Paramount Pictures’ Babylon, starring Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt and Tobey Maguire, is set to hit the cinemas, but the movie Hollywood blockbuster exposes some eery revelations
Margot Robbie stars in Babylon (Image: Richard Milnes/REX/Shutterstock)
New film Babylon takes a look at the wildest days of Hollywood – but the truth about that time is even more outrageous than fiction.
Taking place in the 1920s, as Tinseltown moved from the silent film era to “talkies”, Babylon stars Brad Pitt and Margot Robbie.
On-screen antics include orgies and drug taking while the actress even wrestles a snake as her character Nellie LaRoy battles to become a star.
But the real-life antics of some of the biggest stars of the time were even wilder.
Nellie is based on Clara Bow, who scandalised the showbiz world.
Margot Robbie’s character collapses at a cocaine fuelled orgy in the movie (Image: Paramount Pictures)
She bathed in champagne at lavish parties at a time when alcohol was outlawed in the US and slept with co-stars such as Gary Cooper and Dracula star Bela Lugosi.
She was the only actress signed to the Paramount studio who refused to have a morality clause in her contract so she could have sex with whoever she wanted.
Bow had been raised in poverty in New York, abused by her alcoholic father and tormented by a schizophrenic mother, who threatened to slit her throat when she said she wanted to be an actress.
But Bow managed to become the biggest star of the era, receiving 45,000 fan letters in a single month at the peak of her popularity in 1929.
She starred in 55 films but was dropped at the age of just 25 by Paramount after she became embroiled in a series of sex scandals, husband-stealing accusations and court appearances.
Brad Pitt and Diego Calva in Babylon (Image: Paramount Pictures)
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Bow retired from acting in 1931 and was diagnosed with schizophrenia before dying from a heart attack, aged 60, in 1965.
Famed for films including The Great Dictator, Charlie Chaplin boasted of bedding 2,000 women but had a fondness for teenagers.
He was 29 when he wed 17-year-old Mildred Harris and after their divorce, had a relationship with 15-year-old Lita Grey.
She had two children with Chaplin while in her teens and branded him a “sex machine”.
Babylon tracks the rise and fall of the men and women in Hollywood (Image: Paramount Pictures)
At 47, he married actress Paulette Goddard, who lied and told him she was 17 – she was really 22 – while his final marriage was to Oona O’Neill when she was 18 and he 54.
Overweight comedy star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle appeared in more than 150 movies.
But his career tanked after a three-day sex and drug-fuelled party in 1921 that culminated in the rape and death of actress Virginia Rappe, aged 30.
Accused of the attack, Arbuckle was acquitted on his third trial but his reputation was beyond repair. He died 12 years later after descending into alcoholism.
Margot Robbie attends the Babylon premiere in Australia (Image: Christopher Khoury/Australian Press Agency via ZUMA/REX/Shutterstock)
Hollywood was also rocked by the murder of director William Desmond Taylor, shot in the back in his Los Angeles home in 1922.
Suspects included Mabel Normand and Mary Miles Minter, who were both sleeping with him.
The actresses saw their careers ended as a result of their images being tarnished.
Normand would die from tuberculosis at 37.
Hollywood giant Brad Pitt stars alongside Margot (Image: PIERRE VILLARD/SIPA/REX/Shutterstock)
In Babylon, Pitt’s silent movie actor character is thought to be based on Douglas Fairbanks, who became a star when he played Zorro in 1920.
He had an underground running track built so that he could jog naked from the studio to a gym and had an affair with actress Mary Pickford behind his wife’s back.
But his career didn’t survive the switch to talkies.
Fairbanks did “discover” actress Barbara La Marr and cast her in his 1921 production of The Three Musketeers.
The widely anticipated movie is directed by Damien Chazelle (Image: Paramount Pictures)
The party girl – who once said: “I take lovers like roses, by the dozen” – drank heavily and claimed she only slept two hours a night.
The actress went on several crash diets to lose weight and was once rumoured to have taken a tapeworm head in a pill to slim down.
La Marr died from tuberculosis in 1926, aged just 29.
Dubbed the “Blonde Bombshell”, Jean Harlow made her name in films including Hell’s Angels and Platinum Blonde.
The Hollywood film was set in the 1920’s (Image: Paramount Pictures)
But she suffered tragedy in her personal life.
A heavy drinker, she divorced her first husband in 1929 after her success got in the way of her marriage.
Her second husband was thought to have taken his own life while her third marriage lasted less than a year.
Her boozing, as well as lasting effects from childhood illness, led to her being diagnosed with kidney failure and she died, aged just 26, in 1937.
Babylon is out on Friday (January 20).
source: dailystar.co.uk
