Kenneth Anger (1927–2023)

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.… (more)