The Bookshelf

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HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

Contemporary aspects of the film industry have deep roots in the past, whose effect on personalities, methods and philosophies are traced in several significant current books.

Kenneth Anger's HOLLYWOOD BABYLON, largely rewritten from its original French edition of some 25 years ago, is a sizzling exposé, both factual and inferential, whose lyrical enthusiasm, nostalgic kitsch, and febrile doomsday warnings have the fascination of a sado-masochistic nightmare. (Straight Arrow $14.95)

Long-time MGM story editor Samuel Marx has written, in MAYER AND THALBERG: THE MAKE-BELIEVE SAINTS, a topnotch "inside Hollywood saga about the competitive …