During this pandemic era, I continue to stay home and conduct what research I can over the internet. And recently, I came across a few items which I had never seen before. I thought I would share them with readers of this blog. Here is the third installment in a short series of new finds.
This new find has to do with a rare personal appearance by Louise Brooks while she was a film star. By my count, Brooks made less than five or six such appearance. On most of these occasions, she appeared on stage prior to the showing of a film. On November 5, 1926, for instance, Brooks made a personal appearance at a benefit pre-release midnight showing of We're in the Navy Now at the Rialto Theater in New York City; We're in the Navy Now was directed by Brooks' then-husband, Eddie Sutherland, who was also on hand. (As were Paramount stars Betty Bronson, Ricardo Cortez, Richard 'Skeets' Gallagher, William Powell, Evelyn Brent, and Philip Strange. And Helen Morgan sang!) The event was a benefit showing in aid of the New York American Christmas and Relief Fund.
Another such occasion took place on April 9, 1927, while Brooks and the cast and crew of Rolled Stockings were filming in Berkeley, California; this time, Brooks (and James Hall) made a personal appearance prior to a screening of Evening Clothes at the nearby American theater in Oakland, California. Here is the advertisement for the occasion.
My new find documents the time in July 1927 when Brooks and other Paramount stars were asked (by the studio, no doubt) to attend the Pacific Coast premiere of the Emil Jannings' film, The Way of All Flesh, at the Criterion theater in Los Angeles. I don't know if Brooks appeared on stage, or merely was in the audience - but this was a special occasion as all loge seats for the evening cost $1.65, a large amount at a time when most seats cost less than one dollar.
Besides Emil Jannings himself (making his first American stage performance to mark his first Paramount film) were other Paramount stars such as Pola Negri, Clara Bow, Fay Wray, Bebe Daniels and others - including Brooks' past and future co-stars Esther Ralston (American Venus), Wallace Beery (Now We're in the Air, Beggars of Life), Noah Beery (Evening Clothes), Fred Kohler (City Gone Wild), Chester Conklin (A Social Celebrity), and Adolphe Menjou (A Social Celebrity, Evening Clothes). Their names are all listed at the bottom of this newspaper advertisement.
Incidentally, also possibly present was Frederico Sagor Maas, who penned the story behind The Way of All Flesh. Notably, Maas also wrote the story that served as the basis for Rolled Stockings. I first met Frederica at a publisher's lunch at Musso & Franks in Hollywood in 1999. Enthused about her then forthcoming book, I arranged to put on an event with Maas at the bookstore where I worked in San Francisco. It was her first bookstore event. Because she was nearly blind and 99 years old, we sat together and I interviewed Maas before a a modest those enthusiastic store crowd. Later we went out to dinner and she told stories about Clara Bow, Joan Crawford, Eric von Stroheim and others, as well as what it was like to work in early Hollywood. Be sure and check out her recommended memoir, the Shocking Miss Pilgrim. The following day, she did a booksigning at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, something I helped arrange, and she sold more than 60 books in flash. No "swell fish" there.
To mark the occasion, the bookstore I worked at used to issue trading cards in conjunction with the various events we put on. Here is the card for Frederica Sagor Maas, which depicts her in the 1920s, around the time she worked with the film legends mentioned above. I treasure my autographed copy of her book, and my autographed copy of her trading card. Here is a LINK to the blog I wrote about her when she died in 2012 at the age of 111.
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