Tuesday, November 30, 2004

The Whole Equation


Chatted today with film critic David Thomson, whose fascinating new book, The Whole Equation, has just been published. This new book, a collection of essays on everyone from Chaplin and von Stroheim to Nicole Kidman and Harvey Weinstein, is subtitled "A History of Hollywood." Louise Brooks is referenced three times.
Thomson has written about or referenced Brooks many times in his various essays, reviews and books.*  This rather intertesting passage comes from Thomson's new book. " . . . Louise Brooks in Pandora's Box is the first presence I think I could have fallen for. And Brooks's Lulu is still very dangerous, capable of sweeping pages of description aside with a glance. . . ." Well put.
* David Thomson's The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, which has just been published in a revised and expanded softcover edition, is a must read for any film buff! Go get yourself a copy. You won't be disappointed.

Monday, November 29, 2004

Louise Brooks and Lemony Snicket . . . . redux


On September 20th, I wrote . . .
"Came across these interesting references to Louise Brooks in the works of the popular writer known as "Lemony Snicket." . . . In the "A Night at the Theatre" section of Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography, the author refers to the "Brooks-Gish Award for Best Actress." . . . And in The Carnivorous Carnival, which is part of the author's A Series of Unfortunate Events series and which contains other cinematic and literary references, there is a mention of Lulu. . . . What does it all mean? Is Lemony Snicket a fan of Louise Brooks?"
. . . Today, I had a chance to briefly chat with the mysterious Lemony Snicket, and yes, he is a fan of Louise Brooks!

Sunday, November 28, 2004

Victor McLaglen and Star Cast in "A Girl in Every Port"


Yesterday, I received in the mail a remarkable item I had won on eBay. It was a vintage photograph - measuring 29" wide by 10" tall - of a group of United States Coast Guard standing outside of a theater where A Girl in Every Port was showing in 1928. The marquee above the uniformed members of the Coast Guard reads:
                            Victor McLaglen and Star Cast in "A Girl in Every Port"

                     "Semper Paratus" with U.S. Coast Guard and Fox Ensemble of 125

                       Prologue - Richard Singer & Concert Orchestra - Charles Althoff
The film is being shown at a Fox theater. I am not sure in which (likely) East Coast city this photograph was taken. Might anyone hazard a guess? Follow the link above to see scans of this oversized image.

Saturday, November 27, 2004

Dark Star


Finished reading Dark Star, by Leatrice Gilbert Fountain. I enjoyed this book a great deal, and would recommend it to anyone interested in the silent film era. This excellent, 1985 biography tells the story of the rise and fall of the silent film star John Gilbert. (This dashing actor was the star of such classics as The Merry Widow,The Big Parade and Flesh and the Devil. He also appeared in He Who Gets SlappedLa Boheme, and A Woman of Affairs. All together, his is a remarkable list of credits!) The author is the daughter of John Gilbert and Leatrice Joy, an actress who replaced Gloria Swanson as Cecil B. DeMille's leading lady in the 1920's.
It's stated that John Gilbert and Louise Brooks knew each other ("Louise, a fond friend of Jack's"), and the actress is referenced twice in the book. Once, it is in relation to an article that Beggars of Life author Jim Tully wrote about Gilbert. The second time it is in support of the author's contention that MGM was out to sabotage Gilbert's career based on the quality of his voice. (Brooks claimed a similar fate at the hands of Paramount.)
Leatrice Gilbert Fountain tells a sympathetic story in a convincing manner. Film historian Kevin Brownlow described the book as "A tragic and compelling story, essential to an understanding of this extraordinary actor."

Thursday, November 25, 2004

Daily gleanings

Late last night, while digging through an online newspaper database - not unlike the one which the NEH and LOC are proposing to create (see earlier entry) - I came across a few brief articles and advertisements from the 1920's in the Daily Gleaner, a newspaper based Kingston, Jamaica. This is the first Louise Brooks material I have gathered from that country, and the second from a Caribbean nation. (I already have a handful of vintage clippings from Cuba.)

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Weekly trip to the library


Weekly trip to the library to look at requested microfilm. A few roles of the Cincinnati Enquirer arrived, and I found a short article, review and advertisement for A Social Celebrity. Pinpointing this Cincinnati screening will aid me while I survey the other Cincinnati newspapers when I travel to Ohio next month.
Also arriving were two reels of the Daily City Gate and Constitution-Democrat, from Keokuk, Iowa. This newspaper contained numerous short articles, advertisements and a review of the two Denishawn dance company performances in that small town.

Tuesday, November 23, 2004

Bounty offered for photocopies of vintage film reviews


The Louise Brooks Society is engaged in a number of long term projects in its attempt to fully document the life and career of Louise Brooks. Your help is needed is acquiring articles and other hard-to-get-to printed material. The LBS will pay $1.00 each for photocopies of film reviews and articles about Louise Brooks from the 1920's or 1930's from newspapers in the following American cities. Photocopies should be legible and the reviews complete. Please note the name of the newspaper, title and author of review (if not included on the photocopy), and date of publication.
San Antonio, TX
Fort Worth, TX
Houston, TX
El Paso, TX
Austin, TX
Corpus Christi, TX

Tampa, FL
Jacksonville, FL

Peoria, IL
Rockford city, IL
Springfield, IL
Decatur, IL
Scranton, PA
Erie, PA
Scranton, PA
Allentown, PA
Harrisburg, PA
Reading, PA

Knoxville, TN
Chattanooga, TN
Baton Rouge, LA
Shreveport, LA
Patterson, NJ
Trenton, NJ 
South Bend, IN
Evansville, IN
Gary, IN

Utica, NY
Troy, NY
Schenectady, NY
Binghamton, NY

Hartford, CT
New Haven, CT

Albuquerque, NM
Santa Fe, NM
Cambridge, MA
Worcester, MA
Springfield, MA
Lowell, MA
New Bedford, MA

Savannah, GA
Little Rock, AR
Mobile, AL
Charlotte, NC
Boise, ID
Phoenix, AZ
Honolulu, HI
Juneau, AK
Fairbanks, AK
Please email the LBS with any questions you might have. Thank you very much.

Monday, November 22, 2004

30 million newspaper pages to go online


The National Endowment for the Arts, in conjunction with the Library of Congress - has announced that it is working to put millions of newspaper pages online in a digital / searchable format. The first of what's expected to be 30 million digitized pages from American newspapers published between 1836 and 1922 will be available beginning in 2006.
The chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities announced the project in a speech at the National Press Club on November 16th. "Anyone who's interested - teachers, students, historians, lawyers, politicians, even newspaper reporters - will be able to go to their computer at home or at work and at a click of a mouse get immediate, unfiltered access to the greatest source of our history."
The time span of the digitization project is limited because type faces used before 1836 are too difficult for optical scanners to read, while copyright restrictions prevent newspapers published after 1922 from being scanned and published without permission.
As Louise Brooks' film career didn't start till 1925, the amount of material on the actress which might come to light from this project is severly limited. Nevertheless, depending on which Kansas newspapers are scanned, perhaps some tidbit related to Brooks' early life might surface. There is also hope that some articles or reviews related to Brooks' first season with the Denishawn dance company - which started in 1922 - might also be found.

Sunday, November 21, 2004

Google Scholar


The search engine Google has announced the launch of Google Scholar. According to the website, "Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web."
A search under "Louise Brooks" produces a few interesting results. There are citations for articles from scholarly journals (such as "Consuming Distractions in Prix de beauté," from Camera Obscura), references to the actress in scholarly books, and previously undocumented scholarly papers delivered at conferences from around the world. One I found, "The Overcoming of Desire: Prostitution and the Contract in Pandora’s Box (1929) ," was no longer online but could still found in the Google cache.
One curiousity which turned up was "The ‘arrayjob’package Management of arrays in (La) T E X" by Zhuhan Jiang, an Australian professor of Mathematics and Computing. In this paper, the author used Louise Brooks and the names of other actresses as examples in writing programming language.
Hopefully, more and more scholarly material will be indexed through Google Scholar, and hopefully, some of that material will be related to Louise Brooks.
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