![A FINAL BOW](/images/headline/6842.png) Well, you're right. I'm mainly angry at myself. But I'm going to take it out on you. ![](/images/postimg/a_final_bow.jpg)
Pre-Code star Clara Bow looks mighty miffed in this promo shot made for her 1928 Paramount drama Ladies of the Mob, in which she plays the daughter of a lifelong criminal who falls in love with a crook and tries to reform him. Interesting trivia: because bullet squibs wouldn't be invented until around 1943, for shooting scenes studios often employed marksmen to fire real bullets near actors. Both Bow and her co-star Richard Arlen were injured by ricocheting fragments. Which brings us back to the photo. We like to imagine Bow facing Paramount head honcho Jesse Lasky and saying, “Don't worry, Jesse—I'm just going to shoot near you.”
![MIDNIGHT IN BABYLON](/images/headline/4863.png) Kenneth Anger explores Hollywood's darkest recesses in his landmark tell-all. ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_01.jpg)
Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon is the grandaddy of all Tinseltown exposés. It was published in 1965, banned ten days later, and shelved until 1975. It's exactly as advertised, outing everybody that was anybody for everything. Entire chunks are devoted to Charlie Chaplain, Lana Turner, Errol Flynn, Fatty Arbuckle and other cinematic luminaries. Some of its claims have been proved false—for instance the assertion that Lupe Velez died with her head in a toilet, and that Clara Bow screwed the USC football team (we doubt anyone really believed that one, even back then). But other tales are basically true, including accounts of various legal run-ins and feuds. Anger's writing is uneven, but at its most effective mirrors the type of pure tabloid style that influenced the likes of James Ellroy and others. Besides the salacious gossip the book has a ton of rare celeb photos, and those are of real worth. We've uploaded a bunch below. They came from a digital edition because our little paperback was too fragile to get on a scanner. By the way, don't feel as if we're working overtime on our website this Christmas morning—we uploaded everything in advance and are actually nowhere near a computer today. We're glad you took a minute to drop by. Copious vintage Hollywood below. ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_20.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_02.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_27.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_29.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_19.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_22.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_03.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_04.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_39.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_05.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_06.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_07.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_08.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_21.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_09.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_33.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_10.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_23.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_37.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_12.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_13.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_14.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_24.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_15.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_16.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_25.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_17.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_18.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_26.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_28.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_38.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_30.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_31.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_36.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_11.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_32.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_34.jpg) ![](/images/postimg/midnight_in_babylon_35.jpg)
![ALICE IN WONDERLAND](/images/headline/974.png) Your kiss is on my list of the best things in life. ![](/images/postimg/alice_in_wonderland.jpg)
Promo photo of American film actress Alice White, née Alva White, who appeared in around forty films, including the original Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, seen here circa 1928 in the mode of Clara Bow, to whom she was often compared.
![WILD IS THE WIND](/images/headline/852.png) Hanging with Mr. Cooper. ![](/images/postimg/wild_is_the_wind.jpg)
We were just writing about Gary Cooper in our history text and… You do read the history text, right? Please tell us you read that stuff, because we really do work hard on it. Anyway, Cooper died fifty years ago yesterday, so we thought we’d share one of the posters we had sitting around. Above you see the Japanese one sheet for his 1953 western Blowing Wild, with Barbara Stanwyck and Anthony Quinn. We’ll get into Mr. Cooper a bit more down the line. We have to—we can’t possibly ignore a guy who Clara Bow said was “hung like a horse and can go all night.” And we also have to get into the story about how Lupe Velez stabbed him for drawing a face on one of her nipples. When you do something like that to a woman known as the Mexican Spitfire, you have to expect incendiary results, but we'll explore that and other Cooper episodes soon.
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The headlines that mattered yesteryear.
2003—Hope Dies
Film legend Bob Hope dies of pneumonia two months after celebrating his 100th birthday. 1945—Churchill Given the Sack
In spite of admiring Winston Churchill as a great wartime leader, Britons elect
Clement Attlee the nation's new prime minister in a sweeping victory for the Labour Party over the Conservatives. 1952—Evita Peron Dies
Eva Duarte de Peron, aka Evita, wife of the president of the Argentine Republic, dies from cancer at age 33. Evita had brought the working classes into a position of political power never witnessed before, but was hated by the nation's powerful military class. She is lain to rest in Milan, Italy in a secret grave under a nun's name, but is eventually returned to Argentina for reburial beside her husband in 1974. 1943—Mussolini Calls It Quits
Italian dictator Benito Mussolini steps down as head of the armed forces and the government. It soon becomes clear that Il Duce did not relinquish power voluntarily, but was forced to resign after former Fascist colleagues turned against him. He is later installed by Germany as leader of the Italian Social Republic in the north of the country, but is killed by partisans in 1945.
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