Kenneth Anger (1927–2023)

Pure trash. Absolutely tasteless in its inclusion of photos of death scenes, and filled with complete lies. That becomes apparent early on, in The Clutching Hand, on the tragic death of Olive Thomas. The facts were that Jack Pickford was with her when she died, not that she was not discovered nude in the hotel by a valet. She didn’t commit suicide, she accidentally drank the poison which may have been prescribed to Pickford as a topical solution for syphilis, and was rushed to the show more hospital, dying five days later. Even the graphic from a newspaper at the time that Anger includes contradicts his account, which he doesn’t seem to realize. He can’t even get the basics right: she was 25 when she died, not 20.

That set the tone for the entire book, which soon became rather exhausting. The pattern was to (1) read Anger’s tabloid-like, awful prose about something that relates to a Hollywood scandal, one with little depth and zero empathy, often peppered with misogyny, (2) in cases where I wasn’t already aware of what had actually happened, put the book down and look up the truth online, (3) annotate the book with notes.

What’s ironic is that Anger criticizes tabloid writing and gossip columnists in several places, and yet often parrots the same stories which were used to smear people. Not surprisingly, there are zero footnotes or sources listed for his claims, which are often outrageous embellishments. And when he does cite a source, he doesn’t question it when it provides him with something salacious, like when he quotes the Los Angeles Examiner by saying that William Desmond Taylor’s manservant, Henry Peavey, ran down the street screaming “Dey’ve kilt Massa! Dey’ve kilt Massa!” upon finding him dead, without mentioning that this was almost certainly a Hearst smear, as Hearst also had Peavey literally kidnapped in the attempt to get him to confess.

Beware also that this is a very mean-spirited book. Women are often depicted as whores or derided for “going to fat,” a child of Chaplin’s dying at three days old is called a “deformed monster,” and the gay men who a homophobic Chicago newspaperman was concerned that Rudolph Valentino was unduly influencing are “faggots” to Anger. After including that columnist’s screed, Anger insinuates Valentino was gay and throws in invented tidbits like giving Ramon Novarro a signed art deco dildo, when biographers generally agree he was straight.

Are there some chapters that contain relatively accurate accounts? Yes, but most of them are well-known to cinephiles, and there are no revelations here. Meanwhile, Anger spews lots of complete bullsh*t, like:

- Dorothy and Lillian Gish were lovers.
- Clara Bow slept with the entire USC football team.
- Marie Prevost’s dead body was half-eaten by her dachshund.
- Milton Sills committing suicide by driving over Dead Man’s Curve (he died by heart attack).
- Gwili Andre was found amidst her old publicity, implying suicide (she died tragically in a fire).
- Many other actors followed Peg Entwistle’s lead and jumped off the Hollywood sign.
- Mary Nolan incited abuse so that she could sue men for money.
- F.W. Murnau’s valet was 14 years old (he was 31) and that Murnau was going down on him at the time of his fatal car crash.
- Claudette Colbert was one of Marlene Dietrich’s lovers.
- Mary Astor’s diary included incredibly ribald descriptions of her affair.
- Charlie Chaplin screwed Joan Barry on a bearskin rug when she threatened him with a gun.
- Lupe Velez (a “cunt-flashing Hollywood party girl”) died by drowning in the toilet after taking an overdose of pills.
- Lana Turned enjoyed being abused by the men in her life.

There are dozens of others. Perhaps the New York Times said it best: “If a book such as this can be said to have charm, it lies in the fact that here is a book without one single redeeming merit.” And it wasn’t surprising to find that Anger was a piece of work in real life too, harboring deeply racist, antisemitic, and misogynistic views, and a guy who said that politically he was “somewhat to the right of the KKK.” One to steer clear of. show less

Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon II is as entertainingly salacious and sleazy as the first one. There's chapters devoted to Hollywood lushes, Hollywood drug addicts, and Hollywood suicides. There's escapades and sexcapades, lurid, decadent, depressing, alarming incidents and accidents. It's a fantastic book, strewn with gorgeous black-and-white photos, my favorite being one of a greasy-looking Zero Mostel staring down the front of adult Shirley Temple's low-cut dress, ogling her cleavage. show more Hollywood Babylon II is a sordid soap dish: you won't get clean, but sometimes it's fun to be dirty. show less

It's like Kenneth Anger wrote a tabloid magazine just for me and fed-exed it to the future!! I don't care if half of this is untrue or blown out of proportion, it's a lot of fun to read on the bus. I love you, Frances Farmer.

The original "Hollywood Babylon" is one of my favorite books of all time, although I read it before I realised that the author Kenneth Anger made chunks of it up. So, the follow-up had much to live up to, and was always doomed to sit in the sizeable shadow of what had come before it.

Taking every "fact" and "expose" with a grain of salt, "Hollywood Babylon II" digs further into Hollywood's seamy past, as well as mentioning a few then-current scandals, including the making of "Blues Brothers" show more and Louise Lasser's drug problem.

Anger discusses how in every group of thirteen there is always a Judas (so the two women who spoke to the media about the orgies at Chez Lionel Atwell's were from a cast of 26 participants), the portrayal of gay men in Hollywood films (not well, you will not be surprised to hear), some incest and Hattie McDaniel's supposed affair with Tallulah Bankhead, which, true or not, needs a movie right now.

I'm still hopeful for a third edition by Mr Anger but that sadly may not come to fruition. In the meanwhile, go back and read "Hollywood Babylon I" again and then this one. show less