The Real Showbiz Scandals Behind Kenneth Anger’s ‘Hollywood Babylon’

Filmmaker Kenneth Anger, whose death was announced on Wednesday, spent his early 20s in Paris, where he became acquainted with the city’s avant-garde scene. Between producing shorts under Henri Langlois at the Cinémathéque Française, Anger managed to snag a few bylines in the French film magazine Cahiers du Cinéma. Anger regaled readers with his mythic tales of Old Hollywood starlets, packing them to the brim with details of sex, drugs and murder. His editors, impressed by Anger’s flare for the dramatic, encouraged him to compile these articles into a book, and thus “Hollywood Babylon” was born. Published in France in 1959, the release of “Hollywood Babylon” came a decade after the fall of the studio system. In 1965, the book debuted in the United States. Within two weeks, it was banned. Kenneth Anger in 1979. Ten years later, “Hollywood Babylon” was republished in the States. New York Times critic Peter Andrews described it as a “306-page box of poisoned bon bons.” Plenty of the rumors Anger spread in “Hollywood Babylon” have since been discredited. His stories, which range from lewd to downright libelous, include persistent speculation on stars’ sexual identities and substance abuse issues — cruel tactics that today’s tabloids have abandoned in light

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