Hollywood Babylon, Kenneth Anger's sordid, sensationalist account of the lives of the famous, forever changed how the world saw them

by Kenneth Anger, pub. Straight Arrow Press

The brutal murders of actress Sharon Tate and her friends in 1969 were seen by many as the incident that heralded the end of the so-called Golden Age of Hollywood.

When Charles Manson's insane posse burst through the door of that mansion in the hills and destroyed those lives, it was as though the modern world and all its harsh realities came crashing down on the fantasy that Tinseltown had worked so hard to build since the 1920s.

The international coverage that incident received heralded a change in the way the world perceived the lifestyles of the stars it had idolised on the silver screen. After that, intrusion became the name of the game with the public lapping up every juicy morsel of gossip and innuendo.

Four years earlier, Kenneth Anger, sometime child star and filmmaker, had pointed out the shape of things to come. He gathered together what he had heard - and quite a lot of what he had imagined - and sought a publisher for this nasty little collection of sordid sensationalism.

And it has been many people's dirty little secret ever since, tucked away on the bookshelf beside the publications we are actually supposed to read.