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

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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. 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! Later he intentionally drowned in Pacific Ocean and his body recovered from the Malibu Beach in California.

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). Written by Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince, the book had no participation or association with Anger.In 1939 when George Cukor was replaced by Victor Fleming to direct the epic film, “Gone with the wind,” it was widely reported that the “macho” Gable did not like to work with the gay director because of his dislike for that lifestyle. 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. 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. Of course one doesn’t read this kind of material for its factualness, that would be a mistake of the utmost gravity. 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?

Hosted by Tony Curtis, the series featured dramatic reenactments of stories from Anger's books, augmented by veteran actor Curtis relating Hollywood-based anecdotes of his own. Although it's structured as a series of gossip vignettes about various personages sprinkled throughout Hollywood history, certain celebrities pop up repeatedly in different places to tie the whole random, rambling history together. It seemed to be somewhat of a voyeuristic look into the dreams and ambitions of vibrant people who fall into these seedy alley nightmares of Hollywood Babylon. Things got from bad to worse as Haines was arrested in gay sex scandal at downtown Los Angeles YMCA when the house dick and vice squad appeared at his door and arrested him promptly.I got on to this book after hearing about the first one in an interview by NPR about a band that is using it as inspiration for an album. Spine is a tad sunfaded and the red has become pink with title still bold but author name has all but disappeared. 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. Sadly, the tragic "Chords of Fame" have continued to play on for far too many in and out of Hollywood in subsequent years, despite the cautionary tales of their forebears. 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’.