Showing posts with label Kenneth Tynan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kenneth Tynan. Show all posts

Friday, September 9, 2022

Louise Brooks, the still silent muse

Louise Brooks is having a moment.... Just recently, the New Yorker magazine reprinted Kenneth Tynan's 1979 profile of the actress, "Louise Brooks Tells All," in its August 29, 2022 issue. That recent issue celebrated great magazine profiles from the past. Tynan's rightly celebrated piece certainly fits the bill. (Also included in the August 29th  issue was a piece by Hilton Als, who profiled Missy Eliot. Als, I should note, wrote about Brooks in his 2013 book, White Girls.)


Louise Brooks is also included in the most recent issue of FICTION magazine, a literary journal issued by the City College of New York. Issue number 65 includes an excerpt from Jerome Charyn's new novel, Lulu in Love. I have read the entire work manuscript, and am looking forward to the day when it is published. In the meantime, Charyn's new piece is, as of now, only available in print.

Adjunct to Charyn's piece, I was asked to write a piece noting some of the other instances in which Louise Brooks shows up in fiction, the genre, not the journal. I contributed "Louise Brooks: Silent Muse," which can be read online. It explores how Charyn, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Willem Frederik Hermans, Ali Smith and other authors have employed the actress in their fiction. I hope everyone takes a few minutes to read my piece. And while you are at it, because I know you will want to, be sure and read Tynan's and Charyn's pieces, if you haven't already done so. Be included in the smart set.

This blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society (www.pandorasbox.com). Original contents copyright © 2022. Further use prohibited.

Monday, October 14, 2013

London play about Louise Brooks - Smoking with Lulu


SMOKING WITH LULU by Janet Munsil

Directed by Peter Turner
15 – 20 October 2013
Evenings 20.00
Matinee (Sun only) 17.00
London Theatre, SE14
Box Office: 0208 694 1888
http://beyondtheatre.org/smoking-with-lulu/

Smoking with Lulu was first performed in Calgary, Canada in 1997 and subsequently at The west Yorkshire Playhouse in association with Soho Theatre Company. The action of the play takes place in a small apartment in Rochester, New York and is based on the real life meetings that took place in 1978 between Kenneth Tynan, the renowned and very decadent British theatre critic, and Louise Brooks, the iconic silent screen star of the late 1920’s.

At the time of the meetings Tynan was, in his mid-fifties, suffering from emphysema, and Brooks was in her mid-seventies. The purpose of the meetings was that Tynan was to write a profile of Brooks for The New Yorker magazine which when published in 1979 was called ‘The girl in the black helmet’ – a reference to Brook’s trademark black bob hairstyle. Yet Kenneth Tynan wasn’t just researching, he was sexually obsessed by Louise Brooks and had been for many years. It was an obsession grown out of his fascination of her film career and in particular her portrayal of Lulu in GW Pabst 1929 film ‘Pandora’s Box’. And for Louise Brooks, after having a lifetime experience of fuelling men’s, and women’s , erotic desire for her, expertly drew him into her web.

By 1978 Brooks was ill, old, penniless, and hard-bitten but she knew exactly which devices to employ to turn Tynan on. Cleverly using Tynan’s vision of her as the amoral Lulu in ‘Pandora’s Box’ Brooks was able to bend Tynan to her will. Or did he bend her to his. Yes he was addicted to sex but how far was the ageing Louise Brooks prepared to go to have Kenneth Tynan be besotted by her? Aroused by his obsession, did she need a love slave for one last final time?

CAST AND CREW

Louise – Maureen Bennett
Ken – Simon Chappell
Lulu – Nadia Musa

Director – Peter Turner
Lighting Design – Sky Bembury

ABOUT BEYOND THEATRE

Beyond Theatre was founded as The Chelsea Players in 1959, and the present company are proud of those roots which give it fifty years’ experience on the London Theatre Scene. More information at http://beyondtheatre.org/smoking-with-lulu/

Thursday, May 20, 2010

On Kenneth Tynan & Louise Brooks

There is an interesting article in today's Guardian UK about Kenneth Tynan, the British-born critic and writer whose 1978 New Yorker article about Louise Brooks, "The Girl in the Black Helmet," helped ignite a revival of interest in the actress.

Although best known as a theatre critic, Tynan also wrote widely on film and for the movies. Tynan wrote a number of screenplays including the Ealing Studios' "least Ealing film ever." Michael Billington's article, "Kenneth Tynan off stage: the theatre critic's life in film," looks at the critic's unrealized screenplays (including one for The Lord of the Flies) and collaboration with Roman Polanski.

Billington concludes his article this way:  "But, if Tynan's screen output was small, his writing on film is imperishable. Best of all is his famous New Yorker profile of Louise Brooks, in which he tracks the ageing, reclusive star down to her Rochester, NY hideaway and gets her to relive her memories of making Pandora's Box with Pabst. If Brooks was intrigued by Tynan, he was obviously hypnotised by her. And, in Tynan's scene-by-scene breakdown of Brooks's most famous movie and in his thralldom to this enchantress, you get a perfect marriage of his critical instinct and lifelong star-worship."

Which reminds me, I need to go and find the picture of Tynan dressed in drag as Louise Brooks . . . . complete with a black helmet.

Friday, March 17, 2006

Kenneth Tynan article

There is a long, illustrated article about Kenneth Tynan in the April, 2006 issue of Vanity Fair. A section of the article dwells on Tynan's relationship with Louise Brooks, and there is a rather outrageous picture of Tynan dressed as Brooks.
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