A cinephilac blog about an actress, silent film, and the Jazz Age, with occasional posts about related books, music, art, and history written by Thomas Gladysz. Visit the Louise Brooks Society™ at www.pandorasbox.com
Diary of a Lost Girl, the sensational 1929 silent film starring Louise Brooks, will be shown in Italy. More information about this special event can be found HERE, and below.
Giovedì 18 ottobre 2018 ore 21.30 Auditorium Fondazione Banca del Monte
di Lucca Chiesa di San Francesco Lucca Evento speciale in memoria di
Riccardo Berutto DIARIO DI UNA DONNA PERDUTA di Georg W. Pabst – Germania,
1929 – 90' con Louise Brooks, Joseph Rovensky In collaborazione con
Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca e Associazione Domenico di
Lorenzo Thymiane, figlia di un farmacista, è violentata dall'assistente
del padre e resa incinta.
Il bambino nasce ma muore quasi subito.
Thymiane viene rinchiusa in una casa di correzione, da cui evade per
lavorare in un bordello. Qui conosce un giovane ma dopo la morte di
quest'ultimo ne sposa lo zio, diventando una signora per bene.
Melodramma sulla complessa carriera di una ragazza che passa attraverso
l'inferno della prostituzione per giungere ai fasti della società
borghese: il regista Pabst sarcasticamente dipinge i crimini e misfatti
di una società in disfacimento, avvalendosi del fascino morboso della
bella e dotata Louise Brooks. Un capolavoro del cinema muto che vi
proponiamo, in collaborazione con la Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di
Lucca e Associazione Domenico di Lorenzo, nel ricordo dell'amico
Riccardo Berutto.
Can You Ever Forgive Me?, the just released Fox Searchlight film based on Lee Israel's 2008 memoir of the same name, is out in theaters Friday. And so far, there have been a handful of early reviews, each of them glowing in the assessment of the film and star Melissa McCarthy's portrayal of a desperate Israel.
For those who may not be aware. Lee Israel was a respected biographer whose career went south. To earn a living, she turned to a life of crime, namely forging letters from various celebrities including Louise Brooks. The actress' name even appears xxxed out on the cover of Israel's memoir on which the movie was based. (Brooks' name is third down, between Noel Coward and Lillian Hellman.)
The publisher has changed the cover and reissued a movie tie-in edition of Israel's book, depicted below. Read the original New York Times review of the book, which mentions Brooks, HERE. Also, check out the Los Angeles Times review HERE. And the NPR story can be read or listened to HERE.
Israel's first book on actress Tallulah Bankhead was a New York Times bestseller, and her second, on the newspaper reporter and columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, made a splash in the headlines. (Bankhead and Kilgallen were both friends of Brooks; Bankhead and Brooks socialized, and Kilgallen wrote of Brooks a number of times in her columns beginning in 1941, and did so until 1957.)
But
by 1990, almost broke and desperate to hang onto her Upper West Side
studio, Israel made a bold and irreversible career change: inspired by a
letter she’d received once from Katharine Hepburn, and armed with her
considerable skills as a researcher and celebrity biographer, she began
to forge letters in the voices of the famous and great. Between 1990 and
1991, she wrote more than three hundred letters in the voices of, among
others, Dorothy Parker, Humphrey Bogart, Ernest Hemingway, Eugene O'Neil, Edna Ferber, Lillian Hellman, and
Noel Coward—and sold the forgeries to memorabilia and autograph
dealers. Until she got caught....
In 2008, she penned a memoir detailing her life in crime, Can You Ever Forgive Me? The new film of the same name shows what happened and how a talented but desperate author traveled down the slippery slope toward crime. Yesterday's New York Post published a profile of Israel, "Meet the author who considered her forgeries to be her best work," which can be read HERE. And so do many of the early reviews of the film, like this Associated Press review and this piece in the UK Daily Mail. [I haven't seen the film, and don't know for sure, but I was told by someone involved in scripting the film that Brooks is mentioned in the film itself.]
Why Louise Brooks? Israel's forging of letters from the actress coincided with the resurgence of interest in Brooks following Barry Paris' celebrated 1989 biography. It was widely written about, and so was Brooks.
After her memoir was published in 2008, Israel turned to selling her forged letters (as such) on eBay. As I noted on this blog at the time: "The eBay description reads, 'Lee Israel, author of the recently published Can You Ever Forgive Me? Memoirs of a Literary Forger, which The New York Times
called 'pretty damned fabulous,' is offering several letters for sale –
the hilarious forgeries that experts from coast to coast could not
distinguish from the extraordinary letters written by the silent film
star. These are the letters Lee Israel had not yet sold when the FBI
came knocking at her door. $75 each, suitable for framing to bamboozle
your literary friends. Letters of inauthenticity provided."
I didn't buy any of Israel's forgeries, but did email her. We exchanged a
couple of notes, but all-in-all, she was reticent to talk about what
she did. In an interview with Vice magazine, she said this:
VICE: Well, it could’ve been that they didn’t fuss because you went to
such great lengths to make the content of the letters believable and
entertaining.
LEE ISRAEL: Yes. For instance, my Louise Brooks letters were based on
her actual letters. In the beginning, I spent weeks reading these
fabulous letters by her in the library. I got into her soul and her
sensibilities and gained lots of knowledge about her life. So when I sat
down to do the forgeries, I was just taking baby steps. In the
beginning those letters were mostly Louise’s words with a bunch of stuff
just changed around. But when they started to sell like hotcakes, I got
surer of myself and moved farther and farther away from the model. The
Noël Coward and Dorothy Parker and Edna Ferber stuff was not even based
on real letters. I was using things written in other forms and
incorporating them into my work.
###
Melissa McCarthy's co-star in Can You Ever Forgive Me? is the renowned English actor Richard E. Grant. He came to public attention in 1987 for playing Withnail in the
celebrated cult film Withnail and I, and achieved even greater recognition as John Seward in the 1992
film Bram Stoker's Dracula and Zander Rice in the 2017 superhero film
Logan. Grant's co-star in Withnail and I is the celebrated English actor Paul McGann, who not only played the 8th Doctor Who, but who is as well a big Louise Brooks devotee. McGann even once penned an article for the UK Guardian newspaper on the actress. Which may explain why Brooks can be seen looking over Richard E. Grant's shoulder in this scene still from Withnail and I.
The Chaperone, the yet to be released PBS Masterpiece film based on Laura Moriarty's bestselling novel of the same name, was recently screened at the Los Angeles Film Festival (LAFF). And so far, there have been two major reviews, one in The Wrap, and one in The Hollywood Reporter. Disappointingly, neither are especially glowing in their praise of the over-all film, though each singles out Haley Lu Richardson for her portrayal of the young Louise Brooks.
I haven't seen the film myself, as their don't seem to be any screeners available. I will reserve judgment for the time being. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film is set for release in May, 2019 - which seems to be yet another delay. That's not a good sign, as the film has been completed for some time.
Loulou (aka Pandora's Box) will be shown in Toulouse, France on November 7 and 8, with live musical accompaniment. Details follow.
Loulou, 7 novembre 2018 - 8 novembre 2018, Théâtre National de Toulouse (TNT) Toulouse .
Théâtre National de Toulouse (TNT) le mercredi 7 novembre à 19:30
Loulou Culture ### Ciné-concert / Georges Wilhelm Pabst / Karol Beffa
La présence et la beauté fascinante de Louise Brooks . Ceux qui l’ont
vue ne peuvent l’oublier. Louise Brooks c’est Loulou. À jamais. Belle
insouciante capricieuse et innocemment perverse elle ne vit que pour
l’amour et ensorcelle aussi bien les hommes que les femmes. Des
élégantes fêtes berlinoises à un Londres couvert d’une brume épaisse
Loulou c’est aussi l’histoire d’une chute toute en légèreté . Pabst
chorégraphie et Brooks danse. Un film sur la révolte sans compromis la
voracité de la bourgeoisie et l’hypocrisie morale. _Loulou_ – 1929.
Allemagne. N&B. DCP. Muet. Séance accompagnée au piano par Karol
Beffa . Infos pratiquesMercredi 7 novembre à 19h30 Durée : 134 min. – La
Salle – Intertitres en Allemand (soustitré en français) Théâtre
National de Toulouse (TNT) 1 Rue Pierre Baudis 31000 Toulouse France
Toulouse De 12 à 30 €
Believe it or not, but the Brooklyn Public Library has started its 17th season of showing silent films as part of its Silent Movie Matinee. There aren't any Louise Brooks films scheduled this season, though the library hopes to screen one sometime soon. But look, there's Buster Keaton and Janet Gaynor and Lewis Milestone. More information at https://www.bklynlibrary.org/