Tabloid sparks flew some months ago when Tori Spelling threw her still newish husband off her own private Love Boat and ended up in the arms of Dean McDermott, a Canadian actor with a superhero chest and C-list cred. At the time, McDermott was married to Toronto’s Mary Jo Eustace, most famous for once co-hosting a popular food show called What’s for Dinner?

Canadian content notwithstanding, it seemed about as interesting to me as a dial tone. Another week, another celebrity split. Big yawn. What did caress my attention, however, were reports that the former 90210 star and daughter of a TV ayatollah had settled into L.A.’s famous Chateau Marmont. The New York Post reported that the nose-knows Tori summoned her best pals to the hotel to break the news that her marriage, which began just one year ago with a totally gorgeous ceremony and her dog bearing the wedding rings, had busted up.

A Spelling needing a hotel? My mind went mash. I may not know much, but one thing I do know is that Tori’s real-life Dynasty folks, Aaron and Candy, have a 123-room Holmby Hills mansion in L.A. that would accommodate at least three or four of the G8 nations. As one L.A. blog bristled: “We’re very curious to know why she had to check into a hotel rather than going back home after her divorce. Couldn’t Candy have set up a cot in the mansion’s famous gift-wrapping room?”

Of course, that wasn’t the point. Tori wasn’t just looking for somewhere to check in; she was looking for a place to check in her new life. And the Marmont, where celebrity shadows fall every which way, was just the place. Rising like a Cinderella castle just up from Sunset Boulevard, the Marmont is, what I like to call, one of a very exclusive group of “divorce hotels.”

Going straight from ’til-death-do-us-part to room service is nothing new. Divorce hotels are almost as old as divorce itself. Elizabeth Taylor stayed at London’s old-dame Dorchester after her split from Eddie Fisher, with – naturellement – her new man squeeze, Richard Burton, in tow. Dorothy Parker, the snippy gin-soaked social observant and story writer, moved, post-divorce, into the hotel most associated with her name, New York’s the Algonquin. And, similarly, poor Judy Garland lived between husbands at the Plaza for a time with her young daughter, Liza Minnelli (suspected by some to be the inspiration for the Eloise books penned by Kay Thompson).

More recently, Mick Jagger went from sour to suite when his relationship with Jerry Hall went south. He went straight to Claridge’s in London. Likewise, when Ethan Hawke got bit by reality and his marriage to Uma Thurman fell apart, he moved into the Hotel Chelsea, where the ghosts of everyone from Sid Vicious to Simone de Beauvoir no doubt helped him get through the night. (His ex, Uma, did one better not by checking into a hotel but by snagging a hotelier as a new boyfriend: André Balazs, who owns, among other things, the Chateau Marmont in L.A.!)

More royally, when Edward VIII abdicated the throne for the love of his life, Wallis Simpson – effectively, divorcing himself from England – he and the missus set up life at the Waldorf in Manhattan.

One of the things about the truly rich and famous is that when their marriages crack, they crack glamorously. This is the dirty little secret that few feel fit to mutter out loud for fear of sending out the “wrong message” to the great celebrity mag-reading unwashed. But having more than one spouse in a lifetime is like having a wide range of Louis Vuitton luggage. And in the psycho space that hotel rooms occupy in the collective imagination, all these fabulous people know what even the least fabulous of us know intuitively. It’s not just about room and board; it’s about starting from scratch and playing hooky from your existing life… both fresh sheets and a fresh slate.

With all this bitter suite shelter seeking, it makes you wonder: If Virginia Woolf were still writing today, would her book be called A W Hotel Room of One’s Own?

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Shinan Govani is the Scene columnist for the National Post and frequently appears on television commenting on celebrities and the social whirl. Write him at sgovani@enroutemag.net.