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Hollywood Babylon
''Hollywood Babylon'' is a book by avant-garde filmmaker Kenneth Anger, which details the purported scandals of famous Hollywood denizens from the 1900s to the 1950s. The book was banned shortly after it was first published in the U.S. in 1965, and remained unavailable until reprinted ten years later. Upon its second release in 1975, ''The New York Times'' said of it, "If a book such as this can be said to have charm, it lies in the fact that here is a book without one single redeeming merit." ''The Daily Beast'' described Anger's book as "essentially a work of fiction. There is no doubt that many—if not all—of the stories Anger shares in his slim bible have no merit." Film historian Kevin Brownlow repeatedly criticized the book, citing Anger as saying his research method was "mental telepathy, mostly". Contents Originally published in French in 1959 by J.J. Pauvert (Paris) as ''Hollywood Babylone'', the first U.S. edition of ''Hollywood Babylon'' was published in 1965 by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kenneth Anger
Kenneth Anger (born Kenneth Wilbur Anglemyer, February 3, 1927 – May 11, 2023) was an American Underground film, underground experimental filmmaker, actor, and writer. Working exclusively in short films, he produced almost 40 works beginning in 1937, nine of which have been grouped together as the "Magick Lantern Cycle". Anger's films variously merge surrealism with homoeroticism and the occult, and have been described as containing "elements of erotica, documentary, psychodrama, and spectacle".The Kinsey Institute''Spotlight on the Collections: Filmmaker Kenneth Anger'' 2004. Retrieved June 1, 2010. He has been called "one of America's first openly gay filmmakers", with several films released before LGBT rights in the United States, homosexuality was legalized in the U.S. Anger also explored occult themes in many of his films; he was fascinated by the English occultist Aleister Crowley and an adherent of Thelema, the religion Crowley founded. Anger was born into a middle-class ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jeanne Eagels
Jeanne Eagels (born Eugenia Eagles; June 26, 1890 – October 3, 1929) was an American stage and film actress. Eagels appeared in many Broadway productions, and in the emerging medium of sound films. She was posthumously nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her 1929 role in '' The Letter'' after dying suddenly that year at the age of 39. Early life Eugenia Eagles was the second of six children born to Edward, of German and French Huguenot descent, and his wife Julia Eagles (née Sullivan), who was of Irish descent. Her birth year – depending on the source – is given as 1888, 1890 (official bio year), 1891, 1892, 1893 (death certificate), or 1894. Jeanne, who later changed the spelling of her surname to "Eagels", would later claim that her father was a Spanish architect and she was born in Boston. In reality, she was born in Kansas City, Missouri and her father was a carpenter. Actress Mary Shipp was Eagels's niece. Eagels attended St. Joseph's Ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marie Prevost
Marie Prevost (born Mary Bickford Dunn; November 8, 1896 – January 21, 1937) was a Canadian film actress. During her 20-year career, she made 121 silent and sound films. Prevost began her career during the silent film era. She was discovered by Mack Sennett who signed her to contract and made her one of his "Bathing Beauties" in the late 1910s. Prevost appeared in dozens of Sennett's short comedy films before moving on to feature-length films for Universal. In 1922, she signed with Warner Bros. where her career flourished as a leading lady. She was a favorite of director Ernst Lubitsch who cast her in three of his comedy films: ''The Marriage Circle'' (1924), '' Three Women'' (1924) and '' Kiss Me Again'' (1925). After being let go by Warner Bros in early 1926, Prevost's career began to decline and she was relegated to secondary roles. She was also beset with personal problems, including the death of her mother in 1926 and the breakdown of her marriage to actor Kenneth Ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ramon Novarro
Ramón Gil Samaniego (February 6, 1899 – October 30, 1968), known professionally as Ramon Novarro, was a Mexican actor. He began his career in American silent films in 1917 and eventually became a leading man and one of the top box-office attractions of the 1920s and early '30s. Novarro was promoted by MGM as a "Latin lover" and became known as a sex symbol after the death of Rudolph Valentino. He is recognized as the first Latin American actor to succeed in Cinema of the United States, Hollywood. Early life Novarro was born Ramón Gil Samaniego on February 6, 1899, in Durango City, Durango, north-west Mexico, to Dr. Mariano N. Samaniego, and his wife, Leonor Pérez Gavilán. The family moved to Los Angeles to escape the Mexican Revolution in 1913. Novarro's direct ancestors came from the Castilian town of Burgos, whence two brothers emigrated to the New World in the seventeenth century. Allan Ellenberger, Novarro's biographer, writes: The family estate was called th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mary Nolan
Mary Nolan (born Mariam Imogene Robertson; December 18, 1902 – October 31, 1948) was an American stage and film actress, singer and dancer. She began her career as a Ziegfeld girl in the 1920s performing under the stage name Imogene "Bubbles" Wilson. She was fired from the ''Ziegfeld Follies'' in 1924 for her involvement in a tumultuous, highly publicized affair with comedian Frank Tinney. She left the United States shortly thereafter and began making films in Germany. She appeared in 17 German films from 1925 to 1927, using the stage name Imogene Robertson. Upon returning to the United States in 1927, she attempted to break from her previous scandal-ridden past and adopted the stage name Mary Nolan. She was signed to Universal Pictures in 1928 where she found some success in films. By the 1930s, her acting career began to decline due to her drug abuse and reputation for being temperamental. After being bought out of contract with Universal, she was unable to secure film wo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mae Murray
Mae Murray (born Marie Adrienne Koenig; May 10, 1885 – March 23, 1965) was an American actress, dancer, film producer, and screenwriter. Murray rose to fame during the silent film era and was known as "The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips" and "The Gardenia of the Screen". Early life Murray was born in New York City, the second-oldest child of Joseph and Mary (née Miller) Koenig. Her maternal grandparents had emigrated from France while her paternal grandparents had emigrated from Germany. She had two brothers, William Robert and Howard Joseph. The family eventually moved to an apartment in the Lower East Side. In May 1896, Murray's father, died from acute gastritis due to his alcoholism. To support the family, her mother took a job as a housekeeper for Harry Payne Whitney. Career Stage Murray began acting on the Broadway stage in 1906 with dancer Vernon and Irene Castle, Vernon Castle. In 1908, she joined the chorus line of the Ziegfeld Follies, moving to headliner by 1915. Mu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe ( ; born Norma Jeane Mortenson; June 1, 1926 August 4, 1962) was an American actress and model. Known for playing comic "Blonde stereotype#Blonde bombshell, blonde bombshell" characters, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1950s and early 1960s, as well as an emblem of the era's sexual revolution. She was a top-billed actress for a decade, and her films grossed $200 million (equivalent to $ billion in ) by Death of Marilyn Monroe, her death in 1962. Born in Los Angeles, Monroe spent most of her childhood in foster homes and an orphanage before marrying James Dougherty (police officer), James Dougherty at the age of 16. She was working in a factory during World War II when she met a photographer from the First Motion Picture Unit and began a successful pin-up modeling career, which led to short-lived film contracts with 20th Century Fox and Columbia Pictures. After roles as a freelancer, she began a longer contract with Fox in 1951, becomi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carole Landis
Carole Landis (born Frances Lillian Mary Ridste; January 1, 1919 – July 5, 1948) was an American actress and singer. She worked as a contract player for Twentieth Century-Fox in the 1940s. Her breakout role was as the female lead in the 1940 film '' One Million B.C.'' from United Artists. She was known as "The Ping Girl" and "The Chest" because of her curvy figure. Early life Landis was born on January 1, 1919, in Fairchild, Wisconsin, the youngest of five children of Clara (née Sentek), a Polish farmer's daughter, and Norwegian-American Alfred Ridste, a drifting railroad mechanic who abandoned the family after Landis's birth. According to Landis's biographer E. J. Fleming, circumstantial evidence supports that Landis was likely the biological child of her mother's second husband, Charles Fenner. Fenner left Landis's mother in April 1921 and remarried a few months later. In 1923, Landis's family moved to San Bernardino, California, where her mother worked menial jobs to s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barbara La Marr
Barbara La Marr (born Reatha Dale Watson; July 28, 1896 – January 30, 1926) was an American film actress and screenwriter who appeared in twenty-seven films during her career between 1920 and 1926. La Marr was also noted by the media for her beauty, dubbed as the "Girl Who Is Too Beautiful", as well as her tumultuous personal life. Born in Yakima, Washington, La Marr spent her early life in the Pacific Northwest before relocating with her family to California when she was a teenager. After performing in vaudeville and working as a dancer in New York City, she moved to Los Angeles with her second husband and became a screenwriter for Fox Film Corporation, writing several successful films for the company. La Marr was finally "discovered" by Douglas Fairbanks, who gave her a prominent role in '' The Nut'' (1921), then cast her as Milady de Winter in his production of ''The Three Musketeers'' (1921). After two further career-boosting films with director Rex Ingram (''The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean Harlow
Jean Harlow (born Harlean Harlow Carpenter; March 3, 1911 – June 7, 1937) was an American actress. Known for her portrayal of "bad girl" characters, she was the leading sex symbol of the early 1930s and one of the defining figures of the Pre-Code Hollywood, pre-Code era of American cinema. Often nicknamed the "Blonde Bombshell" and the "Platinum Blonde", Harlow was popular for her "Laughing Femme fatale, Vamp" screen persona. Harlow was in the film industry for only nine years, but she became one of Hollywood's biggest movie stars, whose image in the public eye has endured. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Harlow number 22 on its AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars, greatest female screen legends list. Harlow was first signed by business magnate Howard Hughes, who directed her first major role in ''Hell's Angels (film), Hell's Angels'' (1930). After a series of critically failed films, and Hughes' loss of interest in her career, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer bought out Harlow's c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Juanita Hansen
Juanita Hansen (born Juanita Cecilia Hanson; March 3, 1895 – September 26, 1961) was an American actress who performed in silent films. She became one of the Sennett Bathing Beauties and appeared in a variety of Serial (film), serials through the late 1910s. She was well known for her troubled personal life and struggle with addiction to cocaine and morphine. In 1934, she became clean and traveled lecturing on the dangers of drugs. She wrote a book about addiction and started her own charity to help raise awareness about drug abuse. Early life Juanita Cecilia Hanson was born in Thor, Iowa to Henry George Hanson, who was originally from Wisconsin, and Johanna Sophia Peterson (or Pederson) on March 3, 1895 or March 5, 1895 (sources differ). Alternatively, her birthplace has been given as Des Moines and her birth year as 1897. The family moved to California when Juanita was a young girl, and she attended Los Angeles High School, where she dropped out after completing 9th grade. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Gilbert (actor)
John Gilbert (born John Cecil Pringle; July 10, 1897 – January 9, 1936) was an American actor, screenwriter and director. He rose to fame during the silent era and became a popular leading man known as "The Great Lover". His breakthrough came in 1925 with his starring roles in ''The Merry Widow'' and '' The Big Parade''. At the height of his career, Gilbert rivaled Rudolph Valentino as a box office draw. Gilbert's career declined precipitously when silent pictures gave way to talkies. Though Gilbert was often cited as one of the high-profile examples of an actor who was unsuccessful in making the transition to sound films, his decline as a star had far more to do with studio politics and money than with the sound of his screen voice, which was rich and distinctive. Early life and stage work Born John Cecil Pringle in Logan, Utah, to stock-company actor parents, John George Pringle (1865–1929) and Ida Adair Apperly Gilbert (1877–1913), he struggled through a childhood of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
