![]() Moviegoers did laugh at Gilbert’s line delivery in his first talkie, His Glorious Night (1929), as they do in Babylon. On that note, the story of how John Gilbert fell from grace is consistent across sources, though the amount of venom in the telling differs (Kenneth Anger is the meanest, naturally). It was a difficult assignment to live up to.” His friend, director King Vidor, wrote in his autobiography A Tree Is a Tree that Gilbert was emotionally immature and uneasy with his fame, and “when he began to read the publicity emanating from his studio calling him ‘the great lover,’ his behavior in real life began to change accordingly. He was married four times, and was romantically connected to many more women, some of whom were married to other people. John Gilbert drank heavily and loved prolifically. That film sparked a love affair between its stars that kept fans entertained and gossip columnists busy for a solid year. In The Parade’s Gone By… cameraman Clarence Brown recalls shooting a “horizontal love scene” - one of cinema’s first - with Gilbert and Greta Garbo for Flesh and the Devil (1926). After Rudolph Valentino, Gilbert was the premiere romantic leading man of the 1920s, a hearty, virile all-American figure who was beloved by men and women alike (for different reasons, of course). Of the three, Gilbert is the most prominent influence the top note, if you will. Together, they offer a glimpse into an art form, and a social scene, that lived fast and died young.ĭamien Chazelle has left no mysteries on how to interpret melancholy leading man Jack Conrad: In an interview with EW in November, he said that the character of Jack Conrad is a blend of John Gilbert, Clark Gable, and Douglas Fairbanks. While some of the characters are based on a single historical figure, others are blends of multiple real-life personalities or simply representations of a type. ![]() Not only does it incorporate legends taken directly from Hollywood Babylon - a book that, again, has been proven to be mostly bullshit - it also takes liberties in crafting its ensemble. Brownlow records their memories verbatim, as actors, directors, and assistants describe anarchic days not unlike the jazzy “day in the life” sequence midway through Chazelle’s film.īabylon bends reality to suit its purposes. That book came out in 1968, at which point many of the players on the silent scene were still alive to share their experiences firsthand. One of Chazelle’s key sources is Hollywood Babylon, filmmaker Kenneth Anger’s gossipy (and mostly untrue) compendium of Hollywood’s bad behavior from the early days of the medium up through the late ‘50s.Ĭhazelle’s other primary source is more reputable: The Parade’s Gone By…, a nearly 600-page tome by British filmmaker Kevin Brownlow that documented the then-untold story of early Hollywood. ![]() Babylon wallows in the excitement - and misery - that came in the wake of that shift. The introduction of sound changed everything, from the way films were shot to who starred in them. But his career was ruined, and Hollywood’s sinful reputation was set.ĭamien Chazelle’s latest film, Babylon, opens in 1926, when silent Hollywood was a fast-moving train unaware that it was about to hurtle off of a cliff with the release of The Jazz Singer one year later. ![]() Comedian Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was charged with her rape and murder, and the tabloid headlines kept blaring throughout Arbuckle’s three trials. The movies’ first major scandal broke over Labor Day 1921, when a sometime actress named Virginia Rappe died after a raucous, boozy party at the St. ![]() The image of Hollywood as a new Babylon, a place populated by perverts, hop heads, and loose women whose depravity is communicable through the movie screen, goes all the way back to the silent era. ![]()
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