Showing posts with label Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star. Show all posts

Thursday, March 17, 2022

Addendum to Roland Jaccard (1941-2021), French author of Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star

I wanted to add a bit more to my prior post regarding the passing of the French writer Roland Jaccard, who took his own life last September. Jaccard is best known to fans of Louise Brooks as the editor of the first ever book about the actress, Louise Brooks : portrait d'une anti-star. Jaccard's book was first published in France in 1977, and then translated into English and published in the United States in 1986 (and then in the UK in 1988). Here is a scan of the front and back covers of the American edition.


Jaccard's book made a bit of a splash in France, where it got some reviews and was eventually republished in 1985. The English language pieces in the book, namely those by Louise Brooks, were translated into French by Alain Meylan. When the book was published in English, the French pieces were translated into English by Gideon Y. Schein, who also contributed a brief forward to the book.

The book didn't catch on like it had in France, and only received a smattering of press. One syndicated piece that ran in a handful of newspapers stated: "More than a year after her death, silent screen star Louise Brooks continues to be a hot item in the publishing world. New York Zoetrope recently published Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star, an English translation of a 1982 German book edited by Roland Jaccard. The $19.95 paperback includes essays and letters - including several by Brooks - as well as 90 photos, many borrowed from Brooks' personal collection." The author of this piece got a couple of things wrong, like the fact the book came from France, not Germany, and was first published in 1977, not 1982. 

Along with a filmography and list of Brooks' published articles, the English language edition includes:

The touch of a glance, by Tahar Ben Jelloun (poetry)
"Thank God, I'm alone", by Roland Jaccard
A certain kind of freedom, by Louise Brooks
The passion, death, and transfiguration of Lulu, by Jean-Michel Palmier
Pabst and Lulu, by Louise Brooks
The other side of the camera, by Louise Brooks
A witness speaks, by Lotte H. Eisner
The origin of a myth, by Roland Jaccard
An answer to an admirer: a letter from Louise Brooks to Guido Crepax
Song of Lulu, by Andre Laude (poetry)


During the pandemic lock-down in 2020, I found myself rereading Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star, and wondering about the book's translator, Gideon Y. Schein. I wondered who he was, and decided to try and track him down, if possible. I was able to do so, and wrote him asking how it was he came to translate the French text 

Gideon wrote back: "A friend of mine who was working for the publisher of the book knew that I had met Louise Brooks in Rochester NY several times and when they needed a translator/editor they came to me. I was a big time fan long before that. I was a lunchtime guest in her home, which she never left.  At that time I was the Producing Director of the GeVa Theater in Rochester. . . . One day, out of the blue she called me and invited me for lunch. She must have followed me in the two local papers and was curious about my opera career in Europe, as well as my theater in Rochester. . . . She really was an extraordinary woman, but in her own way very humble. She turned down a star career for artistic principles."

Roland Jaccard's Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star is a book every fan of the actress should own, and read. There are many second hand copies floating around the internet at very affordable prices.

 * * * * *

I want to add one more bit about Jaccard's book. Anyone who has read this blog for a whiule will likely know that I used to work as a bookseller at the Booksmith in San Francisco. For a long time, I ran the store's events program, and as a Louise Brooks obsessive, I tried to secure events with anyone connected with early film. Over the years, I put on events with Barry Paris, Peter Cowie, Frederica Sagor Maas (of Rolled Stockings fame) and others. Check out this earlier blog about some of the events I put on, part 1 is HERE, and part 2 is HERE.

Before I ran the events program, I was a section buyer, purchasing stock for the film section, art section, poetry, and the sale table. One day in 1998, while going through list of sale books, I noticed Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star. Wow. I ordered a box full, and placed them on the sale table and offered them on-line. I knew there was interest, and they sold quickly. I ordered another box and they sold. I ordered two more boxes, and three more boxes, and four more boxes, and they all sold. I remember being a bit giddy at how fast these books were flying out the door. 

I am not sure how many copies of Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star I sold, but it was a lot. Perhaps as many as 800 or 900 books. In fact, the store sold so many copies that the book made a local bestseller list. The SF Weekly, an alternative weekly in San Francisco, carried bestseller lists from local bookstores, and when they carried the Booksmith list, the then two-year old Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star became a bestseller in 1998. Here is a scan of the clipping I have kept since then.

Tuesday, March 15, 2022

Roland Jaccard (1941-2021), French author of Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star

Only recently I became aware of the passing of the French writer and critic Roland Jaccard (1941-2021), who is best known to fans of Louise Brooks as the author / editor of the first ever book about the actress, Louise Brooks : portrait d'une anti-star (1977). That heavily illustrated work, which included pieces by and about the silent film star, was translated into English and published in the United States as Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star (1986). It helped advance the Brooks' revival in the 1980s.

Jaccard was the author of a number of other books, most notably Portrait d’une flapper (2007), which depicts Brooks on the cover, and another, Lou (1982), a fictional autobiography of Lou Andreas Salomé, the German-Russian woman of letters and pioneering psychoanalyst known for her relationships with Friedrich Nietzsche, Rainer Maria Rilke, Sigmund Freud and significantly Frank Wedekind. (There are some, including Jaccard, who have speculated that Wedekind based his Lulu character on Lou Andreas-Salome.)

Besides his writings on film (he also authored a book on John Wayne in 2019), Jaccard was also involved in the making of a few films. Here is his IMDb page. Jaccard was also a novelist, essayist, journalist, publisher and a specialist in psychoanalysis, having published several essays on Freud. Despite his many activities, he was little known in the United States, excepting for Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star, which received a small number of reviews in America in the 1980s.

According to his French Wikipedia page, Jaccard believed in assisted suicide. In 1992, he wrote Manifeste pour une mort douce (Manifesto for a Gentle Death) with Michel Thévoz, the director of the Collection de l'art brut in Lausanne, Switzerland. In Jaccard's last autobiographical book, One never recovers from a happy childhood, released in 2021 a few weeks before his death, he announced that he would commit suicide “after the summer,” declaring old age horrified him. Jaccard died, apparently by his own hand, on September 20, 2021, two days before what would have been his 80th birthday. Notably, both his grandfather and father had also committed suicide around the same time in their lives.

I met Roland Jaccard in Paris back in January 2011. I was in the French capital to give a talk at the Village Voice bookshop (the now defunct English-language bookshop) and to introduce a screening of a Brooks' film at the Action Cinema. Both events were meant to promote my 2010 publication, the "Louise Brooks edition" of Margarete Böhme's The Diary of a Lost Girl. Some 50 plus people turned-out for the bookstore event (a good turn-out considering I am an unknown in Paris), including a few noted devotees of Brooks. Among them was Roland Jaccard. Pictured below is a snapshot from the event. On the left holding my "Louise Brooks edition" of The Diary of a Lost Girl is the French translator of the Barry Paris biography, Aline Weill - I am in the middle, and on the right is Jaccard holding a copy of his Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star.

Not only did Jaccard attend my event, he also agreed to meet for dinner a couple of days later. Jaccard was well known for his love of Japanese food, and we met at one of his favorite Japanese restaurants, where he answered my questions about Brooks. (They were correspondents in the 1970s.) Jaccard also gifted me with a cache of rare Louise Brooks documents - including a vintage postcard, photographs, six handwritten letters, and other material. Eleven years later, I still can't believe his generosity.


During our dinner, the French actress Marie-Josee Croze arrived, and we were introduced. We spoke with her a bit (she knew of Brooks), and I gifted her with one of my mini-Lulu pins, which she immediately put on. It was a lovely evening, the kind that could only happen in Paris. Below is a snapshot of Jaccard chatting with Croze, who can be seen wearing my Lulu pin-back button.


Jaccard also generously autographed three different copies of  Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star which I had carried with me on the airplane in hopes of meeting the author. (Being a completest, I own both the English and French editions of the book.) I also signed a book for Jaccard, which he had bought at the Village Voice bookstore before my event!

For those interested in learning more about Jaccard, here is a link to an article, "Death of essayist and columnist Roland Jaccard" in The Canadian. And here is another piece, “The elegance of Roland Jaccard”, by Frédéric Schiffter, a friend of the writer.

Jaccard's French Wikipedia page has a number of links to other recent articles, including this one by the noted novelist Tahar Ben Jelloun, who was also a contributor to Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star. A small number of videos featuring Jaccard can be found on YouTube, including this, episode #4 of Cinephiles.

Wednesday, March 9, 2005

Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star

I saw a copy of Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star for sale on eBay. No one has placed a bid on this item, which has a very modest opening price of $9.99. I am not the seller (and don't know the seller), but wanted to bring this item to the attention of anyone who might be looking for a copy of this increasingly scarce book.

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