Showing posts with label research. Show all posts
Showing posts with label research. Show all posts

Friday, August 14, 2020

Around the World with Louise Brooks, a few LAST trimmings from the cutting room floor

A continuation of the series of previous posts.... Here are a couple more odds 'n ends which I can't make use of or don't have room for in Around the World with Louise Brooks. The first is a three page Spanish language article about Hollywood which unfortunately doesn't mention Louise Brooks. I don't remember where it is from, likely a South American publication circa 1930. That was sloppy of me.




And lastly, here is another undated, unsourced clipping from Austria which does depict Louise Brooks. This page is titled "Wie war es mit einer Volksabstimmung" or "How about a referendum".  Instead, I will title this somewhat bizarre piece "babes and battleships."

Monday, August 10, 2020

Around the World with Louise Brooks, even a FEW MORE trimmings from the cutting room floor

A continuation of the series of previous posts.... Here is another odds 'n ends which I can't make use of or don't have room for in Around the World with Louise Brooks. As with the earlier post in this series, here is an eight page French language article on Hollywood which mentions both Louise Brooks and her one-time husband, Eddie Sutherland. (Brooks and Sutherland are mentioned on the fourth page.) This article comes from a March 1929 issue of a scarce French film magazine, PhotoCine, and comes complete with pictures of various movie stars and their homes as well as some 'swonderful caricatures. Enjoy.








Thursday, July 30, 2020

Around the World with Louise Brooks, some trimmings from the cutting room floor

First off, a big THANK YOU to Leif Jensen for sending me images of three Louise Brooks' magazine covers from Denmark, one of which I had never seen before. I have added them to my forthcoming book, Around the World with Louise Brooks, and have added Leif's name to the book as well in the acknowledgements and on the pages where those images appear. I am so pleased to have received Leif's help, and am pleased also they he was so generous in sharing a few scans. It made my day.

Along with Leif's contributions, and a few new finds, I have been able to bring the total of vintage Louise Brooks' magazine covers shown in Around the World with Louise Brooks to 85. I think that is a wow!

Here are a few odds 'n ends which I can't make use of or don't have room for in Around the World with Louise Brooks. I thought I would share them with you. From a March 1928 issue of Cinegrafico, a publication from Argentina.


And here is a two page spread from a November 1927 issue of Swiatowid, an illustrated Polish magazine.


And lasting here is a page from a November 1926 issue of UFA Magazin displaying a still and a bit of verse about The American Venus, the film for which Louise Brooks received her first screen credit. Unfortunately, she is not pictured.


Friday, April 10, 2020

New Find 3 - Trade Ads Mentioning Louise Brooks and Her Films

There is still a lot of interesting Louise Brooks & silent film material yet to discover. This post is the third in an ongoing series highlighting some of the newly found material I have just recently come across while stuck at home due to the coronavirus. With time on my hands, I have turned to picking through some of the many online databases and archives - some of which are newly accessible (due to the physical restrictions put on researchers because of the coronavirus), and some of which I am returning to in order to more thoroughly explore their holdings. As I am always finding out, it pays to not only have more than one set of key words to search under, but to look in the most unlikely places. You never know what you will find. Be sure and follow this blog for more discoveries in the coming weeks. 

In the movie biz, trade ads were advertisements taken out by a studio or some other corporate entity which typically promote not just one film or actor, but rather a group of films or stars. These ads might be aimed toward theater managers or the press, but sometimes as well the movie going public. Over the years, I have accumulated a number of examples of these sorts of ads. One chapter in my forthcoming book, Around the World with Louise Brooks, for example, will feature a selection of rare foreign ads, each of which promote Louise Brooks or one of her films.

In the meantime, here are a few American trade ads which I came across just a few days ago. Each were found in a general interest magazine, in particular Ladies Home Journal; each promote a batch of new releases and were aimed at the movie going public. To me, these ads are interesting in that they show which films and which stars Paramount was especially keen to promote. Which as it turns out, wasn't necessarily Louise Brooks. Nevertheless, these ads featured some rather delightful graphics.

This piece below suggests a world of adventure awaits those who go to see a Paramount Picture. It mentions The Show-Off  and its four stars, including Louise Brooks. We're in the Navy Now, which is mentioned in the right hand column, was directed by Brooks' husband at the time, Eddie Sutherland. He named one of the small boats in that nautical comedy "Louise."


This piece, with a humorous illustration, also features a prominent mention of The Show Off, as seen in the left hand column.


The delightful comic strip featured in this piece mentions Evening Clothes, which starred Adolphe Menjou (and which featured Louise Brooks in a supporting role). Apparently, older women and Mothers were keen on Menjou, who almost always played a sophisticate and was a heart-throb to some.


This piece, which merely lists Love Em and Leave Em among the "Best Motion Pictures", features a nifty Ralph Barton-like illustration - though this illustration is initialed "R.I." Among the films highlighted in the right-hand column is the German production, Metropolis, which Paramount distributed in the United States.


This trade ad features W.C. Fields first feature film for Paramount, It's the Old Army Game, which co-starred Brooks. The stylistic illustration at the top is again by "R.I." (Does anyone know the name of "R.I." ?)

Thursday, February 20, 2020

More unusual early film material found while researching Louise Brooks

In researching Louise Brooks, I have come across all kinds of interesting, unusual, and even surprising material.... At the end of the previous blogpost,"Louise Brooks and Brazil - beginning with Pandora's Box featured in a 1930 Chaplin Club newsletter," I mentioned that this post would feature material of interest to those looking into early film and it manifestation around the globe. Here it is.

I recently came across archives from two new (to me) newspapers, and explored them for material related to Louise Brooks. Unfortunately, I came up empty handed. Nevertheless, the material was unusual enough that I wanted to share it. First up are a couple of clippings from Managua, Nicaragua. I am confident that Brooks' American silent films were shown there, but the sole database I accessed was fragmentary, and thus the record was incomplete. I figure if Buster Keaton was known and shown in this Central American nation, chances are so was Brooks

A 1929 clipping
A January 1937 Max Factor ad featuring Jean Harlow
By comparison, I have found a good number of listings for Brooks' American silents in Panama -- specifically in the Panama canal zone. I also have found many clippings from Mexico, from various Caribbean island nations (Cuba, Haiti, etc...), and South America. Unfortunately, I have found little from Central America - specifically  Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. Certainly, Brooks' films made their way into these the nations.

The other clippings I came across originated in India. They were published in a now defunct newspaper called Amrita Bazar Patrika. Originally published in Bengali script, the paper evolved into an English format publication which was published from the city of Kolkata and other locations such as Cuttack, Ranchi and Allahabad. Unfortunately, as this database was also fragmentary, I failed to find any material related to Brooks. (Again, by comparison, I have come across a good number of articles and advertisements related to Brooks' films in the Times of India.) Here is what I found in Amrita Bazar Patrika.

Here is an advertisement for a Harold Lloyd film from August, 1930. Notice that "Dances and Songs" were featured every day at the Crown Cinema, another theatre in Shambazar. (Shyambazar is a neighbourhood of North Kolkata, in the Kolkata district in the Indian state of West Bengal.)


And here is one for a Marion Davies film showing at the Purna Theatre, dating from July 1930. It was accompanied by a "grand revival" of Madhur Milan. I am not sure what Madhur Milan was, exactly, though there were later Bengali films by that name. Also, notice in the next ad over that the Pearl theatre is promoting "Wonderful singing and dancing" by Shibo Rani, as well as the "comedy king of India" in the person of Prof. T.N. Bagchi.


And here is one for a John Gilbert film, also dating from July 1930. It is described as a "H[a]unting Memory of Beauty and Delight."


The pre-film entertainment which accompanied these three American films seems to be local, which made for a lively mix of American and Indian entertainment.

Finally, here is a full page of mostly film advertisements dating from April 1939, five months before the beginning of WWII and eight years before India would gain its independence. Again, the page presents not only a Boris Karloff thriller, a Ginger Rogers & Fred Astaire film, and a Charlie Chan film, but overall a lively mix of American and Indian entertainment.

Thursday, August 1, 2019

Yesterday's Louise Brooks research trip to Berkeley

Yesterday, I ventured to the University of California in Berkeley in search of yet more material related to Louise Brooks, and found a few more gems.

Over the years, and especially when I lived in San Francisco, I visited the Doe Library at U.C. Berkeley dozens of times, spending hundreds of hours scrolling through the library's massive microfilm collection. This was before the newspaper and microfilm collection was moved from its low-hung basement room which often smelled of ant spray to its current home in a cavernous four floor "vault" created out of the post-earthquake ruins of another wing of massive library building. My many trips to this library have left me with many pleasurable memories.... I love doing research, and love finding things no one has seen in decades.

Doe Memorial Library, named after benefactor Charles Franklin Doe, is a Beaux Arts landmark whose main portal
is graced by Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom.
photo via Cal Alumni Association

I hit most of my marks, but not all. I have always wanted to find pictures and coverage of "60 Ans de Cinema," the landmark exhibit organized by Henri Langlois in Paris in 1955. As Barry Paris recounts, "Visitors entering the building were greeted by two gigantic portraits looming down from wires in positions of co-equal honor: Falconetti from Dreyer's The Passion of Jeanne d'Arc (1927) and Brooks from Pandora's Box. What stunned people was that the two dominant faces belonged to such obscure actresses.... Asked to justify his choice of Brooks over Garbo or Dietrich or a hundred others more worthy of the honor, Langlois made a ringing declaration that became the rallying cry of Louise's resurrection:

There is no Garbo! There is no Dietrich! There is only Louise Brooks!" 

I spent about an hour scrolling through the June, 1955 microfilm of both Le Monde and Le Figaro, two leading newspapers, but came up empty handed. Paris had other newspapers at the time, as well as film magazines, so my search will go on.

However, I did find other material of note, like this Russian newspaper advertisement from 1932. There are five film programs being promoted, and the one in the middle for the Nero-Film Лулу, should catch your eye. (Лулу = Lulu, as the film was titled in the Soviet Union.) For those who don't read Russian, like me, Louise Brooks is here spelled as Луиза Брук.


Unless you know what you are looking for, and where to look for it, and when in time to look, it is difficult to search Russian language publications, which are written in Cyrillic. Also difficult for me to search through are Japanese-language newspapers and magazines, which are written in kanji, but sometimes contain bits of English-language text. That's how I came across this brief clipping related to The Canary Murder Case from The Rafu Shimpo, a Japanese-language newspaper published in Los Angeles, California.


The Canary Murder Case debuted at the Paramount theater in February of 1929, where it enjoyed a successful run. It then played a week at the Egyptian in March, and then was revived for another week at the historic Million Dollar. According to Wikipedia, "The Million Dollar Theatre at 307 S. Broadway in Downtown Los Angeles is one of the first movie palaces built in the United States. It opened in 1917 with the premiere of William S. Hart's The Silent Man. It's the northernmost of the collection of historical movie palaces in the Broadway Theater District and stands directly across from the landmark Bradbury Building. The theater is listed in the National Register of Historic Places."

I found a few other clippings in The Rafu Shimpo dating from 1937 related to King of Gamblers and When You're in Love. This later material was printed in English.

Besides foreign-language publications, I also looked through a database of LGBTQ publications and came across this UK clipping. Louise Brooks has long been a figure of interest within the gay and lesbian community, so it's no surprise I found this enthusiastic 1993 article, as well as others. THis piece comes from a now-defunct London-based tabloid publication called The Pink Paper. And its author, Nigel Robinson, if I am not mistaken, is also the author of a few science fiction novels as well as a handful of later Doctor Who titles.


Like the good Doctor, I too travel though time and place in search of Lulu. 

Thursday, December 27, 2018

Around the World with Louise Brooks - Chinese Movie Magazines

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am at work on a new book, Around the World with Louise Brooks, which I expect to have ready sometime early next year. The book, as it looks now, should run at least 500 pages. It will be a multilingual and multinational look at Brooks and her films and how they were perceived around the world in the1920s and 1930s.

With that in mind, I have been looking at all sorts of material related to my book's topic. And that's when a remarkable new book, Chinese Movie Magazines: From Charlie Chaplin to Chairman Mao, 1921-1951 (University of California Press), by Paul Fonoroff.


About the book (from the publisher): "Showcasing an exotic, eclectic, and rare array of covers from more than five hundred movie publications from a glamorous bygone age, Chinese Movie Magazines sheds fresh light on China’s film industry during a transformative period of its history. Expertly curated by collector and Chinese cinema specialist Paul Fonoroff, this volume provides insightful commentary relating the magazines to the times in which they were created, embracing everything from cinematic trends to politics and world events, along with gossip, fashion, and pop culture.

The cover designs reflected the diverse contents of the publications, ranging from sophisticated Art Deco drawings by acclaimed artists to glamorous photos of top Chinese and Hollywood celebrities, including Ruan Lingyu, Butterfly Wu, Ingrid Bergman, and Shirley Temple. Organized thematically within a chronological structure, this visually extraordinary volume includes many rare illustrations from the Paul Kendel Fonoroff Collection in Berkeley’s C.V. Starr East Asian Library, the largest collection of Eastern movie memorabilia outside China."

I have spent more than a few hours enjoyable browsing the many image laden pages of Chinese Movie Magazines: From Charlie Chaplin to Chairman Mao, 1921-1951. It is a visual feast, and is a book which should appeal to anyone interested in film history, graphic design, or early Asian cinema.

Alas, there aren't any images of Louise Brooks in the book, but other silent era stars can be found. Among those I spotted are Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Greta Garbo, Richard Dix, Harold Lloyd, Lupe Velez, Anna May Wong, Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, Clara Bow, Norma Shearer, Jean Harlow, Maurice Chevalier, Tallulah Bankhead, Janet Gaynor & Charles Farrell, and Charles Rogers & Nancy Carroll. Here are a few page scans from this highly recommended book.







Monday, December 17, 2018

Louise Brooks text: Need more help translating from Japanese

I am hard at work on a new book, Around the World with Louise Brooks, which I hope to have finished in a few months. It's about just what the title suggests.... it will be a large format, 500 to 600 page, multilingual and multinational look at the actress and her films and the way they were viewed in countries all around the globe. It will be chock-a-block in images, including many not seen in decades. It will also contain some remarkable new information.

Louise Brooks' films were shown all around the world in the 1920s and 1930s, including in Japan, where the actress was very popular. (See this earlier LBS blog, as well as a chapter in my recent book, Louise Brooks, the Persistent Star.) In my search to document all things related to the actress and her legacy, I have come across all kinds of interesting material in languages which I don't read. That material includes articles,  advertisements, and other miscellaneous clippings from non-English language publications.

I tried rendering meaning from these clippings using virtual Japanese characters, but couldn't find exact matches. Can any good soul translate or summarize these NUMBERED clippings from vintage Japanese magazine?

1) This clipping references G.W. Pabst.


2) A personality portrait


3) A personality portrait



4) A personality portrait



5) Something from Love Em and Leave Em




6) A personality portrait

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Louise Brooks text: Need help translating from Japanese

Louise Brooks' films were shown all around the world in the 1920s and 1930s, including in Japan, where the actress was popular. In my search to document all things related to the actress and her legacy, I have come across all kinds of interesting material in languages which I don't read. That material includes articles,  advertisements, and other miscellaneous clippings from non-English language publications.

I tried rendering meaning from this clipping using a virtual Japanese characters, but couldn't match the characters.

Can any good soul translate or summarize the two text groups (one to the right of Brooks, the other above Garbo) from this vintage Japanese magazine?


Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Louise Brooks related text: Need help translating from Russian

In my search to document all things related to the actress and her legacy, I have come across all kinds of interesting material in languages which I don't read. That material includes articles,  advertisements, and other miscellaneous clippings from non-English language newspapers published in the United States. In fact, there were many such "ethnic" newspapers in the 1920s and 1930s, including those published in Spanish, Portuguese, German, Yiddish, and Russian. I have found Louise Brooks-related material in each language.

Can any good soul translate or summarize the first two clippings from a Russian-language newspaper? Each related to the debut of Pandora's Box in the United States in December of 1929.




Powered By Blogger