‘Babylon’: Meet the Real Old Hollywood Stars Who Inspired the Characters of Damien Chazelle’s Wild Epic

Margot Robbie as Nellie LaRoy

Inspiration: Clara Bow, Joan Crawford, Jeanne Eagels, Alma Rubens, and Thelma Todd 

We first meet starlet Nellie LaRoy as she (literally) crashes the Kinoscope orgy, where she inhales a copious amount of cocaine, dominates the dance floor, her bright red dress both free-flowing and figure-hugging as she gyrates in ecstasy. When Kinoscope exec Bob Levine (Flea) needs an actress to replace one who has overdosed, he points to the energetic Nellie, the life of the party, dancing atop a table, casting her on the spot and changing her life forever. 

While Nellie may seem overly modern in her style and physicality, Chazelle is actually drawing from several starlets of the era whose modern sensibilities skyrocketed them to fame, most notably Clara Bow and Joan Crawford. 

One of the most notorious stars of her era, Clara Bow shined brighter than most of her contemporaries, with her larger-than-life persona and off-screen antics leading to some of Hollywood’s most pervasive — and perverted — myths. Just like Nellie, Bow had a difficult childhood (allegedly her mother had schizophrenia and her father was abusive), leaving New York for LA as soon as she could. Although her casting story is not quite as interesting as Nellie’s, she was signed on the spot after one meeting with Preferred Pictures studio chief B.P. Schulberg. When the independent studio hit financial dire straits, the two moved over to Paramount together. 

With her glorious red hair and uninhibited, effervescent screen presence, Bow was a breath of fresh air in Hollywood. Like Nellie, she clashed early on with some of the more established stars. In “Babylon,” Nellie bankrupts producer-star Constance Moore (Samara Weaving) after showing up one day with her face covered in bandages after the pair bickered while in production. This actually happened on the set of 1924’s “Painted People,” where Bow co-starred with Colleen Moore before being fired. 

Other tidbits from Bow’s real life, like her gambling problems (and troubles with Cal-Neva casino owner and gangster Jim McKay, played here by a gonzo Tobey Maguire), an unfounded myth involving the USC football team, and a cafe she opened capitalizing on her iconic “It” girl image are all referenced as Nellie rises the ranks of the Hollywood elite before spiraling spectacularly.

While the original “It” girl Bow was the biggest inspiration for Nellie, a young Joan Crawford is the clear inspiration for Nellie’s hip-hugging costuming and even her name. Nellie LaRoy is a nod to Crawford’s real name, Lucille Fay LeSueur. Originally a redhead, Crawford crashed parties and danced wildly into the night. During her first day on set, Nellie astonishes her director with her fearless acting abilities. When Crawford began her career, she was also known for her mastery of screen acting. In fact, George Cukor once remarked that she “had no fear of the camera. You could dolly right up on to her and she would never blink.”

Like Nellie, many starlets had drug problems, especially with cocaine, that led to their early deaths. After many unsuccessful stints in rehab, star Jeanne Eagels died at the age of 39 in 1929, receiving a posthumous Oscar nomination for her work in “The Letter.” Alma Rubens wrote a searing memoir about her struggle with addiction called “This Bright World Again” before she died at the age of 33 in 1931. The sudden death of comedienne Thelma Todd, nicknamed Hot Toddy, at the age 29 in 1935 became one of Hollywood’s most notorious largely unsolved mysteries due to her connections with the mob. 

As Nellie accepts her fate and dances off into the night, she joins countless other starlets in obscurity, whose deaths barely merited a mention in the very papers that once exalted them.

Olivia Hamilton as Ruth Adler

Inspiration: Dorothy Arzner, Alice Guy Blaché, and Lois Weber

Unlike many films about the silent era, Chazelle corrects the myth that women were not involved in the technical side of the early years of Hollywood filmmaking. “Babylon” is filled with homages to the women who worked as writers, producers, editors, and directors.

In a big set piece on the outdoor Kinoscope lot, one of the two filmmakers shown simultaneously directing their films is the fictional Ruth Adler, modeled mostly on studio-era pioneer Dorothy Arzner, who made twenty films between 1927 and 1943, working with actresses like Katherine Hepburn, Lucille Ball, Joan Crawford, and (of course) Clara Bow.  

Although her father owned a restaurant called Hoffman Café frequented by silent film stars and directors like Mary Pickford, Mack Sennett, and Douglas Fairbanks, Arzner did not originally intend to join the business. She first went to school for medicine, joining the Southern California ambulance unit during WWI, a reference to which is made when Manny steals an ambulance during his frantic mission to bring a camera back to set before they lose the light. 

Arzner then joined Players-Lasky Studios (which later became Paramount) as an editor on films like 1922’s “Blood and Sand” starring Rudolph Valentino. Her first film as director was 1927’s “Fashions for Women,” now a lost film. Written by Arzner’s life partner Marion Morgan, its original title “The Best Dressed Woman in Paris” is referenced in the comic intertitles Lady Fay writes for Nellie for her breakout role in the fictional “Maids Off.”

Bow and Arzner’s collaboration is further examined in one hilarious scene; after sound is introduced to moviemaking, Ruth and Nellie struggle to film a scene from a fictional talkie called “The Dame and the Dean.” This is a direct homage to the filming of the 1929 film “The Wild Party” in which Bow played an amorous student who falls for her professor (played by Fredric March). Like Nellie, during the production of the film, Bow’s wild physicality meant she was unable to hit her marks. This then led to the creation of what is now known as the boom mic, allowing the starlet greater freedom of motion. Arzner later became the first woman to join the Directors Guild of America and later taught filmmaking at UCLA to students like Frances Ford Coppola.

Other pioneering female filmmakers get nods in Chazelle’s film, as well. To calm Nellie’s nerves before shooting her first sound scene, Ruth tells her to just “be natural.” This is an homage to director Alice Guy-Blaché, who had a large sign in her studio, Solax, that read “Be natural,” reminding her actors to forget they were being filmed. Guy-Blaché was one of the first filmmakers to make narrative films and the first to make a film with an all-Black cast. Many of her films are now lost. 

Chazelle also references director Lois Weber. When Ruth both directs Nellie to shed a single tear during the filming of “Maid’s Off,” she also coordinates a complicated lighting trick. Weber pioneered many filmic techniques, including the split screen in her 1913 film “Suspense.” Film historian Anthony Slide asserts that Weber, along with D. W. Griffith, was American cinema’s first genuine auteur. Weber made an estimated 200 to 400 films, though most of them are now lost. Along with their films being lost, many early books and films about the era ignored the work of these women, ostensibly keeping them out of film history for decades. 

Jovan Adepo as Sidney Palmer

Inspiration: Duke Ellington and Sidney Easton

Although Sidney’s trumpet anchors the energy of the film from its opening party to the closing credits, the character remains largely in the background for the first third of the film until his collaborations with Manny kick up. This mirrors the way Black entertainers were treated in the early days of Hollywood, where most Black characters were played by white actors in Blackface. Black directors from the era like Oscar Micheaux operated largely outside the studio system.

With the advent of sound, music suddenly became a much more important element in the making of films. Throughout the film’s portrayal of this transition, Sidney continues to find work at Hollywood parties, in addition to playing live scores for early musical films. 

As jazz fever took hold across the nation, studios saw an opportunity to utilize musicians in front of the camera as well, turning people like Sidney into movie stars, albeit mostly in short films. Short films could be made quickly and cheaply, priming audiences for sound films while the more expensive feature films were being shot.

After the success of Manny and Sidney’s short jazz film for MGM, an homage to the 1929 short “Black and Tan” starring Duke Ellington, exec Bob Levine lures Manny back to Kinoscope to deal with Nellie’s antics. Sidney continues to thrive at Kinoscope, although as the films became more popular he asked to compromise his integrity in ways he cannot abide. Like Sidney in the film, musicians like Ellington went back to playing music in nightclubs, although Ellington would make cameo appearances in films periodically for the rest of his career. 

Another likely inspiration for the character is Sidney Easton, who began his musical career in minstrel shows, carnivals, burlesque, and vaudeville. Like Sidney, he spent much of his career on the periphery of Hollywood before appearing in a handful of films, including the 1932 jazz short “A Rhapsody in Black and Blue” starring Louis Armstrong. At a cocktail party, Sidney is asked about the popularity of race films, which were mostly independent films made by Black production companies, but occasionally made within the studio system like King Vidor’s MGM musical “Hallelujah,” which had an all-Black cast. 

Along with his musical output, the multi-talented Easton was a playwright and actor, who also appeared in many race films in the ’30s and ’40s. A suit against 20th Century Fox for using Easton’s play “Lifeboat 13” without permission as the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s “Lifeboat” was later settled out of court. His most fruitful professional collaboration was with Ethel Waters, who recorded many of his songs. Sidney’s decision to quit Hollywood and return to his jazz club roots mirrors Easton’s commitment to his artistry over Hollywood stardom.

Diego Calva as Manny Torres

Inspiration: Dudley Murphy and Ramon Novarro

Manny’s first day on a film set occurs during the tail end of the silent era, as he wrangles extras for an epic shooting on the Kinoscope lot. He then finds miscellaneous jobs with Jack Conrad, eventually advising the star that after the sound hit “The Jazz Singer,” everything is going to change. Although his trajectory from assistant to executive and musical director, as well as his star-crossed romance with Nellie, do not have direct parallels, aspects of the character can be found in two notable people from the era: experimental director Dudley Murphy and Mexican-American actor Ramon Novarro. 

The son of Modernist landscape painters, Dudley Murphy worked as a journalist before moving to California to make films. His Dadaist art film “Ballet Mécanique,” co-directed by Fernand Léger with input from Man Ray, is considered a landmark in experimental film (and referenced in the closing montage of “Babylon,” which is a tribute to cinematic innovation). Like Manny, Murphy got a foothold in Hollywood during this transitional period and found himself with the impossible task of helping the studios survive. In “Babylon,” Manny befriends trumpeter Sidney Palmer on the set of “The Hollywood Revue” and the two hatch a plan to collaborate on musical shorts. 

In real life, Murphy’s friend Miguel Covarrubias, whose celebrity caricatures were featured in The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, brought Murphy to Harlem where the newfound fervor for jazz inspired Murphy’s shorts, “Black and Tan” and “St. Louis Blues,” which shot simultaneously in 1929. As their popularity grew, so did studio interference. 

In one of the film’s most heartbreaking scenes, Manny asks Sidney to don blackface in order to match the darker skin tones of his bandmates. This is a reference to an incident during the filming of Murphy’s 1933 film “The Emperor Jones,” which starred Paul Robeson and Fredi Washington. After watching rushes, studio execs said Washington looked like a white woman next to Robeson and forced her to reshoot the scene wearing dark makeup so her skin tone would match his.

Another possible inspiration for Manny is Mexican-American heartthrob Ramon Novarro. When Manny is first introduced he goes by his full name Manuel Torres, although he endures many slurs like “chico” from others on set. Nellie immediately anoints him Manny during their first meeting, and continues to call him such throughout the film. Eventually, he adopts the name officially, while also concocting a Madrid-set origin story. White-washing of Latinx people was incredibly common at the time (and has not completely gone away even today). 

Born José Ramón Gil Samaniego, the actor anglicized his name on the recommendation of actor and director Rex Ingram. Finding work at MGM, he became a major sex symbol after the death of fellow “latin lover” Rudolph Valentino (who was actually Italian). At the height of his career he starred in romantic epics like “The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg” with Norma Shearer and “Across to Singapore” with Joan Crawford and Anna May Wong. Unlike Manny’s relative happy ending, Novarro was brutally murdered in his home on October 30, 1968.

Li Jun Li as Lady Fay Zhu

Inspiration: Anna May Wong, Frances Marion, and Marion Morgan

The other main entertainment at the Kinoscope orgy is Lady Fay Zhu, who sings a racy cabaret song called “My Girl’s Pussy” while clad in an androgynous tuxedo, an homage to both Marlene Dietrich’s homosexually suggestive performance in the 1930 film “Morocco” and a 1932 portrait of Anny May Wong by photographer Carl Van Vechten. 

Although an established player in the Hollywood game like Jack Conrad, Lady Fay’s Chinese ancestry is exoticzed and her acting talent ignored. Aside from her erotic singing performances, she mostly finds work on set writing intertitles for Kinoscope’s women-centric films, while living above her family’s laundry service. Her witty writing aids Nellie’s rise as a star, although her contributions remain largely in the shadows. 

Like Lady Fay Zhu, Anna May Wong was a talented star whose ethnicity was exoticised throughout her career. Born on Flower Street in Los Angeles, Wong’s father owned a laundry called Sam Kee Laundry. Without her parents’ permission, a teenaged Wong became one of 300 female extras to appear in Alla Nazimova’s film “The Red Lantern” in 1919. She landed her first leading role in the 1922’s “The Toll of the Sea.”

This early Metro two-color Technicolor was written by Frances Marion, whose career as writer of intertitles may have also inspired the character. Marion began her career working with director Lois Weber, and became the first writer to win two Academy Awards. Another possible inspiration for this aspect of the character was Marion Morgan, a screenwriter and choreographer whose creative and personal partnership with Dorothy Arzner lasted for over four decades. 

Wong later appeared with Douglas Fairbanks in “The Thief of Bagdad,” her friendship with Fairbanks serving as inspiration for the bittersweet relationship between Lady Fay and Jack Conrad. Although Lady Fay is shown leaving to work for Pathé the mid-’30s, Wong actually left for Europe in March of 1928, where she starred in silent films like “Piccadilly” and the Alfred Hitchcock co-directed musical revue “Elstree Calling.” She returned to the United States a few years later, starring in films like 1932’s racy pre-code drama “Shanghai Express” with Marlene Dietrich. 

While the films made in this era still pushed the boundaries of the production code, studios began a mission to clean up the images of their stars. In their attempt to tame Nellie, Kinoscope gives her elocution lessons and fires Lady Fay, whose close friendship with their starlet has sparked unsavory rumors. Similarly, Anna May Wong’s friendship with Dietrich and other women at the time led to rumors of lesbianism that may have damaged her career. 

Some biographers also believe the code hampered Wong’s career due to its strict prohibiting miscegenation, which one biographer believes may have cost her the lead in MGM’s lush adaptation of Pearl S. Buck’s “The Good Earth.” Despite these setbacks, Wong continued to act on stage and screen, appearing in her last film in 1960. Earlier this year, she became the first Asian-American to appear on an American coin. 

Although her fate is largely left up to the audience’s imagination, Lady Fay’s journey to Europe hopefully forecasts a similarly rocky, yet iconic success for her.

Brad Pitt as Jack Conrad

Inspiration: John Gilbert

The main inspiration behind Pitt’s aging film star is the debonair matinee idol John Gilbert — nicknamed Jack — who was one of the most popular actors in the ‘20s. Arriving at the Kinoscope orgy, Conrad’s current marriage dissolves, his wife Ina (Olivia Wilde, an homage to Gilbert’s wife Ina Claire) leaving him without even entering the party. Later that night Conrad cheers up his friend producer Geroge Munn (Lukas Hass), whose tragic end is inspired by Gilbert’s friendship with producer and writer Paul Bern, who died by suicide in 1932. 

At the peak of his career, Gilbert was the highest paid actor on MGM’s payroll. During that outdoor set piece, we see that Conrad is the star, with everything revolving around getting his scenes shot, despite his alcoholism. Although the film shown is an epic period drama a la “Ben-Hur,” this sequence is likely a reference to Gilbert’s 1925 film “The Merry Widow” directed by Erich von Stroheim (who himself is paid homage to by a hilarious Spike Jonze cameo).

Conrad later marries an actress named Olga Putti (Karolina Szymczak), although there is not direct corollary in Gilbert’s life, she is clearly an homage to Hungarian actress Lya De Putti, who was briefly a star at Paramount before her life ended tragically at the age of 34 in 1931. Conrad’s final wife, Broadway star Estelle (Katherine Waterston), is likely inspired by Gilbert’s final wife, Virginia Bruce, who got her star on the great white way before a decades long career in Hollywood. 

As Conrad’s star fades, he’s asked to participate in projects of less and less quality, like bizarre 1929 Best Picture nominee “The Hollywood Revue” which is referenced directly, or a stinker film pitched to him by Thalberg that is clearly meant to represent Gilbert’s final film 1934’s “The Captain Hates the Sea” directed by Lewis Milestone.

There are many legends around what exactly ended Gilbert’s career, from his alcoholism to MGM’s Louis B. Mayer sabotaged him due to his high salary, and most pervasive that his squeaky voice and creaky mannerisms did not translate to sound films. This last myth can immediately be debunked just by watching his films, like 1929’s “His Glorious Night,” often pegged as the film began his downfall. Gilbert sounds just fine and is as charming as ever. Chazelle peppers in nods to all three, wisely never allowing one to become the deciding factor.

Although Gilbert did not take his own life as Conrad does, he eventually died of a heart attack brought on by his alcoholism, dying just two years after the completion of his final film.

Jean Smart as Elinor St. John

Inspiration: Elinor Glyn, Louella Parsons, and Adela Rogers St. Johns

In the midst of the chaotic Kinoscope orgy, Manny bumps into Elinor St. John, a grand dame wearing a large beaded headdress, who tries desperately to convince him to show her the upstairs bathroom (AKA where all the drugs are kept). Afterwards Manny’s boss Bob Levine, tells him never to speak to the woman, or at least pretend he doesn’t speak English. Elinor is always observing, looking for a scoop or the next big thing, whether it’s on set at Kinoscope studios, at the premiere of a new film, pressing a star for information during an interview. In the film, St. John has a hand in raising Nellie’s star as she’s on the rise and throwing dirt on Jack Conrad as his fades. 

Screenwriter Elinor Glyn coined Clara Bow’s nickname “the It girl,” after she starred in the smash romantic comedy “It,” launching Bow into superstardom. The next year Bow starred in “Red Hair,” a now lost early Technicolor film based on a story by Glyn. 

Just as Elinor helps Nellie polish her wild child ways, Glyn is credited with shaping the personas of stars like Bow, Rudolph Valentino, and Gloria Swanson. Along with her work writing on film, Glyn also co-directed a few of her screenplays. Chazelle nods to this side of Glyn’s career while she observes the filming of multiple Kinoscope films, with blocking that is a direct homage to Nell Shipman’s 1920 film about screenwriting looks for inspiration called “Something New.”

St. John is also likely inspired by Louella Parsons, known as the Queen of Hollywood gossip. In the ’20s and early ’30s, Parsons could make or break careers with ease. Like Jack Conrad, one of John Gilbert’s last major interviews was with Parsons in the Hearst-run magazine New York American in 1931. At her peak, Parsons’ column was read by 20 million people in 700 newspapers, mostly owned by William Randolph Hearst. Hearst, along with his mistress, actress Marion Davies, appear late in the film hosting a tame, yet exclusive cocktail party where Jack, Nellie, Sidney, and Manny’s stories all collide again, just as they begin to lose a grip on their careers. 

A final inspiration for the character can be found in the life of another reporter who got her start working for Hearst. Along with straight journalism, “The World’s Greatest Girl Reporter” Adela Rogers St. Johns wrote for the movie magazine Photoplay. In “Babylon,” the magazine shoots Nellie into superstardom after dubbing her “The Wild Child” and later foretells Jack Conrad’s demise. Like Elinor, St. Johns was known for coaxing stars into giving salacious and revealing interviews. 

St. Johns was also a successful screenwriter, working with Dorothy Arzner on films such as “The Red Kimono” for director and producer Dorothy Davenport and “Children of Divorce” starring Clara Bow. She is credited for creating the story for George Cukor’s “What Price Hollywood?” The movieland-set drama about a starlet’s rise and director’s fall, would later inspire the 1937 version of “A Star Is Born,” both of which had endings echoed by Jack Conrad’s final scene. 

As Jack confronts Elinor about her hit piece in Photoplay, she lectures him about the elusive nature of fame. She assures him that no one knows when their time will be up as a star, but eventually the clock comes for everyone. Yet, despite that tragedy, the movies will make them immortal and long after everyone who worked on one is dead, their artistry will touch an audience that hasn’t even been born yet.

“Babylon”

Although Chazelle mines the darkest parts of Hollywood history, he also never wavers from reminding everyone of its everlasting power. And in the end, what’s more magical than that?

Along with a film as rich in Hollywood history and mythology as “Babylon” comes with a large further reading list.

For those interested in delving even deeper into the stories of this era, I recommend starting with:

“Hollywood Babylon” by Kenneth Anger
“The Parade’s Gone By…” by Kevin Brownlow
“Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild” by David Stenn
“John Gilbert: The Last of the Silent Films Stars” by Eve Golden
“Hot Toddy: The True Story of Hollywood’s Most Sensational Murder” by Andy Edmonds
“Lulu in Hollywood” by Louise Brooks
“​​The Shocking Miss Pilgrim: A Writer in Early Hollywood” by Frederica Sagor Maas
“Silent Stars” by Jeanine Basinger
“Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood” by Cari Beauchamp
“Dudley Murphy, Hollywood Wild Card” by Susan B Delson
“The Moguls” by Norman Zierold
“Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood” by William J. Mann
“Forbidden Lovers” by Axel Madsen
“Silent Women: Pioneers of Cinema” edited by Melody Bridges and Cheryl Robson