Thursday, December 28, 2006

New Beverly Cinema


New 35 mm prints of both Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl were screened at the New Beverly Theater in Los Angeles, California. Did anyone attend this double-bill?

Sunday, December 24, 2006

Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays from the Louise Brooks Society (www.pandorasbox.com). Its been a great year for all things Louise Brooks. (I will be away from this blog for a few days, but shall return with some notes and images from my recent trip to Detroit and Rochester.)

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Pandora's Box makes the Top 10

Pandora's Box was listed among the top 10 DVD's of 2006 by Jeremy Osgood in the Chattanooga Pulse, (the alternative weekly serving Chattanooga, Tennessee). The Pulse noted, "Louise Brooks is utterly seductive as Lulu in this film from 1929, proving you don’t need sound to be sexy." This disc has sure been getting a lot of reviews.

I have also heard from an individual that the two copies of the DVD that he bought on-line were defective. Has anyone had a similar problem ?

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Audiophile Audition

A review of the new Criterion DVD of Pandora's Box has appeared on the Audiophile Audition website. The review can be found here. The review starts by noting that G.W. Pabst's masterpiece of sexual suggestion "May be both most important film of the black-helmeted screen vixen as well as the most important German silent film."

Sunday, December 17, 2006

A couple of unusual images

A couple of unusual images featuring Louise Brooks have shown up on eBay. One is of Brooks on the cover of the Feb 23, 1929 issue of the Police Gazette. This publication was something like today's National Enquirer.



The other is a publicity pic featuring Brooks, Gary Cooper, and Thelma Todd. This is the first image I've ever seen which shows Brooks and Cooper together. (Cooper was then, like Brooks, a Paramount player.) I'm not sure who the others in the pic are.

Saturday, December 16, 2006

Peter Cowie's book

Dennis Drabelle's short write-up of Peter Cowie's new book, Louise Brooks: Lulu Foreverappears in tomorrow'sWashington Post.
Louise Brooks looked so relentlessly modern. Still does, in fact: Photos of the movie star in her prime show an androgynous beauty with coal-black hair cut into both forehead and sidewall bangs, along with features that diverge not a centimeter from classic lines. Her career was short (1925-38) but varied (she starred in G.W. Pabst's German silent "Pandora's Box" and an American talkie called "The Canary Murder Case"). More than anything else, she was a symbol of no-nonsense sex appeal laced with intelligence.

Peter Cowie, who knew Brooks at the end of her life (she died in 1985), has told her story and assembled hundreds of photos of her in Louise Brooks: Lulu Forever (Rizzoli, $55). "I had to run away from the world of celebrities," she explained regarding the implosion of her career. "For years it was a terrible life in limbo without friends or security or approval." But her luck turned when film historian James Card persuaded her to move to Rochester, N.Y. -- "this darling little town," she called it -- where he revived her movies and made much of her. She became a film historian herself, writing articles and memoirs and showing a facility for the well-turned phrase. Here is how she summed up Humphrey Bogart: "When a woman appealed to him, he waited for her the way the flame waits for the moth."

Friday, December 15, 2006

A short cut to stardom

A long article on Louise Brooks appears in Sunday's Telegraph, the UK newspaper.
Louise Brooks was hailed as 'the greatest actress in the history of moving pictures', and yet her career lasted only as long as her famous bob. In the centenary of Brooks's birth, Anne Billson explains what became of her.
Check it out here.

Thursday, December 14, 2006

Lulu returns to Chicago

Through December 23rd, the Silent Theater company will stage their version of Lulu (the Wedekind plays staged as a silent film a la Louise Brooks in Pandora's Box) at the Chicago Center for the Performing Arts in Chicago, Illinois. Showtime is 8 pm daily - with an added show at 10:30 on December 16 and December 23.  If you haven't already seen this exceptional production in San Francisco, Chicago or New York City - here is your last chance to do so in 2006. It's received rave reviews everywhere it's played. Click here for more info

Thursday, December 7, 2006

The Motor City

Just a brief entry, as I am about to take off for the City of Detroit where I will be visiting family and, over the course of the weekend, introducing Pandora's Box when it's shown at the Detroit Institute of the Arts. If you live in the area, please stop by and say hello and show your love of Lulu. I will be the nervous looking fellow near the front of the auditorium. For more info or tickets see http://www.dia.org/dft/item.asp?webitemid=868  ( An article about these screenings appeared in the Metro Times, the alternative weekly for the Detroit area. The illustration for the article is nifty. Check it out.)  Coincedently, there is a new book out on the historic movie theaters of downtown Detroit, some of which showed Louise Brooks films when they first played in town. . . . . After Detroit, I will be making a quick stop in Rochester, New York where I will be visiting the George Eastman House to see the Louise Brooks exhibit and do a little research, both at the GEH and the Rochester public library. See you all on the other side.
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