Louise Brooks and Denis Marion: a correspondence

Just recently, I acquired a French-language book, Denis Marion; pleins feux sur un homme de l'ombre (LE CRI). It is about the French-speaking Belgian writer, lawyer, journalist, chess player, literary critic, film critic, playwright, and university professor Denis Marion. I did so because the book contains a 17-page chapter about Marion's long correspondence with Louise Brooks. And though I don't read French, I was able to pick through the chapter (by Muriel Andrin and Caroline Pirotte) and gleam some fascinating material. Happily, for me, bits of some of their letters are presented in their original English.

Marion is only mention in passing in the Barry Paris biography, but from what I was able to find out, Marion (whose real name is Marcel Defosse) was born in 1906, the same year as Brooks. He began a career as a lawyer while indulging in his passion for chess (he participated in six championships in Belgium). In 1928, he published a laudatory article on a novel by André Malraux, which earned him the friendship of the famed author. In the early 1930s, he was one of the founders of the Screen Club (the precursor of the Belgian Royal Cinematheque ), and was involved in the making of various documentary films. In 1945, he left his law firm to become the correspondent in Paris of the Belgian daily newspaper Le Soir. He signed his articles under the pseudonym Denis Marion. As such, he wrote books on literature (on Daniel Defoe, Edgar Allen Poe), and the cinema (including titles on Erich von Stroheim, and Igmar Bergman), a novel published by Gallimard, two plays, a couple of screenplays (both films were directed by Albert Valentin), and gave classes at the Université Libre de Bruxelles on the history of cinema.

Denis Marion

Marion knew many cultural personalities in France, as well as in the post-WWII film world. I don't think Marion and Brooks ever met. But, they did strike up a seven-year correspondence with Brooks that began in 1962 and lasted until 1969.

Chapter VII of Denis Marion; pleins feux sur un homme de l'ombre, titled "Louise Brooks/Denis Marion, fragments d'une correspondence (1962-1968)" offers a glimpse of what I gather to have been a vigorous meeting of minds. At one point in the exchange of letters, there was much discussion regarding Erich von Stroheim. Marion was writing a book on the director, and was pleased to be in contact with someone who had met him.

According to a Brooks’ letter from 1964, the actress met von Stroheim at G.W. Pabst’s Hollywood apartment in 1935. “I shall never forget him sitting tense, separate, flashing me a quick, ugly look and saying not a word as we were introduced. He made not even a gesture of rising. In that look, we knew each other — why pretend?” Brooks goes on to discuss silent era actors who made up a past.

In 1966, the French film journal Etudes Cinematographiques published its "von Stroheim" issue, edited by Denis Marion (and dedicated to Brooks). The actress contributed one page of notes about the director excerpted from her 1964 contribution to the Montreal journal Objectif. Brooks' name also appears on the cover alongside Rene Clair, Lillian Gish, Jean Renoir and others.

Here are some highlights which I gathered from "Louise Brooks/Denis Marion, fragments d'une correspondence (1962-1968)," which only quotes snippets from their correspondence. All together, this is fascinating material, and well worth publishing in its entirety.

August 27, 1962
Begins corresponding with French writer Denis Marion.

August 28, 1962
Writes to Marion, "Yesterday when I wrote to you I was so busy -- reading your article, feeding the cat, checking my notebook, making a cake, writing to Lotte [Eisner], clipping the ivy and reading a letter from William Inge." 

November 20, 1962
Marion writes to Brooks offering to translate her book Women in Film into French and to help find a publisher in France.

November 25, 1962
Writes a letter to Marion in which Brooks states her reluctant admiration for Mae Murray.

December 8, 1962
Writes a letter to Marion offering to help research Erich von Stroheim. Brooks also writes that she will acquire a copy of Daniel Defoe's Moll Flanders, which she plans to read again.

August 26, 1963
Writes a letter to Denis Marion, who notes she often spent nights in Chez Florence in Montmartre while in Paris.

September 18, 1963
Writes a letter to Marion in which Brooks says "Perhaps I never would have had courage to write had you not told me to read novels."

October 3, 1963
Writes a letter to Marion asking which Balzac novels he suggests she read. "I reread Manon Lescaut. It is just as silly to me now as 35 years ago.... Another book I read again was [Flaubert's] Madame Bovary."

March 27, 1967
Writes a letter to Marion stating she gave up sex in 1958. "But right up to my retirement from sex in 1958, I always had some pretty lesbians on a string -- flattering and fun. So if I am known as a lesbian it is my own doing, and I don't mind, I like it."

May 10, 1967
Writes a letter to Marion which states she has "fallen in love with Stroheim -- as a person now."

November 13, 1967
Writes a letter to Marion, "Tomorrow I shall be 61, knowing no more about myself or why I do anything then I did at 6. Except this -- all my life I have been a learner. That is why I write. As Dylan Thomas put it... 'My poetry is the record of my struggles from darkness to some measure of light'."

July 10, 1969
Correspondence with the French writer Denis Marion ends.