Notes on the tragic end of Dominique Ellen Dunne:
One of the most powerful movies ever made about the world of psychic phenomena, "Poltergeist" from 1982 featured Craig T. Nelson, JoBeth Williams, Heather O'Rourke, Dominique Dunne and Oliver Robbins as the Freeling family. They live in a house which was built over a graveyard, where the bodies were not disinterred before the subdivision was developed.
A common theme in the real world of poltergeist -- or unquiet spirits -- is the presence of a pre-teen or early teen-age girl in the house. For some reason, the presence of a girl who is on the edge of female development seems to bring about or 'enable' some kinds of poltergeist phenomena, including furniture movement, sounds and creaking noises, cracks in the walls and so on ....
In "Poltergeist," Dominique E. Dunne has a relatively small role by comparison with the beleaguered parents ( Nelson and Williams ), and the amazing performance of child actress Heather O'Rourke. Twenty-two years later it is still a solid, scary, entertaining and thought-provoking movie. Her part seems to be something of an aside in that movie, now, although in poltergeist lore and studies, a young woman is often associated with the phenomena as a trigger agent or catalyst.
"Poltergeist" has a tragic side, too, for the Dunnes.
Not long after leaving the University of Colorado for Hollywood, Dominque Dunne parlayed her famous name and her famous family members ( John Gregory Dunne, Joan Didion are her uncle and aunt ), into a budding career. She also fell into an abusive relationship with a chef named John Thomas Sweeney. Then just twenty-two, and looking much younger as her parts required, when she sought to end the stormy and abusive affair with Sweeney, he went ballistic and strangled her, injuring her fatally.
She died after five days in a coma. He got six years for his vicious assault on her and did not do the entire sentence ( don't know what situation enabled his early release ).
By all accounts, at the time, Dunne was devastated by the untimely death of his talented daughter.
A few years later, Heather O'Rourke died of intestinal stenosis or complications from Chron's disease, via cardio-pulmonary arrest. It was 1988 and she was only twelve.
Beatrice Straight, the veteran character actress who appeared in "Poltergeist", died in April of 2001 of pneumonia.
But it was the deaths of O'Rourke and Dunne which gave "Poltergeist" something of a bad reputation for a few years, as if it was a cursed film production. O'Rourke actually appeared in all three "Poltergeist" productions, and many devotees of horror films feel that "Poltergeist II" was as scary and memorable as the original film. Dunne was slated to appear as Robin Maxwell in the highly successful science-fiction series, "V", about an alien invasion of Earth by reptilian humanoids who could wear elaborate disguises and appear human.
Her murder required her scenes from "V" to be reshot, featuring Blair Ashleigh Tefkin as the Maxwell daughter.
It doesn't seem possible to assess the literary accomplishments of Dominick Dunne without keeping in mind how he suffered when his daughter was murdered, just short of her twenty-third birthday.
Now, watching Gary Condit 'crawfish' on the admissions he made when being interviewed by the D.C. police, concerning his constituent from Modesto, the savvy observer has to wonder whether or not Dunne has an instinctual distaste for the kind of man who can seem so cavalier about the death of someone who was so close to him. Dunne's daughter was almost 23 when she was murdered, and like Chandra Levy ( then 24 ), was raven-haired and extremely magnetic and well-liked by those who knew her well.
Discount this as amateur psychology, or not ....
It may be that Dunne sees an opportunity for revenge in his side-stepping method, in needling Condit from afar, by discussing what someone told someone else who told him. It is very interesting to note that Condit has left California and is now resident in Arizona.
The Patriot
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