Hollywood Babylon: The Legendary Underground Classic of Hollywood's Darkest and Best Kept Secrets Mass Market Paperback – Illustrated, November 15, 1981

Hollywood Babylon depicts the darker side of about 1920-1950 Hollywood. According to the author Kenneth Anger, during those years Hollywood was full of sex, drugs, suicide, alcohol, rapes, even murders, and famous actors and actresses were mostly involved in them. The personages picked up in this book have hardly a redeeming feature. The author seems to think it his vocation to reveal that all the celebrity are base at heart, for all their outward seeming.Surely it is possible that people who have got fame and wealth are likely to degrade themselves. But it is just as possible that some people keep their sensibility in spite of everything. So it would be absurd to assert that this book is written without any bias or prejudice.But for all that, notwithstanding the reservations one may make, this is a great book. It is great in that from revealing the scandals of the celebrity, it goes so far as to reveal what human nature is really like.By the way, as for me, the chapter of Frances Farmer struck me chiefly. She was a woman who asserts her rights. I wonder who has not known such a woman today, but in those days such a self-assertive woman was very rare even in America. She was teased and bullied by the directors and the management in the way that the stake that sticks out must get hammered in.She got more and more defiant. William Wyler once went on record as saying, “The nicest thing I can say about Frances Farmer is that she is unbearable.” In the end, she was confined to a lunatic asylum either because she actually got nervous breakdown or because they claimed her to have done so.In this book, her picture in her asylum days is printed. Because I once saw her beautiful figure in the movie titled ‘Come and See It’, I could not help being frightened at how miserably that beautiful Cinderella has changed into such a terrible prisoner!Kenneth Anger concludes this chapter with the following sentences; Genius and Madness compose Janus-faced creativity. Of all the Hollywood Magdalenes who have drunk at the well of madness ―Clara Bow, Gail Russel, Gene Tierney―we nominate as their patron: Frances, Saint.”One is inclined to think that Anger’s prejudice has his personal principle. His antipathy is not to everyone, but he strongly sympathizes with anti-establishment people.

そもそも下世話な好奇心からこの本を手にしたが、時代が遡りすぎて、知らない俳優ばかり。1915年から1969年のハリウッドを騒がせた事件が俳優ごとに取り上げられている。女優はTheda Baraに始まり、シャロン・テートまで。禁酒法時代下、薬物にはしるハリウッド・スターたち、バグジー射殺事件、レッドパージなど当時の社会を反映した事象も。有名どころではグロリア・スワンソン、クララ・ボウ、ジェーン・マンスフィールド。チャップリン、ルドルフ・バレンチノなど。数十人も掲載されているので、当然一人ひとりのページは２０ページ以下。写真はかなりあり。