Lulu and Spike (BTVS)

I'm a big fan of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so much so that I own the entire series on DVD and even attended a Buffy convention earlier this year. Thus, I was amused to come across a piece of "fan-fic" which contains a lengthy passage referencing Louise Brooks.

Written in the form of an academic study of William the Bloody (a.k.a. the character known as Spike), author Lydia Chambers (herself the name of the minor character) has fashioned a "thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Watcher's Diploma." If you are familar with the Buffy-verse, you shouldn't have any trouble following this story-line.

Chapter seven of this cleverly written work, devoted to the sexual idiosyncrasies of the romantic vampire, suggests that Spike (then going under the name of Wicked Wills) and Brooks met at least once over the years. Why didn't Spike - then a rather merciless vampire - turn the actress? You will have to read this faux thesis to find out.

On a not unrelated note, here is an image of a bob-haired Buffy (actress Sarah Michelle Geller) taken from the season four, Twin Peaks flavored episode, "Restless."

Anyone know of any other overlap between the worlds of Lulu and Buffy?

Research trip notes (part two - Ohio)

I have finally had time to sort through all of the material I brought back from my research trip, and am now ready to write a few notes about what I accomplished in Ohio. I have already entered annotated citations in the various LBS bibliographies for all of the reviews and significant articles I found in the Buckeye state.

I spent three days in Columbus, Ohio. One day - about seven plus hours - was spent at the Columbus Metropolitan Library, where I went through microfilm of the three major Columbus newspapers. I searched the Columbus Dispatch, Columbus Citizen, and Ohio State Journal, and managed to find at least 15 or more articles / film reviews in each paper. I also found some Denishawn material, and a few nice movie advertisements. There was an index - incomplete, as it turned out - to the early years of the Ohio State Journal, and this lead me to about half-a-dozen film reviews. (See "Motion Pictures - Reviews.") Otherwise, I was searching blind, but managed to come up with a bunch of good stuff.

Regarding It's the Old Army Game, the Columbus Dispatch critic stated, "Louise Brooks, a dainty little brunette, with cute girlish ways, a way of flirting, a way of kissing and with a figure that formerly earned Ziegfeld or Carroll honors, looks like a good screen personality. If properly handled, she will be a real comer."

And not unlike other newspaper critics of the 1920's, the reviewer for the Columbus Citizen seems to have been rather fond of Brooks. In reviewing The Show-Off, John McNulty wrote, "Louise Brooks (the bold thing) is as luscious as can be." And in reviewing Rolled Stockings, he noted ". . . the provoking presence of Louise Brooks." About Now We're in the Air, he stated "Louise Brooks, a pretty thing, has little to do but walk around and show her legs, which are pretty and [the] only amusing things in the picture." A year later, while writing about Beggars of Life, the same critic commented, "Miss Brooks only needs remain as warm to look upon, and she can have any role she wants as far as we're concerned."

The next two days - eight hours each, from open to close - I spent at the Ohio Historical Society. For me, Ohio has been a somewhat problematic state from which to borrow materials, so I was really glad to be able to visit this midwest archival motherlode.

At the OHS, I was searching for articles, reviews and advertisements for the many Denishawn performances in the state. I looked through microfilm of newspapers for Cleveland, Cincinnati, Toledo, Dayton, Akron, Youngstown, Canton, Sandusky, Steubenville, Ashland, Alliance and Springfield - and managed to find articles or reviews in each one. Some mentioned, or even pictured, a very youthful Louise Brooks. What a delight.

When microfilm was lacking, I requested massive bound volumes of the Cincinnati Times-Star, Canton News, Akron Times, and Cleveland News. (These crumbling bound volumes - containing a month or more of a newspaper - were about 8 to 10 inches thick and weighed 20 or 30 pounds.) Since photocopies could not be made from these oversized volumes, I took notes when I found material. I also looked at loose issues of the Hamilton Daily News (which were wrapped in butcher paper and tied with string), and found a rather interesting review of which I was able to obtain a photocopy.

Seemingly, the OHS doesn't have microfilm or bound volumes of newspapers from Aurora, Findlay, Uniontown or Newark. Each were Ohio towns in which Denishawn performed. I will have to search for those papers elsewhere.

Along with Denishawn material, I was eager to obtain film reviews and other articles. To that end, I looked at microfilm of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and Cleveland Press (representing the sixth largest city in the United States in the 1920's), as well as the Cincinnati Post and Cincinnati Enquirer (representing the seventeenth largest city in the United States in the 1920's). I also made a comprehensive sweep through the three Toledo newspapers (the Toledo Blade, Toledo Times, and Toledo News Bee), the two Youngstown papers (the Youngstown Telegram and Youngstown Vindicator), the Akron Beacon Journal, and Dayton Journal. I also went through a few months of Canton Repository and Sandusky Star Journal. And then I ran out of time.

Here are two rather nifty caricatures of Louise Brooks which I came across while searching for film material. The one on the left was tied in with Now We're in the Air. The one on the right was part of a three panel comic strip featuring Brooks, Wallace Beery and Richard Arlen in Beggars of Life. The text on the right-hand caricature reads "Louise Brooks was the heroine and she caused most of the trouble."

                                  

Before I left the OHS - an impressive, modern facility with clean microfilm and working microfilm readers - I took a few minutes to look at the records of the Ohio Division of Censorship. I examined the handwritten records (a so-called Book of Rejections) of this state organization, looking at their list of censored films for the 1920's and 1930's. These records contained "Daily lists from the time period when film censorship was done by the Industrial Commission, and later, 'Certificates of Censorship- Rejected' from the Department of Education. The reports list state, film number, title, a brief description of eliminations, class, action, number of feet, fee, and filmmaker." I noticed Birth of a Nation, and films by Buster Keaton and Eric von Stroheim, but alas, not any featuring Louise Brooks. I was a bit surprised, as I know that some of Brooks' films were subject to censorship in both Kansas and New York state.

Despite the hundreds of dollars I spent on airfare, hotels and a rental car - I feel that my trip to Ohio and Michigan was well worth the expense. I obtained a massive amount of new material. I am a geek, and I love the challenge and experience of doing research.

This week at the SFPL

Two inter-library loans were waiting for me at the San Francisco Public Library. I looked through the Charleston Evening Post, where I found articles and advertisements for three of Louise Brooks films, as well as an article on the 1923 Denishawn performance in that South Carolina town. I also scanned a few months of the Buffalo Courier-Express, where I found three film reviews. This article also turned up in Courier-Express.

A couple of years ago, I went through back issues of Time magazine, which the SFPL has on microfilm. Back then, by scrolling through the years, I was able to uncover a few film reviews. Recently, however, Time put their archives online. These archives, which are searchable by keyword, date back to 1923. I took the opportunity to search for "Louise Brooks," "Denishawn," "George White Scandals," "Zeigfeld Follies," and various film titles. After noting the results (one has to pay to read the articles at the Time archive), I returned to the SFPL microfilm where I found a few more articles and reviews which were unknown to me. Among the more interesting items was a 1979 article regarding the Santa Fe Opera staging of Alban Berg's Lulu, which noted that "During rehearsals, the cast screened Louise Brooks' Lulu in the 1928 silent film of Wedekind's Pandora's Box."

Research trip notes (part one - Michigan)

My recent trip to the midwest (a combined visit home / mad dash from library to library) was the most complicated research trip I've ever taken. Over the course of six days, I visited five libraries in two states, while driving hundreds of miles and suffering freezing temperatures. (One day, the wind chill reached 15 degrees below zero!) All the while, I was terribly sick with an awful head cold. Nevertheless, except for getting lost on a couple of occassions while trying to make my way from city to city, things went off without a hitch. I hit all my marks - unearthing at least two hundred clippings - and returning home with a three-inch stack of photocopies! (I spent about $90.00 on copies.)

My first stop in Michigan was in a cold Ann Arbor, where temperatures were in the teens. I made my way to the University of Michigan's Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library, and on the way, walked past Hill Auditorium - site of two Denishawn performances during the years Louise Brooks was a member of that pioneering dance company.

                                        

At the library, I spent about four hours in the microfilm collection. First, I looked through Detroit Saturday Night, a hard-to-get-ahold-of weekly entertainment paper published throughout the 1920's and 1930's. (This is the only city-based entertainment publication I know of - except for those published in New York. Does anyone know of others?) At the time, Detroit was the third largest metropolitan area in the United States, and Detroit Saturday Night covered the city's lively music, stage, and film happenings. I managed to find a bunch of brief articles about Brooks' films at the time of their Detroit showings.

Next, I dipped into the Michigan Daily, the student newspaper at the University of Michigan. The Michigan Daily was a goldmine of articles, reviews and advertisements for the two Denishawn performances. I was stunned by the extensive coverage - including front page articles, long reviews, and large, quarter page advertisements. Denishawn was big news in Ann Arbor in the early 1920's, and Brooks herself was mentioned in a few pieces. I have looked at a few other student papers from the time, and never found too much. However, this unearthing of valuable material will lead me to look more closely at other such periodicals.

The University of Michigan library also has a couple of French publications. The Petit Parisian was a Paris newspaper which yielded vintage articles on Diary of a Lost Girl and Beggars of Life from the time of their first French screenings in 1929 and 1930, respectively.

                                     

I also looked at more than a years worth of Cinematographie Francaise, a French trade journal. This weekly film magazine also turned out to be a goldmine of articles, images, and advertisements regarding Pandora's Box and Beggars of Life. There was a stunning full page advertisement for Diary of a Lost Girl, as well as numerous articles on Prix de Beaute. Brooks was on the cover of this publication on May 11 and June 8 of 1929.

Because I had run out of time (and needed to drive to Lansing that night), I was not able to sift through three German newspapers the U-M library has on microfilm. One day, hopefully, I will be able to return and look through the Kolnische Volkszeitung, Weimarische Zeitung, and Leipzieger Volkszeitung for material on the two Pabst films.

This was my second Louise Brooks-research trip to Lansing. Last year, I visited the State Library of Michigan, where I gathered articles and reviews on all of the Denishawn performances in that state. I had, at the time, also scoured the leading Detroit, Ann Arbor, Lansing, Flint and Kalamazoo newspapers for vintage film reviews. This time, I concentrated on the Grand Rapids and Battle Creek papers, with a quick look through the Saginaw paper. I found a bunch of material in theGrand Rapids Press and the Battle Creek Enquirer and Evening News. However, I was not so lucky with the Saginaw Daily News, where I only managed to turn up some nifty advertisements. Here is a typical example.

                                     

I spent more than four hours at the State Library of Michigan, and now feel that I have largely completed by survey of major Michigan newspapers.

From Lansing, I made my way to the suburbs of Detroit, where a couple days later I took the opportunity to visit the Royal Oak Public Library. This suburban library holds the Daily Tribune - a typical small-town paper "serving Detroit's progressive suburbs." I didn't expect to find much, perhaps just some brief articles or advertisements. I found those, but was even more delighted to find an article on Brooks entitled, "Will Follies Grad Act with Funny Man." This March, 1926 article, if it can be believed, quotes Brooks as saying she didn't want to appear with W. C. Fields.

"Recently Paramount announced she was to have the feminine lead opposite W. C. Fields, also late of the Follies, in The Old Army Game. When interviewed, Louise flashed those eyes of her and said, 'They may think I'm going to do the part, but I won't. I'm not going to play around with a funny man.'" The articles goes on. "When, if ever, Pola Negri, Lya de Putti from Hungary, exploited as the 'rage of Europe' and the exotic Louise go to work on the same lot, there might ought to be no dearth of excitement around the Famous Players studio."

This unattributed article was not the only gem found. I also came across a syndicated March, 1928 feature photo of Brooks wearing clothes of 1900, 1912 and 1928. This is one item I have never seen before! Which goes to show, you'll never know what you'll find . . . .

                  

Referenced in Le Temps

Yesterday, the Louise Brooks Society was referenced in an article, "Louise Brooks, l'adoration perpétuelle," in Le Temps, a Paris newspaper. The reference reads "La Louise Brooks Society en ligne: http://www.pandorasbox.com."

Divine Dancer

Finished reading Divine Dancer: A Biography of Ruth St. Denis by Suzanne Shelton. I really liked this book, and would recommend it to anyone interested in Denishawn or early 20th century cultural history. Shelton's book is certainly is one of the most enjoyable biographies I have read in some time. It is well written, well researched, and full of interesting information.

St. Denis had an incredible life, and was acquianted with, or knew, many of the leading personalities of her day. St. Denis once performed on the same bill as W.C. Fields, danced for the painter John Singer Sargeant, and was friendly with the Nobel Prize winning Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore. Rodin once sketched her, and she danced for King Edward VII. St. Denis had "special relationships" with the architect Stanford White (famous for his own special relationship with Evelyn Nesbit), the showman David Belasco, and the German writer Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It was also rumored she had an affair with the painter Egon Schiele. In 1906 (the year Louise Brooks was born), St. Denis toured Germany, where she met the dramatist Frank Wedekind, author of the Lulu plays!

All of that is background to her incredible achievements as a dancer. She was a contemporary of (and personally knew) Isadora Duncan, Anna Pavolva, Maud Allan, and Loie Fuller. Both as a solo artist and as a founding member of the Denishawn dance company, St. Denis - perhaps more than anyone else - helped introduce modern dance to America. Hers was a truly singular life.

A footnote: my copy of Divine Dancer once belonged to the composer Lou Harrison. Like St. Denis, Harrison had a great interest in Asian culture. Whereas St. Denis was drawn to Indian dance (her nautch dance was well known), Harrison was drawn to the music of the Indonesian gamelan. I do not know that St. Denis and Harrison ever met, but I would not be surprised if they had, as their circles of friends may well have overlapped. Besides his considerable accomplishments as a composer, Harrison was also a music critic and calligrapher. My copy ofDivine Dancer bears Harrison's calligraphic ownership signature.

Return of the weekly research report

Yesterday, I returned home from my trip to Michigan and Ohio, where I had spent the last six days driving from library to library in search of Louise Brooks material. Research-wise, it was a very successfull trip! I unearthed at least two hundred clippings - all sorts of articles, reviews and advertisements related to Brooks' career and films as well as her time with Denishawn. I returned home with a three-inch stack of photocopies. Now, I'm in the middle of processing this new material. I will write detailed reports about what I found in the coming days.

(As I write this journal entry I am listening to Stare Kino, a CD I picked up while visiting a Detroit area gift shop which features Polish products. The compact disc, an import, features songs from Polish films of the 1930's. It's pretty good, though it does not feature my favorite Polish singer of the interwar period, Ordonka, aka Hanka Ordonowna.)

Today, not having to go into work, I ventured over to the San Francisco Public Library, where a few inter-library loans awaited me. I found a long Denishawn review which referenced Louise Brooks in the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette (from Fort Wayne, Indiana), as well as an article and some advertisements in the Greensboro Daily News (from Greensboro, North Carolina). I also dug through a couple of months of the Peoria Transcript (from Peoria, Illinois), where I found a bunch of advertisements, short articles and reviews for the two Denishawn performances in that mid-west town.

Off to the Midwest

I'm off to the midwest for six days, where I will be driving from library to library, from city to city, in search of yet more Louise Brooks material. Probably won't be able to post from the road. So, I will record the results when I return. In the meantime, Happy Holidays.

Louise Brooks gift items

Looking for that special holiday gift for that special Louise Brooks fan? Might we recommend the merchandise pages of the Louise Brooks Society, where you can find an amazing assortment of Louise Brooks DVD's, videos, and books (including hard-to-find foreign editions).

Also, be sure and check out the LBS gift shop at Cafepress.com, where you can find an equally amazing assortment of LBS merchandise including shirts, coffee mugs, stickers, postcards, tote bags and more. This unique shop features a "Diary of a Lost Girl" blank book (perfect for keeping notes or a journal), as well as a "Pandora's Box" wooden keepsake box with tile lid.

                                  

Other popular items include the LBS tote bag and sticker.

                                  

There is lots to be found at the Louise Brooks Society Gift shop. There are travel mugs, tile coasters, messenger bags, mouse pads, sweatshirts and other unique items. And what's more, use coupon "CPFESTIVE" to receive $10.00 off orders of $50.00 or more. (Offer expires December 20, 2004.)

Denishawn bibliography updated

I've updated the Denishawn bibliography. Citations were added - mostly from the New York Times and Washington Post - for a bunch of brief articles. Among the material added was a small article mentioning a previously unrecorded Denishawn performance in New York City. The performance (which was not part of their 1922-1923 tour) was a benefit, and took place in May, 1923. The article did not mention Louise Brooks by name, only that Ruth St. Denis, Ted Shawn and the Densiahwn dancers would be present.

In world news . . .

The Belfast Telegraph reported on December 3rd that Neve Campbell is still hoping to make a film about Louise Brooks. In an article about Campbell's recent activity, the Irish newspaper stated "Campbell produced as well as starred in The Company, and this is an experience she's keen to repeat. She plans to make a film about the silent-film icon Louise Brooks, and is keeping her fingers crossed over a project entitled The Mermaids Singing."

And in yesterday's Cape Times (from South Africa), film critic David Thomson wrote, "this is clearly Natalie Portman's breakthrough film - she is enchanting and lethal, childlike and eternal, in ways that made me think of Louise Brooks." While a day earlier in an article about the Alvin Ailey Dance Company, the New York Times also evoked the actress: "Olivia Bowman wears a Louise Brooks-style wig and is the loner."

As did numerous other publications across the United States which carried a recent Associated Press review of Eve Ensler's new theatre piece, The Good Body. "The actress, sporting a Louise Brooks bob and a billowy, sleeveless pants suit, takes the audience on a 90-minute journey through her own and other women's observations about their bodies."  This sentiment was echoed by Newsday back in November, which stated in an article about Ensler, "She still has her shiny Louise Brooks hair . . . ."

(Louise Brooks trivia: Back on November 11, 2000 - both Eve Ensler and Louise Brooks biographer Barry Paris were guests on West Coast Live, a syndicated radio program from San Francisco. For a while, audio of the show was archived on the net, but no longer appears to be.)

Weekly research report (warning: dull redux)

Received a call from Ron at the SFPL, who telephoned to tell me there were problems with some of my just-arrived inter-library loan requests. Four ILL requests arrived today, but three of them were either missing reels or contained the wrong reels. These sorts of mix-ups are not uncommon. And in the case of the requests which were missing reals, the lending institutions offered no explanation.

Sometimes, I request too many reels of microfilm. Every lending library or historical society has a different ILL policy. Some will only lend two reels at a time. Others will lend as many as six or nine reels. I try to keep track of where things come from, who are the likely lenders, and what their policies are so as to make my search as efficient as possible. (I have quite an extensive log detailing my hundreds of requests.) Sometimes, things go wrong. In these instances, I will have to request the missing microfilm at a later date.

Despite these hurdles, I did find a couple of brief reviews and advertisement for The American Venus (1926) in the Cleveland Press and Trenton Times (from Trenton, New Jersey). I also came across this curious February, 1927 advertisement for A Social Celebrity (1926) in the Green Bay Press Gazette. Notice that this second run screening of the Adolph Menjou-Louise Brooks film is part of a bill that includes vaudeville acts as well as Marjah & Co., "The Mental Marvels of India Exponents Yogi Philosophy and Occult Sciences.

                    

The Green Bay Press Gazette turned-out to be a gold mine of all kinds of clipping - including more than two dozen articles, captioned photographs, advertisements and reviews of the two performances Denishawn gave in that Wisconsin city during the two years Brooks was a member of that pioneering dance company. In the week leading up to a performance, this newspaper ran one or two (and sometimes three) items about Denishawn per day. That is remarkable coverage. I even came across this rather sexy front page photograph of Ruth St. Denis, which is titled "Will Do Her Famous Dances For Green Bay Folk Tonight."

In addition to the Green Bay material, I also found a score of Denishawn articles and reviews in the Trenton Times and Cleveland Press, as well as the Waterbury Republican (from Waterbury, Connecticut). It was a good day for Denishawn research!

Weekly research report (warning: dull)

Went to the library today to do research. No interlibrary loan material had arrived, so I ventured home to write this post about nothing. . . .

Earlier this week, I had received word that four of my ILL requests were rejected. I had been hoping to borrow copies of the Jacksonian (Jackson, Tennessee),Morgantown Post (Morgantown, West Virginia), Orlando Morning Sentinal (Orlando, Florida), and Ponca City News (Ponca, Oklahoma), but the institutions which have these newspapers on microfilm apparently won't loan the material. Oh well. I was hoping to gather articles or reviews on the Denishawn performances in those four cities. If anyone reads this and lives near one of those four cities and would be willing to do an afternoon's research tracking down those reviews, please email me at thomasg AT pandorasbox DOT com  Thanx as always!

Wicked Joys in Weimar Berlin

Interesting article in today's Guardian about life in Berlin during the Weimar period. The article can be found at http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/features/story/0,11710,1360663,00.html

This passage struck me as especially noteworthy."Among much else that marks Weimar Berlin out as a quintessentially modern metropolis was its cultural bustle and its critical media. During the 1920s the city's publishing industry burgeoned and, books apart, produced some 150 daily and weekly papers - right and leftwing, highbrow and popular." That could mean there is a lot more coverage of Louise Brooks and the making of Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl then I might have suspected. Oh, what wicked joys await me.

Overland Stage Raiders

Louise Brooks' last film, Overland Stage Raiders (1938), will be broadcast in the United States on the STARZ Westerns cable station on December 8th at 1:15 pm, and again on December 21st at 4:30 pm and December 28th at 4:00 am. It will also be shown on the MOVIEplex cable station on December 8th at 2:15 pm. Consult your local listing for further deatils.

Overland Stage Raiders (1938) is not a great film, but is worth seeing because Louise Brooks is featured in it. Though she then sported a brushed-back 1930's hairstyle (and not her trademark bob), she still looked quite lovely at age 31. The film is approximately 55 minutes long, and is considered part of the "Three Mesquiteers" series. Brooks co-stars along with John Wayne, Ray Corrigan and Max Terhune.

Interestingly, because it starred John Wayne (before he made it big in the movies), this otherwise b-grade picture has occassionally been shown theatrically in the United States in the decades since its release. These screenings tool place in the 1940's and 1950's. The film was also shown on television in the 1970's. I wonder how many viewers then recognized the once and future Lulu?

New web page

MovieMaidens.com is a somewhat curious website "dedicated to the most beautiful classic actresses during the first 50 years of Hollywood...remembering them when they were young and attractive." The site goes on to state, "These actresses burst onto the Hollywood scene as beautiful young women, and they should be remembered as the gorgeous girls that they were. . . . We are so sick of seeing history's most beautiful actresses portrayed as old women." The site has pages (largely composed of a picture gallery, biographical text and links) devoted to Vilma Banky, Clara Bow, Joan Blondell, Anita Page, Kay Francis, Mae West and others. The site also has a page dedicated to Louise Brooks, who was "young and sexy between the ages of 18-35."

New web address

One of the best Louise Brooks websites comes out of Italy. It is chock full of interesting material in both Italian and English. That site recently obtained a new web address, and is now located at http://xoomer.virgilio.it/louisebrooks/. Check it out!

German silent films with a gay theme on sale at Kino

"Kino proudly presents a truly eye-opening collection of gay-themed German silent films, available for the first time on DVD.  Richard Oswald's Different from the Others (1919), Carl Theodor Dreyer's Michael (1924), and William Dieterle's Sex in Chains (1928) are all landmarks in the cinematic depiction of homosexuality.  And -- no surprise -- all three pictures were variously banned, censored, or purposely removed from the public eye.  But now they're out of the closet and on DVD in restored versions." Also included in this special offering is G.W. Pabst's Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), which is available available on DVD and VHS.

These "Gay-themed Silents" are available at a hefty discount from Kino. For further info and to order, see http://www.kino.com/video/results.php?featured_id=33

Portland Film Censors Busy

Yesterday at the library, I found this interesting wire-service article, which is subtitled "Fans Driven to Suburban Houses by Official Cutters." It is interesting in that it details censorship practices of the time, practices which were certainly applied to the films of Louise Brooks when they were shown in Portland, Oregon. The article dates from December, 1927.

Portland Film Censors Busy

Spicy bits on the legitimate stage are quite all right, but the same scene in the movies in Portland constitutes a grave error and calls for drastic scissor action. Portlanders must not look upon movie kisses which are too long. Similar restriction, however, is not placed on movie fans of villages of the "back country."

Such is the status of censorship in Oregon.

There is no state censorship law, so the villagers escape the penalty of seeing only that which censors rule is nice. Portland, the one large city in the state, has a censor board which leaves no doubt as to its willingness to function.

But, strangely enough, the powers of the Portland Board of Motion Picture Censors appears to be limited to the silver screen. Ten nude girls may not appear in films exhibited here. But 10 nude girls could appear on the stage and never a word would the board say, although the police might say and do considerable. Not that 10 undressed bits of femininity have ever appeared on a local stage, but 40 one-quarter clad girls have, and any mathematician knows that they are equivalent to10 entirely disrobed flappers.

Portland is only one of several large cities having a picture censor board, but perhaps no similar group has commanded the same degree of publicity.

For example, there is the time the board ruled that a drawing of a nude girl on a theater program was improper and ordered the management to cover her rawness before circulating the programs.

Vainly theater men protested that she was a reproduction of Spanish art, but they were told no bull fighters were in Portland. And so the entrancing curves of Spain's best was wasted behind the blankness of thick bond paper which was pasted over all but the figure's head.

The censor board is composed of three members, one of whom represents the movies. The other two do not. They are appointed by the mayor and are assisted by a staff of 70, mostly women, viewers. These viewers are given monthly assignments and scan every picture before it is exhibited. Presumably they say: "Cut that kiss by eight feet," or "undressed chickens are limited to fowls."

And that is the reason why, as frequently happens, a rabid fan will journey to Gresham or other nearby village when the film makes what apparently is a broad jump.

But the cutting board and its viewers go on cutting and in most instances a cut stays out. The city council, however, is the board of appeal, and upholding the censors is infrequent. As a rule, however, the cutting goes on without interference, for it is easier for an exchange man to cut out footage than to wade through an official council hearing.

I did a quick Google search on the Portland Board of Motion Picture Censors and found this link, their annual report from 1921.

This week at the SFPL

Three interlibrary loans arrived this week. And so I spent an enjoyable morning - some two hours of time and some seven dollars for photocopies - going through microfilm at the SFPL. . . . I looked through a few months worth of the Toronto Globe & Mail, where I found film reviews of The American Venus (1926) and A Social Celebrity (1926). I also looked through the Springfield Republican, a Masschusetts newspaper, where I gathered a slew of material on the Denishawn performance there in 1924. (One of the articles mentioned Louise Brooks.) I also got an advertisement and review of The City Gone Wild (1927). And then from the now defunctPittsburgh Press I found material on The Street of Forgotten Men (1925), Now We're in the Air (1927), The Canary Murder Case (1929), and It Pays to Advertise(1931). All together, it was a good haul.

The Whole Equation

Chatted today with film critic David Thomson, whose fascinating new book, The Whole Equation, has just been published. This new book, a collection of essays on everyone from Chaplin and von Stroheim to Nicole Kidman and Harvey Weinstein, is subtitled "A History of Hollywood." Louise Brooks is referenced three times.

Thomson has written about or referenced Brooks many times in his various essays, reviews and books.*  This rather intertesting passage comes from Thomson's new book. " . . . Louise Brooks in Pandora's Box is the first presence I think I could have fallen for. And Brooks's Lulu is still very dangerous, capable of sweeping pages of description aside with a glance. . . ." Well put.

* David Thomson's The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, which has just been published in a revised and expanded softcover edition, is a must read for any film buff! Go get yourself a copy. You won't be disappointed.

Louise Brooks and Lemony Snicket . . . . redux

On September 20th, I wrote . . .

"Came across these interesting references to Louise Brooks in the works of the popular writer known as "Lemony Snicket." . . . In the "A Night at the Theatre" section of Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography, the author refers to the "Brooks-Gish Award for Best Actress." . . . And in The Carnivorous Carnival, which is part of the author's A Series of Unfortunate Events series and which contains other cinematic and literary references, there is a mention of Lulu. . . . What does it all mean? Is Lemony Snicket a fan of Louise Brooks?"

. . . Today, I had a chance to briefly chat with the mysterious Lemony Snicket, and yes, he is a fan of Louise Brooks!

Victor McLaglen and Star Cast in "A Girl in Every Port"

Yesterday, I received in the mail a remarkable item I had won on eBay. It was a vintage photograph - measuring 29" wide by 10" tall - of a group of United States Coast Guard standing outside of a theater where A Girl in Every Port was showing in 1928. The marquee above the uniformed members of the Coast Guard reads:

                            Victor McLaglen and Star Cast in "A Girl in Every Port"

                     "Semper Paratus" with U.S. Coast Guard and Fox Ensemble of 125

                       Prologue - Richard Singer & Concert Orchestra - Charles Althoff

The film is being shown at a Fox theater. I am not sure in which (likely) East Coast city this photograph was taken. Might anyone hazard a guess? Follow the link above to see scans of this oversized image.

Dark Star

Finished reading Dark Star, by Leatrice Gilbert Fountain. I enjoyed this book a great deal, and would recommend it to anyone interested in the silent film era. This excellent, 1985 biography tells the story of the rise and fall of the silent film star John Gilbert. (This dashing actor was the star of such classics as The Merry Widow,The Big Parade and Flesh and the Devil. He also appeared in He Who Gets Slapped, La Boheme, and A Woman of Affairs. All together, his is a remarkable list of credits!) The author is the daughter of John Gilbert and Leatrice Joy, an actress who replaced Gloria Swanson as Cecil B. DeMille's leading lady in the 1920's.

It's stated that John Gilbert and Louise Brooks knew each other ("Louise, a fond friend of Jack's"), and the actress is referenced twice in the book. Once, it is in relation to an article that Beggars of Life author Jim Tully wrote about Gilbert. The second time it is in support of the author's contention that MGM was out to sabotage Gilbert's career based on the quality of his voice. (Brooks claimed a similar fate at the hands of Paramount.)

Leatrice Gilbert Fountain tells a sympathetic story in a convincing manner. Film historian Kevin Brownlow described the book as "A tragic and compelling story, essential to an understanding of this extraordinary actor."

Daily gleanings

Late last night, while digging through an online newspaper database - not unlike the one which the NEH and LOC are proposing to create (see earlier entry) - I came across a few brief articles and advertisements from the 1920's in the Daily Gleaner, a newspaper based Kingston, Jamaica. This is the first Louise Brooks material I have gathered from that country, and the second from a Caribbean nation. (I already have a handful of vintage clippings from Cuba.)

Weekly trip to the library

Weekly trip to the library to look at requested microfilm. A few roles of the Cincinnati Enquirer arrived, and I found a short article, review and advertisement for A Social Celebrity. Pinpointing this Cincinnati screening will aid me while I survey the other Cincinnati newspapers when I travel to Ohio next month.

Also arriving were two reels of the Daily City Gate and Constitution-Democrat, from Keokuk, Iowa. This newspaper contained numerous short articles, advertisements and a review of the two Denishawn dance company performances in that small town.

Bounty offered for photocopies of vintage film reviews

The Louise Brooks Society is engaged in a number of long term projects in its attempt to fully document the life and career of Louise Brooks. Your help is needed is acquiring articles and other hard-to-get-to printed material. The LBS will pay $1.00 each for photocopies of film reviews and articles about Louise Brooks from the 1920's or 1930's from newspapers in the following American cities. Photocopies should be legible and the reviews complete. Please note the name of the newspaper, title and author of review (if not included on the photocopy), and date of publication.

San Antonio, TX Fort Worth, TX Houston, TX El Paso, TX Austin, TX Corpus Christi, TX Tampa, FL Jacksonville, FL Peoria, IL Rockford city, IL Springfield, IL Decatur, IL

Scranton, PA Erie, PA Scranton, PA Allentown, PA Harrisburg, PA Reading, PA Knoxville, TN Chattanooga, TN Baton Rouge, LA Shreveport, LA Patterson, NJ Trenton, NJ

South Bend, IN Evansville, IN Gary, IN Utica, NY Troy, NY Schenectady, NY Binghamton, NY Hartford, CT New Haven, CT Albuquerque, NM Santa Fe, NM

Cambridge, MA Worcester, MA Springfield, MA Lowell, MA New Bedford, MA Savannah, GA Little Rock, AR Mobile, AL Charlotte, NC Boise, ID Phoenix, AZ Honolulu, HI Juneau, AK Fairbanks, AK

Please email the LBS with any questions you might have. Thank you very much.

30 million newspaper pages to go online

The National Endowment for the Arts, in conjunction with the Library of Congress - has announced that it is working to put millions of newspaper pages online in a digital / searchable format. The first of what's expected to be 30 million digitized pages from American newspapers published between 1836 and 1922 will be available beginning in 2006.

The chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities announced the project in a speech at the National Press Club on November 16th. "Anyone who's interested - teachers, students, historians, lawyers, politicians, even newspaper reporters - will be able to go to their computer at home or at work and at a click of a mouse get immediate, unfiltered access to the greatest source of our history."

The time span of the digitization project is limited because type faces used before 1836 are too difficult for optical scanners to read, while copyright restrictions prevent newspapers published after 1922 from being scanned and published without permission.

As Louise Brooks' film career didn't start till 1925, the amount of material on the actress which might come to light from this project is severly limited. Nevertheless, depending on which Kansas newspapers are scanned, perhaps some tidbit related to Brooks' early life might surface. There is also hope that some articles or reviews related to Brooks' first season with the Denishawn dance company - which started in 1922 - might also be found.

Google Scholar

The search engine Google has announced the launch of Google Scholar. According to the website, "Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web."

A search under "Louise Brooks" produces a few interesting results. There are citations for articles from scholarly journals (such as "Consuming Distractions in Prix de beauté," from Camera Obscura), references to the actress in scholarly books, and previously undocumented scholarly papers delivered at conferences from around the world. One I found, "The Overcoming of Desire: Prostitution and the Contract in Pandora’s Box (1929) ," was no longer online but could still found in the Google cache.

One curiousity which turned up was "The ‘arrayjob’package Management of arrays in (La) T E X" by Zhuhan Jiang, an Australian professor of Mathematics and Computing. In this paper, the author used Louise Brooks and the names of other actresses as examples in writing programming language.

Hopefully, more and more scholarly material will be indexed through Google Scholar, and hopefully, some of that material will be related to Louise Brooks.

Harold Lloyd's Hollywood Nudes in 3D

Last night at the Booksmith in San Francisco, I hosted an author event with Suzanne Lloyd, the granddaughter of silent film great Harold Lloyd. Suzanne - who was raised by her grandfather and lived with him for twenty years - spoke about Harold Lloyd's Hollywood Nudes in 3D!, a new book of photographs she edited by the comedic actor. The event was a lot of fun. Suzanne gave a brief talk, showed slides of images from the book, and took questions from the dozens of silent film and stereoscopic photography fans in the audience.

Suzanne told a story about how she came to realize Harold Lloyd was a movie star. One day in the early 1960's, she took a phone call from a man who identified himself as Cary Grant. Suzanne, who was then a young girl and unaware of her grandfather's fame, couldn't believe that the debonair actor- someone she had just seen on television - would call her home! In disbelieve, she hung up on Cary Grant. When Harold Lloyd asked who had called, Suzanne said it was someone whoclaimed to be the famous actor. It was then that Harold Lloyd explained that he too was an actor and was friendly with movie stars like Cary Grant!

Mary Pickford, Clairvoyant

What strange force led me to browse the newstand at The Booksmith in San Francisco? Was it mere coincedence, or something else? But there I found myself, drawn to something familiar, yet strange. . . 

Silent film star Mary Pickford adorns the cover of the October, 2004 issue of Fate magazine. Along with articles on strange occurances, combustible women, harmonic concordances, Russian precognition cases and the language of Sasquatches was an article entitled "Mary Pickford: Superstitious Superstar." Lina Accurso's four page piece on "America's Sweetheart" unconvincingly probes the super-rational leanings of the actress. "But what looked like a charmed life to her legions of fans had indeed been filled with sunshine, shadow, and more than a little of what she called 'superstition.' Today, this ability may be more accurately described as premonitions."

Seemingly, Mary Pickford did have an interest in the paranormal. I recently spotted a handful of books from the actress' library - each of which had some occultish theme - at Allan Milkerit books. A number of them were inscribed by the author to Mary Pickford.

Thank you Bryan Goldberg

I just recieved, through the mail, a half-dozen photocopies of rare articles about Louise Brooks. Thank you Bryan Goldberg. This dedicated Louise Brooks fan took the time to visit the Kansas State Historical Society, where he went through the Louise Brooks clippings file. (Some of this material is on-line here.) Among the material Bryan sent were clippings from the 1930's and 1950's which I had never seen before. Thank you Bryan Goldberg.

Lulu's Back in Town

Spotted this article, "Louise Brooks Lulu's Back in Town," in the on-line edition of the New York Post. (It ran on Sunday, November 14th - Louise Brooks' birthday.) The article mentions that Pandora's Box will be shown tomorrow and Saturday in New York City.

"Pandora's Box will unreel Thursday and Saturday at 9:30 p.m. at Anthology Film Archives, part of a four-day showcase called "German Cinema: Silent Into Sound." Also in the series, running Thursday through next Sunday, are two by Fritz Lang, M (1931) and Metropolis (1926), plus Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari(1919) and Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel (1930). The Anthology is at Second Avenue and Second Street in the East Village; (212) 505-5181."