Friday, August 31, 2007

A fashion plate

A bunch of images from the San Francisco Examiner photo archive have been put up for sale on eBay. One particular image ran alongside a fashion column by Babette, which was syndicated in Hearts' newspaper syndicate.

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Spring Awakening, a new translation

Today, I received an advance copy of Jonathan Franzen's new translation of Frank Wedekind's play, Spring Awakening. Here is what the publisher has to say.
First performed in Germany in 1906, Frank Wedekind’s controversial play Spring Awakening closed after one night in New York in 1917 amid charges of obscenity and public outrage. For the better part of the twentieth century Wedekind’s intense body of work was largely unpublished and rarely performed. Yet the play’s subject matter—teenage desire, suicide, abortion, and homosexuality—is as explosive and important today as it was a century ago. Spring Awakening follows the lives of three teenagers, Melchior, Moritz, and Wendl, as they navigate their entry into sexual awareness. Unlike so many works that claim to tell the truth of adolescence, Spring Awakening offers no easy answers or redemption.
I haven't had a chance to yet read the work, though I did read Franzen's challenging introduction. In it, the acclaimed, National Book Award winning novelist (The Corrections, etc...) notes Wedekind's California origins, his troubled history, as well as the play's controversial New York City debut. Franzen also mentions Wedekind's Pandora's Box, the character of Lulu, and their relationship to Spring Awakening, as well as the fact that Alban Berg wrote an opera based on the Wedekind play. (Franzen did not mention Pabst's film or Louise Brooks.)

I term Franzen's introduction challenging because Franzen does not hold his punches when discussing earlier translations, or even the recent Broadway musical - which he terms "insipid." From what I gather, this new translation promises a fuller and more truly representative version of Wedekind's work. We shall see. It would be great to see him translate Pandora's Box.
Spring Awakening is the best play ever written about teenagers, and Jonathan Franzen's fraught yet buoyant translation is the best I've ever read.  In a culture where lies about adolescence prevail, this funny and honest play is more relevant than ever. Spring Awakening is essential reading.”  — Christopher Shinn

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

A sort of silent film

The Belgian comic duo Circoripopolohas has created a web feature (not unlike a short silent film) whose design includes affecting your Internet browser. Click on their site and your browser will immediately shrink. At first, you'll see two pairs of hands squeezing out of a small crack in the otherwise black screen. The duo keep pushing outward until they've successfully expanded your browser. Later, when they explode a large balloon, your browser shakes. Pretty nifty me thinks. Check it out athttp://users.telenet.be/kixx/

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Pandora's Box - new soundtrack

The BBC website is reporting that a new soundtrack for Pandora's Box has been commissioned. The score will debut at a special screening in Bristol on September 15. According to the BBC
New meets old at the Watershed in September, with the world premiere of a brand spanking new musical score for a silent classic.
The orchestral score, from composer Paul Lewis, has been specially commissioned by Watershed and Bristol Silents for the gala screening of silent classic Pandora's Box.
The event, taking place at the Colston Hall on Saturday, 15 September, will be hosted by actor Paul McGann, a big fan of the film's star, Louise Brooks, and is part of the media centre's 25th birthday celebrations. . . .
Two years in the planning, music for the gala event will be performed by members of the Royal Ballet Sinfonia, conducted by composer Paul Lewis.
Lewis has produced more than 500 pages of handwritten A3 score sheets to accompany the two hours and 11 minutes of Pandora's Box.
"The score is operatic and the melodies full-blooded," he explained.
"In spite of this I am scoring it for a relatively small orchestra as I believe this gives greater intimacy and a closer connection with the individual characters."
Adapted from the controversial plays of Frank Wedeking, Pandora's Box, released in 1929, stars Louise Brooks as young temptress Lulu who wreaks havoc in the lives of a wealthy newspaper editor, his hapless son and a lovelorn countess.
Chris Daniels of Bristol Silents said: "It's incredible that a film of this standing in world cinema hasn't had an orchestral score composed of this quality or on this scale before.
"Even people who know the film well will be experiencing it for the very first time in this way."
I would love to hear from anybody who attends this screening. I wish I could be there!

Monday, August 27, 2007

From Rudolph Nureyev to Louise Brooks


here was an article in yesterday's New York Times about Rudolph Nureyev. ** The piece was prompted by the debut of a new documentary about the Russian dancer which airs on PBS later this week. Well anyways, the article began in a most thoughtful kind of way. For me, the situation the reporter depicts rang true. The article began:
A POINT comes in the afterlife of an artist when, for the time being, biography has pretty much done its work. The essential history is known; the ambience is broadly understood; the relationship between the life and the work has yielded its chief mysteries. Barring bombshells any future surprises are apt to be minor: not revelations, just minutiae.
Sometimes, that's the situation I find myself in regarding Louise Brooks. There may not be all that much left to find out. Critics of the Louise Brooks Society - and there are a few - have complained that my efforts are too much focussed on picking through the scraps. Well, that's all I have access to. Sometimes, I find something interesting. . . like the unlikeliness of G.W. Pabst having seen A Girl in Every Port before he decided to cast Brooks in Pandora's Box, or the fact that Pandora's Box was screened in Newark, New Jersey in 1931 with sound effects! These simple facts may not be revelations, only minutiae. But they do alter some long held believes in the story of the actress.

My hunt goes on.

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been back to the San Francisco Public Library looking at inter-library loan material. More microfilmed newspapers had arrived. I got a bit of Denishawn material and a few film reviews from the Bangor Daily News (Maine), Reading Times(Pennsylvania), Louisville Post (Kentucky), Virginian-Pilot and Norfolk Landmark (Norfolk, Virginia), and Montreal Gazette (Canada). My request for the Milwaukee Herold (a German-language newspaper from Wisconsin) was rejected as "title not on shelf." Oh well, that sometimes happens. Likewise, nothing turned up in the Morning Register (Eugene, Oregon), though I did find a short article and a large advertisement forBeggars of Life in some January, 1930 issues of the North China Daily News (Shanghai). Bad luck sometimes runs with good.

One unusual source I also examined was the New York Commerical. This New York City financial paper was something like today's Wall Street Journal. (Like so many other publications I have looked at, the Commerical is no longer published. I believe it either folded or merged with another paper in the late 1920's.) Anyways, somewhere along the line I had come across a reference to a Denishawn article appearing in that publication. So, I figure I would request some key dates and see what I could find. As it turns out, I found that review and bit more. Happily, the Commercialran a small amount of "entertainment news" pretty much every day - mostly reviews of New York happenings.

Along with the Denishawn dates, I also requested microfilm for the period when the George White Scandals opened in NYC in 1924. And lo and behold, I came across a June 30th article referencing Brooks as a performer in the Scandals. Wow, she was hardly a principal - but there was her name in an article in a newspaper. That article ran before the show opened. I also came across a interesting review titled "George White Excels His Best Scandals" after the show's debut. Brooks was not mentioned in it.

My luck with the Commerical convinced me to request additional microfilm.Thus, on the docket are microfilm requests for the period covering the opening of "Louie the 14th," the 1925 Ziegfeld Follies, and even the NYC openings of Brooks' early silent films. You never know what you may find. . . . Speaking of things found, here is a nice advertisement I came across in the Evening Bulletin (Providence, Rhode Island).


Last week, I also spent a little time organizing my projected inter-library loan requests. I have pending requests for some additional issues of theEvening Bulletin, as well as the New Orleans States (Louisiana), Hagerstown Morning Herald (Maryland), Evening Telegram (Superior, Wisconsin), and a few other papers. From here on out, I plan on putting in probably no more than two ILL requests per week till I am through. It should take me less than a year to get through  all of those.

** Trivia buffs: which silent film star with whom Brooks was acquainted did Rudolph Nureyev play in a film?

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Beggars of Life to play at Cinecon

According to a story in today's Los Angeles Times, the 1928 Louise Brooks film Beggars of Life will be shown at this year's Cinecon film festival. The article, by Susan King, reads in part, "Other films in the lineup include the complete version of 1927's "The Patent Leather Kid," starring Richard Barthelmess in an Oscar-nominated performance; a newly restored print of the 1922 Mary Pickford classic "Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall"; the 1928 William Wellman drama "Beggars of Life" with Richard Arlen and Louise Brooks; and Paramount's first talkie, 1928's "Interference," starring William Powell and Evelyn Brent."

The Cinecon website - located at http://www.cinecon.org/ - doesn't reference the film. Perhaps it was just added to the schedule. Cinecon takes place in Hollywood. I have been a few times. That's were I saw Franz Lederer speak. (Lederer was Brooks co-star in Pandora's Box.) Once, I bumped into Kenneth Anger in the memorabilia room, and saw Kevin Brownlow present a John Ford film. I have also seen a bunch of silent and early sound films screened there. Cinecon is well worth going if you have never been.

Friday, August 24, 2007

Fashion Decrees, from Mme Lisbeth

Here is a clipping I ran across while looking through old newspapers on microfilm. As can be seen, Louise Brooks is one of the models included in this syndicated fashion column.

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