Novelist and Vanity Fair Contributor Dominick Dunne Dies at 83

Author and culture guru Dominick Dunne died of bladder cancer at age 83 Wednesday. Dunne's son, actor Griffin Dunne said an a statement to Vanity Fair that his father had been battling bladder cancer for sometime but that it did not prevent him from working and socializing, according to the AP.

A frequent contributor to Vanity Fair, Dunne covered high-profile trials including the trials of OJ Simpson, Claus von Bulow, Michael Skakel, William Kennedy Smith and the Menendez brothers.

Dunne's novels include The Two Mrs. Grenvilles, An Inconvenient Woman and A Season in Purgatory.

A renaissance man of sorts, Dunne was also a film producer who had his hand in the caustic gay classic The Boys in the Band, Panic in Needle Park and a film version of his sister-in-law Joan Didion's famous California novel Play it as it Lays.

Dunne's brother, novelist John Gregory Dunne who died in 2003, was married to Didion. His daughter, actress Dominique Dunne, who starred in the film Poltergeist was strangled by her ex-boyfriend in 1982, shortly after the film's release.