Hollywood Babylon II

Thanks, Mom! I had to skip over the chapter about suicides but really enjoyed the chapter about Reagan. It's hard to tell what's bogus here and what's not, like, there's absolutely no way "Rosebud" refers to Marion Davies' clit, but that bit about Bill Tilden making a cameo in "Lolita" is incredible. The photos & editing in this are perfect.

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. Hollywood Babylon II is a sordid soap dish: you won't get clean, but sometimes it's fun to be dirty.

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" 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 show more 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

5 Stars