Don’t get me wrong, it’s fascinating and important as a cultural document.
Here’s the thing about Hollywood Babylon: It’s bullshit. If that doesn’t tell you everything about the book, nothing will. The copy I have has mercifully edited in an extra inch of fabric, but most editions show her nipples, tinted red for posterity. Well, that and the cover, featuring Jayne Mansfield leaning over with her breasts on full show. It took a few more years to get to America, due to libel and copyright issues, but by that point, bootleg copies had already made their way across the Atlantic, thus ensuring the book’s infamy. He put together some stories he’d heard growing up, and a few he claimed he heard about first hand, and a coffee table style book was published in France in 1959. Experimental short films aren’t a cash cow, funnily enough. Hollywood Babylon was written by Anger because he needed the money. Essentially, trusting this guy with your Hollywood lore is like having Hannibal Lecter around to give you a vegan cooking class. And that doesn’t even get into his Manson Family connection. I know some folks who saw some of his more recent short films, once of which seemed to be nothing but regurgitated Nazi propaganda. The dude once ‘joked’ that he was ‘somewhat to the right of the KKK’ in his views about black people. This is the guy who would hang around with Anton Lavey and counts Aleister Crowley among his biggest influences. Anger is not without controversy, and he does seem to love attracting it. Part queer art-piece, part mythology-inspired pulp, his films have been hugely influential on directors like David Lynch and John Waters.
Before there was TMZ, there was Kenneth Anger.Īnger is an experimental short filmmaker whose works include the colourfully titled Lucifer Rising and Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. While not all of the rumours I mentioned above originated in the pages of Kenneth Anger’s seedy pseudo-expose, the book is certainly responsible for us believing them to be true. If not, then you’re certainly familiar with the lore it helped to establish. If you’re a Hollywood nerd or connoisseur of celebrity gossip in any form, the chances are you’ve at least heard of Hollywood Babylon. The death of Ramon Novarro was not the result of a ‘lead Art Deco dildo which Valentino had given him forty-five years earlier, thrust down his throat’. Jayne Mansfield was not decapitated when she died in a car crash. Virginia Rappe’s death was not caused by Fatty Arbuckle crushing her during an aggressive sexual assault. Lupe Velez did not die with her head in the toilet.
Let’s get some things out of the road: No, Clara Bow did not sleep with the entire USC football team.
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