ABSTRACT
Former child star Kenneth Anger’s exposé of the movie industry, Hollywood Babylon, begins with the tale of Intolerance. “The king of Babylon wanted elephants!” 1 The ‘king’ was D. W. Griffith, and the elephants were contributing to probably the most lavish sets in the history of cinema. Everything about Intolerance is larger than life. As Anger’s introduction suggests, this cinematic Babylon is also representative of the excesses of ‘Hollywood Babylon’ more broadly. Anger describes the colossal sets left to decay in the Californian desert after the film’s financial failure: “something of a reproach and something of a challenge to the burgeoning movie town—something to surpass, something to live down”. 2
