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He was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and was a younger brother of author Dominick Dunne. He suffered from a severe stutter and took up writing to express himself. Eventually he learned to speak normally by observing others. He graduated from Princeton University in 1954 and worked as a journalist for Time magazine. He married novelist Joan Didion on 30 January 1964, and they became collaborators on a series of screenplays, including Panic in Needle Park (1971), A Star Is Born (1976) and True Confessions (1981), an adaptation of his own novel. He is the author of two non-fiction books about Hollywood, The Studio and Monster.

As a literary critic and essayist, he was a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. His essays were collected in two books, Quintana & Friends and Crooning.

He wrote several novels, among them True Confessions, based loosely on the Black Dahlia murder, and Dutch Shea, Jr.

He was the writer and narrator of the 1990 PBS documentary L.A. is It with John Gregory Dunne, in which he guided viewers through the cultural landscape of Los Angeles.

He died in Manhattan of a heart attack, in December 2003. His final novel, Nothing Lost, which was in galleys at the time of his death, was published in 2004.

He was father to Quintana Roo Dunne, who died in 2005 after a series of illnesses, and uncle to actors Griffin Dunne (who co-starred in An American Werewolf in London) and Dominique Dunne (who co-starred in Poltergeist).

His wife, Joan Didion, published The Year of Magical Thinking in October 2005 to great critical acclaim, a memoir of the year following his death, during which their daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, was seriously ill. It won the National Book Award.
]]> male Hartford, Connecticut 1932/05/25 2003/12/30 137367 1560258152 9781560258155 10 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172089217m/137367.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172089217s/137367.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/137367.True_Confessions_A_Novel 3.78 54
Two brothers, Tom and Des Spellacy, are at the heart of this powerful novel of Irish-Catholic life in Southern California just after World War II. Played in the film version by Robert Duvall and Robert De Niro respectively, Tom is a homicide detective and Des is a priest on the rise within the Church. The murder investigation provides the background against which are played the ever changing loyalties of the two brothers. Theirs is a world of favors and fixes, power and promises, inhabited by priests and pimps, cops and contractors, boxers and jockeys and lesbian fight promoters and lawyers who know how to put the fix in.

A fast-paced and often hilarious classic of contemporary fiction, True Confessions is about a crime that has no solutions, only victims. More important, it is about the complex relationship between Tom and Des Spellacy, each tainted with the guilt and hostility that separate brothers.
</div>]]> 79463 3.66 219 44 47387 3.73 4657 694 1977 137366 037575024X 9780375750243 8 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172089217m/137366.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172089217s/137366.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/137366.Monster_Living_Off_the_Big_Screen 3.33 40 Up Close and Personal, a toothless star vehicle for Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer. In his account of the script's metamorphosis, Dunne also mentions other potential masterpieces of excess that he and Didion worked on, including Dharma Blue, an aborted Jerry Bruckheimer-Don Simpson movie about UFOs and Ultimatum, a nuclear thriller that was abandoned after its studio spent $3 million on script development! Dunne makes no bones about being in show biz for the money--his film work financed his heart surgery, legal costs, and vacations in Honolulu. Still, this account of a screenplay's devolution unmasks an industry spoiled rotten by wealth and power.]]> 79463 3.66 219 44 1997 137371 1400035015 9781400035014 8 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172089218m/137371.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172089218s/137371.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/137371.Nothing_Lost 3.32 19
In the aftermath of Edgar Parlance’s killing, the small prairie town of Regent becomes a destination for everyone from a sociopathic teenaged supermodel to an enigmatic attorney with secret familial links to the worlds of Hollywood and organized crime. Out of their manifold convergences, their jockeying for power, publicity or love, Nothing Lost creates a drama of magnificent scope and acidity.]]> 79463 3.66 219 44 2004 137365 0375700080 9780375700088 2 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172089217m/137365.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172089217s/137365.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/137365.The_Studio 3.81 16
Whether he is recounting a showdown between Fox's studio head and two suave shark-like agents, watching a producer's girlfriend steal a silver plate from a restaurant, or shielding his eyes against the glare of a Hollywood premiere where the guests include a chimp in a white tie and tails, Dunne captures his subject in all its showmanship, savvy, vulgarity, and hype. Not since F. Scott Fitzgerald and Nathanael West has anyone done Hollywood better.

"Reads as racily as a novel...(Dunne) has a novelist's ear for speech and eye for revealing detail...Anyone who has tiptoed along those corridors of power is bound to say that Dunne's impressionism rings true."--Los Angeles Times]]> 79463 3.66 219 44 1969 137364 1560258160 9781560258162 3 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172089216m/137364.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1172089216s/137364.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/137364.Regards_The_Selected_Nonfiction_of_John_Gregory_Dunne 3.73 15
Regards is a celebration of Dunne’s best nonfiction, from frank observations on the film industry, politics, sports, and popular culture to tender reflections on what it was like to raise an adopted daughter. The collection spans his entire career, including his depictions of Las Vegas and an L.A. film studio, and essays from both of his existing compilations, as well as the essays from the last fifteen years of his life, never before collected. This book is a magnificent gift from one of the finest and most uncompromising writers of a generation.</div>]]> 79463 3.66 219 44 2006 137368 0671412922 9780671412920 2 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1223644382m/137368.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1223644382s/137368.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/137368.Dutch_Shea_Jr_ 3.69 13 79463 3.66 219 44 1982 1223041 0140140204 9780140140200 2 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182013404m/1223041.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1182013404s/1223041.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1223041.Harp 3.90 10 79463 3.66 219 44 1989 554646 0394461657 9780394461656 1 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/554646.Vegas_A_Memoir_of_a_Dark_Season 4.38 8 79463 3.66 219 44 1974 1099643 0520254333 9780520254336 1 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1099643.Delano_The_Story_of_the_California_Grape_Strike 4.00 7 Delano: The Story of the California Grape Strike, based on compelling first-hand reportage and interviews, retains both its freshness and its urgency in illuminating a moment of unusually significant social ferment.]]> 79463 3.66 219 44 1971 137372 0312909659 9780312909659 1 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/137372.The_Red_White_and_Blue 3.29 7 79463 3.66 219 44 1987