Thursday, September 11, 2014

New musical about Louise Brooks

There is a new musical loosely inspired by Louise Brooks called Hi Alba! The musical was created in June 2014 by the students and staff of the Lovewell Institute in partnership with the Short North Stage in Columbus, Ohio. [ Here is a link to its original production in June by high school students at the Garden Theater in Columbus: http://vimeo.com/101574804.]

Hi Alba! A New Musical tells a story of Louise Brooks’ rise to fame and the stagehand who saw her and never forgot her. The inspiration for the musical was a drawing found on the backstage wall of the Garden Theater in Columbus. The drawing, by a stagehand named Alba Cummings, is thought by some to be of Louise Brooks. Shown below is a photo of the drawing.


According to the Short North Stage website, Alba was a stage hand at the Garden Theatre in the 1920's, "and a man smitten." A World War I veteran and a lifelong bachelor, he returned home after the war and took a job at the theater, where in 1924 a young dancer caught his eye. On December 19, 1924, "Alba was so inspired by his muse that he drew an elegantly simple, but nonetheless beautiful sketch of her on a wall backstage." The drawing was discovered some 87 years later.

One of the most compelling songs from the musical, "Capture Me," imagines the the circumstances around the drawing of the picture. A rather charming clip can be seen below.


Though a sweet story, the facts don't align with Brooks' life. The Garden Theater opened in 1920, but  was not the venue in Columbus where Brooks and the Denishawn Dance Company performed while touring the country. That was Memorial Hall on March 8th and November 24th in 1923.  Nevertheless, there is a charming poetry to this musical story which suggests Louise Brooks continuing appeal in the 21st century.. 

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Max Ferguson painting features Louise Brooks

Max Ferguson is a contemporary artist of considerable talent. His realistic style, described as hyper-detailed and grounded in Old Master techniques, is both objective and poignant. It has great appeal.

Ferguson's work has been written up in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, ARTnews, Art & Antiques and elsewhere, and is held in the collections of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, The British Museum in London, The Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Arkansas, and The Museum of the City of New York.

An exhibit of Ferguson's new work is touring three cities in the United States. And what's more, one of the artist's new, almost photo-realist paintings, depicts Louise Brooks. "Lulu in New York" (oil on panel, 2014) is shown below: it depicts pianist Ben Model at the Museum of Modern Art in New York during a screening of Pandora's Box. The painting measures 12 x 12 inches, and the artist told me he expects to paint a larger version. I like it. I like it a lot. Be sure and check out one of the shows listed below.



NEW YORK
September 2 - September 10
445 Park Avenue 15th floor

SAN FRANCISCO
September 18 - October 6
Opening Reception September 18
478 Jackson Street

BEVERLY HILLS
October 13 - November 3
Opening Reception October 14
9478 West Olympic

HERITAGE AUCTIONS

Tuesday, September 9, 2014

The Art of Time Travel Act I Louise in the Late Afternoon Pt. 1

The Art of Time Travel Act I Louise in the Late Afternoon Pt. 1. I think you will recognize the song.

Sunday, September 7, 2014

Any Way the Wind Blows - The Green Pajamas - tribute to Louise Brooks

The Green Pajamas performing "Any Way the Wind Blows" in this tribute to the film, PANDORA'S BOX, and it's star, Louise Brooks. I love it.

Saturday, September 6, 2014

Louise Brooks - Digital painting by Jeff Stahl

Time lapse digital speed painting of Louise Brooks by Jeff Stahl done in Photoshop CS5 with Wacom tablets Cintiq 12wx and Intuos 4L. Real time: 1h16min. Music: "The Russian Princess" by Jeff Stahl, track available here: http://on.fb.me/1fnzNSH

Thursday, September 4, 2014

Intrigue and Comedy Abound (in case of mistaken identity)

One of the curious items I've run across over the years is this incorrectly captioned pair of photographs. This one - pictured below - confuses Louise Brooks and Colleen Moore and their respective co-stars. As it happened, films starring each actress were playing at the same time in Tacoma, Washington.

This is not the first time I have come across a Louise Brooks-Colleen Moore mix-up: I think, because the two actresses wore their hair in a similar fashion (and perhaps resembled one another slightly), and because at times they played the same sorts of roles, newspapers editors and the public sometimes mistook one actress for the other. Or was it that they thought of them in similar terms?


Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Silent film star Colleen Moore

Colleen Moore (1899-1988) was one of the most popular and beloved stars of the American silent screen. Remembered primarily as a comedienne in such films as Ella Cinders (1926) and Orchids and Ermine (1927), Moore's career was also filled with dramatic roles that often reflected societal trends. A trailblazing performer, her legacy was somewhat overshadowed by the female stars that followed.

 

Jeff Codori - author and Colleen Moore researcher extraordinaire - maintains an impressive website devoted to the actress. Jeff's site can be found at http://www.colleenmoore.org/  He has put a lot of work into the site, and it contains lots of pictures and lots of interesting text. I would encourage everyone to check it out.

Also, well worth checking out is Jeff's biography of the actress, Colleen Moore: A Biography of the Silent Film Star (McFarland). The book is available in soft-bound and Kindle editions.

Ten years of research went into the creation of this book, giving the most complete account of her childhood and film career to date, including a look behind the scenes of many of her films, as well as a look at the evolution of her studio First National, and how it's fortunes were affected by the actress'. Many never-before seen photos, including family photographs and candids, are included. It is a must-have for silent film and Colleen Moore enthusiasts.

I have seen only a few of Colleen Moore's films, and they are delightful! I think they compare favorably to those of Marion Davies, another undervalued performer. I wish more Colleen Moore films were in circulation. Like Louise Brooks, she is something extra special.


Speaking of Colleen Moore films, on Saturday September 6th at 7:30 pm, Why Be Good? (1929) will be screened in Los Angeles. In this, her final silent film, Colleen Moore plays a wild flapper with a dubious reputation, who, after a vivacious night of dancing, finds herself romantically linked to her boss’s son. Why Be Good? contains a Vitaphone soundtrack with sound effects and synchronized music, chiefly hot jazz and Twenties dance music played by such period greats as Jimmy Dorsey, Phil Napoleon, Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang. The big-budgeted film, filled with beautiful art deco sets, features a young Jean Harlow as a prominent dress extra.

Long believed to be a lost film, it was rediscovered though the perseverance of film historian Joseph Yranski and Ron Hutchinson, the founder of the Vitaphone Project. The search began when Yranski interviewed Moore, who told him that a copy of the film survived in an Italian film archive. Hutchinson was able to find the 16” Vitaphone discs containing the soundtrack, and the task of locating the missing picture began. Gian Luca Farinelli of Cineteca di Bologna contacted Matteo Pavesi of Cineteca Italiana di Milano, who graciously allowed access to the 35mm nitrate dupe negative for the restoration at L’Immagine Ritrovata in conjunction with Warner Bros.

Be sure and check back tomorrow for another Colleen Moore related blog . . .  about how Moore and Louise Brooks were sometimes confused.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Follow Louise Brooks on Twitter

The Louise Brooks Society is on Twitter @LB_Society. As of today, the LBS is followed by more than 2,700 individuals. Are you one of them? Why not join the conversation? Be sure and visit the official LBS Twitter profile, and check out the more than 3,465 LBS tweets so far!
The LBS twitter stream can also be found in the right hand column of this blog.
And that's not all.

RadioLulu ♪♫♬♪

also has a Twitter account at @Radio_Lulu.
This account tweets about Louise Brooks and music as well as additions to
RadioLulu - the long running online radio station of the Louise Brooks Society
at live365.com/stations/298896 Check it out today!

Monday, September 1, 2014

John Philip Sousa and Louise Brooks

A while back, I purchased a CD of John Philip Sousa's music for wind bands. The disc contains a track of some interest, The Atlantic City Pageant March (1927). According to the linear notes, "During Sousa's final years, beginning in 1926, the band often played summer engagements at Atlantic City's Steel Pier. The Atlantic City Pageant March was written at the request of the city's mayor, and honoured the famous Atlantic City Beauty Pageant." That's a little less then two years after Louise Brooks and Famous Players-Lasky were in Atlantic City (during the first week of September in 1925) filming The American Venus, whose story centered on the pageant.



Curiously, this is not the first time I have come across an instance of Sousa "shadowing" Brooks . . . . I noticed 
- while looking in the Independence Daily Reporter - that Sousa and his band performed in Independence, Kansas just a week or so after Brooks and Denishawn had danced there in January, 1924. (The paper reported that the band concert was the next big happening in town after the dance recital.) Another time, I came across a screening of Evening Clothes in Chicago. At that 1927 event, Sousa's band performed onstage prior to the film being shown!
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