Books |
Hollywood Babylon — It’s Back
Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince
By
Published: Jan 01, 2008
Category:
Non Fiction
Here’s the ultimate host or hostess present.
Assuming, that is, your host or hostess has no problem with full-frontal nudity and NC-17-rated, reputation-shattering revelations.
If that’s the case, stay clear.
And I should, in fairness to refined sensibilities, go further: This is not a book for those who want to believe that Hollywood heroes only bed Hollywood heroines. Or even for those who like sources attached to gossip.
Hollywood Babylon — It’s Back is one nasty, nasty book — just what you’d expect from a title inspired by Kenneth Anger’s 1959 “classic”. That book was rich in tabloid images from the 1920s to the 1950s — the car crash that killed Jayne Mansfield, for example, and the bullet-blasted body of Bugsy Siegel. And then followed a tour of drug addiction, suicide, closeted homosexuality and more.
Now Anger’s successors are offering “an overview of exhibitionism, sexuality and sin as filtered through 85 years of Hollywood scandal.”
They don’t lie.
They start with a list of myth-busters from tough-guy novelist James Ellroy, including “Rin Tin Tin was really a girl dog.” That’s a modest eye-opener. Coming up: Almost every star in old time Hollywood is gay. Okay, bi-sexual.
These writers don’t just serve up shopworn rumors. They give you names and places. Favorite practices. And, when it comes to men, the “vital” statistics of size and shape.
Hey, I warned you.
Gary Cooper: switch-hitter. (“Howard Hughes dropped Cooper for Randolph Scott.”) At parties, Errol Flynn liked to play “You Are My Sunshine” on the piano without… uh… using his hands. At other parties, Johnny (“Tarzan”) Weissmuller and his wife did… shows. Mae West on Cary Grant: “I knew he was a homosexual before he did.”
But Pope Paul VI and… Marcello Mastrioanni? Sir Winston Churchill having a one-time adventure with… Ivor Novello? Nick Adams, who had been James Dean’s lover, moving on to… Elvis Presley? [Worry not, Elvis fans — the authors say Elvis only liked to do X and Y.] Any “good” news? Ronald Reagan showered and brushed his teeth before and after sex, according to Marilyn Monroe.
After a while, it’s hard to feel much. An account of Sal Mineo’s audition to play opposite James Dean in “Rebel without a Cause” is beyond anything you’ll hear about on “Inside the Actor’s Studio.” But it’s served up in a stew of orgies, betrayals, murders, blackmail: ho-hum.
Every once in a while, though, you hit… well, you can’t really call it gold, can you? More like greater depravity than you thought possible. Like the account — seemingly verified by the victim — of James Dean’s involvement with a 12-year-old boy. It’s ugly and detailed, and I’m not less appalled when the victim, now in his 60s, says he thinks fondly of Dean every day.
But as Gertrude Stein would say, “Very interesting, if true.”
That’s the question you’re asking as you read this (that is, once you accepted the notion I was writing about such stuff at all). And if there’s any value to this book beyond its shock appeal and its usefulness as a conversation-starter, I suspect it’s in the question of accuracy. Did the macho men of yore really go both ways? Were female sex objects much more… animated in their personal choices? And, if so, what about today’s stars?
Generalities are pointless, but let’s not forget that acting is role-playing. Sure, Jack Nicholson is “Jack” — pretty much the same guy off-camera as on. The roles are now made for him. But back when Hollywood was a factory, other male stars were chosen for a look, then manufactured; they weren’t real. Maybe the creators weren’t much interested in accurate casting.
But movies are magic; as smart as we are, they fool us. And so we make the dangerous assumption that the hero with a square jaw really is a homebody and a square. I’m sure there are many who read Bob Dylan’s account of his white-picket fence marriage in Chronicles and believed it was truth. On the other hand, I do feel there’s more transparency now — that Brad Pitt, say, really is Brad Pitt. There’s just too much media for anyone to hide. And as for the studios manufacturing stars and protecting their careers — if only they did.
“Hollywood Babylon — It’s Back” is printed on cheap paper. The pictures are poorly reproduced — and unless you have a clinical interest in male anatomy, it’s just as well. The design is high school. There is a huge section on Lucille Ball, about whom there is no interesting scandal — someone had pages to fill and copy lying around.
For all that, I found myself picking this book up each time I put it down. Consider yourself warned: If you let “Hollywood Babylon — It’s Back” into your home, you may also succumb to its strange power.
To buy “Hollywood Babylon — It’s Back” from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy “Hollywood Babylon: The Legendary Underground Classic of Hollywood’s Darkest and Best Kept Secrets” from Amazon.com, click here.
