‘You have post-Watergate America, where there’s this idea where everything you thought you knew about our institutions was wrong’ It was finally published in America in 1975 and became a cult object. “Hollywood Babylon” compiles the dirty ditties in heightened purple prose, along with crime-scene snapshots, ironic glamour shots and unflattering portraits of aging starlets.Ī bootlegged copy of the French version - surreptitiously wrapped in brown paper - surfaced in the US in 1965 but was pulled from shelves within 10 days. After moving to Paris, he began writing up these racy rumors for French film magazines as a way to finance art flicks. © CinemaPhoto/CORBIS/Getty ImagesĪnger, now 92, was a former child star who grew up in LA collecting titillating tales about Tinseltown. It is still the “Bible of Hollywood scandal.” Banned in the US upon publication, “Hollywood Babylon” skewered celebs such as Jean Harlow, Judy Garland and Rudolph Valentino (from left). Anger ushered in in a new era of gossip as camp, making it OK for even high-minded types to indulge in.Īnd despite its “amalgamation of truth and rumor,” as Horak put it, “Babylon” has remained continuously in print, with its silver-screen gossip viewed as gospel. machine, while rags such as Confidential magazine moralized bad behavior.

Mainstream columnists such as Hedda Hopper had long kowtowed to studio fixers and the p.r. “It has had a long and lasting effect on the image of Hollywood as a hotbed of decadence and scandal,” UCLA film historian Jan-Christopher Horak told The Post. Sixty years later, the tawdry tome, by experimental filmmaker Anger, remains as controversial, shocking and irresistible as ever and continues to shape the public’s perception of Hollywood and its stars. Originally published in France in 1959 and banned in the US, “Hollywood Babylon” had it all. Sorry, TMZ: Much of today’s juicy gossip reads like puffed-up press releases compared with Kenneth Anger’s “ Hollywood Babylon.” Johnny Depp gets Hollywood love at Cannes - but it won't save his career

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