Showing posts with label Jim Tully. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jim Tully. Show all posts

Friday, March 17, 2023

Happy St. Patricks Day from the Louise Brooks Society

In honor of St. Patrick's Day, a treasure from my collection of silent film related books - Colleen Moore's copy of "Beggars of Life", inscribed by the celebrated hobo author Jim Tully to the celebrated bobbed actress "with the admiration of an Irish Rover to a whimsical girl who knew him when" in Hollywood, California, 1926.  I am not sure if this is a first edition; and sadly, the dust jack is in tatters. But still, the bookplate and inscription is what sets this book apart.

The original price of the book was $3.00, according to the label from the Hollywood Book Store which is pasted to the rear end paper. I bought this book years ago here in California. The used book shop was asking $90.00, but I remember asking them for a discount and getting it. For obvious reasons, this book is a treasured possession.

 
 

Of course, it was another bobbed-hair beauty, Louise Brooks, who went on to star in the film version of Beggars of Life just two years later.

THE LEGAL STUFF: The Louise Brooks Society™ blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society  (www.pandorasbox.com). Original contents copyright © 2023. Further unauthorized use prohibited.

Friday, September 8, 2017

Last Saturday's article about Jim Tully and Beggars of Life (and Louise Brooks, too)

Here is a copy of the article which appeared on the front page of last Saturday's St. Marys Evening Leader newspaper, on 9/02/2017.




Sunday, February 15, 2015

More on Jim Tully and Beggars of Life

As the world awaits the tonight's premiere of the television documentary Road Kid to Writer - The Tracks of Jim Tully on Western Reserve PBS (WNEO Channel 45.1 / WEAO Channel 49.1) in northeast Ohio, why not check out this excellent 14 minute radio documentary which aired last November on Southern California Public Radio. An online article, images, and a link to listen can be found HERE.

Jim Tully on the MGM lot.

Jim Tully's 1924 novel, Beggars of Life, was a big deal in its day. It also figures significantly in the life and career of Louise Brooks.

Tully wrote it while in the employ of Charlie Chaplin; and later, in the summer of 1925 and while they were having an affair, Chaplin and Brooks went to see the stage adaption of Tully's book in New York City. (That stage play, incidentally, starred a Tully look-alike redhead by the name of Jimmy Cagney.)

Earlier, in the spring of 1925, Brooks was hired to play a small part in the Herbert Brenon directed film, The Street of Forgotten Men. Like Beggars of Life, it too features a story with a down and out theme. In its review of the film, the New York Daily News even went so far as to name check Tully's then famous work, stating "The Street of Forgotten Men dips into the dark pools of life. It shows you the beggars of life - apologies to Jim Tully - and in showing them it shows them up."

Three year's later, Louise Brooks co-starred in the William Wellman film adaption of Beggars of Life (1928). It is widely considered today the actress' best surviving American film, and one of her best performances.

Louise Brooks on the back and front covers of the British dust jacket of Beggars of Life, which was published
at the time the film was released in 1928. (image courtesy of Frank Thompson)

Saturday, February 14, 2015

Louise Brooks included in new documentary on Beggars of Life author Jim Tully

Jim Tully is a writer whose reputation is on the rise. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, his "extraordinary life story has long been a movie waiting to be made."

Over the last few years, this once famous "Hobo author" has been celebrated with the publication of a definitive biography, a string of newspaper and magazine articles, reissues of his out-of-print bestsellers, screenings of movies based on his books, and the recent DVD release of Beggars of Life (1928), an acclaimed silent film based on Tully's best known work.

In 2012 there was "Tullyfest", a series of exhibits, lectures, talks, screenings, and walking tours held in-and-around Hollywood, the author's one-time home. The event, which marked the 100th anniversary of Tully's arrival in Los Angeles, also saw the publication of The Dozen and One: A Field Guide to the Books of Jim Tully, by Howard Prouty of ReadersInk in Los Angeles.

Now comes Road Kid to Writer - The Tracks of Jim Tully, a new documentary by Mark Wade Stone and StoryWorks.TV which airs February 15th on PBS in Ohio. At 50 minutes, it packs a punch, and should go a long way toward reestablishing the author as one of the significant American personalities of the 1920's.

As this new documentary shows, Jim Tully (1886-1947) was a larger-than-life character: stocky, short, and with a tussle of red hair, this rough and tumble writer was hard to miss either in person or on the printed page.

The son of an impoverished Irish immigrant ditch-digger, Tully fled the orphanage where he had been placed following the death of his mother and spent most of his teenage years in the company of the American underclass. Drifting across the country as a "road kid," Tully rode the rails, sleeping in hobo camps, begging meals at back doors, and haunting public libraries wherever he went. It was a hardscrabble life.

Weary of wandering after six years, Tully jumped off a railroad car in Ohio with dreams of becoming a writer. He published a few poems, and supported himself working as a newspaper reporter, professional boxer, chain maker, and tree surgeon. These early experiences would shape his future books.

Tully moved to Hollywood in 1912, and there started work on his first work, Emmett Lawler. (Originally composed as a single paragraph 100,000 word novel--it took a decade to complete). Tully also fell in with a crowd of artistically inclined up-and-comers. His growing circle of friends included the likes of Lon Chaney, Tom Mix, Erich von Stroheim, Boris Karloff, and others. Another early friend was director Paul Bern, who insisted Tully meet another "little tramp" by the name of Charlie Chaplin. Tully went to work for Chaplin as ghostwriter, publicist and creative factotum.

Jim Tully is center, to the left of Charlie Chaplin. Louise Brooks' future husband,
 Eddie Sutherland is second from the right.
After a year-and-a-half in Chaplin's employ, Tully began to turn-out a stream of critically acclaimed books about his road years, including Beggars of Life (a major bestseller), Circus Parade, Blood on the Moon, Shadows of Men, and Shanty Irish. Tully was quickly established as a major American author, and he used his status to launch a parallel career as a Hollywood journalist, writing for Vanity Fair, Photoplay and other leading magazines. Much as his gritty books shocked readers, his truth-be-told magazine articles on the movies rocked Hollywood. One, about matinee idol John Gilbert, even led to a headline-making fistfight.

While some of Tully's more gritty books ran afoul of the censors (one was banned in Boston), they also garnered critical acclaim and considerable commercial success. A couple were filmed, and a couple were turned into successful stage plays. H.L. Mencken, his editor at The American Mercury, was a longtime champion. Screenwriter Rupert Hughes, another promoter of Tully's work, wrote that this singular author had "fathered the school of hard-boiled writing so zealously cultivated by Ernest Hemingway and lesser luminaries."

Richard Arlen, Louise Brooks and Jim Tully on the set of Beggars of Life
Road Kid to Writer - The Tracks of Jim Tully tells a remarkable story. Always in the thick of things, the author's equally remarkable array of friends and associates include W. C. Fields, Wallace Beery, Eddie Sutherland, and Frank Capra. He also crossed paths with Jack London, James Joyce, Jimmy Cagney, Joe Louis, Amelia Earhart, Louis B. Mayer, George Bernard Shaw, and H.G. Wells. All are glimpsed in Road Kid to Writer, a revelatory documentary deserving a broader, even national audience. The Youngstown Vindicator newspaper in Ohio wrote up the broadcast a few days ago.

Louise Brooks and Jim Tully didn't like one another, but that shouldn't stop you from watching this worthwhile film. Road Kid to Writer - The Tracks of Jim Tully premieres on Western Reserve PBS (WNEO Channel 45.1 / WEAO Channel 49.1) on Sunday, February 15 at 7 p.m. Additional airdates can be found at westernreservepublicmedia.org/schedule.htm

Sunday, March 30, 2014

Documentary based on Jim Tully bio nearing release

The documentary based on the book, Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler (Kent State University Press), is nearing release. Here's the opening clip.

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Jim Tully's Beggars of Life adopted for classroom use

According to the Jim Tully Facebook page, the recent Kent State University edition of Beggars of Life by Jim Tully has been named assigned reading for students. The book has also gone into a 2nd printing.

Beggars of Life was the inspiration for the 1928 William Wellman film of the same name starring Louise Brooks. 

Hopefully, this interest in the source material for the film will spur its eventual release on DVD or BluRay.

Thursday, July 25, 2013

And more on the Jim Tully documentary


This second video, "How Jim Tully's Beggars Abroad Came to Be," is a four minute outtake from the new Jim Tully documentary From Road Kid to Writer. Here author Paul Bauer tells an entertaining story about how one of Tully's best books came to be. Attention fans of James Joyce and George Bernard Shaw!

From Road Kid to Writer is from StoryWorks.TV. This documentary is based on Jim Tully, the first biography of the vagabond, boxer and hard-boiled writer who rocked Hollywood during the Roaring Twenties. He also authored Beggars of Life, the 1928 William Wellman directed film starring Wallace Beery and Louise Brooks. To learn more, check out this article in the local press. Or, follow the documentary on its Facebook page.

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

More on the Jim Tully documentary

From Road Kid to Writer, a new documentary about Jim Tully, recently premiered in the author's hometown of St. Marys, Ohio. To learn more, check out this article in the local press. Or, follow the documentary on its Facebook page.

From Road Kid to Writer is from StoryWorks.TV. This documentary is based on Jim Tully, the first biography of the vagabond, boxer and hard-boiled writer who rocked Hollywood during the Roaring Twenties. As has been noted, Tully is the most famous writer you've never heard of. He also authored Beggars of Life, the 1928 William Wellman directed film starring Wallace Beery and Louise Brooks.

Here is a related video. It is a musical short by Eric Taylor. It is called "Tully's Titles." Taylor is an American singer-songwriter from Texas. He is known for his anecdotal songs which often take the form of short stories. In addition to Taylor's seven solo releases, his songs have been recorded by Nanci Griffith, Lyle Lovett and others. "Tully's Titles" contains a Louise Brooks sighting! [I will post another video excerpt tomorrow.]

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Jim Tully documentary premiered July 22

Jim Tully should be well known to fans of Louise Brooks as the author of Beggars of Life, the book on which Brooks' 1928 film is based. A new Jim Tully documentary, From Road Kid to Writer, premiered in Tully’s hometown of St. Marys, Ohio, on Monday, July 22, 2013. Read an article in the local press here. Or, follow the documentary on Facebook.I will try and post more throughout the week as this story develops.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Tullyfest: A Celebration of author Jim Tully

Tullyfest: A Celebration of hard-boiled Hollywood author Jim Tully (1886-1947) is set to take place October 10 through October 15 in Los Angeles. Here are the details, with more info at https://www.facebook.com/events/300265733414321/


Hollywood's forgotten literary bad boy Jim Tully honored with October "Tullyfest"

WHAT: LAVA - The Los Angeles Visionaries Association, UCLA Special Collections and The American Cinematheque celebrate the life, writings and films of Jim Tully (1886-1947) with a week-long "Tullyfest." Events include: 1) October 10 - LAUGHTER IN HELL screening at the American Cinematheque; 2) October 11 - REDISCOVERING JIM TULLY Bonnie Cashin Lecture at UCLA Special Collections and opening of exhibit (open thru December) of selections from the Jim Tully Papers; 3) October 14 - Jim Tully's Hollywood walking tour; and 4) The LAVA Salon at Musso & Frank honors "Jim Tully: A Hobo in Hollywood." (Detailed event info is below.)

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Beggars of Life in Singapore, Overland Stage Raiders on TV

The recent screening of Beggars of Life at the Cinefamily theater in Los Angeles may have got some wondering about its source material, Jim Tully's novelistic memoir of the same name, and the film made from it. Tully's 1925 book is described as a "bestseller" and the 1928 William Wellman directed film one of the more acclaimed films in the year it was released. 

But just how big were they? 

Recently, while digging through some Singapore newspapers from the 1920's I came across these two items, each advertisements. The first is a booksellers advertisement listing some new books for sale. It dates from 1931. And there, among the 35 cent novels being offered - likely reprints or today's equivalent of the paperback, is Jim Tully's Beggars of Life. Some of the other books offered were by H.G. Wells and Nobel Prize winner John Galsworthy.


The other Tully item I came across is this advertisement for some records for sale. It dates from 1929. Among the records listed is a vocal waltz recording of Beggars of Life, which was the theme song for the movie of the same name. It was recorded by a few different artists, so I am not sure who performed on this one.


I show these two items in order to make a small point: Jim Tully and his book got around. Even  around the world, and all the way to Singapore. Was Beggars of Life shown there? I am not sure. Many of Louise Brooks' films showed in Singapore in the 1920's and early 1930's, though I have yet to come across a listing or advertisement or clipping for Beggars of Life. However, I did come across something else a bit unusual - a listing for Overland Stage Raiders (1938), Brooks' last film. This is a 1976 clipping listing programing on Singapore television. Overland Stage Raiders followed coverage of the XXI Olympics held in Montreal, Canada. Brooks is given forth billing after John Wayne, Ray Corrigan, and Max Terhune.


Thursday, August 2, 2012

More about Jim Tully, author of Beggers of Life

In the 1920s and 1930s, author Jim Tully was a household name. His writing - a singular brand of rough and tumble realism - was both popular and critically acclaimed. In his heyday, Tully's books appeared on bestseller lists, were adapted for the stage, and were made into movies.

On August 1st, the Cinefamily theater in Los Angeles screened the 1928 film, Beggars of Life, which stars Louise Brooks. The film was based on a celebrated 1925 novelistic memoir by Tully, a once popular "hobo author."


Over the last few years, Kent State University Press in Kent, Ohio (Tully's one-time home) has been reissuing this forgotten writer's long-out-of-print books. So far, they've released Circus Parade (with a foreword by the late comix artist Harvey Pekar), Shanty Irish (with a foreword by film director John Sayles), The Bruiser (with a foreword by critic Gerald Early), and Tully's breakthrough work and what's likely his best remembered book, Beggars of Life (with an introduction by series editors Paul Bauer and Mark Dawidziak).

Last year saw the release of Bauer and Dawidziak's outstanding biography, Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler. That book includes a foreword by documentary film maker Ken Burns, who has called the book a "wonderful, hugely important biography."

And also last year, the Akron Summit Library hosted an event with Paul Bauer and Mark Dawidziak called "Jim Tully: Rediscovering a Lost Ohio Writer." And here it is in its entirety. The video lasts one hour and seventeen minutes. Check it out.



Three films were made from Jim Tully books, including Beggars of Life (1928), Way For a Sailor (1930), and Laughter In Hell (1933). Beggars of Life is the only silent film among the three. This William Wellman directed feature starred Wallace Beery, Richard Arlen and Louise Brooks. Way For a Sailor was John Gilbert's second talkie. It also featured Wallace Beery, and Tully himself. Laughter In Hell is described as a chain-gang melodrama. It stars Pat O'Brien.
  

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Beggars of Life celebrated in New York City

Seemingly, it's Jim Tully week in New York City. On Monday, Film Forum screened Beggars of Life, the 1928 Louise Brooks film based on Tully's novelistic memoir of the same name. According to Bruce Goldstein, who heads the NYC film venue, the screening was a complete sellout.

I had written an article about the event which was published on Huffington Post. And, I had noticed a lot of Twitter activity linking to the article and referencing the screening. Among the tweeters was Roger Ebert, a fan of Brooks.

How cool! Wouldn't it be great if Kino or Milestone or Criterion or Flicker Alley released Beggars of Life on DVD. And wouldn't it be even more cool if they paired it with Louise Brooks' unavailable first film, The Street of Forgotten Men, from 1925. I for one think they would go well together - both are dark tales and both cast Brooks in an unusual, dramatic role.

Jim Tully week continues today when Tully biographers Paul J. Bauer and Mark Dawidziak speak about the author at New York University's Ireland House at 7 pm. I received an email from the biographers, and they mentioned that they will also speak a bit about Beggars of Life and Brooks' role in the film. I wish I could be there.

Their biography of the author, Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler (Kent State University Press), is really, really good. The book includes a forward by documentary filmmaker Ken Burns (yes, that Ken Burns - of PBS fame) who calls it "hugely important." You should check it out, as Tully led an interesting life and worked a lot in Hollywood.

Here is the press release from New York University's Ireland House:
Biographers Mark Dawidziak and Paul Bauer present the remarkable life of Jim Tully (1886-1947), the Irish-American vagabond and hard-boiled writer who rocked Hollywood during the Roaring Twenties. 
 The son of an Irish ditch-digger, Jim Tully spent most of his teenage years in the company of hoboes. After six years on the road, he jumped off a railroad car with wild aspirations of becoming a writer. While chasing his dream, Tully worked as a chain maker, boxer, newspaper reporter, and tree surgeon. All the while he was crafting his memories of the road into a dark and astonishing chronicle of the American underclass.

After moving to Hollywood and working for Charlie Chaplin, Tully began to write a stream of critically acclaimed books mostly about his road years, including Beggars of Life, Circus Parade, Blood on the Moon, Shadows of Men, and Shanty Irish. He quickly established himself as a major American author and used his status to launch a parallel career as a Hollywood journalist. Much as his gritty books shocked the country, his magazine articles on movies shocked Hollywood. Along the way, he picked up such close friends as W. C. Fields, Jack Dempsey, Damon Runyon, Lon Chaney, Frank Capra, and Erich von Stroheim. He also memorably crossed paths with Jack London, F. Scott Fitzgerald, George Bernard Shaw, James Joyce, and Langston Hughes.

Mark Dawidziak is the television critic for the Plain Dealer newspaper and has been a theater, film, and television reviewer for thirty years with many nonfiction books to his credit. He is also a novelist, playwright and Mark Twain scholar. Paul Bauer is the owner of Archer's Used and Rare Books in Kent, Ohio, and is the co-author of Frazier Robinson's autobiography, Catching Dreams: My Life in the Negro Baseball Leagues.

Introduction by Linda Dowling Almeida, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Irish and Irish-American Studies at NYU, who teaches Irish-American history and literature.
Free admission to Members of Glucksman Ireland House and to all students / faculty with a valid NYU I.D. card. For non-members: $10 donation at the door for the general event series. In order to ensure a seat at events, please RSVP to 212-998-3950 (option 3) or email ireland.house@nyu.edu

Friday, February 17, 2012

Louise Brooks in Beggars of Life screens in New York City

Beggars of Life is a film whose reputation is picking up steam.

Directed by William Wellman the year after he made Wings (the first film to win an Academy Award), Beggars of Life (1928) is a gripping drama about a girl (Louise Brooks) dressed as a boy who flees the law after killing her abusive stepfather. On the run, she rides the rails through a male dominated hobo underworld in which danger is always close at hand. Picture Play magazine described the film as "Sordid, grim and unpleasant," though added "it is nevertheless interesting and is certainly a departure from the usual movie."

Beggars of Life will be screened on February 20th as part of Film Forum's Wellman Festival. It is a great opportunity to see a rarely screened film not readily available on DVD.

Beggars of Life is based on the 1925 novelistic memoir of the same name by Jim Tully, a once celebrated "hobo author" whose own reputation is also on the rise. Kent State University Press in Kent, Ohio (Tully's one-time hometown) has launched an ambitious program of reissuing the author's books, including Beggars of Life -- his best remembered work. They have also recently published an excellent biography of the author called Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler. The book includes a forward by documentary filmmaker Ken Burns, who calls it "hugely important." 

Coincidentally, Tully biographers Paul J. Bauer and Mark Dawidziak are speaking about the author at New York University's Ireland House on February 23 at 7 pm. More info here.

Though shot as a silent, Beggars of Life has the distinction of being considered Paramount's first sound film: a synchronized musical score, sound effects, and a song were added at the time of its release. Early advertisements for the 1928 film even boasted "Come hear Wallace Beery sing!" The gravel-voiced character actor and future Oscar winner plays Oklahoma Red, a tough hobo with a soft heart. Richard Arlen, who the year before had starred in Wings, plays Brooks' romantic interest. 

Beggars of Life is a film about the desperate and the downtrodden. And in some ways, it anticipates films made during the Depression, which was just a few years off. Among them is Wellman's own Wild Boys of the Road, from 1933. It too is included in the Wellman Festival.


2012-02-17-Beggars_Life_1928_301_sil70.jpg
Richard Arlen and Louise Brooks in Beggars of Life.

In 1928, Beggars of Life was named one of the six best films for October by the Chicago Tribune, and, it made the honor roll for best films of the year in an annual poll conducted by The Film Daily. Nevertheless, it is little known today and its grim story set among disheveled tramps drew mixed reviews upon release. One Baltimore newspaper said it would have limited appeal, quipping, "Tully tale not a flapper fetcher for the daytime trade."

Louella Parsons, writing in the Los Angeles Examiner, echoed the sentiment when she stated, "I was a little disappointed in Louise Brooks. She is so much more the modern flapper type, the Ziegfeld Follies girl, who wears clothes and is always gay and flippant. This girl is somber, worried to distraction and in no comedy mood. Miss Brooks is infinitely better when she has her lighter moments." Her cross-town colleague, Harrison Carroll, added to the drumbeat of disdain when he wrote in the Los Angeles Evening Herald, "Considered from a moral standpoint, Beggars of Life is questionable, for it throws the glamour of adventure over tramp life and is occupied with building sympathy for an escaping murderess. As entertainment, however, it has tenseness and rugged earthy humor." 

Critics in New York were also divided on the merits of Beggars of Life, so many of them instead focused on Brooks' unconventional, cross-dressing role. Brooks, it should be noted, was something of a local celebrity in the 1920s. The actress had lived in New York in the mid-twenties while appearing with the George White Scandals and Ziegfeld Follies. And, more often than not related to some outrageous behavior or a scandal, she also managed to get her name or picture in the paper on more than a few occasions. 

Mordaunt Hall, in the New York Times, noted, "Louise Brooks figures as Nancy. She is seen for the greater part of this subject in male attire, having decided to wear these clothes to avoid being apprehended. Miss Brooks really acts well, better than she has in most of her other pictures."

The New York Morning Telegraph penned, "Louise Brooks, in a complete departure from the pert flapper that it has been her wont to portray, here definitely places herself on the map as a fine actress. Her characterizations, drawn with the utmost simplicity, is genuinely affecting." While Quinn Martin of the New York World wrote, "Here we have Louise Brooks, that handsome brunette, playing the part of a fugitive from justice, and playing as if she meant it, and with a certain impressive authority and manner. This is the best acting this remarkable young woman has done."

Indeed, it was Brooks' best acting and her best silent film prior to her heading off to Germany to star in Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl (both 1929). It is on those two films, each directed by G.W. Pabst, that Brooks' reputation rests.

Girls dressed as boys, pastoral life gone wrong, the mingling of the races, desperation depicted among the glitz and glamour of the twenties -- there is a lot of friction and a lot going on in Beggars of Life. It's a more than worthwhile film and one well worth watching. And, until a few years ago when the George Eastman House blew-up its sole surviving 16mm print to 35mm, Beggars of Life had been little seen. 

Wellman was one of the great directors -- and he made a lot of great movies; among them are Wings (1927), The Public Enemy (1931), A Star is Born (1937), Beau Geste (1939), Roxie Hart (1942), The Ox Bow Incident (1943), and Battleground (1949). Actor and author William Wellman Jr., who has recently completed a biography of his father and is introducing some of the movies at the Wellman Festival, stated via email, "Beggars of Life was one of my Father's favorite silent films. He loved it. He talked about it a great deal with appreciation and GUSTO." 


Beggars of Life will be screened on February 20th as part of Film Forum's William Wellman Festival. Start time is 8:35 pm. Musical accompaniment will be provided by Steve Sterner. Film Forum is located at 209 West Houston St., west of 6th Ave.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

From Jim Tully to Colleen moore

As mentioned in yesterday blog, here is one of my copies of Jim Tully's Beggars of Life, inscribed to actress Colleen Moore. I found it in a used bookstore here in California. The store owner gave me a discount, because it had sat on the shelves for so long. And they were happy to sell.


Tully's inscription to Colleen Moore reads "With the admiration of a Irish rover to a whimsical girl who knew him when." The book is signed, Hollywood, California 1926.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Jim Tully

Over the weekend, I received word that something of a Jim Tully revival can be expected this Fall. Tully, as readers of this blog may know, was the author of Beggars of Life, the novel which became the 1928 film of the same name starring Louise Brooks. Just last year, that film was transferred to 35mm and is now enjoying it's own revival in theaters across the country.

Tully was a colorful character as well as a popular writer in the 1920's and 1930's. Gritty and forceful, he also left his mark on some of the hard-boiled writers who followed in his wake. (Some might consider him the Charles Bukowski of his day?) This Fall's revival will see the long awaited release of the first ever biography of the writer by Kent State University press, as well as the reissue of a handful of Tully's seminal books including Beggars of LifeCircus Parade and others. I have been in touch with the biographers, and can't wait to read their book. I will post additional updates as warranted.

p.s. Louise Brooks and Jim Tully met during the filming of Beggars of Life, and from accounts of the time, Brooks did not care for Tully and his gruff manner.

Tuesday, May 4, 2004

Beggars of Life

Having finished the Dietrich biography, I decided to next read Beggars of Life, by Jim Tully. I haven't read it before. And am intent on eventually reading all of the books which served as the basis for a Louise Brooks' film. So far, I am about 85 pages into the book. It's ok, so far - somewhat dated, but also somewhat engaging. Kinda rough-hewn, and written in thickly-dabbed, colorful, impressionistic prose.

I own two copies of Beggars of Life. One is a 1928 photoplay edition, with a dustjacket depicting Brooks, Richard Arlen and Wallace Beery. The other is a first edition from 1924. This copy was once owned by actress Colleen Moore, and has her bookplate on the endpaper. It is also inscribed by Tully to Moore. The inscription reads, "To Colleen Moore with the admiration of an Irish rover to a whimsical girl who knew him when. Jim Tully Hollywood, Calif 1926."



After a long period of being out-of-print, Beggar's of Life is available once again in a new edition from AK Press. I would be interested to know if anyone else has read this book.
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