Hollywood Babylon: The Legendary Underground Classic of Hollywood's Darkest and Best Kept Secrets

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Later, the Klan assaulted Haines and Shields when they were coming out of a party at El Porto beach in Los Angeles. Even though it does not glamorize Hollywood in the least, I wanted to see that the people that are idolized in society so much are just as troubled, maybe even more than everyone else.

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. I will read the "coffee table" edition someday, but for the time being this is satisfying enough, and truer to its form. 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.Experimental filmmaker, Kenneth Anger details the sordid rumors of old Hollywood in a convoluted mess of glamorization and finger pointing. 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. Se da un lato la fabbrica dei sogni ha contribuito a creare gran parte dell'immaginario collettivo di generazioni di adoratori e appassionati, dall'altro, in privato, si e' rivelata una terribile macchina assassina e distruttrice di vite e destini.

Kenneth Anger is a well-known author who wrote the best seller “Hollywood Babylon,” and revealed many interesting stories about the stars of the pre-code era.

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. Parts of this book feel dated and parts feel absolutely iconic, in particular the litany of Hollywood suicides.

On the plus side, the segments are relatively short, making it an ideal toilet read, which also seems appropriate given the tawdriness. 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. Das zweite Buch besteht zu 25% aus Wiederholungen aus dem ersten Teil, wirklich neu ist das Gejammer über das heruntergekommene verkokste Hollywood der 1980er und männliche Stars, die nach zu viel Schnee keinen mehr hochkriegen. Spine is a tad sunfaded and the red has become pink with title still bold but author name has all but disappeared. This book is a second volume with the same title and fills in the material not covered in the first book and additional info about less-known stars.I highly recommend this to anyone interested in the history of Hollywood, especially the golden era. The book details alleged scandals of Hollywood stars from the silent era through to the 1960s, including Charles Chaplin, Lupe Vélez, Mary Nolan, Rudolph Valentino, Marie Prevost, Mary Astor, Wallace Reid, Olive Thomas, Jeanne Eagels, Thelma Todd, Errol Flynn, Frances Farmer, Juanita Hansen, Mae Murray, Alma Rubens, John Gilbert, Barbara La Marr, Ramon Novarro, Jean Harlow, Carole Landis, Lana Turner, Judy Garland, and Marilyn Monroe. Whether this was to avoid the sort of lawsuits the first book generated or for another reason, it made for an interesting read.

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? 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.In 1938 Buzz was sued by Irving Wheeler for seeking the affections of Irving’s wife, actress Carol Landis, and the suit was dismissed. 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. His stories are reliable and they have been quoted in many articles in Wikipedia, blogs and books on the history of Hollywood.