The Dunnes: Literary Family Royalty
The Friday Afternoon Club: A Family Memoir by Griffin Dunne (Penguin, 2024)
Reviewed by Michael Jimenez
Actor, director, and author Griffin Dunne comes from an impressive line of writers. His father was the film and television producer, journalist, and novelist Dominick Dunne, and his uncle was the writer and journalist John Gregory Dunne, credited with one of the first books about Cesar Chavez and the UFW, and the ups and downs of showbusiness in The Studio. And then there is Dunne’s aunt, Joan Didion, the author of Slouching Towards Bethlehem and many other things. Didion is probably the most famous American non-fiction writer of the last fifty years. These family members all have a starring role in Dunne’s memoir.
Dunne’s childhood was anything but typical. Nighttime sometimes consisted of lavish Hollywood parties, who’s who type of affairs. How were he and his two siblings, Alex and Dominique, supposed to get any sleep with actors and producers drunkenly dancing the night away? However, the glimmer of fame begins to fade with his parents’ divorce and his time sent away at private school. The separation took a toll on both parents. His father’s closeted lifestyle, alcoholism, and desire to be accepted by the entertainment establishment created an existential burden that almost led to suicide. His mother deals with a debilitating disease that ultimately confines her to her bedroom as a television-watching recluse. Even his brother Alex struggles with a lifetime of mental affliction. These family situations were difficult for Dunne, but he summarizes how the family dealt with tough topics: “In Dunne family tradition, I kept it pleasant and my secrets close” (118). He does seem to be the family peacekeeper, helping his parents and sibling persevere through their pain, and handles the turmoil in stride.
Famous people, like Dunne’s kinfolk writers, come and go through the story, but the narrative never loses sight of Dunne’s whole immediate family. Considering the amount of tragedy that visited his family, it is remarkable he was able to compose such a loving tribute to them in his book. Still, a lesson he learned from Didion inevitably helped shape his memoir: “A writer is always selling somebody out” (92). By the end of the book, Dunne has done just that. He has revealed much, especially the trauma that has left a scar on this family, yet they managed to persevere.
Dunne ultimately finds himself in New York, trying to find his way as an actor. He strikes up a lifelong friendship with the vivacious Carrie Fisher, recollecting the before and after of Star Wars and their relationship. He is familiar with many famous people, but the space dedicated to Fisher highlights just how important she remains in his memories. Dunne himself never lands a space opera that makes him famous overnight. He had some success, with films like American Werewolf in London and Martin Scorsese’s After Hours. However, he never gets a taste of being an A-list celebrity. The Scorsese film has only recently been considered a cult classic. Dunne’s perseverance as an actor sees him at his most vulnerable in the story.
The second part of the book is almost wholly dedicated to the murder of his sister, Dominique, and the infamous trial that followed. His sister had just been part of the Steven Spielberg produced film Poltergeist and was seen as an up-and-coming actress, in some ways challenging Dunne’s own quest for stardom. However, she was in an abusive relationship that eventually resulted in her murder. The trial still manages to be a prime example of grossly mishandled justice and was a spark for victim’s rights activism, a cause the family matriarch took up after the trial.
His father would write the classic article “Justice: A Father’s Account of the Trial of His Daughter’s Killer” for Vanity Fair, which led to a late burgeoning career as a novelist and court trial journalist (Nathan Lane would play Dominick in the recent Ryan Murphy miniseries about the Menendez brothers). During the trial, Dunne almost welcomes the distraction of co-starring in a film with Michael Keaton called Johnny Dangerously. However, the trial and its outcome consume the family’s life.
A misunderstanding between Dunne’s father and uncle led to an alienation between the brothers for years, one that the memoirist would try to help bridge. The book closes with reconciliation between his father and his uncle, and the birth of Dunne’s only daughter. The presence of his sister’s memory seems to be the force to ultimately bring peace to the family. He writes about feeling the warmth of her spirit as he holds his child. The recollection about Dominique reveals how much of a positive impact she made on people’s lives. This makes her death all the more haunting. It takes years before all the family members can, in some ways, move on with their lives. Perhaps this is the appropriate ending to this book, but it means that we learn nothing about the family in the last twenty to thirty years.
As much as the book at times name-drops celebrities (Sean Connery rescues a young Dunne from drowning in the family pool), the focus of the book never wavers from Dunne’s immediate family and the author’s insights. In one passage, he reveals: “What I secretly longed for was to have a father like my hotheaded uncle. It took me many years to understand what it meant to be a man, and by then I realized I’d been raised by one all along” (79). Dunne does a good job capturing these moments of illumination throughout his life, especially at the mundane moments. The Dunnes are complicated people with a deep love for each other, through the good times and the bad times. This book is proof that the Dunnes are literary family royalty and will be read for years to come. I hope we see a follow-up volume, for more recent years. In the meantime, there are many books by the Dunne brothers and Didion that help fill the void.
Michael Jimenez is an Associate Professor of history at Vanguard University. He is the author of Remembering Lived Lives: A Historiography from the Underside of Modernity and Karl Barth and the Study of the Religious Enlightenment: Encountering the Task of History.
