Gift ideas for the Louise Brooks or silent film fan on your list

There are a handful of new releases in 2015 which would make a great gift for the Louise Brooks or silent film fan on your list. Click on the title links to make a purchase.

The Diary of a Lost Girl (Kino Lorber)
by G.W. Pabst

The second and final collaboration of actress Louise Brooks and director G.W. Pabst (Pandora's Box), DIARY OF A LOST GIRL is a provocative adaptation of Margarethe Böhme's notorious novel, in which the naive daughter of a middle class pharmacist is seduced by her father's assistant, only to be disowned and sent to a repressive home for wayward girls. She escapes, searches for her child, and ends up in a high-class brothel, only to turn the tables on the society which had abused her. It's another tour-de-force performance by Brooks, whom silent film historian Kevin Brownlow calls an actress of brilliance, a luminescent personality and a beauty unparalleled in screen history.


Special Features: Mastered in HD from archival 35mm elements, and digitally restored, Audio commentary by Thomas Gladysz, Director, Louise Brooks Society, Windy Riley Goes Hollywood (1930, 18 Min., featuring Louise Brooks)

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Louise Brooks Detective (NBM Publishing)
by Rick Geary

A fictional story centered on actress Louise Brooks, this graphic novel by Rick Geary is spun around her actual brief meteoric career as a smoldering film actress who popularized bangs. Geary fantasizes about her coming back to her home town of Wichita where she becomes intrigued by a murder involving a friend, a famous reclusive writer and a shady beau. Not before she gets herself in great danger will she emerge with the solution the police fail to grasp.

The author, Rick Geary, is related to Louise Brooks.

"A fun, twisty mystery for both film buffs and crime fiction lovers, and the final revelation is satisfying." — Publishers Weekly

"He knows his way around both history and crime stories. Geary is also possessed of a unique and charming art style, something I've dubbed 'faux woodcut,' which makes everything he draws look like it's lifted from some magical era of the past that never really existed, but should have." — Andrew A. Smith, Tribune News Service

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Louise Brooks, Frank Zappa, & Other Charmers & Dreamers (The Devault-Graves Agency)
by Tom Graves
 

Award-winning author and journalist Tom Graves in "Louise Brooks, Frank Zappa, & Other Charmers & Dreamers" collects the best of his long-form journalism and profiles as well as his in-depth interviews with a variety of curious personalities. The lead piece is "My Afternoon with Louise Brooks" about Graves's encounter in 1982 with the reclusive silent film legend Louise Brooks. He was the last journalist ever to sit bedside with Miss Brooks, who allowed very few people into her life. Also included are Graves's 1979 sit down with the king of Southern grit lit, Harry Crews, his discovery of the first Elvis impersonator, his search with the help of Quentin Tarantino to find actress Linda Haynes, who had vanished from Hollywood. Included are also Graves's in-depth question and answer interviews with: Frank Zappa, Mick Taylor of the Rolling Stones, Lee Mavers of the cult band the La's, and Mark Lindsay of Paul Revere and the Raiders. Some of Graves's best essays are also part of this anthology: his piece on the Sex Pistols in Memphis, an apology for biographer Albert Goldman, a revisit of Woodstock, and more.

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Wild Bill Wellman: Hollywood Rebel  (Pantheon)

by William Wellman  Jr 

The extraordinary life—the first—of the legendary, under celebrated Hollywood director known in his day as “Wild Bill” (and he was!) Wellman, whose eighty-two movies (six of them uncredited), many of them iconic; many of them sharp, cold, brutal; others poetic, moving; all of them a lesson in close-up art, ranged from adventure and gangster pictures to comedies, aviation, romances, westerns, and searing social dramas.

Among his iconic pictures: the pioneering World War I epic Wings (winner of the first Academy Award for best picture), Public Enemy (the toughest gangster picture of them all), Nothing Sacred, the original A Star Is Born, Beggars of Life (with Louise Brooks), The Call of the Wild, The Ox-Bow Incident, Battleground, The High and the Mighty...

Wellman directed Hollywood’s biggest stars for three decades, including Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, John Wayne, Lauren Bacall, and Clint Eastwood. It was said he directed “like a general trying to break out of a beachhead.” He made pictures with such noted producers as Darryl F. Zanuck, Nunnally Johnson, Jesse Lasky, and David O. Selznick.

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Ziegfeld and His Follies: A Biography of Broadway's Greatest Producer (University Press of Kentucky)
by Cynthia Brideson and Sara Brideson

The name Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. (1867–1932) is synonymous with the revues that the legendary impresario produced at the turn of the twentieth century. These extravagant performances were filled with catchy tunes, high-kicking chorus girls, striking costumes, and talented stars such as Eddie Cantor, Fanny Brice, Marilyn Miller, W. C. Fields, Will Rogers. and Louise Brooks. After the success of his Follies, Ziegfeld revolutionized theater performance with the musical Show Boat (1927) and continued making Broadway hits―including Sally (1920), Rio Rita (1927), and The Three Musketeers (1928)―several of which were adapted for the silver screen.

In this definitive biography, authors Cynthia Brideson and Sara Brideson offer a comprehensive look at both the life and legacy of the famous producer. Drawing on a wide range of sources―including Ziegfield's previously unpublished letters to his second wife, Billie Burke (who later played Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz), and to his daughter Patricia―the Bridesons shed new light on this enigmatic man. They provide a lively and well-rounded account of Ziegfeld as a father, a husband, a son, a friend, a lover, and an alternately ruthless and benevolent employer. Lavishly illustrated with over seventy-five images, this meticulously researched book presents an intimate and in-depth portrait of a figure who profoundly changed American entertainment.

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The Roaring Road: Book 1 The Road West (Road Trip Dog Publishing)
by Johann M.C. Laesecke

(Jazz Age inspired fiction) 1924 – Prohibition has been the law since 1920 but that did not stop people from wanting alcoholic beverages nor did it stop the organizations that supplied them. Lack of good alcoholic beverages causes many speakeasies and gangs to manufacture low quality substitutes made from dangerous ingredients. Violence is on the rise as the gangs protect their turf and their products. Dan and Laure grew up in small villages in the far north and south areas of Chicago. They meet in unusual circumstances and Dan loves her at first sight. Laure has the same feelings for him but a past relationship causes her to be cautious and Dan is forced to undertake an impossible mission. Thus begins the adventure of The Roaring Road. Take a prototype Duesenberg and a Road Trip Dog - add mayhem, a mob chief, a group of highwaymen and a gang of bank robbers, a pair of kidnappers and assorted other villains, throw in visits to speakeasies plus the lure of Hollywood in the form of a prank devised by the infamous actress Louise Brooks that turns out to be wildly successful, and Laure is offered a role in the 1926 movie 'The Great Gatsby'. Automobiles, trains, aeroplanes, flapper glamour, adventure, mayhem and lust on the roads and rails and in the speakeasies and blind pigs of Prohibition. What could possibly go wrong?

The Roaring Road: Book 2 The Road East (Road Trip Dog Publishing)
by Johann M.C. Laesecke

(Jazz Age inspired fiction) 1926 - Laure and Dan are being drawn into Hollywood even as their challenge of moving their contraband inventory becomes critical. Laure is a dancer on the 1926 production of The Great Gatsby movie, while Dan has an offer to become a movie producer. There are others who want Laure, and not for her dancing. Trouble looms as kidnappers are sent to grab Laure and send her to Chicago where her life expectancy will be very short. The railcar full of wine and booze is hijacked and their friend Scott is taken as a hostage and is forced to become a morphine addict. Dan's crew captures the train and Scott back and they send him to the rehab clinic Scott and Dan helped fund. Trouble continues to come at Dan and Laure but they gather a small group of people with unusual talents to help. The Chicago gangs become more involved and more mayhem leads to a confrontation in Cherryvale, Kansas which happens to be the hometown of Louise Brooks. Come with us on our adventure tale of captures, rescues, recapture, speakeasies, mayhem and lust on the roaring roads and rails of the Prohibition era. What Could Possibly Go Wrong?