Saturday, April 9, 2005

The Lawless Decade

The Lawless Decade: a somewhat sensational, though nifty website about the 1920's. This website is based on a book (which I have), and which you may also find interesting.

Thursday, April 7, 2005

Notes on a marathon session

Yesterday's visit to the San Francisco Public Library resulted in a marathon session. After a long drought, a whole bunch of inter-library loans had arrived! And so, I spent about five hours pouring over microfilm of newspapers from the United States and Canada. What fun . . . . 

Based on the dates of film reviews I had found earlier in the Toronto Sun, I was now able to uncover a few more reviews in the Toronto Globe and Mail. Among the films I found articles and reviews for was Rolled Stockings (1927), which the Globe and Mail  advertisements amusingly described as "The Romance of a Collegian and His Girl Friend" and "A Fast Stepping Romance of the Varsity Schockers." I also went through a couple of months of the Duluth News Tribune (from Duluth, Minnesota), where I found a couple of film reviews. As well, I scanned theCharlotte News from February, 1923 and found an article, a couple of advertisements, and a review for the Denishawn performance in that North Carolina university town. The Denishawn Dance company, which the paper had described as "home brew dance," drew a "good crowd" according to the review.

The Hartford Daily Times (from Hartford, Connecticut) and Illinois State Register (from Springfield, Illinois) both yielded a bunch of interesting Denishawn material and film reviews. . . . The sold out Springfield performance took place on New Years day at the state arsenal, and many of the articles about the performance published prior to the event were placed on the newspaper's society pages. A December 31st article entitled "One of the Largest Audiences Ever Assembled in Arsenal is Expected for Denishawn Dance Monday Night," stated "Coming on the opening day of the year, the Denishawn local engagement will assume many of the atributes of a holiday social function, the Illini Country Club, the Sangamo club and several other prominent organizations having arranged their New Year's night programs so that they will follow the arsenal performance." Some of the articles were focussed on those who were lucky enough to be chosen as an usher for the performance, while others detailed after-event parties and dances which were planned. I am not sure if Louise Brooks and the Denishawn dancers attended any of these parties, though they may have. (Articles found in other small town newspapers indicate that the Denishawn dancers did attend local society gatherings and parties given in their honor.) The Springfield performance was well reviewed. Brooks was referenced in the review, which claimed that the dancers "captivated the city with their art."

I also went through eight reels of the Pittsburgh Chronicle Telegraph, one of the lesser papers from this large industrial city from the time when most major urban areas had three or more newspapers. (And of course, Pittsburgh is also the future home to Brooks' biographer Barry Paris). I found a review of the December, 1923 Denishawn performance entitled "Pantomine Artists Give Pleasing Performance," as well as reviews for six of Brooks' films.

All together, it was a good haul. Despite my bleary eyes and stiff back,  I ended up with some 75 copies. I plan to add citations for much of this material to the LBS bibliographies within the next few days. (I have recently revamped this page, and retitled it "Bibliographies and Documentation.")

Wednesday, April 6, 2005

Diary of a Lost Girl screening

Diary of a Lost Girl will be screened at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York on April 10th. Here are the details.
DIARY OF A LOST GIRL Sun. April 10 With live piano accompaniment by Ben Model.
G. W. Pabst. 1929. 116 m. NR. Germany. Silent. Kino International.
Twenty-two-year-old Louise Brooks, from Kansas, plays an unwed teenage mother who is cast out of her bourgeois home and sent to an exceptionally creepy reformatory - from which she escapes to a high-class brothel. This was the second and last film Brooks made under the sensitive direction of G. W. Pabst (the first was Pandora's Box, also 1928), who knew a great camera subject when he saw one: He just keeps gazing at his young star and she rewards him with a cooly radiant performance.
3:00: Q&A with film critic Terrence Rafferty
from the "JBFC Program Notes by Terrence Rafferty"
Diary of a Lost Girl (1929)
A hyperventilating French critic once wrote, "Louise Brooks is the only woman who had the ability to transform no matter what film into a masterpiece." Her filmography doesn't support that claim, but when you watch her in Diary of a Lost Girl you can see what that panting Frenchman meant. Although the film is beautifully directed by G.W. Pabst, it's the coolly compelling presence of Brooks that raises the rather ordinary material above the level of well-mounted soap opera and turns it into something memorable. The screenplay (based on a popular novel by Margarete Böhme, which had already been filmed once before) follows the fortunes of a teenaged unwed mother who is exiled by her loathsome bourgeois family to a school for wayward girls--a place of such Dickensian awfulness that even a life of prostitution looks like an improvement. Brooks had herself turned her back on a middle-class upbringing (in Kansas) at 15 and had knocked around Broadway and Hollywood for six or seven years until, at the age of 22, she was invited by Pabst to come to Germany and play the demanding leading role-also a "fallen woman"-in his 1929 Pandora's Box. She was lucky because Pabst was, of all the German filmmakers of his time, by far the best director of actors. He was luckier because Brooks proved to be an extraordinarily subtle artist: an actress who could embody women's suffering without descending to self-pity-neither standing on her dignity nor ever, for a moment, surrendering it.

Tuesday, April 5, 2005

Mary Pickford on PBS

Did anyone catch the Mary Pickford documentary on PBS last night? I thought it pretty good. There seemed to be a fair amount of fresh footage. Louise Brooks (along with Clara Bow, Greta Garbo and one or two others) was pictured briefly when the narrator mentioned the rise of new types of film stars during the Jazz Age. And Kevin Brownlow was included as an interveree.

Monday, April 4, 2005

Beyond the Rocks

There is an interesting article about film preservation and the discovery of a previously lost Rudolph Valentino film in today's New York Times. The restored print of Beyond the Rocks (1922), starring Valentino and Gloria Swanson, will be shown in NYC (tonight?) and screenings and film festivals around the United States in the fall.

Sunday, April 3, 2005

Two by Alfred Cheney Johnston

Alfred Cheney Johnston was certainly one of the most gifted photographers working in New York City in the 1920's. As the official photographer of the Ziegfeld Follies, he created lush portraits of many of the featured performers and showgirls who appeared in that revue. And among his subjects was Louise Brooks, who posed for Johnston on one or two occasions. Besides Follies girls, Johnston also shot portraits of other aspiring performers - actresses, showgirls, performers. Some would go on to achive fame in the film world.  Two such images - youthful portraits of Paulette Goddard and Clara Bow - have just shown up on eBay. [ And don't miss this remarkable semi-nude portrait by A.C. Johnston.]

Saturday, April 2, 2005

Timeline of American Literature, Music, and Movies

Here is a Brief Timeline of American Literature, Music, and Movies dating from 1920 through 1929.
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