LOS ANGELES

THE Sunset Tower Hotel, once a dilapidated dump but now a power-broker capital in Hollywood, recently hired a detective. After all, a crime had been committed  at least in the eyes of its owner, Jeff Klein.

When US Weekly reported in August that Renée Zellweger and her new beau had guzzled Champagne in a Sunset Tower suite, Mr. Klein had a meltdown. The detective was hired and, soon, a room-service waiter was fired.

“He claimed he only told his mother,” Mr. Klein says. “I didn’t care. Gone!”

A New York society brat turned serious hotelier and restaurateur, Mr. Klein, 39, bought the Sunset Tower in 2004 and has transformed it partly by throwing out the handbook of how entertainment industry haunts are managed, especially in Los Angeles. A ban on media leaks about boldface business deals or celebrity frolicking is strictly enforced. Mr. Klein is also very careful about curating a clientele. Celebrities deemed out of place, including the rapper Sean Combs and Britney Spears, have been  gasp  turned away.

Hollywood hotels have long played a role in how the gears of show business grind. They are where the moguls show off (Harvey Weinstein conducting multiple meetings simultaneously at the Peninsula), where publicists monitor interviews (the bar at the Four Seasons) and where pretty young things are discovered poolside (the plucking of Robert Evans decades ago from obscurity at the Beverly Hills Hotel).