Hollywood Babylon: The troubled lives of film stars during golden era

Book Reviewed: Hollywood Babylon II, by Kenneth Anger

Kenneth Anger is a well-known author who wrote the best seller “Hollywood Babylon,” and revealed many interesting stories about the stars of the pre-code era. This book is a second volume with the same title and fills in the material not covered in the first book and additional info about less-known stars. The author was an insider who worked in Hollywood as a child-star and got to know many well-known personalities in movie business. His stories are reliable and they have been quoted in many articles in Wikipedia, blogs and books on the history of Hollywood.

Alexander Pantages came from Athens, Greece and made fortune during Klondike gold strike and owned vaudeville houses and about 60 theaters. He was worth $30 million in 1929 when the rest of the country was in economic turmoil. But his sexual assault on a young Eunice Pringle, a school dropout and would-be dancer dethroned him as the commander-in-chief of movie theaters. Later on her deathbed, Eunice confessed that it was a frame set by Joe Kennedy, bootlegger to the film colony and head of FBO pictures who wanted to destroy Pantages theater circuit. Joe also had eyes for beautiful females in Hollywood that led to a sensual relationship with actress Gloria Swanson. While shooting the movie “Swamp,” which later became “Queen Kelly,” Gloria Swanson was so incensed with the antics of erratic and kinky director, Eric von Stroheim, she asked Kennedy to stop the “lunatic in charge of the film.”

William (Billy) Haines was the first MGM star to face the ordeal of a microphone with Lionel Barrymore in 1928 film “Jimmy Valentine.” He was a well-known gay and had loved his ex-stand-in Jimmy Shields. Howard Strickland, the head of the publicity at MGM and studio head Luis B Mayer had to make sure that all MGM movies are box office hits at Loew’s theaters. The challenging job was to make sure that studio stars conformed to a strict image of morality is highest. Undesirable romances were discouraged, gay life style was unacceptable, and abortions arranged in Tijuana. When MGM found out that William Haines, an upcoming star of the studio was gay, studio started rumors that he was in love with actress Pola Negri and they were getting married. Things got from bad to worse as Haines was arrested in gay sex scandal at downtown Los Angeles YMCA when the house dick and vice squad appeared at his door and arrested him promptly. Later, the Klan assaulted Haines and Shields when they were coming out of a party at El Porto beach in Los Angeles. Mayer fired the “fagelah” instantly. He later became an interior decorator and worked to decorate actress Carole Lombard’s house and they became good friends. She was so sure of his “gayness,” she would strip naked and dress in front of him; he reported that often times she did not wear bras or panties. Years later when her husband Clark Gable, irked with his wife being “palsy” with mainly males, asked “don’t you have any girlfriends,” she said “yes, Mitch Leisen and Billy Haines.”

In 1939 when George Cukor was replaced by Victor Fleming to direct the epic film, “Gone with the wind,” it was widely reported that the “macho” Gable did not like to work with the gay director because of his dislike for that lifestyle. But the truth is that Cukor knew something about Gable that no one else knew except for Billy Haines. It turned out that when Clark Gable was still a bit player at MGM, he had let himself blow-serviced by Haines and seek his help to further his career at MGM. Haines, a close friend of Cukor was not “lip-lazy,” when he confided Gable’s secret. George Cukor knew that Gable was not “He-Man” after all.

In “Roman Scandals” made for Goldwyn in 1933, director Busby Berkley (Buzz), the undisputed genius of the Hollywood musical shot a scene with completely nude women who were wearing long chains and blonde wigs which fell down to their snatches. At the height of his success tragedy struck in 1935. Buzz was returning home after a party at production manager William Koening’s house. He had one too many drinks at the party and while driving at Pacific Coast Highway near Santa Monica Canyon, he lost control and careened off into the oncoming traffic which resulted in three deaths. He was charged for second degree murder. He was found not guilty.

In 1938 Buzz was sued by Irving Wheeler for seeking the affections of Irving’s wife, actress Carol Landis, and the suit was dismissed. But Landis was widely known at the Fox studio as the “available” girl in the backroom of Darryl Zanuck’s office. He was known to have a regular female companion for “fun” every working day at about 4 PM. After Buzz’ mom passed away he lost control of his senses and hit the bottle hard. He spent six weeks at a psychiatric ward in Los Angeles. He was reduced to rubbles physically and emotionally. He weighed about 107 pounds and his bank balance was $650.

Jimmy Dean was reclusive, compulsively withdrawn, promiscuous, friendless, suspicious, boorish and rude. On occasion, he would be charming and on occasions, he would be annoyingly nuts. On the eve of his death, he had attended a gay party in Malibu, and his gay friends accused him of dating women for publicity purposes.

Actor John Bowers who lost all his money when he invested in a failed flying school, he became penniless and depressed. Later he intentionally drowned in Pacific Ocean and his body recovered from the Malibu Beach in California. His death was retold in the movie “A Star is born,” starring Frederick March and Janet Gaynor. Screen writer of the movie took this story and put into the movie. In this movie, the character played by March simply walks into the Pacific Ocean in Malibu and never returns. In the last chapter entitled, “The magic of self-murder” the author has a given brief account of several Hollywood’s notable who committed suicides. This includes actor George Sanders, Jack Dougherty, husband of Barbara La Marr, Lupe Velez, Jonathan Hale, Gig Young and his young wife Kim Schmidt’s double suicide, Mae West’s lover John Indrisano, actress Peg Entwistle, Charles Boyer, Clara Blandick, Alan Ladd, Chester Morris, Inger Stevens, Margaret Sullivan, and others.

The book has plenty of rare and hard to find pictures that need to be treasured. The pictures of Joan Crawford is racy. The book is very well written and reads effortlessly. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in the history of Hollywood, especially the golden era.