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

I think I first came across this book at the Dawn Treader Book Shop, way in the back where they shelve their Hollywood Film History books, among other popular sections like Science Fiction and Mysteries, like a pharmacy putting their most popular drugs in the back of the store so you have to walk past all their other products to get to what you came there for in the first place. And this is that kind of book - it’s like a drug, addictive, pleasurable, you can’t put it down. I have heard that it suffers from a surfeit of factual inaccuracies, and I can confirm that a cursory googling of almost any chapter of this book will turn up errors. For example, Peg Entwistle didn’t jump off the ‘D’ of the Hollywood sign, she jumped off the ‘H’. Barbara La Marr didn’t have 6 husbands, she had 4. And Thelma Todd’s body wasn’t discovered in a Packard, it was discovered in a Haverhill brown 1932 Lincoln KB Dual Cowl Phaeton. But getting bogged down over whether a starlet was discovered dead in a Packard or a Lincoln misses the point of this book. It is a salacious, well-illustrated, tabloidy counter-history of Hollywood. It’s a crime-scene photo-illustrated, sex and drugs scandal chronicle of the birth and adolescence of Hollywood, beginning in the unstable silent film era and progressing into the studio era when emergencies involving movie stars meant calling the movie studio brass at Paramount or Warner Bros. before calling the police. The style of the book is unique among Hollywood histories. Anger uses a tone and language that is taken from scandal sheets and tabloids and his ample illustrations indicate that he is aiming for an audience that likes to look at pictures as much as or more than they like to read. The sex, drugs, and crime in the text enter into a dialogue with the pictures of naked and dead stars mixed in with a few glossy public relations portraits. The result is a salaciously entertaining book which is a pure joy to read but also fun just to flip through. Every chapter has either some well-known star or some overlooked character from Hollywood’s past, often both, and the stories range from well-known scandals like Fatty Arbuckle to crimes and deaths among obscure Hollywood hangers-on who wouldn’t be out of place in Nathaniel West’s “Day of the Locust”.

This book is about the beginnings of Hollywood. The dangerous underbelly of the film world. It has murder, intrigue, and the dark secrets into which Hollywood was founded.

My Mom and I enjoyed this book. Must read.

Interesting read, but very dated. Wish author would write a more updated book from say the 1950's forward. But still a good read.

Scandalous and eye-opening. All the things you want in a juicy book. Good read if you're into Hollywood scandals. Well written!

I have 2 versions of this book. The first edition is about 40% different than this book. It’s complete false advertisement that the book comically says on back cover “unedited and original nothing changed”. Don’t look here kids believe me. I have hard proof that the most important aspects of this book was edited completely to tell a different story. I want a refund. I’m glad people are gathering talking about class action. Our history is being edited and I never believed that. Then behold I compared 1984, and behold a pale horse originals. Wow. Same result. Never buy digital can u imagine how much your books are changing?

I’m not so hot in this book, but I decided to give it a read because of Candace Owen‘s recommendation. It ties into some bigger conspiracy narratives I can see, it has some interesting photos in it. Just not for me personally.

Good gossipy book

Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon is a lurid, intoxicating plunge into the myth and muck of early Hollywood. It reads like a feverish scrapbook—half‑history, half‑provocation—mixing genuine archival oddities with sensationalism that’s impossible to fully trust yet equally impossible to look away from. Its power lies in the atmosphere it conjures: a dream factory built on glamour, secrecy, and ruin. As a cultural artifact, it’s less a reliable chronicle than a gothic portrait of an industry obsessed with its own shadows, and that’s precisely what makes it so compelling.

Ótimo.

Great read .

All good

Read this book many years ago and lost it so wanted copy . Smaller than orginal book though