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Hollywood Babylon #1
Hollywood Babylon
Originally published in Paris, this is a collection of Hollywood's darkest and best kept secrets from the pen of Kenneth Anger, a former child movie actor who grew up to become one of America's leading underground film-makers.
305 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1959
About the author
Kenneth Anger
22 books99 followersKenneth Anger (born as Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer) was an American underground avant-garde film-maker and author. 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. A pirated (and incomplete) version was first published in the U.S. in 1965. The official U.S. version was not published until 1974.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 583 reviews
January 17, 2022
Un Novella 2000 sotto acidi scritto da uno dei più importanti registi underground del cinema statunitense.
Tra pura exploitationg e glitter, tra boa di struzzo e bagni nello champagne, tra "Cronaca vera" e splatter-pulp... un libro ADORABILE.
Tra pura exploitationg e glitter, tra boa di struzzo e bagni nello champagne, tra "Cronaca vera" e splatter-pulp... un libro ADORABILE.
July 28, 2011
Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon is a boiling cesspool of lies! Practically none of this shit happened. The ratio of truth to lies is like 10 to 1. I have it on the highest authority those girls looked thirty under the bad set lighting. My great-great-great aunt was there for that underage (by trickery! It was set up!) sleepover-cum-orgy and Lillian Gish had no idea that Dorothy Gish was the other girl in the bed with Griffiths. This Kenneth Angers person is blowing it all out of proportion just to sell a few measely books. And Charlie Chaplin's mustache supplementing his income by performing mustache stand-in duties for Hitler? Preposterous! My cousin's roomate knows this guy and he says it was accidental mustache standing in! Hitler told him he was going to be back after a toilet break. The same thing happened to George Harrison's beard. Charles Manson took too long in the bathroom, is all. I mean, really. Where is he getting all of these facts? There is no way that Fatty Arbuckle forced a genie to live in a coke bottle. How does a big man fit into that tiny hole? He would kill them! I heard something different than the sordid tale of Stroheim's monocle blinding ladies on beaches into dropping their bikini tops. Joan Crawford was the economist for the George W. Bush administration? Failed Hollywood starlets mounted the Hollywoodland sign in hopes that King Kong would either kill them or cast them as his next leading lady? This book has more namedropping than Madonna's Vogue rap and is more apocolyptic than Deborah Harry's Rapture rap from her Blondie days. My niece's great-great-great-great-great cousin twice removed married into a family that employed as a garderner the direct descendent of Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies did not sell his family jewels to pay off his debts after the stock market crash. She merely sold some jewelry he gave her that didn't go with any of her furs. Who actually believes this shit? I heard that all of the stars from the silent era didn't sound like Danny Kaye before his voice broke, not this shit about the kissing disease and they all lost their voice en masse. Pfffffft. Don't believe everything you read. Trust my hairdresser that Kenneth Angers is laughing all the way to the bank as he'd believe these nice immigrant boys who harmlessly ran movie studios to bring joy to the public and employ Jayne Mansfield's prehistoric boob job. Think of the trouble they'd get up to on their own!
February 7, 2020
"Wasted lives make waste, not tragedy." (413)
And yet, this really isn't so. The history of Hollywood in all its shady dealings & deaths--ending in the Manson Tate massacre--is sometimes too bloody a story to take in, but the viewer and fanboy is not heartless. That so many of these "wasted" silver screen deities ended up in the loony bin, alone, unloved, is too often a repeated tale. Those smiles and human emotions--that they are so fake & made up makes this American tragedy all the more pronounced.
Also, Anger's tone is arguably disgusting (I wonder how twenty years ago this one woulda read...). The man is awful talking about actresses' deaths & shortcomings; mysoginistic, racist, deplorable. Just! So! Hollywood!
And yet, this really isn't so. The history of Hollywood in all its shady dealings & deaths--ending in the Manson Tate massacre--is sometimes too bloody a story to take in, but the viewer and fanboy is not heartless. That so many of these "wasted" silver screen deities ended up in the loony bin, alone, unloved, is too often a repeated tale. Those smiles and human emotions--that they are so fake & made up makes this American tragedy all the more pronounced.
Also, Anger's tone is arguably disgusting (I wonder how twenty years ago this one woulda read...). The man is awful talking about actresses' deaths & shortcomings; mysoginistic, racist, deplorable. Just! So! Hollywood!
May 15, 2008
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. One night I read “Hollywood Babylon” while guzzling an entire bottle of red Zinfandel and eventually fell asleep with the book by my bed. I proceeded to have one of the worst nightmares of my life.
I was in a silent film, scratchy, jumpy and dirty as hell – in it Albert Dekker was preparing his noose in ladies’ lingerie as Ramon Navarro looked on, William Ince was feeding bits of Marie Prevost to her dogs, and Fatty Arbuckle was tossing Jayne Mansfield’s head to Frances Farmer.
When I awoke I practically jumped out of bed. I looked at my copy of “Hollywood Babylon” and threw it in the closet. I slept peacefully for the rest of the night.
I was in a silent film, scratchy, jumpy and dirty as hell – in it Albert Dekker was preparing his noose in ladies’ lingerie as Ramon Navarro looked on, William Ince was feeding bits of Marie Prevost to her dogs, and Fatty Arbuckle was tossing Jayne Mansfield’s head to Frances Farmer.
When I awoke I practically jumped out of bed. I looked at my copy of “Hollywood Babylon” and threw it in the closet. I slept peacefully for the rest of the night.
June 10, 2011
I used to check this out regularly from my small-town public library back in middle and high school; I loved it because the library's innocuous cover meant my parents had no idea that I was reading something so (to use their word) sinful. Needless to say, it was an eye-opening experience, raising my awareness of a number of different behaviors, coupling possibilities, creative use of inanimate objects, etc.
A copy now has pride of place on my bookshelf next to my other film books.
A copy now has pride of place on my bookshelf next to my other film books.
November 2, 2007
It really doesn't matter if the stories here are true or not - and some people get upset about this. But then they are missing the point. It's "Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon." And it's the way he tells the stories which makes this book and Volume Two priceless.
The mixture of images and Anger's text makes it into a feverish dream - and really, cinema should be a feverish dream. Essential. If one does not have this in their library, they are not film lovers. Just tourists.
The mixture of images and Anger's text makes it into a feverish dream - and really, cinema should be a feverish dream. Essential. If one does not have this in their library, they are not film lovers. Just tourists.
July 14, 2017
EASY SLEAZE
As the both feared and respected head of the Warner Brothers film studio, Jack had intimate knowledge of the dark underbelly of Golden Age Hollywood, the place where most dreams don’t come true at all, but come to perish in ignominy instead. Take a peek underneath its shimmering veneer, and you’d find plenty of rot. In those “halcyon” days, even if you were one of the few lucky ones picked out for a life of shameless luxury, hedonism and blind adoration, chances were good you’d eventually do yourself in (accidental or not), be done in, or ended your life as an unhappy has-been, firmly clenching the bottle or drugged out of your mind by uppers, downers or screamers. In effect, you were utterly disposable, as someone more talented, more hungry, or more young was always waiting in the wings, resolute in wanting to take your place.
Jayne Mansfield wrecks her car and in the process the lives of herself and two others on June 29, 1967
This bleak reality was one Warner had long ago accepted. After all, the almighty dollar and commercial considerations utterly ruled the land, and if it turned out you couldn’t cut it, you had no business being there in the first place. He was not alone in this sentiment, it was an unspoken truth if ever there was one. As a professional, a mere mention of it to one’s surroundings – let alone to the unsuspecting fans, whose naïve fantasies about their stars (deftly supplied to and greedily devoured by them) needed to be maintained at all cost – meant being branded either as ungrateful or, worse, a pariah.
It would take a couple of decades (just as its influence was waning, perhaps unsurprisingly) before old Hollywood in earnest turned a self-critical, unflinching gaze towards itself, through such films as Sunset Boulevard (1950) and The Bad and the Beautiful (1952). Finally, here was an acknowledgement, a mea culpa , yet simultaneously also a morbid, almost pathetic celebration of what Hollywood once was. A longing for the "good old days", even though defining its goodness seemed quite the task for most. At the very least, some disillusionment and rancour was bound to be mixed up with it.
Compared to these - infinitely more classy - films, Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon (originally published in Paris in 1959) is a different beast altogether: a highly readable, veritable cornucopia of dirt on a morally and spiritually corrupt Hollywood and its various participants, spanning five decades. It can’t be overstated what glorious, unadulterated sleaze is contained within these pages, put across in a close approximation of that delicious style the old-timey tabloids utilised to dazzle and titillate their vast readerships way back when.
For here we have the infamous, tragicomic tale of Mexico born actress Lupe Vélez who, in a botched suicide attempt by drug overdose, ended up not peaceful in her bed like some ravishing Aztec queen as intended, but head down in a toilet bowl, covered in her own throw-up. 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? All this and much, much more is all here, in all its unvarnished smuttiness and grotesqueness.
Mug shot of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, the bulky, here definitely not merry clown, who after three trials still managed to escape punishment for loving a woman "too enthusiastically"
A mere cursory glance at the chapter index should suffice in giving one a clear idea of what to expect if opting to proceed any further: ‘Heroin Heroines’, ‘William Randolph’s Hearse’, ‘Charlie’s Nymphs’, ‘The Dirty Hun’, ‘Death Garage’, ‘Monster Mae’, ‘In Like Flynn’, ‘Chop-Suicide’ and - my absolute favourite - ‘Hollywoodämmerung’. That last one should be a David Lynch film, seriously. It would make for a fitting closer of his career.
Of course one doesn’t read this kind of material for its factualness, that would be a mistake of the utmost gravity. In the decades following its publication, more substantive and better researched works obviously have appeared, providing considerably less sensational accounts of the events described here.
But seriously, who would want only that kind of reportage? Where’s the fun, the sheer outrageousness, the indulgence? No, what saves Kenneth Anger’s cult classic from being relegated to the dust bin for being wholly out of date (which it is), is that it doesn’t ever purport to serve this function. Instead it consciously chooses to nigh ecstatically revel in its tabloid style, and you can bet James Ellroy has taken quite a few pointers from this.
Hollywood, a continuous source of ambiguous and often violently contradictory feelings
What Hollywood Babylon has on offer above all else, is rollicking fun for the perverse voyeur that resides within each and every one of us. It’s a dark, often unpleasant journey to be sure, but that doesn’t preclude some bitter laughs of schadenfreude along the way. We know we shouldn’t, yet we nearly always do. For whatever would we do without you, Hollywood? Being the equally attractive as repulsive entity that you are, we just can’t bear to look away. It's far too good a show to miss out on.
No. Watch, we must. Out there. In the dark.
“I walk along the street of sorrow
The boulevard of broken dreams
Where gigolo and gigalette
Can take a kiss without regret
So they forget their broken dreams
You laugh tonight and cry tomorrow
When you behold your shattered dreams
And gigolo and gigalette
Awake to find their eyes are wet
With tears that tell of broken dreams
Here is where you'll always find me
Always walking up and down
But I left my soul behind me
In an old cathedral town
The joy that you find here you borrow
You cannot keep it long it seems
But gigolo and gigalette
Still sing a song and dance along
Boulevard of broken dreams”
- Segment excised from the 1934 musical Moulin Rouge by order of Jack Warner as “Too depressing!”
As the both feared and respected head of the Warner Brothers film studio, Jack had intimate knowledge of the dark underbelly of Golden Age Hollywood, the place where most dreams don’t come true at all, but come to perish in ignominy instead. Take a peek underneath its shimmering veneer, and you’d find plenty of rot. In those “halcyon” days, even if you were one of the few lucky ones picked out for a life of shameless luxury, hedonism and blind adoration, chances were good you’d eventually do yourself in (accidental or not), be done in, or ended your life as an unhappy has-been, firmly clenching the bottle or drugged out of your mind by uppers, downers or screamers. In effect, you were utterly disposable, as someone more talented, more hungry, or more young was always waiting in the wings, resolute in wanting to take your place.
Jayne Mansfield wrecks her car and in the process the lives of herself and two others on June 29, 1967
This bleak reality was one Warner had long ago accepted. After all, the almighty dollar and commercial considerations utterly ruled the land, and if it turned out you couldn’t cut it, you had no business being there in the first place. He was not alone in this sentiment, it was an unspoken truth if ever there was one. As a professional, a mere mention of it to one’s surroundings – let alone to the unsuspecting fans, whose naïve fantasies about their stars (deftly supplied to and greedily devoured by them) needed to be maintained at all cost – meant being branded either as ungrateful or, worse, a pariah.
It would take a couple of decades (just as its influence was waning, perhaps unsurprisingly) before old Hollywood in earnest turned a self-critical, unflinching gaze towards itself, through such films as Sunset Boulevard (1950) and The Bad and the Beautiful (1952). Finally, here was an acknowledgement, a mea culpa , yet simultaneously also a morbid, almost pathetic celebration of what Hollywood once was. A longing for the "good old days", even though defining its goodness seemed quite the task for most. At the very least, some disillusionment and rancour was bound to be mixed up with it.
Compared to these - infinitely more classy - films, Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon (originally published in Paris in 1959) is a different beast altogether: a highly readable, veritable cornucopia of dirt on a morally and spiritually corrupt Hollywood and its various participants, spanning five decades. It can’t be overstated what glorious, unadulterated sleaze is contained within these pages, put across in a close approximation of that delicious style the old-timey tabloids utilised to dazzle and titillate their vast readerships way back when.
For here we have the infamous, tragicomic tale of Mexico born actress Lupe Vélez who, in a botched suicide attempt by drug overdose, ended up not peaceful in her bed like some ravishing Aztec queen as intended, but head down in a toilet bowl, covered in her own throw-up. 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? All this and much, much more is all here, in all its unvarnished smuttiness and grotesqueness.
Mug shot of Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, the bulky, here definitely not merry clown, who after three trials still managed to escape punishment for loving a woman "too enthusiastically"
A mere cursory glance at the chapter index should suffice in giving one a clear idea of what to expect if opting to proceed any further: ‘Heroin Heroines’, ‘William Randolph’s Hearse’, ‘Charlie’s Nymphs’, ‘The Dirty Hun’, ‘Death Garage’, ‘Monster Mae’, ‘In Like Flynn’, ‘Chop-Suicide’ and - my absolute favourite - ‘Hollywoodämmerung’. That last one should be a David Lynch film, seriously. It would make for a fitting closer of his career.
Of course one doesn’t read this kind of material for its factualness, that would be a mistake of the utmost gravity. In the decades following its publication, more substantive and better researched works obviously have appeared, providing considerably less sensational accounts of the events described here.
But seriously, who would want only that kind of reportage? Where’s the fun, the sheer outrageousness, the indulgence? No, what saves Kenneth Anger’s cult classic from being relegated to the dust bin for being wholly out of date (which it is), is that it doesn’t ever purport to serve this function. Instead it consciously chooses to nigh ecstatically revel in its tabloid style, and you can bet James Ellroy has taken quite a few pointers from this.
Hollywood, a continuous source of ambiguous and often violently contradictory feelings
What Hollywood Babylon has on offer above all else, is rollicking fun for the perverse voyeur that resides within each and every one of us. It’s a dark, often unpleasant journey to be sure, but that doesn’t preclude some bitter laughs of schadenfreude along the way. We know we shouldn’t, yet we nearly always do. For whatever would we do without you, Hollywood? Being the equally attractive as repulsive entity that you are, we just can’t bear to look away. It's far too good a show to miss out on.
No. Watch, we must. Out there. In the dark.
March 27, 2014
Glorious garbage. Some of it true. What isn't true is even better.
March 31, 2017
Sucked me right down the gutters and dark alleys of the glittery and smutty Old Hollywood, so much so that I could barely stop to eat. Some stories are amusing, some pathetic, some disgusting, some sad, but every single one grabbed my attention. Anger writes in a very nifty style and the amount of pictures just add the allure.
September 15, 2018
I read this so I could appreciate the new season Karina Longworth’s podcast: You Must Remember This. In each episode, she’s debunking basically everything Anger has claimed. But the book itself is recklessly trashy, poorly written, especially the segments after 1940, which feel nearly stream of consciousness, with an assumption that the reader knows whom he’s describing. That would’ve been risky at the time of publication, but 40 years later it’s beyond annoying. On the plus side, the segments are relatively short, making it an ideal toilet read, which also seems appropriate given the tawdriness.
February 25, 2017
Ulysses and 100 Years of Solitude were killing me, so I just needed some well-written trash; something that I could actually FINISH.
So, yeah I'd known about this book for 30 years and ran across it many times with mild curiosity, but a couple years ago a slightly musty first edition hardcover availed itself for $1 at Half Price Books - kind of a no-brainer, whereupon it sat in the basement till now...
It begins in 1915, a convenient place to begin a history of the scandals of Hollywood, though the film business had already been around for almost a generation, and scandals and censorship battles had already become a part of it, as does anything touched by humans... Hollywood itself officially started in 1912 - the evolution is more complex than that, but no matter.
Anger begins here to establish his theme, that of a phony Babylon, sex and violence amid plaster and Potemkin villages. Flush with cash and power and bloated ego from his monster hit "Birth of a Nation," the film industry's first official artiste, D.W. Griffith, staged his filmic "Sun Play of the Ages," aka "Intolerance," the epic to end all epics, though what it most famously ended was his career - not instantly but put it into a death spiral as Griffith struggled to pay off the debts and restore his damaged reputation as a master of the universe. 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.
The "Intolerance" set sat weedy and decaying for years over the growing new Babylon, an eyesore and reminder of the quickly forgotten past in a place where you're only as good as your next picture. 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. And hereafter, Anger's book becomes a litany of the notorious: the drug death of Wallace Reid, the rape and manslaughter trial of Fatty Arbuckle and so forth. But interwoven into all the irresponsible rumor-mongering (Anger throws in every speculation about who was fucking whom and probably makes up a few of his own) is also a very perceptive history of Hollywood. Anger was part of the scene, as a boy actor in the '40s, and he knows his shit. There's the touch of queenly snarkyness, but also -- as it was in Anger's homoerotic underground home movies -- a great affection and homage to the sad glamor of it all. It probably helps to know the broader history of Hollywood to better appreciate some of the references made in this book. But no matter, Anger's book is breezily written; the book is a model of informational compression -- much crammed into nicely phrased sentences. And of course it is effulgent of imagery, much of it disturbing and capturing the banal reality of death in a land of happy dreams.
The book's famous cover perfectly captures its attitude: the Hollywood glamor image self destructing before our eyes in Jayne Mansfield's overpainted face and saggy tits.
------
Also: A good companion piece to this is Otto Friedrich's excellent overview of noirish behind-the-scenes LA of the '40s: "City of Nets." And Nathanael West's novel "Day of the Locust" also is essential.
So, yeah I'd known about this book for 30 years and ran across it many times with mild curiosity, but a couple years ago a slightly musty first edition hardcover availed itself for $1 at Half Price Books - kind of a no-brainer, whereupon it sat in the basement till now...
It begins in 1915, a convenient place to begin a history of the scandals of Hollywood, though the film business had already been around for almost a generation, and scandals and censorship battles had already become a part of it, as does anything touched by humans... Hollywood itself officially started in 1912 - the evolution is more complex than that, but no matter.
Anger begins here to establish his theme, that of a phony Babylon, sex and violence amid plaster and Potemkin villages. Flush with cash and power and bloated ego from his monster hit "Birth of a Nation," the film industry's first official artiste, D.W. Griffith, staged his filmic "Sun Play of the Ages," aka "Intolerance," the epic to end all epics, though what it most famously ended was his career - not instantly but put it into a death spiral as Griffith struggled to pay off the debts and restore his damaged reputation as a master of the universe. 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.
The "Intolerance" set sat weedy and decaying for years over the growing new Babylon, an eyesore and reminder of the quickly forgotten past in a place where you're only as good as your next picture. 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. And hereafter, Anger's book becomes a litany of the notorious: the drug death of Wallace Reid, the rape and manslaughter trial of Fatty Arbuckle and so forth. But interwoven into all the irresponsible rumor-mongering (Anger throws in every speculation about who was fucking whom and probably makes up a few of his own) is also a very perceptive history of Hollywood. Anger was part of the scene, as a boy actor in the '40s, and he knows his shit. There's the touch of queenly snarkyness, but also -- as it was in Anger's homoerotic underground home movies -- a great affection and homage to the sad glamor of it all. It probably helps to know the broader history of Hollywood to better appreciate some of the references made in this book. But no matter, Anger's book is breezily written; the book is a model of informational compression -- much crammed into nicely phrased sentences. And of course it is effulgent of imagery, much of it disturbing and capturing the banal reality of death in a land of happy dreams.
The book's famous cover perfectly captures its attitude: the Hollywood glamor image self destructing before our eyes in Jayne Mansfield's overpainted face and saggy tits.
------
Also: A good companion piece to this is Otto Friedrich's excellent overview of noirish behind-the-scenes LA of the '40s: "City of Nets." And Nathanael West's novel "Day of the Locust" also is essential.
June 29, 2011
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. It was good honest sleazy fun when it was published and stuff like being gay and doing drugs was rather scandalous, but I think the powder has worn right off its puff now. A relic of more innocent times.
March 27, 2014
It was a cult book. It was almost impossible to get it. It was the quest for the Holy Grail. It deserved to appear in hell of the National library. Kenneth Anger, underground film-maker. The book was a transgressive object the ownership of which conferred us a particular status.
Often by moving, I lost my book. I acquired it recently. That to think of this book today, without pathos, without this émotive environment. This succession of glaucous story becomes fast boring. We feel becoming a Peeping Tom. A light faintness seizes us.
In fact this book has not big interest.
Often by moving, I lost my book. I acquired it recently. That to think of this book today, without pathos, without this émotive environment. This succession of glaucous story becomes fast boring. We feel becoming a Peeping Tom. A light faintness seizes us.
In fact this book has not big interest.
April 1, 2015
Embarrassed both for having read and not read this until now. The veracity of the stories isn't the point. It's a case of sitting down with the nelliest queen in all Nellydom and listening to caviar quality dirt. Who wouldn't?
September 27, 2007
Experimental filmmaker, Kenneth Anger details the sordid rumors of old Hollywood in a convoluted mess of glamorization and finger pointing.
To be honest, I wish I hadn't wasted my time reading this. It is pretty obvious that most of the stories Anger relates are based on rumor and speculation. When, in many cases, actual facts are widely available, Anger ignores them in favor of titillating conjecture. Each of the stories would be better served by a heavily researched look at the facts, but all we get is a few scant pages of cattiness and a lot of artfully collected promotional photos and movie stills of movie stars in "scandalous" situations.
Plus, there is way too much unnecessary and distracting use of CAPITALIZATION and underlining.
To be honest, I wish I hadn't wasted my time reading this. It is pretty obvious that most of the stories Anger relates are based on rumor and speculation. When, in many cases, actual facts are widely available, Anger ignores them in favor of titillating conjecture. Each of the stories would be better served by a heavily researched look at the facts, but all we get is a few scant pages of cattiness and a lot of artfully collected promotional photos and movie stills of movie stars in "scandalous" situations.
Plus, there is way too much unnecessary and distracting use of CAPITALIZATION and underlining.
January 1, 2017
Χόλιγουντ ίσον αστέρες του σινεμά, θέαμα, μαγεία, διασκέδαση και ψυχαγωγία. Σωστά; Όμως τι κρύβεται στο παρασκήνιο, πίσω από τις κουρτίνες; Τι κρύβουν οι ηθοποιοί, οι σκηνοθέτες, οι σεναριογράφοι, οι παραγωγοί, γενικά οι άνθρωποι που συμμετέχουν με τον έναν ή τον άλλο τρόπο σε μια ταινία; Πίσω από την λαμπρή εικόνα των σταρ του σινεμά, κρύβονται ανθρώπινα πάθη και δράματα, ένοχα μυστικά, στιγμές ακολασίας, τα πάντα όλα. Φόνοι, αυτοκτονίες, σεξ, ναρκωτικά, ανωμαλίες, ξέφρενα πάρτι. Και δεν μιλάμε για το σήμερα, αλλά για τα πρώτα χρόνια του Χόλιγουντ, κυρίως για την χρυσή εποχή του! Τότε που θα περίμενε κανείς τα πράγματα να ήταν πιο... συγκρατημένα, πιο κόσμια. Αμ δε!
Το βιβλίο εξετάζει δεκάδες σκάνδαλα που περιστρέφονταν γύρω από ανθρώπους του κινηματογράφου. Η αρχή γίνεται από τα μέσα της δεκαετίας του 1910 και η όλη αποκάλυψη πάσης φύσεως σκανδάλων συνεχίζεται με ρυθμό πολυβόλου κυρίως στις δεκαετίες του 1920, 1930 και 1940, ενώ υπάρχουν και κάποια λίγα περιστατικά από το 1950 και ελάχιστες αναφορές στο 1960. Άλλωστε το βιβλίο εκδόθηκε το 1959. Με το βιβλίο αυτό μαθαίνουμε τα ένοχα μυστικά πολλών ηθοποιών, σκηνοθετών, σεναριογράφων και παραγωγών του Χόλιγουντ, πολύ παλαιών δεκαετιών όμως. Λίγους από αυτούς ήξερα (σε μικρότερο ή μεγαλύτερο βαθμό), αλλά οι περισσότεροι που αναφέρονται στο βιβλίο, τότε, ήταν τα μεγάλα αστέρια του Χόλιγουντ. Τα πιο γνωστά σε μένα ονόματα που αναφέρονται στο βιβλίο είναι: Τσάρλι Τσάπλιν, Γκρέτα Γκάρμπο, Μάρλεν Ντίτριχ, Τζόαν Κρόφορντ, Έρολ Φλιν... Αλλά ο ευρύτερος κατάλογος είναι πολύ μεγάλος.
Βέβαια, το βασικό προσόν του βιβλίου δεν είναι μόνο η παράθεση των σκανδάλων κάθε είδους και το ξεμπρόστιασμα αστέρων του Χόλιγουντ (από εθισμένους στα ναρκωτικά και υπόπτους δολοφονιών μέχρι ομοφυλόφιλους και παιδεραστές), αλλά ο τρόπος που ο συγγραφέας μας παρουσιάζει όλα αυτά τα συγκλονιστικά και ενδιαφέροντα γεγονότα. Ε, είναι πολύ γλαφυρός στις περιγραφές του, με ιδιαίτερα έντονη ειρωνική διάθεση απέναντι σε όλους αυτούς τους τύπους που λύνουν και δένουν στο Χόλιγουντ. Μιλάμε δεν αφήνει μύγα να πέσει κάτω. Και το καλύτερο; Οι δεκάδες φωτ��γραφίες ηθοποιών/σκηνοθετών/σεναριογράφων/παραγωγών που συνοδεύουν το κείμενο. Κάποιες από αυτές είναι απλά πορτρέτα, κάποιες άλλες δείχνουν γυμνές ηθοποιούς, κάποιες λίγες δείχνουν το άδοξο τέλος ορισμένων.
Πρόκειται, σαφώς, για ένα καλτ βιβλίο. Είναι ένα βιβλίο που μας δίνει την ευκαιρία να γνωρίσουμε το (πολύ) παλιό Χόλιγουντ και να καταλάβουμε ότι τα σημερινά σκάνδαλα δεν πιάνουν μια μπροστά στα παλιά (χμ, ίσως γιατί έχουμε συνηθίσει...). Ακόμα και εκείνα τα "αθώα" χρόνια, πίσω από την βιτρίνα, κρύβονταν πολλά δράματα, πάθη και ένοχα μυστικά. Γιατί έτσι είναι η φύση του ανθρώπου - ειδικά του ανθρώπου που από την μια στιγμή στην άλλη γίνεται σταρ του σινεμά. Όσον αφορά την ελληνική έκδοση (Αιγόκερως, 2002), ωραία, με πολλές φωτογραφίες, γλαφυρή μετάφραση, γυαλιστερό χαρτί και μεγάλο μέγεθος. Είναι σίγουρα από τα διαμαντάκια της Non-Fiction βιβλιοθήκης μου.
Το βιβλίο εξετάζει δεκάδες σκάνδαλα που περιστρέφονταν γύρω από ανθρώπους του κινηματογράφου. Η αρχή γίνεται από τα μέσα της δεκαετίας του 1910 και η όλη αποκάλυψη πάσης φύσεως σκανδάλων συνεχίζεται με ρυθμό πολυβόλου κυρίως στις δεκαετίες του 1920, 1930 και 1940, ενώ υπάρχουν και κάποια λίγα περιστατικά από το 1950 και ελάχιστες αναφορές στο 1960. Άλλωστε το βιβλίο εκδόθηκε το 1959. Με το βιβλίο αυτό μαθαίνουμε τα ένοχα μυστικά πολλών ηθοποιών, σκηνοθετών, σεναριογράφων και παραγωγών του Χόλιγουντ, πολύ παλαιών δεκαετιών όμως. Λίγους από αυτούς ήξερα (σε μικρότερο ή μεγαλύτερο βαθμό), αλλά οι περισσότεροι που αναφέρονται στο βιβλίο, τότε, ήταν τα μεγάλα αστέρια του Χόλιγουντ. Τα πιο γνωστά σε μένα ονόματα που αναφέρονται στο βιβλίο είναι: Τσάρλι Τσάπλιν, Γκρέτα Γκάρμπο, Μάρλεν Ντίτριχ, Τζόαν Κρόφορντ, Έρολ Φλιν... Αλλά ο ευρύτερος κατάλογος είναι πολύ μεγάλος.
Βέβαια, το βασικό προσόν του βιβλίου δεν είναι μόνο η παράθεση των σκανδάλων κάθε είδους και το ξεμπρόστιασμα αστέρων του Χόλιγουντ (από εθισμένους στα ναρκωτικά και υπόπτους δολοφονιών μέχρι ομοφυλόφιλους και παιδεραστές), αλλά ο τρόπος που ο συγγραφέας μας παρουσιάζει όλα αυτά τα συγκλονιστικά και ενδιαφέροντα γεγονότα. Ε, είναι πολύ γλαφυρός στις περιγραφές του, με ιδιαίτερα έντονη ειρωνική διάθεση απέναντι σε όλους αυτούς τους τύπους που λύνουν και δένουν στο Χόλιγουντ. Μιλάμε δεν αφήνει μύγα να πέσει κάτω. Και το καλύτερο; Οι δεκάδες φωτ��γραφίες ηθοποιών/σκηνοθετών/σεναριογράφων/παραγωγών που συνοδεύουν το κείμενο. Κάποιες από αυτές είναι απλά πορτρέτα, κάποιες άλλες δείχνουν γυμνές ηθοποιούς, κάποιες λίγες δείχνουν το άδοξο τέλος ορισμένων.
Πρόκειται, σαφώς, για ένα καλτ βιβλίο. Είναι ένα βιβλίο που μας δίνει την ευκαιρία να γνωρίσουμε το (πολύ) παλιό Χόλιγουντ και να καταλάβουμε ότι τα σημερινά σκάνδαλα δεν πιάνουν μια μπροστά στα παλιά (χμ, ίσως γιατί έχουμε συνηθίσει...). Ακόμα και εκείνα τα "αθώα" χρόνια, πίσω από την βιτρίνα, κρύβονταν πολλά δράματα, πάθη και ένοχα μυστικά. Γιατί έτσι είναι η φύση του ανθρώπου - ειδικά του ανθρώπου που από την μια στιγμή στην άλλη γίνεται σταρ του σινεμά. Όσον αφορά την ελληνική έκδοση (Αιγόκερως, 2002), ωραία, με πολλές φωτογραφίες, γλαφυρή μετάφραση, γυαλιστερό χαρτί και μεγάλο μέγεθος. Είναι σίγουρα από τα διαμαντάκια της Non-Fiction βιβλιοθήκης μου.
August 6, 2007
Entertainingly awful, even if some of it has been debunked.
March 12, 2016
I would love to say that this was insightful and/or riveting but alas I cannot. From what I can gather both research and a working knowledge of punctuation went out the window so Mr Anger could spew half formed tales of scandal and gossip on to paper. Layout wise this book is a nightmare; unlabelled photos, unsourced quotes and heavy handed underlining that serves no purpose (except possibly to make it look like a dodgy webpage, some feat given this book was originally published in 1975!).
I really cannot think of a way to adequately express how horrible the writing is; I found myself having to re-read numerous paragraphs just to make sense of them. Mr Anger also fluctuates between attempts to be verbose and educated (even going so far as to litter the book with Latin phrases) and brash vulgarity (multiple uses of the word c**t to refer to females and female genitalia).
I love books about the golden age of Hollywood and gossip about the stars but in my mind there are far better books out there than this. Hollywood Babylon is trashy and not in a good way.
I really cannot think of a way to adequately express how horrible the writing is; I found myself having to re-read numerous paragraphs just to make sense of them. Mr Anger also fluctuates between attempts to be verbose and educated (even going so far as to litter the book with Latin phrases) and brash vulgarity (multiple uses of the word c**t to refer to females and female genitalia).
I love books about the golden age of Hollywood and gossip about the stars but in my mind there are far better books out there than this. Hollywood Babylon is trashy and not in a good way.
March 2, 2013
Rabid, overheated, at times incoherent, this is a sleazy book that I felt a little bad for finishing (and the ending of the book is the weakest, worst, most rushed part). This look at the dark underbelly of Hollywood has few real revelations or surprises. In Anger's description of the rise of "Confidential" magazine and its hatchet stories he could be describing his own book: "His formula was simple: a well-known name, an unflattering photograph and a story, fairly short, which presented a sordid episode in a mocking humorous manner." It's the brevity of some of these "shocking" stories that make the book almost laughably inconsequential (he covers the HUAC hearings in 3 short pages). I guess I read this for the same reason one cranes one's head to see the details of a traffic accident. I'm gonna go wash up now.
December 14, 2008
Kenneth Anger paints a sinister, evil picture of a Hollywood that chews its "stars" up and spits them out. How can you not feel sorry for Frances Farmer and Fatty Arbuckle? I believe you judge a tree by its fruits, from the mindwashing destructive propaganda that Hollywood spews out to the many screwed up people that work in the business as performers, some of whom deserve to be scorned, some deserve your pity. Either way its a poisonous fruit that this tree bares. Hollywood Babylon covers a time period from the 1920s to the 1950s so don't think that human catastrophes like Britney Spears or Anna Nicole Smith are anything but different versions of the same song.
December 26, 2008
I'm embarrassed to admit this one. I don't think you can review a book like this, really. It's like reviewing the National Enquirer magazine. It is what it is.
April 10, 2022
“Spicy! Shocking!! Downright Scandalous!!!”Adorably lurid and sensationalistic. Like, adorably.
February 16, 2023
Acostumbrados a vislumbrar a Hollywood como la fábrica de sueños, siempre contemplando un escaparate de lujo, fortuna y éxito, poco podemos a veces imaginar los engranajes que giran en su interior y lo mezquina o incluso macabra que puede ser su atmósfera interna. En Hollywood Babilonia el autor se encarga de ofrecernos una visión más aguda de ese mundo desconocido a través de un despliegue morboso de los más jugosos rumores de las estrellas de comienzos del siglo XX.
Orgías, mentiras, suicidios e incluso asesinatos. Las infidelidades, los excesos, los sueños truncados, los juegos de poder. Las diosas inalcanzables, los grandes héroes, las starlets, los aristócratas, los que simpatizaban con la mafia. Las grandes productoras, las leyes absurdas, la incomprensión de la época. Juicios, abusos, más mentiras, más muertes. En definitiva, escándalos, escándalos y más escándalos en la ciudad de los sueños.
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.
Orgías, mentiras, suicidios e incluso asesinatos. Las infidelidades, los excesos, los sueños truncados, los juegos de poder. Las diosas inalcanzables, los grandes héroes, las starlets, los aristócratas, los que simpatizaban con la mafia. Las grandes productoras, las leyes absurdas, la incomprensión de la época. Juicios, abusos, más mentiras, más muertes. En definitiva, escándalos, escándalos y más escándalos en la ciudad de los sueños.
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.
August 24, 2018
Shamelessly trashy; gives new meaning to the term "breathless prose." Parts of this book feel dated and parts feel absolutely iconic, in particular the litany of Hollywood suicides. I can only imagine how lurid and fascinating this volume must have seemed in the days before the internet, when all of this info and more wasn't a mere Google search away.
Have to take a moment to commemorate here what's inscribed at the back of my ancient library edition -- somehow still in circulation! -- in blue ballpoint pen:
•last 3 paystubs Dad
•last 2 tax returns
last most recent bank
•statements (checking/savings)
Dearborn Fed
-Verasidy [maybe, illegible]
Trying to discern meaning from this has proven the perfect voyeuristic conclusion to the ultimate voyeur's book.
Have to take a moment to commemorate here what's inscribed at the back of my ancient library edition -- somehow still in circulation! -- in blue ballpoint pen:
•last 3 paystubs Dad
•last 2 tax returns
•statements (checking/savings)
Dearborn Fed
-
Trying to discern meaning from this has proven the perfect voyeuristic conclusion to the ultimate voyeur's book.
August 2, 2010
Salacious volume of Hollywood calumny, lovingly assembled by one of underground cinema's self-styled bad boys, and notable for its complete lack of compassion. The chapters on Fatty Arbuckle and Thomas Ince are perhaps the most interesting because the stories have entered popular mythology. Most of the rest are merely prurient. In sum, the book is no longer the "luscious plum of sizzling scandal" it once was, and Anger's tabloid naughtiness has dated badly.
February 21, 2016
Misogynistic, racist, so over the top and yet fun.
January 23, 2022
I needed to finally dive into this after listening to You Must Remember this a few years ago and hearing all of the true stories behind Angers’ tabloid stories. I truly enjoyed this little jaunt into old Hollywood even if it might be mostly untrue. Recommend
September 24, 2008
Sex, drugs, murder, scandal, old movies and glamourous lives. 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. I love James Ellroy and this book is like reading his background research for books like The Black Dahlia and LA Confidential. Mickey Cohen actually existed, actors were perverse and hopheads. Murders and scandals were covered up by studio heads and corrupt LA cops who destroyed evidence and let suspects leave the country.
The writing isn't stellar and there is no deep or moral discussion, but the pictures of old hollywood are fantastic and the writer has a great knowledge of the film history of that era. I know that whole novels (fiction and nonfiction) have been written on each chapter by other writers, digging through evidence and making educated theories, but here they all are in all their depravity - from the famous like Fatty Arbuckle's rape case and the murder of Johnny Stompanato by Lana Turner's daughter, to the mental breakdown of Frances Farmer, to the diaries of Mary Astor and the self destruction of so many actors and actresses who just did not survive the talkies and the depression and the fame.
A bit morbid, but the subjects are treated with much care by the author; today's tabloids do not give the same treatment to many of new hollywood's starlets. (and Lindsay Lohan is nothing new under the sun!)
The writing isn't stellar and there is no deep or moral discussion, but the pictures of old hollywood are fantastic and the writer has a great knowledge of the film history of that era. I know that whole novels (fiction and nonfiction) have been written on each chapter by other writers, digging through evidence and making educated theories, but here they all are in all their depravity - from the famous like Fatty Arbuckle's rape case and the murder of Johnny Stompanato by Lana Turner's daughter, to the mental breakdown of Frances Farmer, to the diaries of Mary Astor and the self destruction of so many actors and actresses who just did not survive the talkies and the depression and the fame.
A bit morbid, but the subjects are treated with much care by the author; today's tabloids do not give the same treatment to many of new hollywood's starlets. (and Lindsay Lohan is nothing new under the sun!)
August 15, 2012
I read the first edition copy from 1965 that was on shelves for 10 days only to be banned due to "libel" and "copyright issues" from those subjects portrayed in the book. There's a difference: the 1965 version is packaged like that of a sleaze-gossip rag in 95 cent paperback form, versus the 1975 edition, which was published again after the ban was lifted, Anger having cleaned up some of his facts, embellished some of the fluidity and structure of the book, and laid out higher quality images into a "coffee table" hardcover format. . I will read the "coffee table" edition someday, but for the time being this is satisfying enough, and truer to its form. This book about tabloid and scandal, cracking open old Hollywood's best kept sex/murder/ and more than occasionally, occultist-related secrets, also ensued a lot of scandal and tabloid in itself. So it is only fair that I read this book as the unorganized, skeletal tabloid-based work than it is (at the time written to save a bankrupt Kenneth Anger and quench the thirst of sleaze and pulp readers) rather than in the coffee-table edition, meant for the collection of film-buffs of avant-garde interest, who bought the book because of its long-term underground appeal and transgressive, uncensored and unapologetic depiction of the machine that is Hollywood. This is TRULY FUCKING AMAZING and naturally being prone to interest in scandal and hearsay, I was salivating over how these long dead, "America's sweetheart" "deus ex machina" stars of the old Hollywood had such fucked up, mysterious and Lynchian lives, both in front of and behind the curtains of the film industry.
March 14, 2021
Interesting and fun-though most of these stories have been discovered to be false so take this with a grain of salt! I mistakenly thought before reading Hollywood Babylon would focus on the 50-early 70s in Hollywood. I personally don’t know much about the stars from the 20-50s so I think the gossip wasn’t as interesting to me as it could’ve been. If you like reading about Hollywood and celebrities you should definitely pick this up!
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