Babylon – Margot Robbie plays Nellie Laroy in Babylon (Image: Paramount Pictures)
Margot Robbie, barely clad in a dazzling fiery red dress with a neckline cut to the waist, maneuvered through an orgy of writhing bodies, mountains of cocaine and a giant elephant turning tables and chairs in the wildest party imaginable.
The spoiled scene sets the tone for what’s to come in the Australian star’s latest film, BabylonCo-starring Brad Pitt and Tobey Maguire. A Jazz Age tribute to Hollywood’s decadence in the Roaring Twenties, it opens in America next week and in the UK next month, Babylon is a three-hour, eight-minute epic of extravaganza and Oscar nominees from Damien Chazelle, the gritty director of La La Land and Whiplash.
Set in a forbidding Hollywood undergoing catastrophic change with the advent of sound on film, with many stars of the silent era failing to make the transition, hedonism and reckless decadence gripped the film industry in the 1920s.
“There’s an amazing amount of debauchery,” says Robbie, 32, who plays aspiring movie star Nellie LaRue.
“One of the most disturbingly chaotic scenes I’ve seen in this movie, it involved a fight with a snake. I’m not going to tell you who wins or loses that fight, but believe me: this is insane.”
When she starred opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in Martin Scorsese’s blockbuster 2013 blockbuster The Wolf of Wall Street Robbie witnessed gruesome scenes of sex, drugs, wild parties, and even throwing midgets, and says, “I remember being on the set and thinking, ‘I’ll never be in a movie as crazy as this again. ‘” Then I made Babylon! “
Margot Robbie as wannabe star Nelly LaRue (Image: Paramount Pictures)
However, corruption is excessive ostentation Babylon All have their roots in the real-life hustle and bustle of Hollywood’s early days.
“A lot of it is based on real people or a combination of a number of people,” Roby says.
Murders, rapes, and scandals shocked 1920s Hollywood, earning its reputation as a modern gomorrah.
“There was this rush of suicides, deaths that could have been suicidal, and drug overdoses, and it merged a little bit with the drug epidemic that was going on at the time,” says Chazelle.
“Hollywood of the ’20s was really a hotbed of vice and arrogance and excess. We tried to put that on screen. All of it.”
The reality of Hollywood a century ago was downright filthy Babylon filming.
Margot Robbie with Diego Calva as Manny Torres’ cinematic assistant (Image: Paramount Pictures)
Comedy star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, having appeared in more than 150 films, when his career collapsed after a chaotic three-day binge: a sex-and-drugs-fueled party that culminated in the rape and death of the actress. Virginia Rappe, age 30, in September 1921.
Arbuckle, who was a mentor to Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Bob Hope, shared a San Francisco hotel with friends and a group of beautiful women, including the rap star.
Arbuckle was accused of raping Rabbi, whose death four days later was attributed to Arbuckle’s heavy weight.
After two trials ended in hung juries, Arbuckle, then 34, was finally acquitted at his third trial.
“I think I’ll come back,” Arbuckle said, but his reputation was beyond salvage, his films were banned and his career ended.
He turned to alcoholism, and died 12 years later at the age of 46.
As the Arbuckle trials continued, Hollywood was shaken after the murder of famed director William Desmond Taylor, shot in the back at his Los Angeles home in February 1922.
Mary Miles Minter (Photo: Bettmann/CORBIS)
Investigators found an abandoned wife, mistresses, secret love letters, and an embezzled servant. Suspects include comedian Mabel Normand — a recurring co-star of The Arbuckle Boys — and former child star Mary Miles Minter, who is caught up in a love triangle.
Police found a love letter from teen Minter to Taylor, 50, along with her nightgown in his bedroom.
It is also revealed that Minter’s protective mother threatened to kill another director who tried to seduce her daughter.
Decades later, director King Vidor claimed that Minter confessed her mother had killed Taylor, but no charges were ever filed and the case remains unsolved.
Months later, Hollywood silent film Wallace Reed died of morphine addiction. was shooting Valley of the Giants in 1919 when he suffered deep cuts to his head and arm in a train accident.
Doctors gave him morphine to help him complete the shoot, he became addicted and died in 1923, at the age of 31.
Hollywood beauty Barbara La Marr, the wild party-goer—famous for saying, “I take lovers like roses, by the dozen”—was given heroin by doctors to keep shooting through the pain after a sprained ankle, and like Reid became addicted.
She died of an overdose in 1926 at the age of 29.
Clara Bow was Hollywood’s original “It Girl,” a petite, wide-eyed, bob-haired beauty with cupid’s lips who became the first movie sex symbol, despite a tragic past.
She grew up in extreme poverty in New York, abused by her alcoholic father and tormented by a schizophrenic mother who threatened to kill her.
She recalled her childhood “I never had any clothes, and never had much time to eat”.
Arch later developed schizophrenia, retired from acting in 1931, and slipped into obscurity.
Margot Robbie reveals it Babylon The character of Nelly LaRue is based on Bow.
“I would say a lot of it was inspired by Clara Bow,” Robbie says.
“It took away a lot from Clara Bow’s real history, as bad a childhood as anyone can have.”
Robbie found the role “exhausting”, saying, “I demanded everything, both physically and emotionally.”
The death of producer and director Thomas Ince in November 1924 added to Hollywood’s scandalous reputation.
It is alleged that he was accidentally shot by newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst.
He was targeting Charlie Chaplin, suspected of having an affair with Hearst’s mistress Marion Davies, who was 34 years his junior.
Clara bow (Photo: The Donaldson Collection/Michael Ochs Archive/Getty)
Known as the “Father of the West,” Ince has made more than 800 films and was partying on Hearst’s luxury yacht off the California coast when tragedy struck.
Chaplin’s butler, Torishi Kono, claimed to have seen Ensei “bleeding from a bullet wound” to his head.
Los Angeles Times It reported: “The movie producer shot Hearst on a yacht.”
But Ency’s doctor signed the death certificate citing heart failure, and he was soon cremated. No fees were ever submitted.
Charlie Chaplin’s penchant for young girls caused many scandals in Hollywood. He was 29 when he married 17-year-old child actor Mildred Harris, and after their divorce, he became pregnant with 15-year-old actress Letta Gray. She married 35-year-old Chaplin and had two children before divorcing, all while she was still in her teens.
The series’ self-destructive culmination of that era came Peg Entwistle, a British actress who went to Hollywood to find fame.
She appeared on stage opposite Humphrey Bogart, and appeared on screen in the thriller Thirteen women with Myrna Loy and Irene Dunne, but then her career faltered.
In September 1932, she climbed to the top of the “H” on the famous Hollywood sign and threw herself 45 feet to her death.
“I’m sorry for everything,” she said in her suicide note. “If I had done this a long time ago, this would have saved a lot of pain.”
Her death cemented Hollywood’s notoriety as modern-day Babylon.
In the face of mounting criticism, Hollywood set up the Hays Office, under clean postmaster Will Hayes, to police corruption on screen.
Prohibition of showing sexuality, profanity and other vices. Off-screen debauchery continued, but out of the chaos came movie magic.
Adds Chazelle, “Hollywood at that time was a place where, of the most depraved animal behavior, these works of art that were so beautiful and seductive were emerging.”
And also shocking and amazing – like Babylon.
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