roommate. Howard said, 'would you meet my girlfriend at the railroad station?' and she got off that train and I'll never forget it. It was like a scene from a movie!" Within six weeks they were married. They went on to have five children, but two died in infancy.

Dunne worked as a stage manager for several years and during that time met a number of aspiring actors that hadn't hit the big time yet - Grace Kelly, Steve McQueen and Joanne Woodward, among others - and they soon became his friends. Humphrey Bogart was one of his favorites. "What nobody knows about Bogart is that he went to Andover and he's from that kind of family too, but he played all these tough guys so he got a kick out of me and I really just worshipped him." He has a particularly fond memory of his first A-list Hollywood party at Bogart's house. "Sinatra sang, Judy Garland sang and Lana Turner lived next door. Lana Turner was so fantastic at that time, and Spencer Tracy was there that night and David Niven was there that night and Hank Fonda was there that night. And it went on and on. I mean I thought I'd died and gone to heaven. They just sort of took me in and accepted me like I was one of them... I never went to a party as good as that again."

Dunne's rising success in television soon saw the family relocated to Los Angeles where he became a Vice-President of Twentieth Century Fox, produced the popular series, Adventures in Paradise, and hit the big time. He and Lenny socialized with all the top Hollywood stars, including Natalie Wood, Michael Caine, Elizabeth Montgomery, Dennis Hopper, Rock Hudson and Mia Farrow. "My parents thought nothing of having a small orchestra playing and people coming over on a weeknight in full black tie," remembers Dunne's son Griffin. Playwright Mart Crowley reminisces with fondness about the legendary parties the Dunnes held. "Lenny and Nick's parties were a veritable who's who of Hollywood. I met Truman Capote there, Jane Fonda, Carey Grant, David Niven, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford...old Hollywood and new Hollywood, they all mixed...If they were famous, and they were hot, they were at the Dunne's."

However, Dunne's newfound success began to take a toll on his family. He slid into a life of alcohol and drugs but was desperate to keep up the appearance of the perfect family. "He was infuriating," recalls his son. "He wanted us to dress in these Lacoste shirts...we were even art directed... Deadly serious Christmas cards that I think were based on Lord Snowden's portraits of the royal family, that were taken in the middle of the summer. No smiling. So they weren't your happy Christmas cards, they were 'look how beautiful this family is'."

The next decade saw a despondent Dunne fall from grace in Hollywood. The final nail in the coffin of his Hollywood dream was the film, Ash Wednesday, starring Elizabeth Taylor. The film was a flop and when he went on to insult the film's writer, Jean-Claude Tramont, and his fiance, Sue Mengers, the most influential agent in Hollywood, the gossip columns had a field day. Dominick Dunne was no longer welcome in Hollywood.

With his career in tatters, he drove north, not stopping until he blew a car tyre in Oregon. There, he rented a small cottage in the Cascade Mountains and set about trying to reconstruct his life. He began to write for the first time, at the age of 50. He was commissioned to write The Winners, a sequel to The Users, a novel about the secret life of Hollywood high flyers. The novel was panned but Dunne was never-the-less delighted to be reviewed by the New York Times. After six months in that Oregon cabin, he resolved to move to New York and begin life anew as a writer.

His next novel, The Two Mrs Grenvilles, sold over two million copies and changed his life. However, in November 1982, Dunne received a telephone call from Lenny, informing him that his only surviving daughter, Dominique, was on life support after being attacked by her former boyfriend, John Sweeney. He immediately flew to Los Angeles, but Dominique never regained consciousness. The experience of losing his daughter and the ensuing trial of her killer so enraged Dunne that it directed the course of the rest of his life.

The night before flying to Los Angeles for the trial of Dominique's killer, Dunne sat next to a woman called Tina Brown at a friend's dinner party. Brown was about to take up the role of editor of Vanity Fair magazine and when she heard Dunne's story she urged him to keep a journal of the court case and to come and see her when the case was finished. "Tina Brown literally discovered me. She found something in me that I didn't know I possessed." Dunne's account of the trial of his daughter's killer was a huge success in Vanity Fair and kicked off his long and illustrious career with the magazine. "Dominick had a voice that was so personal, that spoke to you right off the page. He just buttonholes you as soon as he starts, in his first sentence. And, that really is what a writer is, it's a voice. I realised then that Vanity Fair had found its first voice. And we signed him up immediately and he became our first star writer and really, the defining voice of the magazine," tells former Vanity Fair Editor-in-Chief, Tina Brown.

Dunne has since written several more best-selling novels and covered the most celebrated trials of the last 20 years for Vanity Fair - O.J. Simpson, the Menendez Brothers and most recently, 60s rock 'n' roll genius, Phil Spector.

Dunne also hosts his own successful television show, Dominick Dunne Presents: Power, Privilege and Justice on Tru TV.

Until his death at the age of 83, Dominick Dunne was still working hard, ever on the trail of a hot story.