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Everybody Thought We Were Crazy: Dennis Hopper, Brooke Hayward, and 1960s Los Angeles
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About This Book
National Bestseller "A landmark and long-overdue cultural history." — Vogue The stylish, wild story of the marriage of Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward—a tale of love, art, Hollywood, and heartbreak "Those years in the sixties when I was married to Dennis were the most wonderful and awful of my life." — Brooke Hayward Los Angeles in the 1960 riots in Watts and on the Sunset Strip, wild weekends in Malibu, late nights at The Daisy discotheque, openings at the Ferus Gallery, and the convergence of pop art, rock and roll, and the New Hollywood. At the center of it all, one inspired, improbable, and highly combustible couple—Dennis Hopper and Brooke Hayward—lived out the emblematic love story of '60s L.A. The home these two glamorous young actors created for themselves and their family at 1712 North Crescent Heights Boulevard in the Hollywood Hills became the era's unofficial living room, a kaleidoscopic realm—"furnished like an amusement park," Andy Warhol said—that made an impact on anyone who ever stepped into it. Hopper and Hayward, vanguard collectors of contemporary art, packed the place with pop masterpieces by the likes of Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha, and Warhol, and welcomed a who's who of visitors, from Jane Fonda to Jasper Johns, Joan Didion to Tina Turner, Hells Angels to Black Panthers. In this house, everything that defined the 1960s went the fun, the decadence, the radical politics, and, ultimately, the danger and instability that Hopper explored in the project that made his career, became the cinematic symbol of the period, and blew their union apart— Easy Rider . Everybody Thought We Were Crazy is at once a fascinating account of the Hopper and Hayward union and a deeply researched, panoramic cultural history. It's the intimate saga of one couple whose own rise and fall—from youthful creative flowering to disorder and chaos—mirrors the very shape of the decade.
Reviews
"Rozzo delves deep into his characters' lives, making a strong case for their enduring cultural influence ..."
"Readers of Rozzo's book will come away deeply impressed by the couple's efforts ..."
"It is a tale driven more by encounter than incident: Hopper and Hayward collide herein with just about every major cultural personage of the American mid-century—including Miles Davis, Andy Warhol, Martin Luther King Jr., David O."
"Extensively footnoted and drawing on current interviews and previously published sources, the book paints a detailed picture of the iconic Hopper and his relationship with Hayward, the daughter of legendary producer Leland Hayward and actress Margaret Sullavan."
"As Rozzo traces the marriage's demise, fueled by Hopper's alcoholism and physical abuse of Hayward, he delivers a captivating drama of clashing egos and artistic struggles that captures the oft-volatile vicissitudes of love."
"Which brings us to Rozzo's greatest authorial gift."
"Author Mark Rozzo has penned a remarkable dual biography that was hard to put down, as the subject matter never ceased to be illuminating."
"That's fine; if I had read the original articles there I would certainly have been left with a thirst for more research into the exuberant Sixties, and Everybody Thought We Were Crazy manages to keep up their engaging pace ..."
"Rozzo keeps racking and re-racking his focus, from the art galleries of North La Cienega Boulevard to the rock clubs that revitalized the Sunset Strip with the sounds of the Byrds and Buffalo Springfield; from the sybaritic celebrity paradise coalescing out in Malibu to the bliss-outs and freak-outs up the coast in San Francisco."
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