Griffin Dunne talks about the Black and White Ball and the Kennedys at the book party in Santa Monica

For actor/producer and author Griffin Dunne, things came full circle on Tuesday night when he hosted a party for his book, “The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir,” at the Georgian Hotel.

He finished writing in a suite in the trendy Santa Monica neighborhood overlooking the beach house where his parents, Dominick Dunne and Ellen “Lenny” Dunne, lived next to Kennedy’s father-in-law, Peter Lawford, when they moved to Los Angeles in the 1960s.

“I could see it from the window where President Kennedy landed right between our two houses to get to the Lawfords and he got off on the beach. You’ve seen those pictures in Life magazine. I remember President Kennedy swimming in the water. And I remember my mother rushing to the hospital with a child in her womb that didn’t survive,” Griffin Dunne said.

“And of course the trial,” he continued, recalling how his family gathered daily at the Santa Monica courthouse for the trial of his sister Dominique Dunne’s killer.

“From the top floor of this hotel, I could see almost everything. And then, as I was writing, I got to a certain point and came to the place where my daughter was born. I said, ‘I’m done.’ I didn’t know how to end it. But I couldn’t top that,” he said of his daughter Hannah.

Eventually, Griffin’s family moved to Beverly Hills and became the center of a social scene that included Hollywood’s bigwigs. Dominick and Lenny hosted their own Black and White Ball in LA, which Truman Capote attended, which gave him the idea of ​​hosting his own Black and White Ball at the Plaza Hotel in New York, as portrayed in the Ryan Murphy series Feud: Capote Vs. The Swans.

For the Dunnes’ Black and White Ball, Women’s Wear Daily sent an artist to document the event, Griffin writes in the book. He doesn’t remember exactly what his mother wore, but he suspects it might have been Oleg Cassini. “My father could certainly tell you, I’m sure it was a dress designed for her,” he said. “Christopher Isherwood was in Los Angeles at the time, in Santa Monica, and his lover was Don Bachardy, who did all the drawings for Women’s Wear Daily and the sketches of the party.”

The author’s closest friends came to toast him and the book. It’s a great read, from his childhood memories of being saved from drowning in the family pool by Sean Connery, to his youthful impertinences in deflowering his best friend Carrie Fisher, his adventures in Hollywood working on After Hours and other films, to how his family endured so much tragedy.

“I love you, brother,” said Michael Keaton, with whom he filmed “Johnny Dangerously” in 1984, on the day the verdict was handed down in the trial. As described in the book, it was Keaton who immediately called for production to be halted for that day.

His girlfriend Sandra Bullock, whom he directed in 1998’s Practical Magic, was also there to support him, posing with the author and his book and grabbing a chocolate chip cookie before they headed out. It was recently announced that Bullock and Nicole Kidman will reprise their roles in a sequel, Practical Magic 2.