“Everybody Thought We Were Crazy,” by Mark Rozzo (Ecco)

In the early 1960s, the hip place to gather for young artists, actors, musicians and other artistic types and their followers was 1712 North Crescent Heights in Hollywood Hills. It was the California home of Brooke Hayward and Dennis Hopper, who were the Gerald and Sara Murphy of the 1960s. “Everybody wanted to be there,” writes Mark Rozzo in “Everybody Thought We Were Crazy”

Everybody included the Monkees, the Fondas, Joan Didion, Andy Warhol, Brian Wilson and the Black Panthers. They all showed up at the Hopper House to drink and talk about art and politics. When she took the kids to school in the morning, Brooke never knew who might be camping out on the first floor. Brooke and Dennis’ daughter, Marin, recalls waking up to find 20 sleeping bags in the living room. “My mom was like, ‘Oh, those are the Hell’s Angels.’ ”

Brooke was Hollywood royalty. She was the daughter of director Leland Hayward and actress Margaret Sullavan. She grew up with Jane and Peter (their father, Henry, had once been married to Brooke’s mother). When Brooke and Dennis’ house burned down, they were taken in by David O. Selznick and his wife, Jennifer Jones.

Dennis, on the other hand, was Hollywood’s bad boy. He appeared in “Giant” with James Dean and was enamored with Dean’s acting, channeling him after Dean’s death. He loved movies and wanted to be a great actor. He loved motorcycles, alcohol and drugs, too.

Brooke had had her own career and had appeared in several movies, although she wasn’t all that serious about acting. When Dennis objected to her working, she turned to other pursuits. “She’d been there, done that,” a friend said about Brooke’s Hollywood career. One of her passions was decorating the Hollywood Hills house with a combination of antiques and junkyard finds. Junked neon signs littered the backyard, including a hotel sign that later sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. And there was lots of 1960s art.

The couple were regular first-nighters at art show openings in Los Angeles and New York. They loved pop art and were enamored with Andy Warhol, then an unknown. They convinced him to have a West Coast show, which turned out to be a flop — for Warhol, although Brooke and Dennis loved it. They’d paid just $50 for one of the soup can paintings. (A collection of the Warhol soup cans later fetched $489,750 each at the Museum of Modern Art.)

But the scene at 1712 North Crescent Heights was too crazed to last forever.  Dennis’ acting gigs were few and far between.  Brooke had given him a camera, and he photographed everything. In fact, Dennis may become as well known for his photography one day as for his acting. But he got more and more manic, and Brooke worried about his effect on the children, their daughter and Brook’s two sons by a previous marriage.

His biggest drive wasn’t booze or drugs, it was sex, admitted Dennis, who had affairs. In a 1971 interview in which he admitted enjoying group sex, he said, “Sex has been an inspiration, the greatest inspiration, since art exists.”

But not Brook’s obsession. One night Jane Fonda and husband Roger Vadim showed up and proposed a foursome, Rozzo claims. “They got in bed with me. I was furious,” Brooke said. “It was not exactly my idea of heaven.”

Not long after that, Brooke got a restraining order against Dennis, which led to divorce.