Hollywood Babylon strikes again!: another overview of exhibitionism, sexuality, and sin as filtered through 85 years of Hollywood scandal

384 Pages·2010·274.926 MB·English

by  Porter, Darwin;Prince, Danforth

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“You know, everyone thinks Hollywood is a cesspool of epic proportions today, but
please! It’salwaysbeenthatway.AndifyoulovesmuttycelebritydirtasmuchasIdo
(and if you don’t, what’s wrong with you? Ya got morals or something?), then have I
got a book for you!”
The Hollywood Offender
“Dishing with abandon, the authors spare no one--especially not the dead. Marilyn
MonroehadanaffairwithRonaldReagan.MarilynalsohadatrystwithJoanCrawford
but refused to make it an ongoing affair. James Dean showed a disconcerting interest
in a 12-year old boy in the early 1950s. Lucille Ball launched herself into show busi-
ness as a hooker, and her husband Desi Arnaz had a fling with Cesar Romero. Cary
Grant had an incestuous relationship with his stepson, Lance Reventlow.
And this, by the way, is only the tip of the iceberg.”
Rush & Molloy, The NY Daily News
“Many of Hollywood’s most outrageous secrets remained hidden. Until now.
This book will set the graves of Hollywood’s cemeteries spinning.”
London’s Daily Express
“This monumentally exhaustive collection of sins, foibles, failings, and sexual adven-
tures is the ultimate guilty pleasure--and publisher Blood Moon pledges that it’s mere-
ly volume one.”
Books to Watch Out For (www.QSyndicate.com)
“TheAmericanmovieindustryisalwayseagerforthespotlightiftheclose-upisflatter-
ing and good for business. But Hollywood may get more than it bargained for with
Hollywood Babylon's compendium of stories, rumors and myths. Virtually every page
featuresonekindoftrainwreckoranother,usuallyaccompaniedbyspectacularlylurid
photographs. Darwin Porter and Danforth Prince provide a hair-raising list of compro-
misesandstrategicallygrantedsexualfavorsasproofthatsomestarswilldoanything
for a part. Not even Grace Kelly and Lucille Ball escaped having to get down and dirty
on the proverbial casting couch, according to Porter and Prince. Read these pages to
learn what Robert Mitchum is said to have taught Marilyn Monroe on the set of The
River of No Return that would prove useful during her rumored affair with J.F.K.Try as
youmight,youwon'tbeabletostopturningthepages...Inrevealingsomanyfactspre-
viously under wraps, this book, in fact, raises the question of how much more remains
hidden.”
ShelfAwareness / Bookselling News
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Hollywood Babylon
Strikes Again!
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OTHER BOOKS BY DARWI PORTER
BIOGRAPHIES
Steve McQueen, King of Cool, Tales of a Lurid Life
Paul !ewman, The Man Behind the Baby Blues
Merv Griffin, A Life in the Closet
Brando Unzipped
The Secret Life of Humphrey Bogart
Katharine the Great: Hepburn, Secrets of a Lifetime Revealed
Howard Hughes: Hell’s Angel
Jacko, His Rise and Fall (The Social and Sexual History of Michael Jackson)
Coming Soon:
Humphrey Bogart, the Making of a Legend
The Kennedys, All the Gossip Unfit to Print
Frank Sinatra: The Boudoir Singer
AND IN COLLABORATIONWITH ROYMOSELEY
Damn You, Scarlett O’Hara: The Private Lives of Vivien Leigh and Laurence Olivier
FILM CRITICISM
50 Years of Queer Cinema--500 of the Best GLBTQ Films Ever Made (2010)
Blood Moon’s Guide to Recent Gay & Lesbian Film--Volume Two (2007)
Blood Moon’s Guide to Recent Gay & Lesbian Film--Volume One (2006)
Best Gay and Lesbian Films- The Glitter Awards, 2005
O -FICTIO
Hollywood Babylon-It’s Back!
OVELS
Butterflies in Heat
Marika
Venus (a roman à clef based on the life of Anaïs !in)
Razzle-Dazzle
Midnight in Savannah
Rhinestone Country
Blood Moon
Hollywood’s Silent Closet
TRAVELGUIDES
Many editions and many variations of The Frommer Guides to
Europe, the Caribbean, California, Georgia and The Carolinas, Bermuda, and The Bahamas
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Hollywood Babylon
Strikes Again!
Volume Two of Blood Moon’s Babylon Series
Another Overview of Exhibitionism, Sexuality, and Sin
as Filtered through 85 years of Hollywood Scandal
BY DARWIN PORTER AND DANFORTH PRINCE
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HOLLYWOOD BABYLO STRIKES AGAI !
Volume Two of Blood Moon’s Babylon Series
Copyright © 2010, Blood Moon Productions, Ltd.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
WWW.BLOODMOONPRODUCTIONS.COM
Manufactured in the United States of America
ISBN 978-1-936003-12-9
First printing June 2010
Cover designs by Richard Leeds (www.bigwigdesign.com)
Videography and publicity trailers by Piotr Kajstura
Distributed in North America and Australia
through the National Book Network (www.NBNbooks.com)
and in the U.K. through Turnaround (www.turnaround-uk.com)
Blood Moon acknowledges the National Book Network
for their savvy guidance in the presentation and marketing of this book.
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D
EDICATIO
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO ANYONE
WHO HAS EVER BEEN EMBARRASSED
BYANYASPECT
OF A CAREER IN THE ENTERTAINMENT BUSINESS.
R I P
EST N EACE
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MMEEMMOORRIIEESS OOFF AA LLOOSSTT CCIIVVIILLIIZZAATTIIOONN
“Grauman’s Chinese Theater stands a couple of miles from the Paramount lot. It has
passed into other hands since the death of Sid Grauman, but the name persists. In the absence
of some sort of film-industry museum, a cultural enterprise undreamed of by the primitives who
ran the big studios, the theater has become Hollywood’s Louvre and its Pantheon.
Visitors buy souvenirs from old extras in cowboy boots and worn buckskins, walk through
a wax museum, and solemnly study the indentations formed in the pinkish-tan concrete of the
forecourt by the hands and feet of scores of movie stars, beginning in 1927 with !orma
Talmadge and Mary Pickford. The autocratic DeMille placed his bootprints in the wet concrete,
Betty Grable her celebrated and rather overrated legs, and Jayne Mansfield her breasts, cre-
ating declivities in which mosquitoes breed after a heavy rain.
From Grauman’s depart the limousines that carry tourists past the homes of the stars in
Beverly Hills and Bel Air. I made the excursion one Saturday afternoon in company with two
honeymooning young couples from places like Deathball City, Ind., and !ew Acne, !eb. The
driver, who bore a passing resemblance to Elvis Presley, turned out to be an aspiring actor from
Brentwood, L.I., named Chuck Cavanagh. He told me that he had decided on a screen career
after losing his job as a jet-engine mechanic at Los Angeles International Airport, and had
recently worked as an extra on Lepke, a nineteen thirties gangland saga.
As we rolled through winding, hilly lanes, past opulent, palm-fringed homes, many of them
reflecting the taste of people who have made a lot of money in a short time, Chuck briefed us
on the latest gossip of the film capital. Vivacious Debbie Reynolds and shoe magnate Harry
Karl had finally called it quits, he reported. She was being squired around town by Glenn Ford.
Priscilla Presley was not lacking for friends since the breakup of her marriage.
We rolled by the mansion of Hugh Hefner, the Playboy man, which was fenced with wire
mesh to keep the Bunnies from getting out and breeding all over the place; the Sammy Davis
Jr. house, protected by a 20-foot fence and patrolled by armed guards because of kidnapping
threats by Arab terrorists and, at the summit, Pickfair, where Mary Pickford, in her 80s, lives
as a virtual recluse.
Chuck divided the stars into the friendlies and the unfriendlies. Doris Day was a friendly,
he said. A couple of days previously, out bicycling, she had agreed to pose for a photograph
with one of his tourists and had dispensed autographs with a liberal hand. Barbra Streisand
was an unfriendly, as was Robert Young. ‘We saw him standing in front of his house,’ he said,
‘and he wouldn’t even wave back at us.’
‘Gee, I never see anybody,’ said one of the honeymooners. ‘I guess I’m not that lucky.’
Passing Pat Boone’s house, it seemed that her luck had changed. Through an open gate, a
man in a flowered shirt could be seen placing suitcases in the trunk of a car. ‘Is that him?’ she
asked. ‘I think it is,’ exclaimed the other young woman. Cavanagh, ever obliging, stopped the
car. She lowered the window and waved. The man turned. It might have been Pat Boone’s
Filipino gardener, but it wasn’t Pat Boone.
‘I could’ve told you it wasn’t him,’ said one of the young husbands. ‘You wouldn’t see Pat
Boone loading his own suitcases like that.’”
—Tom Buckley
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“Ah, the Golden Age of Hollywood. Where stars were stars—other worldly and untouch-
able—and a selection of discreet broads were readily available to help a not-gay man get his
rocks off. It’s a relief that Jimmy Stewart and, most of all, Louis B. Mayer are not alive today
to witness the antics of the present crop of Hollywood’s finest. What would they make of Tom
Cruise jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch screaming, ‘Whaaooo!’ What advice would
they give ‘teen queen’ Lindsay Lohan as she is drunkenly and very publicly scraped off the side-
walk, offering indecent photo opportunities to the expectant paparazzi? And you can be sure
they would have an uncompromising view on Mel Gibson, who added to the A-list implosion
after his drunken, anti-Semitic and sexist remarks to police officers who leaked it to the press.
Our culture is changing: once, we viewed actors like Stewart as heroes and role models; now
we live in a society defined by gossip rags such as Heat and Grazia, determined to show that
celebrities have zits and beer bellies like the rest of us.”
—Mark Hooper
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“In the center of the field was a gigantic pile of sets, flats and props. While he watched, a 10-
ton truck added another load to it. This was the final dumping ground. He thought of Janvier’s
Sargasso Sea. Just as that imaginary body of water was a history of civilization in the form of
a marine junkyard, the studio lot was one in the form of a dream dump. A Sargasso of the imag-
ination! And the dump grew continually, for there wasn’t a dream afloat somewhere which
wouldn’t sooner or later turn up on it, having first been made photographic by plaster, canvas,
lath, and paint. Many boats sink and never reach the Sargasso, but no dream ever entirely dis-
appears. Somewhere it troubles some unfortunate person and some day, when that person has
been sufficiently troubled, it will be reproduced on the lot.”
— athanael West, The Day of the Locust