Hollywood is a town built on light and shadow, but mostly shadow. We all know the drill: the PR machine churns out a sanitized version of a star's life, and we pretend to believe it until the first DUI or messy divorce hits the tabloids. But before TMZ, before Twitter threads, and before the 24-hour news cycle, there was one book that basically set the template for how we consume celebrity misery.
That book is Hollywood Babylon.
Written by the avant-garde filmmaker and self-proclaimed magician Kenneth Anger, this thing is less of a history book and more of a fever dream bound in paper. It’s mean. It’s graphic. It’s frequently, demonstrably wrong about almost everything it claims. And yet, if you’re a film buff or a gossip hound, you’ve probably got a copy on your shelf.
Why do we keep coming back to a book that even its own author admitted was researched through "mental telepathy"?
The Book That Was Too Filthy for America
The history of the book is almost as chaotic as the stories inside it. Anger first published Hollywood Babylon in France in 1959. Why France? Because no American publisher would touch it with a ten-foot pole. It was too "lewd." It was too "libelous." It was essentially a collection of every nasty rumor Anger had heard while growing up as a child actor in the industry.
When it finally made its way to the States in 1965, it was banned within ten days.
Seriously. Ten days.
It took another decade for the "legendary" 1975 edition to hit the shelves, complete with the graphic crime scene photos that made it famous—or infamous. Honestly, the photos are what stick with you. You've got Jayne Mansfield’s car wreck, Carole Landis after her suicide, and the "Black Dahlia" herself. Anger didn't just want to tell you the dirt; he wanted to show you the blood.
What Hollywood Babylon Gets Wrong (Spoiler: A Lot)
If you’re looking for a factual account of the Golden Age, put this book down. You’ve probably heard some of these stories at parties, unaware they started as Anger’s "mental telepathy" sessions.
Take Clara Bow, the original "It Girl." Anger famously claimed she had sex with the entire USC football team, including a young John Wayne.
- The Reality: Total fabrication. It was a vicious rumor debunked by Bow’s family and historians for decades.
- The Impact: It ruined her legacy for a generation, painting a talented actress as a "nymphomaniac" just because she was a free spirit.
Then there’s the tragic death of Lupe Vélez. Anger’s version is the ultimate "gross-out" story: she tried to have a beautiful, staged suicide with candles and flowers, but the Mexican food she ate didn't agree with her. She supposedly ended up drowning in a toilet.
- The Reality: Police photos from the scene show her peacefully in her bed. No toilet. No vomit. Just a sad, lonely end that Anger turned into a punchline.
Even the Fatty Arbuckle scandal, which was already a nightmare, got the Anger treatment. He basically ignored the fact that Arbuckle was acquitted in three separate trials and instead leaned into the most lurid, unproven accusations of the time.
Why Kenneth Anger Did It
To understand the book, you have to understand the man. Kenneth Anger wasn't a journalist. He was an underground filmmaker who made masterpieces like Scorpio Rising and Lucifer Rising. He was a devotee of Aleister Crowley and "Thelema." Basically, he saw Hollywood as a modern-day Babylon—a place of ritual, sacrifice, and dark energy.
He wasn't trying to "report." He was trying to cast a spell.
Anger was kinda broke when he wrote the first version. He needed cash, and he knew that people—even the ones who claim to hate gossip—are suckers for a good scandal. He took the "doom book" mentality of the old studio bosses and turned it into a counter-culture bible.
By stripping away the glamour of the stars, he made them human. Or, more accurately, he made them monsters. And in a weird way, that made people feel better about their own boring lives. "I might be broke," a reader in 1975 might think, "but at least I'm not a drug-addicted starlet dying in a gutter."
The Legacy of the "Babylon" Aesthetic
You can see the fingerprints of Hollywood Babylon everywhere today.
- Tabloid Culture: The "candid" (and often unflattering) photos we see in rags today started with Anger's use of police archives and paparazzi shots.
- Modern Cinema: Directors like Martin Scorsese and David Lynch have cited Anger as a major influence. The "dark underbelly" trope in films like Mulholland Drive owes a massive debt to this book.
- The Internet: The way we "cancel" celebrities or obsess over "blind items" is just Hollywood Babylon for the digital age.
Even the 2022 movie Babylon by Damien Chazelle is essentially a love letter to the chaos Anger described. It captures that same feeling of a world that is beautiful, disgusting, and doomed all at the same time.
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Is There Any Value in It?
Honestly? Yes. But not as history.
Hollywood Babylon is a work of art. It’s a gothic horror story about the price of fame. If you read it knowing that half of it is "mental telepathy" and the other half is spite, it’s a blast. It’s catty, it’s stylish, and it’s a fascinating look at how we wanted to view Hollywood at its peak.
Just don't use it for your history thesis.
How to Read It Today
If you're going to dive into Kenneth Anger’s world, do it right.
- Find the 1975 edition. The later reprints are fine, but the 70s version has that raw, counter-culture energy.
- Fact-check as you go. Listen to podcasts like You Must Remember This (Karina Longworth did an incredible series debunking the book) while you read. It makes the experience much richer to see where the truth ends and the "magick" begins.
- Watch Anger's films. You can't separate the book from his movies. Check out Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome to see his visual style.
The biggest takeaway from Hollywood Babylon is a healthy dose of skepticism. It teaches us that the "official story" is usually a lie, but the "secret story" might be a lie, too. In the end, Hollywood is whatever we want it to be.
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Next time you see a "leaked" story about a celebrity on your feed, just remember Kenneth Anger. He was doing this sixty years ago with nothing but a typewriter, some stolen police photos, and a very vivid imagination.
Actionable Insight: If you're interested in the actual history of these stars, follow up your reading with Kevin Brownlow’s The Parade's Gone By. It’s the factual antidote to Anger’s fiction. It interviews the actual people from the silent era before they passed away, giving you the reality of the "Babylon" years without the made-up toilet deaths.