HOLLYWOOD BABYLON VERSES TRUTH       I should have written the following when my book, The Purple Diaries,  was first published. Nevertheless, for reason discussed below I am now finally getting around to it.  Let’s begin with the  following paragraph from the book’s acknowledgment section. “The idea of wiring the Purple Diaries was first sparked when I read the Mary Astor Chapter in Kenneth Anger’s hugely successful Hollywood Babylon. It was Angar’s intention to scandalize and he succeeded quite well at this. Thus, the…

          MARY ASTOR’S GOLDEN TEN   Iconic director William Wellman enjoyed telling interviewers that of the 100 or so movies he made during his 30+ years as a director, they were all made for the money. He considered 80 junk, twenty pretty good and ten among the best films to ever come out of Hollywood. The very same could be said of actress Mary Astor. She made 100 plus movies—all made for the money—and, like Wellman she also had her ten,…

          THE FILMS OF RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL   Another book proposal that I wrote which didn’t go anywhere was THE FILMS OF RADIO CITY MUSIC HALL. Because Radio City Music Hall could rack up massive grosses it was the theatrical outlet preferred by the studios and for good reason.  If a film played at the Music Hall a studio would advertise those grosses in the trades and this would mean additional bookings.  And, this was the reason why the Music Hall played some of…

  SCANDALOUS FILMS A number of years ago I wrote a proposal for a book about films whose production and or release were engulfed in scandal. Included was a sample chapter as well as 10 thumbnail descriptions of some of the films I wanted to write about.  I discarded the proposal long ago but kept the sample chapter and the thumbnails.  I will post the sample chapter sometime in the future but below you will find the thumbnails.  I hope you enjoy them.       THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915)…

    JOHN BARRYMORE AND ALL MY CHILDREN Early on it was suggested—for the blog at least— that I post sections from The Purple Diaries which had been deleted during the editing process. Presumably this would add up to a sort of “deleted scenes” kind of thing you see on DVDs and Blu-rays for fillm directors but this time it would be for a writer–me. Unfortunately, most of the cuts made during editing were small; a line here, a redundancy there with a certain degree of rewriting.  But, there…