Thursday, May 21, 2015

Louise Brooks is sophisticated

Louise Brooks is sophisticated according to A Girl in Every Port co-star Robert Armstrong. This article appeared in late, 1928.


Wednesday, May 20, 2015

Rick Geary to debut LOUISE BROOKS: DETECTIVE at Denver Comic Con

For the past two decades, NBM Publishing has released Rick Geary's The Treasury of Victorian Murder and Treasury of XXth Century Murder series. And over the years he’s chronicled such iconic true crimes as Jack the Ripper, the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, the assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the lives of Sacco and Vanzetti.

This weekend (May 23-25), Geary will attend the Denver Comic Con and will be premiering his latest 80 page book, Louise Brooks: Detective (NBM Publishing).


This new graphic novel (set for official release on June 1st) is a fictional story centered on Louise Brooks and is spun around her actual brief meteoric career as a smoldering film actress. Geary fantasizes about her coming back to her home town of Wichita where she becomes intrigued by a murder involving a friend, a famous reclusive writer and a shady beau. Not before she gets herself in great danger will she emerge with the solution the police fail to grasp.

"Stepping away for a bit from his growing and impressive body of work in the Treasury of Murder true crime series, Geary creates a fictional story around a favorite actress: Louise Brooks. Spun around her actual brief meteoric career as a smoldering film actress who popularized bangs, Geary fantasizes about her coming back to her home town of Wichita where she becomes intrigued by a murder involving a friend, a famous reclusive writer and a shady beau. Not before she gets herself in great danger will she emerge with the solution the police fail to grasp!"

Be sure to check out the book and meet Rick Geary, who will be exhibiting at TABLE H-32.

Rick Geary is an award-winning cartoonist and illustrator. He is the author and illustrator of several books, including the other titles in the Treasury of XXth Century Murder series. He has worked for Marvel Entertainment Group, DC Comics, Dark Horse Comics, and Heavy Metal magazine, and has contributed to National Lampoon and the New York Times Book Review. He lives in Carrizozo, New Mexico.

Monday, May 18, 2015

New Louise Brooks Society website in the works

To celebrate 20 years online as the leading source for all things Lulu, a new Louise Brooks Society website is in the works! Until its launch, the domain www.pandorasbox.com is under construction. Please check back as a new and improved website is made ready. Contact info is pictured below.



Sunday, May 17, 2015

My First Time in Hollywood by Cari Beauchamp

I just received a new book in the mail that I am especially excited about. It is My First Time in Hollywood, by Cari Beauchamp. I think it is a book every fan of early Hollywood will want to read. Go get a copy today!

Beauchamp is the author of such acclaimed books as Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood  (IMHO required reading for every film historian), Joseph P. Kennedy Presents: His Hollywood Years (which I named to my best film books of 2009), Anita Loos Rediscovered: Film Treatments and Fiction by Anita Loos, Creator of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes", and as editor, the fascinating Adventures of a Hollywood Secretary: Her Private Letters from Inside the Studios of the 1920s.

Beauchamp is a fourth generation Californian who brings her love of history and dedication to women's rights to her writing about film. Her award winning books have been named to many "best of" lists (New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, examiner.com and amazon.com) and she is an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Film Scholar. She was nominated for a Writers Guild Award for her documentary, Without Lying Down: The Power of Women in Early Hollywood, which she wrote and coproduced for Turner Classic Movies.

In My First Time in Hollywood, over forty legends of the film business (from Mary Pickford and Harold Lloyd to Gloria Swanson and Cecil B. DeMille) recount their first trip to Hollywood. Actors, directors, screenwriters, cinematographers, and editors recall the long journey, their initial impressions, their struggle to find work, and the love for making movies that kept them going. Also included in this wonderful anthology is Colleen Moore, Norma Shearer, Marie Dressler, Mary Astor, Hedda Hopper, and Louella Parson, among others. Though Louise Brooks is not included, alas, readers will get a sense of what she experienced when she arrived in Hollywood in 1927.

Drawn from letters, speeches, oral histories, memoirs, and autobiographies - and illustrated with over sixty vintage photographs and illustrations - each story is intimate and unique, but all speak to our universal need to follow our passions and be part of a community that feeds the soul. This anthology is edited and annotated Beauchamp, the only person to twice be named as an Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Scholar.

"What every film fan years for-first-hand, eyewitness accounts of a Hollywood none of us can remember and all of us wish we'd known. Completely fascinating." -- Kevin Brownlow

"What a priceless parade of evocative and highly entertaining memories. Once you start reading you won't want to stop." -- Leonard Maltin

"Through the first-person voices of some of the most fascinating, insightful, funny, ego-maniacal, and brilliant people, Cari Beauchamp's My First Time in Hollywood chronicles the years when Los Angeles became the Hollywood of the world's imagination and movies our internationally shared mythology. Essential reading for anyone interested in film history." -- John Landis

My First Time in Hollywood ( Asahina & Wallace) is available through amazon.com and better bookstores everywhere. Author Cari Beauchamp will also be signing books at the upcoming San Francisco Silent Film Festival in the mezzanine of the Castro Theatre on May 30th at 5pm.

Saturday, May 16, 2015

On this day in 1931, Pandora's Box screens in Newark, New Jersey

On this day in 1931, Pandora's Box (with a synchronized soundtrack) began a short run at the Little theater in Newark, New Jersey. The occasion marked the last known screening of the film in the United States until the 1950's. Pictured below is an advertisement for the occasion.



Wednesday, May 13, 2015

1950 classified ad mentions Louise Brooks

Here something I recently came across, a 1950 newspaper ad promoting classified ads which also happens to mentions Louise Brooks! That year marked a real low, not only in the actresses personal life, but also in her reputation. Brooks, who had not appeared in a film in 12 years, was leading a pretty quiet life in New York City. That an advertisement mentioned her is rather unusual. This piece  is a rarity.

Monday, May 11, 2015

Shirley MacLaine talks Louise Brooks

Shirley MacLaine is on tour, and in a recent interview with Gazette.net in Maryland, the renown actress was asked about Louise Brooks. Here is what she said, as excerpted from“An Evening with Shirley MacLaine” comes to Strathmore: Star of stage, screen, and stories has plenty more to say, by Nathan Oravec. Read the entire interview here.

A&E: Speaking of classic Hollywood, I read that one of your passion projects would be a biopic of silent film star Louise Brooks.

MacLaine: Oh! God, I would love do to that. You know, when Kenneth Tynan found her, she was in her 70s. He found her in upstate New York. And he had been a fan of her all his life. And the movie would have been about the relationship between Louise Brooks and Kenneth Tynan – the great English journalist.

A&E: What is it about her story, in particular, that engaged you, and is it something you still hope to work on?

MacLaine: Yes, I think I would like to, but we need to get somebody to play young Louise. She was just so much of a renegade, actually. And you know the old saying, “You never quit Hollywood until you find God?” (laughter) Nobody could understand what it was that Louise had found that she quit.

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

A new Louise Brooks Society website

To celebrate 20 years online as the leading source for all things Lulu, a new Louise Brooks Society website is in the works! Until its launch, the domain www.pandorasbox.com is under construction. Please check back as a new and improved website is made ready. Contact info is pictured below.



Monday, May 4, 2015

Tonight: Beggars of Life at Film Forum in NYC



BEGGARS OF LIFE    7:50 pm

Monday, May 4

$7.50 Member   $13.00 Regular   Become a Member
Introduced by William Wellman, Jr.

Live piano accompaniment by Steve Sterner
(1928, William Wellman) On the run after killing a molesting stepfather, dressed-as-a-boy Louise Brooks is befriended by Richard Arlen and falls in with Wallace Beery’s band of hoboes. 
Long-thought-lost silent classic, with Brooks’ best pre-German work and dazzling location work on speeding trains. 

William Wellman, Jr., author of a new memoir, Wild Bill Wellman: Hollywood Rebel (published by Pantheon), will introduce the screening. Copies of Mr. Wellman’s book will be available for sale at our concession, with book signing to follow the screening.

Approx. 100 min. 35mm print courtesy George Eastman House. Preservation funded by The Film Foundation. More info.

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