Kenneth Anger, still with us at 95, was the Changeling Prince in the classic 1935 film of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in which Mickey Rooney was Puck and James Cagney gave us his Bottom. Anger went on to make lots of “underground” flicks with rock musicians that had a hallucinogenic tone and an Aleister Crowley slant. He is best known, however, for Hollywood Babylon, his muck-raking book about the scandals of Tinseltown. He went behind the scenes to show the effects (his capitals) of Drink, Dope, Debauchery, Insanity, Suicide and Murder in Hollywood. Anger was the first commentator to reveal and wallow in cinematic sleaze and writes in a baroque style that positively pants and throbs with glorious overstatement.
Hollywood Babylon came out in
