Rating: 
Summary: If You Like To Read Lies, This Book Is For You
Review: Hollywood Babylon is filled with inaccuracies and slander, but if that's your cup of tea, go for it.
Rating: 
Summary: Stars Shimmer as they get Dimmer
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: The best of the genre!
Review: If you like your Golden-Era Hollywood gossip served up hot with no-holds-barred, this is the best book for you! In graphic detail, with uncensored, disturbing photographs, the sordid truth and half-truths of Hollywood's greatest scandals are covered in these pages. No film fan and/or lover of the Grotesque could ask for more! Told slyly by the author with a wink and a chuckle.
Rating:
Summary: Lies Lies Lies
Review: The first time I read this book I loved it. Unfortunately since then I have read the biographies of some of the people in this book and realized that this really is just gossip.
Clara Bow never took on the Trojans in her home, Jayne Mansfield wasn't really decapitated, that is a wig in the picture and Fatty Arbuckle wasn't a rapist, Virginia Rappe died from a botched abortion.
The bottom line is, you are better off reading the biographies that are just as sensational, but hopefully closer to the facts.
Also Crimelibrary.com has truer stories about these people and it is free.
Rating:
Summary: The real Hollywood Confidential
Review: Whether one finds this book to be their cup of tea is very much an open question, and I have little to quibble with anyone giving this a low rating because they question its literary quality. I do, however, have a bone to pick with those who 1) criticize the book for consisting of mere gossip and unsubstantiated rumor and 2) who see this as the work of a failed director. As to the last first, Anger was a very highly regarded and successful independent filmmaker, decades before Independent was considered a good thing. Part of the point of this book is that it is the work of a Hollywood outsider. That is, in a sense. Anger grew up in Hollywood, leaving it to go to make his films in Europe. To see him as in any sense a failed filmmaker is a bizarre travesty of the truth. There was no way for him to succeed in Hollywood simply because Hollywood wasn't doing any of the things he was doing cinematically. As to the gossip and supposed unsubstantiated rumor, I suspect that 100% of the people making that statement have not read this book in particular or books on Hollywood in general. Is it a rumor that Thelma Todd died and that many have long considered her "suicide" a murder? Is the Fatty Arbuckle scandal rumor? Was Mary Astor's affair with George Kaufmann a matter of public record or mere rumor? Are Errol Flynn's escapades with underage women unsubstantiated (acquitted does not mean that they were "of age")? Once again, it really helps to read a book before reviewing it. Anger himself made violent, raw, edgy films with strong sexual and homosexual themes. In a sense, what he does with this book is show that the town in many ways is not unlike his films. Is it the whole story of Hollywood? Of course not. But is it a part of Hollywood? It is hard to contest. Apart from all this, the book is a kitsch lover's delight. It is richly illustrated, and the photographs alone are worth the cost of the book. For me, the book also serves a moral purpose. We sometimes forget that movies are make believe, especially movies from the old Hollywood system. The studios went out of their way to make the actors and actresses look and appear perfect in their private lives. They were not. In fact, in many cases the ambitious egoism that drives one to succeed in film contributes to failure in other regards. Barbara Stanwyck was an utterly magnificent actress, but she was a dreadful mother. Spencer Tracy was one of the great actors, but he was a brawling alcoholic (Warner Brothers frequently had to cover up his arrests for public intoxication and fights with various people--he wasn't just a drunk, he was a bad, bad drunk). One of the things that Anger wants to do is pop our illusions. Hollywood, he wants to say, isn't perfect. And he also manages to entertain us while making that point.
Rating: 
Summary: Anger spills over
Review: Just as snippy, bitchy, and tacky as I remembered it from years ago. All the fury of the star spurned burns bright in Anger's romp through Hollywood's seamy side. Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer's (his real name) career never materialized after a stint as child actor (he once had a minor role as the Changeling Prince in a film production of "Midsummer Night's Dream."), but he took his revenge with two volumes of Hollywood trash and a series of bizarre independent films such as "Fireworks" and "Scorpio Rising."
As history, this is a bit narrowly focused and synoptic. But who's into this for history? HB may be more reliable than the gossip sheets it vilifies, but it is no less titillating and lurid. The good thing about Hollywood Babylon is that it is loaded with photos from old-time Hollywood: all the stars, all the glamour, and all the sleaze. It appears that some of these shots came from the studio's promo office, but others obviously came from the coroner. Still, underneath it all, Anger demonstrates just how manipulative the business end of Hollywood has always been, what a sham and artifice its stars present to the public, and just how meddlesome and effete the government and other social agencies for moral rectitude can be. But mostly Anger demonstrates what has been truly and repeatedly said, "No one ever lost a buck underestimating the taste of the American public."
Rating: 
Summary: Unsubstantiated mean gossip
Review: The author's motto seems to be if it didn't happen this way it should have. Some good pictures, but overall it is just a bitter wannabe's look at Hollywood.
Rating:
Summary: It IS a box of poisoned bonbons!!!!
Review: From some of the reviews I have read, it is either you'll love this book for its contents or hate it for its contents. Well, infinitely sarcastic and tsk tsking in tone, Kenneth Anger compiled a fascinating, if not nauseating tome of Hollywood gossip, mysteries and scandals; accompanied by a generous helping of equally fascinating and nauseating photos. Just when you think that people are so moral back in the good ole days...well, surprise surprised!!!! Here comes Hollywood, the "cemetery of virtue". Hollywood Babylon "documented", with frenzied glee, the various scandals that rocked the film industry, and in turn the world. First we are introduced to the death of Olive Thomas, then the now infamous Fatty Arbuckle trial. These two stories basically set the tone for the rest of the book....rapes, sexual indiscretions, drug overdoses, nervous breakdowns, orgies, murders, creative suicides and so on and so forth. The photos themselves are not for the faint of heart.... featuring death photos of extinguished luminaries such as Thelma Todd, Marie Prevost,Bugsy Siegel, Jayne Mansfield (and her dog!). Overall, if you like gossip and scandal and loves laughing at the misfortunes of others and have a taste for the morbid, this book is a delight...a delectable "box of poisoned bon bons" through which you can choose and pick at your leisure...with every juicy morsel is as good as the next. Otherwise....this book will probably make you nauseous. A sequel, Hollywood Babylon II is not as good as THIS one. But the zinger in that tome is photos of the infamous Black Dahlia murder. But that is another poisoned bonbon for another day.
Rating: 
Summary: Read the scandalous stories of your favorite classic stars!
Review: This book is an accumulation of nothing but gossip information. That's all it purports to be. However, we are treated to photographs which sometimes back up and other times go off subject of some of the scandals. There's some nudity and certainly other scandalous data, so it probably isn't for the kiddies. Don't believe every word between this book's covers as the author isn't a historian - he's more of a fey Hedda Hopper. Regardless, the book is fun and laughable and shocking.
Rating:
Summary: So dirty, you'll need a bath afterwards
Review: Okay, let me preface my remarks by saying that this book is good for what it is, and that is revealing the trashy side of Hollywood, especially the so-called Golden Age of movies when MGM and all the other major studios portrayed their film stars as picture perfect saints who never went to the bathroom and had children delivered via SDS (the Stork Delivery Service). This is a book that dares to look at the swill behind the glamour of Culver City and the tinsel behind the glitter. That being said, I have to say that as good as the book is for that reason, it's just too disgusting to recommend to anyone. Once again, that's what it was meant to be-- a trashy book-- and it's good for that. The problem with the trashiness, however, is that it's so trashy that its only redeeming quality is that it caters well to that base instinct in all of us that arises whenever we pass by a fatal car wreck. I want to warn you, this book crosses no boundaries. In between the text detailing the scandalous lives of Hollywood's past stars are absolutely nauseating pictures of dead people or Hollywood stars at their worst. Some of the pictures are so tacky, graphic and tasteless that I can't even mention them here, but I'll try my best by giving you a sampler of what you can expect: Judy Garland all hagged out shortly before her tragic demise; a woman with bite marks all over her body from her pet dog gnawing on her in the days after her death; and Rex Harrison's lover slumped over on the bathroom floor from her suicide. Even as I typed that sentence recalling the photographs, I had to reach for my Pepto Bismol. Did you reach for some, too? Good. Expect to do that and more should you ever pick up this book. Hell, you may even need to get a stomach-ectomy, if that is possible. So, that's my review in a nutshell. Hollywood Babylon is just one gaudy, tacky, sick, nauseating trashy book of the highest order. If you're sensitive, you probably decided from my review to not buy this book. If you don't mind this type of trashiness, then I probably encouraged you to buy it. If the latter is the case, then I suggest that when you do buy Hollywood Babylon, you also get some nice clean soap with your purchase; you will definitely need it once you're done reading through this book.
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