The new film from the director of “La La Land” is inspired by the crazy lives of celebrities from silent movies and early talkies.
If one believes that the stories about the excesses of Hollywood stars are just part of the myths of the film industry, Babylon is here to prove otherwise. Judging by what is told and shown in the new film by Damien Chazelle, the director of La La Land, the Hollywood of that time was much more wild and depraved than the legend tells. The opening scene of the film – a long sequence that lasts for more than half an hour and includes enormous amounts of drugs, a massive orgy, and even an elephant circling in the middle of a party – is so out of control that even the books cannot be Dedicated to counting the most famous scandals in the history of cinema, they approach a level of depravity and delirium. Starring Margot Robbie and Brad Pitt, Babylon is inspired by the lives of a series of characters that existed in reality and the stories that are told about them.
In fiction, Babylon narrates, in principle, the lives of Nellie LaRoy (Robbie) and Manny Torres (Diego Calva), two young people who meet at that party and begin to enter the public and private worlds of Hollywood in the '90s. 20, still in times of silent movies. Brad Pitt embodies a certain Jack Conrad, a leading man of the time with habits as uncontrolled as they are secret, a professional capable of maintaining a clean public image despite rampant alcoholism. And throughout the little more than three hours that the film lasts, what will be seen are the dramas, the rise, and fall of its protagonists over the years, marked by the transition from silent to talkies, a change that wore the career of many stars and would-be stars.
One of the texts that inspired Chazelle to create this world with many points of contact with reality was Hollywood Babylon, an exciting and controversial book by Kenneth Anger that recounted the most legendary scandals in the film industry. The book was published in the United States in 1965 and was banned for ten years. When reprinted in 1975, it was criticized by specialists in Hollywood history as "a work of fiction," implying that Anger had invented or exaggerated much of what he published there. The one who didn't realize that – or preferred to play dumb – was Chazelle, who accommodates many of those myths in her Babylon, without worrying about whether or not they were true. Here is a summary of the characters and situations seen in the film (or mentioned in Anger's book) and the events that supposedly happened in reality.
Clara Bow
The inspiration for Nellie LaRoy, the character of Margot Robbie, a brilliant silent movie star, was considered the most popular actress in Hollywood between 1926 and 1930. Thanks to the movie It (1927), she was considered the greatest S- symbol of the time, at the same time that Wings, a film in which he also starred, won the Oscar for best film in 1929. His career ended a few years later and rumors about his "scandalous" life remain to this day. In Anger's book, among other comments about his addictions and his taste for exhibitionism, it is said that he had S- with an entire team of football players including a then very young John Wayne, something that was several times denied. There is no doubt that she was the inspiration for the cartoon character Betty Boop.
John Gilbert
Jack Conrad, Brad Pitt's character in the film, is inspired, according to the actor and the director have commented in interviews, by three famous actors of the time: Rudolf Valentino, Douglas Fairbanks, and John Gilbert, but especially on the latter, the greatest romantic leading man of those years and protagonist of classics such as Reina Cristina, Gente de cine and The widow merry, among others. Of the thousand stories that are told about the actor, in addition to his prodigious ability to drink alcohol in enormous quantities and show up to the shoot the next day as if nothing had happened, the most famous is that of his long love affair with Greta Garbo (among the various he had, in many cases with married women) and his difficulty in adapting to talkies due to his somewhat high-pitched voice.
Anna May Wong
The inspiration for the character of Lady Fay Zhu (played by Li Jun Li) is the actress of The Thief of Bagdad and Shanghai Express. One of her "secrets", then considered unpublishable, is that she was a lesbian, something that appears in Babylon. But the film puts more the focus and place for controversy on how Hollywood's racism ruined his career since actors of Asian origin were relegated to only a very limited type of roles and it did not look good for them to have interracial romances in the film. screen… or off it.
Louis Armstrong
The character of trumpeter Sidney Palmer (played by Jovan Adepo) is inspired by the legendary jazz musician who also had to act in movies full of racist stereotypes typical of that time. In A Rhapsody in Black and Blue (1932), the trumpeter appears in two musical numbers dressed as "an African savage, half-N- and in leopard clothing," according to one of his biographies. Despite the inspiration, the attitudes and later careers of Armstrong and the fictional character are very different.
Latinos in Hollywood
There is no real person who inspired the character of Manny (Diego Calva) but it can be seen as a synthesis of the Latinos who managed to enter the film industry at that time to work behind the scenes. Among them, are the Cuban-born filmmaker René Cardona, the cinematographer Enrique Juan Vallejo and the Mexican brothers Joselito and Roberto Rodríguez, who invented a portable sound recording system that was widely used in Hollywood and was called "The Rodriguez Recording SoundSystem”.
Louella Parsons
The character of the reporter and industry commentator Elinor St. John (Jean Smart) is inspired by the famous gossip journalist of the time whose pen could supposedly destroy the career of any celebrity from one day to the next. She shouldn't have her as an enemy...
Dorothy Arzner
The director Ruth Adler (played by Olivia Hamilton) is inspired by Arzner, one of the first directors in the history of cinema, director of films such as Yours forever, Dance and Passion, and The Wild Party, which had Clara Bow as the protagonist, a fact that Babylon stages. Arzner, who had a rather masculine wardrobe for the time, had to publicly hide that she was a lesbian.
German filmmakers
Hollywood welcomed many film directors of that origin in the 1920s, including F.W. Murnau, Fritz Lang, Erich von Stroheim, Josef von Sternberg (actually Austrian), and Ernst Lubitsch, among others. The character of the German filmmaker played by actor/director Spike Jonze in the film is a synthesis of several of them, although his personality has many points in common with Lubitsch's.
The Rappe/Arbuckle Affair
A specific kickoff party event is inspired by the Virginia Rappe rape-murder case in which comic star Roscoe Arbuckle was charged. Although he was considered innocent, his subsequent career was greatly marked by that scandal.
Irving G. Thalberg
Of the few who appear in the film with his real name, the very young producer played by Max Minghella was responsible for many Hollywood classics such as The Lady of the Camellias, Grand Hotel, and Mutiny on board. He died very young, at 37 years old. To this day, the Hollywood Academy presents a special award for the career of great producers named after him.
