Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Uncommon and unflattering



This uncommon image of Louise Brooks is for sale on eBay. In her youth, Brooks was one of the most photogenic of stars. It was difficult to take a bad picture of the actress. However, I think this image is one of the least flattering portraits of Brooks I have ever seen. What do you think?

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Lulu on Long Island


Pandora's Box will be screened on March 21st at 7:30 pm at the Cinema Arts Centre on Long Island. (The event is noted under "Special Events" on the organizations website.) The screening will feature live musical accompaniment by Ben Model, who has composed an original score. I would love to hear from anyone who attends this event.

p.s. It seems there are almost as many screenings of Pandora's Box and other Brooks films this year as there were last year, when the Louise Brooks centenary took place. Certainly, the number of screenings in 2007 surpasses those in 2005.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Pandora's Box in San Jose

Do you know the way . . . . Pandora's Box will be shown March 9th in San Jose, California. The screening is part of the Cinequest festival. From the festival website:
Pandora's Box (1929)

Directed by G.W. Pabst; Starring Louise Brooks, Fritz Kortner, Franz Lederer, Gustav Diessl.
Friday, March 9th @ 7:00pm California Theatre • $10 Ticket includes organ accompaniment by Dennis James at the Mighty Wurlitzer.

The incandescent, iconic Louise Brooks plays Lulu, a flower girl turned cabaret dancer, who entices and destroys the lives of the men who love her. Upon it’s initial release, Pandora’s Box was considered a failure in both Germany and the United States, but the film is now recognized as a timeless classic (like Brooks herself).

"There is no Garbo! There is no Dietrich! There is only Louise Brooks!"
– Henri Langlois, Founder of the Cinématheque Française.

While 2006 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Louise Brooks, it also served as a rebirth of sorts, as new audiences were introduced to the timeless beauty and appeal of “the girl in the black helmet”. Brooks was the ultimate Hollywood rebel, defiantly quitting her contract with Paramount in 1928 in order to go to Berlin to work with director G.W. Pabst. She made Pandora’s Box and Diary of a Lost Girl for Pabst, (as well as a third film, Prix de Beaute, in France), before returning to the Hollywood. But having burnt her bridges with Paramount, she found herself blackballed by the studios. She landed a few small parts in low budget films and ended her career in a western B-movie, supporting John Wayne, in 1938. What “might have been” had been destroyed by her keen intelligence, capricious nature, and deep disdain for the industry and most of its denizens.

For years Brooks languished in anonymity, working various jobs from dance instructor to sales clerk at Saks Fifth Avenue. In the mid-fifties, she was “rediscovered” by film historians and critics. She was encouraged to write about her experiences, and the resulting published essays proved to be clever, insightful and devastatingly honest. Her book Lulu in Hollywood was published in 1982 and is still in print. Louise Brooks died in 1985 at the age of 78.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Fashion decrees

Here is a clipping I ran across while looking through old newspapers on microfilm. As can be seen, Louise Brooks is one of the models included in this syndicated fashion column.

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Inter-library loan finds


A bunch of inter-library loans have come in recently! I went through four more months of the North China Daily News, and came across advertisements and brief write-ups for The American Venus and A Girl in Every Port. Both films played in Shanghai in the fall of 1928. Remarkably, one of the advertisements for A Girl in Every Port took up nearly three-quarters of a page! I also went through some reels of the Arkansas Gazette (from Little Rock, Arkansas), Knoxville News-Sentinal (from Knoxville, Tennessee), and Illinois State Journal (from Springfield, Illinois) - and found a few film reviews in each. Citations for each of these finds have been added to the LBS bibliographies.

I  went through a few months of the Long Island Daily Press and Daily Long Island Farmer. I was hoping to find material on Louise Brooks' Ziegfeld Follies appearances or on later screenings of her films in the Big Apple. However, this New York City area newspaper didn't cover Manhattan goings-on - and thus I turned up nothing of interest. (Previously, I had lots of luck uncovering Brooks' material in the two Brooklyn newspapers. I have yet to look at the Staten Island newspaper.) Similarly, my look-through the Daily Clarion-Ledger (from Jackson, Mississippi) also turned up nothing. And, my request for the Denver Times was declined - as no lending institution could be found in Colorado or elsewhere. Fortunately, I have in the past gotten access to a couple of other Denver papers.

I also went through some microfilm of the Trenton Evening Times. I had requested the month of September 1925, as this month sometimes turns up material on The Street of Forgotten Men (which opened a couple of months earlier and was still in circulation around the country)  as well as the 1925 Miss America contest. The contest - which served as the backdrop to Louise Brooks' second film, The American Venus - was held in the second week of September in nearby Atlantic City, New Jersey. In my searching, I managed to uncover a couple of articles about the contest, as well as a comic strip called "Petey Dink." For about two weeks, it focussed on the Miss America contest. Here is a typical strip.



The search goes on. I put in some more ILL requests. And we shall see what turns up next time.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Paper sculpture

Check out these paper sculptures of Louise Brooks-like figures. Very nifty!

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

City Girls

Back on Valentine's Day, I blogged about the Berlinale International Film Festival and its series called "City Girls," which is devoted to movies of the 1910's and 1920's. One of the films screened as part of the series is Love Em and Leave Em (1926), which features Louise Brooks as a department store employee.

Well, as it turns out, there are a couple of new books out in Germany which features the actress on the cover! I have already placed my order. (I adore the image of Brooks on the cover of these new books. She is so direct - almost defient looking. So modern !)

Monday, February 19, 2007

Pandora's Box



"Pandora's Box," as depicted by Arthur Rackham (for sale on eBay)

Sunday, February 18, 2007

Arcadia books

Chances are, you’ve seen Arcadia Publishing books in your local bookstore. They are the photo-filled paperbacks (with often sepia color covers) that document the local histories of communities, business, schools, sports and ethnic groups across the nation. I own a bunch of them, mostly books about the San Francisco Bay Area (where I live now) and the Detroit area (where I grew up). Among my Bay Area books are a couple on the movie theaters of San Francisco and Oakland - each of which have made for interesting reading in local history.

During my December trip to Detroit, I picked up a just published book on Detroit's Downtown Movie Palaces, which has also proved to be quite interesting. In that book, I was able to see images of a few of the theaters where Louise Brooks' films first played in the Motor City. Another recent acquisition is The Chicago Movie Palaces of Balaban and Katz.


I was especially interested in this title because - through my research - I know that all of Brooks' American silent films played in Chicago, and usually at a Balaban and Katz theater. (Balaban and Katz, the dominant theater chain in the Windy City, were also the primary exhibitors of Paramount films in Chicago.) Thus I was not suprised to see The Canary Murder Case (1929) advertised on the marquee of the Uptown theater (as depicted on page 74 of this book).


A few other titles from Arcadia which I hope to check out eventually include Cleveland's Playhouse Square (the cover image depicts a marquee trumpeting the name of Ethel Shutta - Brooks' one time co-star in the Follies), Stepping Out in Cincinnati: Queen City   Entertainment 1900-1960, and South Jersey Movie Houses. I am interested in the history of theaters, and like local history. These books make for great reading.
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