Arena — Season 1, Episode 410: Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
When Kenneth Anger first published his classic expose of Hollywood's best-kept secrets and scandals, it was immediately banned. The underground film-maker struck a raw nerve in 'tinsel town'. Tonight he goes for a 'walk on the wild side' with Marianne Faithfull, the man who embalmed Marilyn Monroe and American comic Mike McShane who plays the god of Hollywood. Irreverent but affectionate, Anger reveals the origins of the casting couch, why James Dean was 'the human ashtray' and the truth behind Fatty Arbuckle's public disgrace.
About Arena
Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC. Voted by leading TV executives in Broadcast as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has run since 1 October 1975 with over five hundred episodes made, directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Alan Yentob, Roly Keating, Frederick Baker, Volker Schlondorff and Vikram Jayanti. Arena's subjects are a roll-call of the world's best known cultural figures from the 20th and 21st centuries, from singers Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse to academics Edward Said and Eric Hobsbawm, from writers Jean Genet and V S Naipaul to artists Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois. The current series editor is Anthony Wall.