Hollywood Babylon: The Legendary Underground Classic of Hollywood's Darkest and Best Kept Secrets [Mass Market Paperback]

Kenneth Anger (Author)

Book Description

Release date: November 15, 1981

Originally published in Paris, this is a collection of Hollywood's darkest and best kept secrets from the pen of Kenneth Anger, a former child movie actor who grew up to become one of America's leading underground film-makers.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Straight Arrow Books (November 15, 1981)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0440153255
• ISBN-13: 978-0440153252
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 0.9 x 6.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (101 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #33,352 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #20 in Books > Arts & Photography > Performing Arts > Theater > Acting & Auditioning
  • #43 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Movies > History & Criticism

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 47 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Delicious, malicious fun! (but don't believe a word of it) July 27, 2003

By A Customer

Format:Mass Market Paperback

Kenneth Anger's trash classic is still worth a look after all these years. No, this is not the book for those tender and naive dears among us who still think "they wouldn't print it if it wasn't true." This is more along the lines of "they couldn't print it if they weren't dead!" Don't look here for an accurate history of Hollywood's Golden Age. What Anger serves up, in his own wasp-tongued way, is the true gossip of the day. True in the sense that it was actually circulated, not that it was accurate. That in itself gives the book its own kind of historical value: the tabloid trash a bygone era. If you've ever lingered over a particularly lurid headline in the supermarket check out line, this book may be for you. Go for it, nobody's looking!

45 of 52 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Stars Shimmer as they get Dimmer December 5, 2002

By rareoopdvds VINE™ VOICE

Format:Mass Market Paperback

Like any newspaper article, events are turned into "stories." These "stories", like any silver screen biography, tells the dramatic tale of a life in turmoil. Kenneth Anger's book, "Hollywood Babylon" takes the angle of a tabloid and digs up some old dirt of famous celebrity lives and puts it into a full collection of grime, grease and oil. This collection takes a chronological look at Hollywood's finest at the time beginning in the early twenties with such big names as Fatty Arbuckle whose drinking problem got out of hand at one of his big parties after signing a lucrative deal. Moving through time to the 30's, 40's, right up to the Sharon Tate murder, which Anger recognized it was no longer "Old Hollywood."

The book reads like a gossip column mixed with sleazy tabloid journalism, yet with the wit and humor of a prankster. It's an exploitation of exploited lives. To mimic tabloids further, the pages appear with large and sometimes disturbing photos of stars at their most inopportune moments.

While much of the material has already had its heyday in newspapers of the times, it has a new life today where many of these actors and actresses are virtually unheard of by the general public and rekindled new interest in their films. Just as watching and old O. J. Simpson football game may have the same appeal as watching Lana Turner in her debut "They Won't Forget."

The title to me is entirely fitting, as Hollywood is the "Babylon" of our society, one in which everyone has all their wants at their disposal. A place where hedonism is the religion and tragedy is only the end of a scene, for we know by the end of the movie everything will be all right. My only disappointment in the book is its cursory glance at such stars as Marylyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and many other stars that became almost a tally only to be put under a heading of how they died. "Hollywood Babylon" still fits the bill, however, as an enticing and racy read of the darker seedy side of that strange and secret society.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars It's Like Reading a Bundle of "Confidential" Magazines July 5, 2000

By Susan Nunes

Format:Mass Market Paperback

Anybody who is considering buying this book (and its sequel, if one can find it) should know that it has absolutely no pretensions of being fair or accurate. Despite the wild inaccuracies of now-deceased stars' exploits, the book is still like seeing a car wreck: you know it's awful, but you can't resist looking at it. It's a fun book in spite of itself.

The photos are often tasteless, the prose is often tacky and sleazy, the research is put together with two nails and a hammer, and overall the book reminds one of the old "Confidential" magazines (the magazine is actually profiled in one of the book's chapters). Yet sleaze and tackiness are what Hollywood was all about, so the book seems fitting.

If you want accuracy in a book, go elsewhere. If you like gossip in the most vicious and slimy way possible, then this is your book.