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

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Previous owner's name penned to inside front cover, sticker to inside rear cover and date penned to REP. William (Billy) Haines was the first MGM star to face the ordeal of a microphone with Lionel Barrymore in 1928 film “Jimmy Valentine. I guess I read this for the same reason one cranes one's head to see the details of a traffic accident. The pictures promise SO much in 'Hollywood Babylon II' - a promise I had clung to since the 80s - but the text doesn't quite deliver. In a Very Good dust jacket with sunning to the pink spine type, light scratches to the surface, edge wear with chipping and some loss.

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.

There was no basis to the story; in 2013, the first publication of a death photo showed Vélez had been found on her bedroom floor. Et sur le dernier tiers, consacré aux suicides, on dirait parfois une rubrique nécrologique avec 2 lignes de texte, parfois une photo, et la date de la mort. 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?

Hollywood itself officially started in 1912 - the evolution is more complex than that, but no matter. One night I read “Hollywood Babylon” while guzzling an entire bottle of red Zinfandel and eventually fell asleep with the book by my bed. 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. Hollywood Babylon also features chapters on the Fatty Arbuckle Virginia Rappe scandal, the murder of William Desmond Taylor, the Hollywood Blacklist, the murder of Sharon Tate, and the Confidential magazine lawsuits. But no matter, Anger's book is breezily written; the book is a model of informational compression -- much crammed into nicely phrased sentences.

Experimental filmmaker, Kenneth Anger details the sordid rumors of old Hollywood in a convoluted mess of glamorization and finger pointing. Alexander Pantages came from Athens, Greece and made fortune during Klondike gold strike and owned vaudeville houses and about 60 theaters. 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.

It really doesn't matter if the stories here are true or not - and some people get upset about this. Tra pura exploitationg e glitter, tra boa di struzzo e bagni nello champagne, tra "Cronaca vera" e splatter-pulp. 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.Described by The Daily Beast as 'essentially a work of fiction There is no doubt that many-if not all- of the stories Anger shares in his slim bible have no merit". 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’. hardcover with dust jacket, tight, pages clear and bright, shelf and edge wear, corners bumped, date stamp on flyleaf, dust jacket is present but worn with rubbing and chipping, packaged in cardboard box for shipment, tracking on U.