Hollywood Babylon
by Kenneth Anger
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Currently out of print in the UK, this legendary underground classic of Hollywood's darkest and best kept secrets includes hundreds of photographs such as the gruesome scene of the crash where Jane Mansfield was decapitated.Tags
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MiaCulpa Both the Hollywood Babylon and "Whatever Became Of" series are fine examples of gossip and they often lead you to Wikipedia to discover what happened to the actors post-publication.
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Member Reviews
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 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 show more 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
That set the tone for the show more 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
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.
Goes to show you that old Hollywood wasn't all glitz and glamour. Think again, this was the age of so many suicides and murder murder murder (although that's nothing new, Hollywood is prevalent to murder.) This is more of a hey day gossip book of the era for the star struck obsessed. Anger writes it in a tabloid form style that is at the most enjoyable and intriguing. The authenticity is questionable, most of the material is said to have been false or over exaggerated. However, funnily enough, I was watching 'The Man with Two Faces' on TCM one night, and Robert Osbourne mentioned the Mary Astor diary story and whaddyaknow I had just read about her salacious diary scandal in Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon so there you have it. It's show more maliciously fun and sleazy: just one look at the cover of Jayne Mansfield showing her share of cleavage and well, that's one way to introduce the material. Oh, and it has flashy pictures! I enjoyed every bit of it. show less
Goes to show you that old Hollywood wasn't all glitz and glamour. Think again, this was the age of so many suicides and murder murder murder (although that's nothing new, Hollywood is prevalent to murder.) This is more of a hey day gossip book of the era for the star struck obsessed. Anger writes it in a tabloid form style that is at the most enjoyable and intriguing. The authenticity is questionable, most of the material is said to have been false or over exaggerated. However, funnily enough, I was watching 'The Man with Two Faces' on TCM one night, and Robert Osbourne mentioned the Mary Astor diary story and whaddyaknow I had just read about her salacious diary scandal in Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon so there you have it. It's show more maliciously fun and sleazy: just one look at the cover of Jayne Mansfield showing her share of cleavage and well, that's one way to introduce the material. Oh, and it has flashy pictures! I enjoyed every bit of it. show less
I still can't believe how much I loved this book when I first bought it. Such scandalous behaviour by actors whose names meant nothing to me then (and only slightly more now) somehow caught my attention like few other books had before or since. Weird.
Anyhoo, "Hollywood Babylon" is a couple hundred pages of gossip on Hollywood stars of the past. For many years I took what Kenneth Anger wrote on people like Charlie Chaplin, Paul Bern and Thomas Ince here as gospel and while I was saddened to read that in many cases there was very little link between much of the contents of "Hollywood Babylon" and reality, it still hasn't reduced my enjoyment of the book.
Anyhoo, "Hollywood Babylon" is a couple hundred pages of gossip on Hollywood stars of the past. For many years I took what Kenneth Anger wrote on people like Charlie Chaplin, Paul Bern and Thomas Ince here as gospel and while I was saddened to read that in many cases there was very little link between much of the contents of "Hollywood Babylon" and reality, it still hasn't reduced my enjoyment of the book.
Things I Learned: Rich and famous people are crazy, too! Maybe even more so ...
Comments: Anger's style is perplexing, but perhaps well-suit to his subject: celebrities of the silver screen, those well-known and the infamous. It's all here, and he names names. There were several volumes of this book published through the 1970's and 80's, all dealing with the tawdry aspects of Tinseltown. One volume that gave me bad dreams I encountered at my friends Carol's house. It was the volume dealing with the Black Dahlia murder, with crime scene photos and Elizabeth Short herself that were quite frightening. It's the kind of book that makes you glad you're just a regular Jane or Joe.
Comments: Anger's style is perplexing, but perhaps well-suit to his subject: celebrities of the silver screen, those well-known and the infamous. It's all here, and he names names. There were several volumes of this book published through the 1970's and 80's, all dealing with the tawdry aspects of Tinseltown. One volume that gave me bad dreams I encountered at my friends Carol's house. It was the volume dealing with the Black Dahlia murder, with crime scene photos and Elizabeth Short herself that were quite frightening. It's the kind of book that makes you glad you're just a regular Jane or Joe.
Bizarre mish mash of scandalous lies and truth about Hollywood from the silents to the '50s. Fun read. Tame by today's standards when you think a former college and pro football star and actor can cut his wife's and her boyfriend's head off, lead police on a televised high speed chase, and get away with it. Michael Jackson. Phil Hartmann. Phil Spector. And on and on.
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Author Information
Awards and Honors
Series
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Hollywood Babylon
- Original title
- Hollywood Babylon
- Original publication date
- 1975
- People/Characters
- Errol Flynn; Fatty Arbuckle; Peg Entwistle; Charlie Chaplin; Olive Thomas
- Important places
- Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA
- Epigraph
- HOLLYWOOD
Hollywood, Hollywood...
Fabulous Hollywood...
Celluloid Babylon,
Glorious, glamorous...
City delirious,
Frivolous, serious...
Bold and ambitious,
And vicious and glamorous.
Drama - a... (show all) city-full,
Tragic and pitiful...
Bunk, junk, and genius
Amazingly blended...
Tawdry, tremendous,
Absurd, stupendous;
Shoddy and cheap,
And astonishingly splendid...
HOLLYWOOD!!
- Don Blanding
As recited by Leo Carillo in the 1935 MGM Colortone Musical, Star Night at the Cocoanut Grove - Dedication
- To the Scarlet Woman
- First words
- WHITE ELEPHANTS – the God of Hollywood wanted white elephants, and white elephants he got – eight of 'em, plaster mammoths perched on mega-mushroom pedestals, lording it over the colossal court of Belshazzar, the pasteboa... (show all)rd Babylon built beside the dusty tin-lizzie trail called Sunset Boulevard.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Yet, sometimes after fierce rains and winds have swept the skies clean, the Egyptian blue reappears over a still-Spanished, still-palmed plain like the Cytherean isle Catalina, discerned on the horizon on a blue ribbon, the hulking, obsolete sound stages like secretive mastabas picked out below, and we can imagine what drew the ambitious and reckless men here, an age ago.
- Blurbers
- Sontag, Susan; Reed, Rex
- Original language
- English
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 791.430280922
- Canonical LCC
- PN1993.5.U65
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, General Nonfiction, History, Biography & Memoir
- DDC/MDS
- 791.430280922 — Arts & recreation Recreation, sports, and performing arts Movies, TV, Video Motion pictures, radio, television, podcasting Motion pictures Standard subdivisions Acting and performance Standard subdivisions History, geographic treatment, biography Biography Collected biography
- LCC
- PN1993.5 .U65 — Language and Literature Literature (General) Literature (General) Drama Motion pictures
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 1,642
- Popularity
- 13,614
- Reviews
- 30
- Rating
- (3.61)
- Languages
- 6 — English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 21
- ASINs
- 28