The True Stories and Real People Behind Damien Chazelle's 'Babylon' (2024)

Damien Chazelle's Oscar-nominated Babylon starring Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt, Diego Calva, and Jean Smart was an epic ode to the Golden Age of Hollywood. With a plot centered around Hollywood’s transition from silent to sound films in the late 1920s and an all-star cast still fresh from their latest round of Oscar nominations, Babylon was very much the talk of movie town in 2022. But how much of the movie is accurate to the time period it is representing?

Babylon

A tale of outsized ambition and outrageous excess, it traces the rise and fall of multiple characters during an era of unbridled decadence and depravity in early Hollywood.

Brad Pitt’s ‘Babylon’ Character Is Based on John Gilbert

Broadly speaking, Babylon is a fictional story. Pitt and Robbie’s characters of Jack Conrad and Nellie LaRoy, respectively, did not exist, and neither did the other major roles portrayed by Diego Calva, Jean Smart, Jovan Adepo, and Li Jun Li. Nevertheless, this hasn’t stopped Chazelle from taking heavy inspiration from real people who were active in Hollywood during this period. It’s a technique many period films opt for, and by using historical figures as a jumping-off point for his own creations, it allows Chazelle to sidestep criticisms relating to revisionism or inaccuracies while still giving Babylon the authenticity it needs to succeed. While viewers don’t need to take a semester in film school to understand Babylon, knowledge of this era can make for a richer and more rewarding experience.

Pitt’s character is the clearest example. His role is largely based on John Gilbert, one of the silent era’s most successful actors but whose career suffered an almost total collapse when talkies started to gain popularity. Gilbert – also known by the title of “The Great Lover” due to his acclaimed roles in romance films like The Big Parade and Flesh and the Devil – was a master of silent acting, expertly delivering strong performances with only his facial and body movements to see him through. However, the advent of sound films necessitated a new breed of acting, and it soon became clear that Gilbert’s stilted line delivery and rigid demeanor (compounded by the long-standing myth that he had a high-pitched voice) were ill-suited to this brave new era of filmmaking.

John Gilbert Was a Controversial Hollywood Figure

But Gilbert’s decline can be attributed to more than just his limitations as an actor, but also the increasingly controversial nature of his personal life and internal conflicts with studios. He married four times in the space of just twelve years (while also being routinely linked to other high-profile actors like Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich), was infamous for his love of alcohol, and had a reputation of being difficult to work with – all issues that made producers reluctant to hire him. In addition, rumors of a dispute between him and Louis B. Mayer (the head of MGM) served only to make things worse, and it has long been suggested that Mayer sabotaged Gilbert’s career with lackluster scripts so he wouldn’t have to deal with the troublesome actor anymore.

In 1928 Gilbert had signed a contract with MGM that earned him $250,000 per film (the equivalent of over $4.3 million today), and by the time it expired in 1933, his career was dead in the water. His final years were filled with heavy drinking, and he tragically died in 1936 at the age of just 38. It’s a heartbreaking tale that encapsulates both the dizzying highs and tunneling lows of this volatile period, and the influence it had on Pitt’s character is undeniable. From the womanizing nature of his personal life to his name sounding suspiciously similar to his original screen name (Jack Gilbert), the specter of John Gilbert is all over Jack Conrad, and while he’s not the only Hollywood icon to weave his way into his fabric (Clark Gable and Douglas Fairbanks are other major examples), he’s easily the biggest component.

Margot Robbie's Character Is Based Loosely on Clara Bow

Robbie’s character of Nellie LaRoy, by contrast, is more of a mash-up. While she was originally overtly based on Clara Bow back when Emma Stone was set for the role, her character was eventually rewritten to be more fictional by the time Babylon had begun filming. With that being said, it’s not hard to spot Bow’s presence lingering over LaRoy. Born into poverty and raised by a sexually abusive father and a mentally unstable mother, Bow broke into the entertainment industry at the tender age of 16 after winning a modeling competition for the magazine Brewster, and within just a few years she was front and center in some of the era’s most iconic films (most notably Wings, the first recipient of the Academy Award for Best Picture).

Her working-class background and freewheeling screen persona made her a hit with audiences, and her delicate mix of alluring sex appeal with a girl-next-door personality helped lay the groundwork for a century’s worth of leading ladies – while also earning her the coveted nickname of “The It Girl” (named after her 1927 film of the same name). Coupled with this was an extravagant lifestyle that personified everything that made the Roaring '20s such a celebrated decade, and in contrast to some of her co-stars, it only increased her popularity.

Unfortunately this proved to be a double-edged sword. What had proven so enticing in the glamorous world of the 1920s became gravely unappealing as the Great Depression grew to envelop the country in the 1930s, and her elitist image proved an easy target for the press. While she had managed to transition from silent to sound easier than most – the box office success of films like The Wild Party and Dangerous Curves showed she still had a dedicated fanbase – there was little doubt that she had been a stronger performer before the advent of talkies. Her attempts to reconfigure her image as a more serious actor failed, and rather than waiting for the Hollywood machinery to ring every last quarter they could from her before kicking her into the gutter, she retired in 1933 to live with her husband and fellow actor Rex Bell. Her final decades were plagued by physical and mental illness that tragically mirrored that of her mother’s, and by the time she died in 1965 at the age of 60 her legacy as the definitive “It Girl” had been solidified – a shame given how much she came to loath the term.

Joan Crawford Is Also Inspiration for Margot Robbie's Character

It's not hard to look at Nellie LaRoy and see Clara Bow in her, but she is far from the only actress Chazelle is drawing from. Alma Rubens and Jeanne Eagels are two further inspirations, both being amongst the most successful performers of the 1920s until their severe drug addictions cost them far more than just their careers, and all before the industry had even finished transitioning to sound. Joan Crawford has also been cited as an influence, and while she differs from other inspirations due to her career only fully taking off in a post-silent film era Hollywood, her custom-built image as the atypical American flapper (a subculture of young women who flouted the usual societal and sexual norms) led to her becoming one of Hollywood’s most enduring figures – an image that Nellie LaRoy is clearly taking a lot of lessons from.

Not All of 'Babylon's Characters Are Fictional

So, Babylon’s central cast may be fictional, but that doesn’t mean that everyone who makes an appearance isn’t based in fact. The most notable exception is Max Minghella in the role of Irving Thalberg, the head of production at MGM whose careful leadership proved essential in making it the most successful studio in Classical Hollywood. Thalberg himself is amongst the most influential figures in the entire history of cinema, and his revolutionary work that found the highly sought midpoint between artistic pursuits and commercial viability set a standard that few producers have rivaled.

He was also significant for creating the screen images for many of Hollywood’s most iconic stars, and given how vital some of these were in the creation of Babylon – such as John Gilbert and Joan Crawford, to name but a few – it’s clear that Chazelle is keenly aware of his importance. Other real figures who appear include newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst and his mistress Marion Davies (both of whom served as major inspirations for Citizen Kane), but Chazelle smartly kept such roles to cameos as to not overshadow his own creations.

Babylon is available to stream on Prime Video in the U.S.

Watch on Prime Video