Hollywood Babylon: The Legendary Underground Classic of Hollywood's Darkest and Best Kept Secrets

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The most famous images from "Intolerance" involve the massive set of Babylon, with giant columns topped by white elephants - every bit of that being perfect ironic, thematic fodder for Anger's book. On the eve of his death, he had attended a gay party in Malibu, and his gay friends accused him of dating women for publicity purposes. Hollywood Babylon is a book by avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger which details the sordid scandals of many famous and infamous Hollywood denizens from the 1900s to the 1950s.

Murders and scandals were covered up by studio heads and corrupt LA cops who destroyed evidence and let suspects leave the country. Et sur le dernier tiers, consacré aux suicides, on dirait parfois une rubrique nécrologique avec 2 lignes de texte, parfois une photo, et la date de la mort. The chapters on Fatty Arbuckle and Thomas Ince are perhaps the most interesting because the stories have entered popular mythology. The pictures promise SO much in 'Hollywood Babylon II' - a promise I had clung to since the 80s - but the text doesn't quite deliver. Or what about the absolute shock and horror elicited from the story about one of the giants of slapstick comedy Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle (rumoured to have a gargantuan appendage and voracious appetite for women ), in which one of his unfortunate sexual partners ending up fatally succumbing to a ruptured bladder and secondary peritonitis?The fallacies, myths, and exaggerations of Hollywood Babylon were the focus of season 10 of Karina Longworth's podcast You Must Remember This: "Fake News: Fact Checking Hollywood Babylon". He gained fame and notoriety from the publication of the French version of Hollywood Babylon in Paris in 1959, a tell-all book of the scandals of Hollywood's rich and famous. Somewhat quaint what was considered scandalous in 1984 but ultimately unsubstantiated gossip is just not my thing.

Failed Hollywood starlets mounted the Hollywoodland sign in hopes that King Kong would either kill them or cast them as his next leading lady? Kenneth Anger paints a sinister, evil picture of a Hollywood that chews its "stars" up and spits them out. Kenneth Anger was a trail blazer in the 60s with his bitter brand of celebrity reportage - Perez Hilton owes a debt to him - but the truth is that Anger's photo library is the best thing about this book, his sequel to the original bestseller. This is all about whose pretty little C list head was found in a locker at Grand central Station, which no longer famous former star was eaten by her own pet poodles (they might look chic, dear, but they have no taste at all), who put this there and that there and had to be revived by medics who could not believe what they were seeing, who couldn't do it without various types of rigs and harnesses, who did it an extraordinary number of times in one weekend and was filmed the whole time, and so on, and so forth.The story of Hollywood gossip and depravity begins at the turn of the century in this book - and continues through the excess of the 20s, through to the 60's, although most of the stories focus on the 20s to 40s.

Other debunked urban legends started by the book include claims that impoverished film star Marie Prevost's body was partially eaten by her dachshund after she died in her Hollywood apartment in 1937, and that Jayne Mansfield was decapitated in her fatal 1967 car accident. On the plus side, the segments are relatively short, making it an ideal toilet read, which also seems appropriate given the tawdriness. It feels almost surreal when Anger makes reference to then-contemporary films like The Outsiders or The Blues Brothers (he doesn’t like either, for the record), because this book lingers so predominantly in Hollywood’s past. As soon as the star system got rolling in the World War I era, and cash-heavy Hollywood began doling out massive star contracts, the sin had the fertilizer it needed to grow to scandalous proportions. Still a tight, solid copy of this scarcest edition of the Kenneth Anger classic that sort of started the no-holds barred history of Hollywood scandal!The challenging job was to make sure that studio stars conformed to a strict image of morality is highest. It was perhaps a little less thrilling than the first one--presumably because Anger had already used up all the superstar gossip.

Some stories are amusing, some pathetic, some disgusting, some sad, but every single one grabbed my attention. Many years ago I lived in the courtyard apartments Charlie Chaplin built for his crew across the street from his studio on La Brea Avenue.La veracidad de las historias relatadas no puede probarse y el carácter de rumores debe resaltarse para evitar el tomar al pie de la letra lo que a fin de cuentas no es más que un retorcido, morboso y entretenido resumen de chismes de otra época y otro lugar que no es perpetuamente ajeno por mucho que hayamos consumido o idealizado sus rostros a través de la pantalla.