This post is a kind of sidebar to a long and heavily illustrated piece I wrote called "One booksellers memoirs, told through 'baseball' cards." The piece is awaiting publication, when and if it is published, I will edit in a link.
Anyone who has been reading this blog for a while knows that I once worked as a bookseller at the Booksmith in San Francisco, much of the time running the store's events program. As such, I worked with publishers in selecting authors, creating a monthly schedule, arranging for newspaper listings, and generally banging the drum to make sure someone showed up. I also hosted events – which meant setting up chairs and a podium, making sure there were books, bottled water and signing pens available, and most importantly, introducing the writer before an audience which might range between three and 300.
Author events can be highly competitive, especially in the bookstore rich San Francisco Bay Area. In order to make the series stand out, the Booksmith began issuing a series of promotional cards for most every author event the store put on. These author cards were similar to baseball cards or other like collectibles, except that these cards featured contemporary poets, novelists, biographers, historians and more than a few pop culture celebrities. And because of my interest in early film and film history and especially Louise Brooks, there were also a handful of events related to authors in those areas who then recently had a book published.
The three authors I hosted who are most closely associated with Louise
Brooks (among the approximately 30 related to early film) are Peter
Cowie, Frederica Sagor Maas, and Barry Paris. There are stories behind
each event, and each card.
-- The event with screenwriter Frederica Sagor Maas #302 took place on July 10, 1999, just four days after her 99th birthday. The event was held to mark the publication of Maas' The Shocking Miss Pilgrim (University Press of Kentucky).
One day in April,1999 I was roaming about the floor of the national booksellers convention in Los Angeles (or was it Anaheim). I was looking at new and forthcoming books and considering authors who I might like to have for an event. That's when I came across the booth housing the University Press of Kentucky, and met the charming Leila Salisbury. I visited the UPK booth because I had heard they were publishing books on film history, and I wanted to check things out. Leila and I struck up a conversation, and that when she handed me a advance copy of The Shocking Miss Pilgrim, the memoir of an early Hollywood screenwriter whose career began in the silent era. The author's name seemed familiar, but I couldn't quite place it. I took the advance copy back to my hotel, and later, began reading it before I went to sleep. . . . However, I couldn't put it down as one fascinating anecdote followed another until I came across Louise Brooks' name and realized who the author of the book was -- Frederica Sagor, the author of the story that served as the basis for the 1927 Louise Brooks' film, Rolled Stockings! OMG.
When Leila first handed me a copy of The Shocking Miss Pilgrim, she casually mentioned the press would be holding a lunch with the author at Musso and Franks, the famous Hollywood restaurant. First thing the next day, I returned to the UPK booth and wormed my way into the luncheon. I simply had to meet the author, a then 98 year old woman who had known and penned scripts not only Louise Brooks, but also Garbo, Clara Bow, Norma Shearer, Erich von Stroheim and others.
That fortuitous encounter in April led to Maas' first ever bookstore event at the Booksmith just three months later. Maas had just turned 99 years old, and was somewhat frail, nearly blind, and hard of hearing - but still mentally sharp. She wasn't able to stand and give a talk or read from her book, and so she and I sat down together in front of few dozen film buffs and I asked her a bunch of softball questions drawn from my reading of her anecdotal memoir. The crowd loved her, and hung on every word. Of course, it didn’t hurt that Maas told some dishy stories including one about Joan Crawford, who she met when the future star first arrived in Hollywood. Maas was assigned by the studio to greet Crawford (then Lucille LeSueur) at the train station, show her about, take her shopping, and teach her how to dress. Still mentally sharp and opinionated after nearly a century, Maas recalled not being impressed by the young Crawford, and thought the then aspiring actress little more than a “tramp.” The crowd giggled with delight.
After her presentation and book signing, my wife and I took Maas and her helper (her niece) out to dinner, and once again Maas told more stories of early Hollywood. I got to ask her about Brooks, and I was in heaven. The following day, I arranged for Maas to sign books at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, where she spoke briefly from the stage and again wowed a crowd of nearly a thousand. At the book signing that followed, everyone wanted to meet this witness to history. We ended up selling nearly 100 books!
I have written about Frederica in the past here on the Louise Brooks Society blog. Those posts can be found HERE and HERE. The Shocking Miss Pilgrim did well, and even went into a second printing - pretty good for a memoir by a little know individual published by a university press. Frederica also endured, and became a supercentenarian, and one of the oldest surviving entertainers from the silent film era. In fact, Maas lived to the age of 111, making her at the time of her death the second oldest person in California and the eighteenth oldest in America, as well as the 44th oldest verified person in the world. If you haven't read her memoir, The Shocking Miss Pilgrim, I would encourage you to do so.
-- The event with biographer Barry Paris #413 took place on November 14, 2000, on what would have been Louise Brooks' 94th birthday. The event was held for the reissue of the Paris biography of actress (University of Minnesota Press).
For a brief time in the late 1990s, both the Barry Paris biography of Brooks as well as Brooks' own Lulu in Hollywood had fallen out of print. (This was before the era of e-books, when little goes out of print.) I led a grass roots campaign to bring both books back into circulation, emailing and phoning and chatting with whoever might listen. Eventually, the University of Minnesota Press answered the call. They too were starting to publish film history. (My name and the Louise Brooks Society are acknowledged on the copy right page of each edition.)
In an unprecedented "thank you" for my efforts, the UMP flew Barry Paris from his home in Pittsburgh, PA to San Francisco, where he did an event at the Booksmith. I was thrilled, as were others. A good crowd turned out, with a few coming up from as far away as Los Angeles, hundreds of miles away. And again, we sold a good number of books. A year or two later, I stopped by the UMP booth at the annual bookseller's convention and ask how things were going with the book. I was told the Barry Paris biography was still going strong, and in fact, it was among the university press' best selling backlist titles. Both books are still in print today.
BTW: to mark the appearance of Barry Paris at the Booksmith, I produced a limited edition autographed broadside featuring a brief quotation from the Paris book. It can be seen HERE.
-- The event with European film historian Peter Cowie #890 took place on November 12, 2006, just two days ahead of the Louise Brooks centennial. The Booksmith event was held to mark the publication of Cowie's Louise Brooks: Lulu Forever (Rizzoli), which was published to coincide with the centennial and the handful of events which were taking place around the country.
Sometime earlier that year, I had caught wind of the books' forthcoming publication. (I think Cowie had contacted me, as I am acknowledged in the book.) And once again, I was roaming about the floor of the national booksellers convention when I came across the Rizzoli booth. The press representative and I chatted, and he gave me a photocopy of the book's manuscript. Flash forward nearly half a year, and Cowie's publisher was putting together a small author tour in support of the publication of Louise Brooks: Lulu Forever. Rizzoli contacted me to gauge my interest, and of course I said yes.
The Booksmith event was held off-site at the historic Balboa Theatre in San Francisco. I put together a slide-show of rare images and spoke briefly. Cowie spoke, there was a screening of a little seen Brooks' film, and Cowie signed books in the lobby. It was a memorable occasion. I even created a vintage looking handbill for the occasion which were given away to all of those who attended the event.
I gave Peter Cowie one of the Louise Brooks buttons I made featuring a vintage caricature of the actress. He can be seen wearing it in the picture above. And, he can be seen wearing it in the centennial event held two days later in the Dryden Theater at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York.
Those are the stories behind the three cards pictured above (front) and below (back side of card). To be continued....HERE
BTW: the Booksmith card series began in 1993, and ran for 15 years; by the time it ended, the number of cards totaled more than 1000, making it, I would hazard to guess, one of the larger non-sport card series of the time. However, less than 30 cards relate to early film. An annotated checklist of all the cards can be found at www.thomasgladysz.com/booksmith-author-cards-a-checklist/
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