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Kenneth Anger

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Kenneth Anger

Birth
Santa Monica, Los Angeles County, California, USA
Death
11 May 2023 (aged 96)
Yucca Valley, San Bernardino County, California, USA
Burial
Cremated
Memorial ID
View Source

American Actor, Filmmaker and Author. Anger, whose films included 'Fireworks' (1947), 'Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome' (1954), 'Scorpio Rising' (1963) and 'Lucifer Rising' (1972), made him a key figure in the counterculture over seven decades. While he never found commercial success through his films, his book 'Hollywood Babylon,' which was a compilation of often sleazy and largely unverifiable gossip about the film industry and major stars, became famous after first being published in French in 1959, in English 1975, and was followed by a sequel in 1984. Born Kenneth Anglemyer in Santa Monica, he grew up in Pacific Palisades and Santa Monica, later moved to Los Angeles. There he met avant garde film-maker Curtis Harrington, who introduced him to the occult writings of Aleister Crowley. In 1947, having made films at home for years, Anger completed 'Fireworks,' a surreal, experimental short combining Crowley's ideas with homoerotic imagery. Distributor Raymond Rohauer was convicted for obscenity for showing the film in a Los Angeles theater in 1957. It became a civil rights issue and the California Supreme Court, in a landmark judgment, overturned the ruling, saying that reference to homosexuality in a film was not obscenity. Anger would go on to make a number of shorts that would garner him celebrity on the underground film circuit. In the late 60s, he became friendly with Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Jimmy Page and John Paul Getty Jr. Jagger composed music for Anger's 1969 film 'Invocation of My Demon Brother' while Faithfull starred in Lucifer Rising in 1981. Anger largely gave up making films in the 1980s, but came out of retirement in 2000 to make a number more. In 2010, he wrote a third instalment of 'Hollywood Babylon,' but was unable to publish it due to legal matters.

American Actor, Filmmaker and Author. Anger, whose films included 'Fireworks' (1947), 'Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome' (1954), 'Scorpio Rising' (1963) and 'Lucifer Rising' (1972), made him a key figure in the counterculture over seven decades. While he never found commercial success through his films, his book 'Hollywood Babylon,' which was a compilation of often sleazy and largely unverifiable gossip about the film industry and major stars, became famous after first being published in French in 1959, in English 1975, and was followed by a sequel in 1984. Born Kenneth Anglemyer in Santa Monica, he grew up in Pacific Palisades and Santa Monica, later moved to Los Angeles. There he met avant garde film-maker Curtis Harrington, who introduced him to the occult writings of Aleister Crowley. In 1947, having made films at home for years, Anger completed 'Fireworks,' a surreal, experimental short combining Crowley's ideas with homoerotic imagery. Distributor Raymond Rohauer was convicted for obscenity for showing the film in a Los Angeles theater in 1957. It became a civil rights issue and the California Supreme Court, in a landmark judgment, overturned the ruling, saying that reference to homosexuality in a film was not obscenity. Anger would go on to make a number of shorts that would garner him celebrity on the underground film circuit. In the late 60s, he became friendly with Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Jimmy Page and John Paul Getty Jr. Jagger composed music for Anger's 1969 film 'Invocation of My Demon Brother' while Faithfull starred in Lucifer Rising in 1981. Anger largely gave up making films in the 1980s, but came out of retirement in 2000 to make a number more. In 2010, he wrote a third instalment of 'Hollywood Babylon,' but was unable to publish it due to legal matters.



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