Did 1920s Hollywood Really Look as Debauched in ‘Babylon’?

This is how it happened with some of these people and events in “Babylon,” which opens Dec. 23 and stars MargotRobbie and Brad Pitt.

WERE THERE REALLY THAT MUCH DRUGS?

It was clear that Hollywood had a drug scene and there were drug-dealing rings operating in the studios. This was especially true in the 1920s when William Hays arrived in town and began cracking down on morality both onscreen and offscreen. Although it is unlikely that partygoers were offered mountains of cocaine to eat, the film shows that drugs such as heroin, cocaine, morphine and opium — an early anesthetic — were all available.

Adela Rogers Saint Johns, the reporter who inspired the film’s Elinor-St. Johns gossip columnist character, recalled “Cecil B. DeMille giving out a combination of hyoscine & morphine at parties,” Mann reports in “Tinseltown”.

Like today, drug addiction can start with painkillers that are prescribed for injuries. Wallace Reid, a hunky actor, died in 1923 after being admitted to a sanitarium for his morphine addiction following a train accident. The Nov. Variety, November 17, 1920, reports on a drug bust. It is most likely Reid’s dealer. According to the arresting officer, Thomas H. Tyner, alias Claude Walton and alias Bonnie Walton were taken into custody at a local lot. He had seven heroin bundles on him. Tyner claimed he was delivering dope to one the most well-known male picture stars of the coast. He also stated that this was the second time Tyner had delivered the drug to the same star. His wife, in the hope of breaking the habit, told the authorities.

In 1920, another scandal broke when Olive Thomas, a popular Selznick Picture Company flapper, was found dead in Paris. Variety reported that she had taken mercury bichloride. According to the New York Times, police sought evidence regarding “rumors of champagne orgies” and “a former American officer who was sentenced for selling cocaine.”

It’s not surprising that cocaine wasn’t widely banned in the U.S. before 1922 and Prohibition started in 1920.

ROSCOE FATTY ARBUCKLE SCANDAL

Although he is only there for a few seconds, Orville Pickwick’s character, a rich, corpulent man, laughs as a young woman pees on his body during the film’s first wild party scene. Pickwick later discovers the woman is unconscious, possibly due to an overdose. He shouts “wake-up, wake-up!”

Arbuckle, a successful comic actor, was involved in the 1921 murder of Virginia Rappe. Arbuckle was not convicted of raping or inadvertently killing Virginia Rappe. However, there is still suspicion that she was seriously injured when he penetrated her with his champagne bottle. “Babylon,” a reference to the urban legend, also features a scene in which a bottle is used on a woman.

Although it wasn’t proven that Rappe died in a San Francisco hotel room, Arbuckle was involved, and there was still plenty of alcohol around Rappe and his friend, despite the fact that alcohol was illegal throughout the decade. Mann says that Fatty Arbuckle was well-known for having one of the largest cellars. This meant that he had unlimited access to alcohol.

“Scandal strikes industry,” was the headline in a September 16, 1921 Variety article about the trial. “Arbuckle scandal furnishes capital for screen’s enemies — hundreds cancel ‘Fatty Comedies.” Arbuckle’s three trials, two of which ended in hung juries, and his third trial that resulted in his acquittal brought more scandal to the film industry than the studios could handle.

All this negative press led to Hays, a former Republican party chairman, being appointed the first chairman of the MPA. His mission was to clean up Hollywood.

“There’s an emerging sensibility now, people care more about morals,” Manny Torres from “Babylon”, played by Diego Calva in a 1929 scene.

“By the middle of the decade, the studios have also learned how to protect themselves against the press and the general public. Mann says that one thing they did not have in the 1920s, at the time of Fatty Archbuckle and the murder of William Desmond Taylor, is how to protect themselves from the press and the public. “It’s only the middle of the decade that they start to get fixers who are able to contain these scandals.” Mann adds.

Flea portrays a studio fixer in “Babylon” who exclaims, “What a goddamn chaos!” when he meets the dead woman at the party.