Friday, December 31, 2021

Happy New Year from the Louise Brooks Society

Happy New Year from the Louise Brooks Society. Lets hope 2022 will be a good year for all. If you are wondering who the exhausted woman is to the left of baby 1927, it is one of the of the women from the various ports-of-call who appeared in the 1928 film, A Girl in Every Port. It is 1930s film star Myrna Loy!

Myrna Loy was just one of the many emerging stars who appeared in A Girl in Every Port. Here is a still from that film featuring Loy and Victor McLaglen.


And finally, to end the year right / or to begin the new year also right, here is a lovely portrait of Louise Brooks from A Girl in Every Port. It is a somewhat different look for the actress. Don't you think?

Tuesday, December 28, 2021

Around the World with Louise Brooks

I have good news and not so good news.... First the not so good news. Despite the fact that I have steadily applied myself to working on my two volume book, Around the World with Louise Brooks, I will not be able to complete it this year as I had hoped. I estimate that I am 80% done with this rather large project, which currently stands at more than 900 pages. I admit to a bit of project creep -- I am always coming across new and interesting things -- but also, life and this crazy world and another couple of projects have diverted my attention. 

I will, of course, keep everyone updated on my progress and the books' publication date, which should be in 2022. I am anxious to finish it, as it has consumed me for too long and I am anxious to get going on other things.

The covers for the two volumes of Around the World with Louise Brooks

And now the good news.... Consequently, I need to set Around the World with Louise Brooks aside for a couple / three months in order to work on a new book project, a tie-in to one of Brooks' films which is currently being newly restored and which will likely debut next year (provided the world doesn't end). I have assisted in a small way with the film's restoration, but can't say which film it is, as this project is under wraps until its debut in 2022.

This new project, a slim book under 150 pages, will be similar to two of my earlier publications, Beggars of Life: a Companion to the 1928 Film, and Now We're in the Air: A Companion to the Once Lost Film. I intend to get this new book project done in time to the restoration debut in 2022. Stay tuned to this blog and the Louise Brooks Society website for details.

While conducting research for Around the World with Louise Brooks, I spent hundreds of hours going through various online newspaper and magazine archives. I bookmarked these sites in order to return to them again, but also because some proved difficult to find, in that some were come across only by chance, or were found while looking for something else. 

Recently, I completed an overhaul of the Resources / Links page of this blog which include a handful of link lists which bookmark film magazines dating from the silent and early sound era. At the time these lists were compiled, each link was freely accessible on the web, without need of subscription, institutional affiliation, or local access. Generally speaking, I have included magazines published from the time before Brooks' began her film career, but not those published after her career ended, around 1940. Not all publications listed contain material related to Louise Brooks, though many do. Happy hunting / happy researching.

On the Resources / Links page, you will find links to film magazines from silent and early sound era from all around the world. There are publications from not only the United States and Germany and France, but also Poland, Spain, Cuba, Brazil, Australia and elsewhere. This page is a work in progress. I should add more links to obscure publications in the coming weeks. Are these lists missing a worthwhile site? Send a suggestions to LouiseBrooksSocietyATgMAILdotCOM


Friday, December 24, 2021

Happy holidays from the Louise Brooks Society

Happy holidays from the Louise Brooks Society! What a year it has been, and what a year next year promises to be. BTW, it's never too late to buy the LBS a little something. Check out the newly updated Amazon wishlist HERE. You might even find something for yourself.

Lately, I have been building up the Louise Brooks Society social media presence. As a matter of fact, this post marks the 100th post this year, bringing the total since I started blogging back in 2002 to more than 3,400 blog posts. This blog also passed another small milestone when it received its 1000th share via the floating share this menu on the left. Hazaa! I have also tweaked and streamlined this blog, adding a search function and donation function, removing dead links, etc... I hope you like what I have done with the place. I also hope you will SUBSCRIBE, which can be done in the right hand column. 

My biggest effort has gone toward the Louise Brooks Society YouTube channel, where I have added a few original videos and linked to dozen of other must-watch documentaries and shorts. Check it out HERE and don't forget to subscribe. BTW, the LBS also has a Vimeo and Soundcloud accounts, where there are other interesting media to explore.

The LBS has a longstanding Twitter and Facebook  account, but just recently, I have also established a LBS Instagram account, which can be found HERE. Check it out, and please follow.

I have also begun to set up a Louise Brooks Society Etsy shop, as a compliment to the long standing LBS Cafe Press gift shop. I plan on expanding the available selection in both in the coming weeks.

If you want a quick reference to all of the LBS social media accounts, then check out the LBS on LinkTree.  Happy holidays from the Louise Brooks Society. And stay tuned to this blog for a a few major announcements in the coming months!





Monday, December 20, 2021

Recommended Reading on Early Film

Here is a small selection of new and recommended books on early film (the silent and early sound era). Perhaps it's just me, but it seems there are fewer appealing books on this increasingly distant time in film history. I haven't read all of these book, only a couple of them, but know of the many of the  author's previous work and am confident it their quality. And, I am eager to check them out myself. Some of these titles, like those on Greta Garbo, should also intrigue those interested in Louise Brooks. Each of these recommended works was released sometime in 2021.

Garbo
by Robert Gottlieb 

Award-winning master critic Robert Gottlieb takes a singular and multifaceted look at the life of silver screen legend Greta Garbo, and the culture that worshiped her.

“Wherever you look in the period between 1925 and 1941,” Robert Gottlieb writes in Garbo, “Greta Garbo is in people’s minds, hearts, and dreams.” Strikingly glamorous and famously inscrutable, she managed, in sixteen short years, to infiltrate the world’s subconscious; the end of her film career, when she was thirty-six, only made her more irresistible. Garbo appeared in just twenty-four Hollywood movies, yet her impact on the world―and that indescribable, transcendent presence she possessed―was rivaled only by Marilyn Monroe’s. She was looked on as a unique phenomenon, a sphinx, a myth, the most beautiful woman in the world, but in reality she was a Swedish peasant girl, uneducated, naïve, and always on her guard. When she arrived in Hollywood, aged nineteen, she spoke barely a word of English and was completely unprepared for the ferocious publicity that quickly adhered to her as, almost overnight, she became the world’s most famous actress.

In Garbo, the acclaimed critic and editor Robert Gottlieb offers a vivid and thorough retelling of her life, beginning in the slums of Stockholm and proceeding through her years of struggling to elude the attention of the world―her desperate, futile striving to be “left alone.” He takes us through the films themselves, from M-G-M’s early presentation of her as a “vamp”―her overwhelming beauty drawing men to their doom, a formula she loathed―to the artistic heights of Camille and Ninotchka (“Garbo Laughs!”), by way of Anna Christie (“Garbo Talks!”), Mata Hari, and Grand Hotel. He examines her passive withdrawal from the movies, and the endless attempts to draw her back. And he sketches the life she led as a very wealthy woman in New York―“a hermit about town”―and the life she led in Europe among the Rothschilds and men like Onassis and Churchill. Her relationships with her famous co-star John Gilbert, with Cecil Beaton, with Leopold Stokowski, with Erich Maria Remarque, with George Schlee―were they consummated? Was she bisexual? Was she sexual at all? The whole world wanted to know―and still wants to know.

In addition to offering his rich account of her life, Gottlieb, in what he calls “A Garbo Reader,” brings together a remarkable assembly of glimpses of Garbo from other people’s memoirs and interviews, ranging from Ingmar Bergman and Tallulah Bankhead to Roland Barthes; from literature (she turns up everywhere―in Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, in Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene, and the letters of Marianne Moore and Alice B. Toklas); from countless songs and cartoons and articles of merchandise. Most extraordinary of all are the pictures―250 or so ravishing movie stills, formal portraits, and revealing snapshots―all reproduced here in superb duotone. She had no personal vanity, no interest in clothes and make-up, yet the story of Garbo is essentially the story of a face and the camera. Forty years after her career ended, she was still being tormented by unrelenting paparazzi wherever she went.  Includes Black-and-White Photographs


The Savvy Sphinx: How Garbo Conquered Hollywood
by Robert Dance

From the late 1920s through the thirties, Greta Garbo (1905–1990) was the biggest star in Hollywood. She stopped making films in 1941, at only thirty-six, and thereafter sought a discreet private life. Still, her fame only increased as the public and press clamored for news of the former actress. At the time of her death, forty-nine years later, photographers continued to stalk her, and her death was reported on the front pages of newspapers worldwide.

In The Savvy Sphinx: How Garbo Conquered Hollywood, Robert Dance traces the strategy a working-class Swedish teenager employed to enter motion pictures, find her way to America, and ultimately become Hollywood’s most glorious product. Brilliant tactics allowed her to reach Hollywood’s upper-most echelon and made her one of the last century’s most famous people. Garbo was discovered by director Mauritz Stiller, who saw promise in her nascent talent and insisted that she accompany him when he was lured to America by an MGM contract. By twenty she was a movie star and the epitome of glamour. Soon Garbo was among the highest-paid performers, and in many years she occupied the number one position. Unique among studio players, she quickly insisted on and was granted final authority over her scripts, costars, and directors. But Garbo never played the Hollywood game, and by the late twenties her unwillingness to grant interviews, attend premieres, or meet visiting dignitaries won her the sobriquet the Swedish Sphinx.

The Savvy Sphinx, which includes over a hundred beautiful images, charts her rise and her long self-imposed exile as the queen who abdicated her Hollywood throne. Garbo was the paramount star produced by the Hollywood studio system, and by the time of her death her legendary status was assured.

The Rise & Fall of Max Linder: The First Cinema Celebrity
by Lisa Stein Haven

Max Linder, born Gabriel Leuvielle in St. Loubes, France in 1883, started in films with the Pathe Brothers in Vincennes, just outside of Paris in 1905, making him one of the first film comedians that became world-renowned. In fact, there is evidence that Linder was the first screen celebrity to see his name in print. His comedy timing and gags (Linder started writing his own scenarios early on) have been copied and imitated by many of his followers, including Charlie Chaplin. 

Linder's story is both a comedy and a tragedy. His meteoric rise to fame by 1907/8 hit a roadblock in 1914 with the onset of World War I, and was dealt a death blow by his attempts to revive his career in America and Austria. His marriage to a young wife was ill-fated and ill-timed, leading Linder to take the life of his wife and himself on the night of October 31, 1925, leaving a 16-month-old daughter behind, Maud, who would devote her life to restoring his film legacy.  

Lisa Stein Haven is an Professor of English at Ohio University Zanesville, specializing in British and American modernist literature, the Beat poets and silent film comedy, especially the work of Charlie and Syd Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Max Linder.  

I wrote about this excellent book on an earlier blog. Check it out HERE.


Movie Mavens: US Newspaper Women Take On the Movies, 1914-1923
edited by Richard Abel

During the early era of cinema, moviegoers turned to women editors and writers for the latest on everyone's favorite stars, films, and filmmakers. Richard Abel returns these women to film history with an anthology of reviews, articles, and other works. Drawn from newspapers of the time, the selections show how columnists like Kitty Kelly, Mae Tinee, Louella Parsons, and Genevieve Harris wrote directly to female readers. They also profiled women working in jobs like scenario writer and film editor and noted the industry's willingness to hire women. Sharp wit and frank opinions entertained and informed a wide readership hungry for news about the movies but also about women on both sides of the camera. Abel supplements the texts with hard-to-find biographical information and provides context on the newspapers and silent-era movie industry as well as on the professionals and films highlighted by these writers. 

An invaluable collection of rare archival sources, Movie Mavens reveals women's essential contribution to the creation of American film culture.

Richard Abel is a professor emeritus of international cinema and media studies at the University of Michigan. His recent books include Menus for Movie Land: Newspapers and the Emergence of American Film Culture, 1913-1916, and Motor City Movie Culture, 1916-1925. He is also the coeditor of Barbara C. Hodgdon’s writings, Ghostly Fragmentsand the 2017 winner of the Jean Mitry Award.


20th Century-Fox: Darryl F. Zanuck and the Creation of the Modern Film Studio
by Scott Eyman 

From New York Times bestselling author Scott Eyman, this is the story one of the most influential studios in film history, from its glory days under the leadership of legendary movie mogul Darryl F. Zanuck up to its 2019 buyout by Disney.
 
March 20, 2019 marked the end of an era -- Disney took ownership of the movie empire that was Fox. For almost a century before that historic date, Twentieth Century-Fox was one of the preeminent producers of films, stars, and filmmakers. Its unique identity in the industry and place in movie history is unparalleled -- and one of the greatest stories to come out of Hollywood. One man, a legendary producer named Darryl F. Zanuck, is the heart of the story. This narrative tells the complete tale of Zanuck and the films, stars, intrigue, and innovations of the iconic studio that was.
 
Scott Eyman is an award-winning author of 15 books about the movies, three of which have been New York Times bestsellers. He's a frequent book reviewer for The Wall Street Journal, Film Comment, and the New York Observer. His books include Hank & Jim: The Fifty-Year Friendship of Henry Fonda and James Stewart; John Wayne: Louis B. Mayer: Lion of Hollywood; and Print the Legend: The Life and Times of John Ford.

Silent Vignettes: Stars, Studios and Stories from the Silent
by Tim Lussier

Pickford, Lloyd, Keaton, Garbo. You're familiar with these icons of silent film, of course - and they are here within these pages. But are you familiar with Francelia Billington? No? How about Harold Lockwood, Edna Flugrath, Marion Byron, Virginia Brown Faire? Still, no? 

Well, fear not. Film historian and author Tim Lussier ("Bare Knees" Flapper: The Life and Films of Virginia LeeCorbin) shines a belated spotlight on these unjustly forgotten men and women, each of whom brought untold joy to millions of fans in the years before movies learned to talk. When you read their stories in Silent Vignettes, you'll understand why.

"Silent film fans know there is a vast world of long-forgotten studios and stars just waiting to be rediscovered. . . Tim Lussier helps bring a complex era to life with these tales of 'film folks,' both familiar and obscure." - Lea Stans

 


Vitagraph: America's First Great Motion Picture Studio
by Andrew A. Erish 

In Vitagraph, Andrew A. Erish provides a comprehensive examination and reassessment of the company most responsible for defining and popularizing the American movie. This history challenges long-accepted Hollywood mythology that simply isn't true: that Paramount and Fox invented the feature film, that Universal created the star system, and that these companies, along with MGM and Warner Bros., developed motion pictures into a multi-million-dollar business. In fact, the truth about Vitagraph is far more interesting than the myths that later moguls propagated about themselves.

Established in 1897 by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith, Vitagraph was the leading producer of motion pictures for much of the silent era. Vitagraph established America's studio system, a division of labor utilizing specialized craftspeople and artists, including a surprising number of women and minorities, whose aesthetic innovations have long been incorporated into virtually all commercial cinema. They developed fundamental aspects of the form and content of American movies, encompassing everything from framing, lighting, and performance style to emphasizing character-driven comedy and drama in stories that respected and sometimes poked fun at every demographic of Vitagraph's vast audience. The company overcame resistance to multi-reel motion pictures by establishing a national distribution network for its feature films. Vitagraph's international distribution was even more successful, cultivating a worldwide preference for American movies that endures to the present. For most of its existence America's most influential studio was headquartered in Brooklyn, New York before relocating to Hollywood.

An historically rigorous and thorough account of the most influential producer of American motion pictures during the silent era, Erish draws on valuable primary material long overlooked by other historians to introduce readers to the fascinating, forgotten pioneers of Vitagraph. 

 ++++++

I have added some of these titles to my Louise Brooks Society wish list. If you are looking to help support the efforts of the Louise Brooks Society and gift the LBS with something from this list, your contribution will be greatly appreciated! Long live Lulu.

Friday, December 17, 2021

Searching the Young Companion magazine for Louise Brooks

Speaking of Chinese magazines on the Internet Archive, I also came across a bunch of issues of The Liangyou (良友 The Young Companion) magazine, which was published in Shanghai and founded by Wu Liande (伍聯德). Aimed toward the youth market, the magazine's readers were evidently interested in modern life, movie stars, and contemporary culture from the United States and Europe. Some 174 issues were published through 1945. Captions on its many interior photographs were often both in Chinese and English. I don't read or speak Chinese, but that didn't matter, as the magazines are heavily illustrated and attractive to look though.

I looked over the page of covers and noticed three that featured the Chinese - American movie star Anna May Wong. (She is a favorite, and I have read a couple of books on her.) From what I could tell, the actress only appeared on the cover of the magazine. There did not seem to be any interior articles, except for a one-page illustrated piece in the January 1929 issue.

June 1927

January 1929


June 1930

I flipped through about a dozen issues dating from 1929 and 1930, hoping to find something on Louise Brooks, but came up empty handed. I did find other illustrated pieces on American movie stars, like those pictured below. Perhaps I will look some more and find something on Brooks. Is that Richard Arlen and Anita Page pictured below?

I also noticed this back cover to the August 1930 issues, which includes Lupe Velez. Can anyone tell me what this page is for? Is it a promotion or advertisement for something?

The best thing I found was this four page spread depicting various American movie stars of the time. It is titled "The Well Known Screen Actresses." It dates May of 1931. I thought Brooks might have been included, but she is not. (Certainly, her earlier American films were shown in China as much as any other American actress. But that was a couple of years in the past. Perhaps she had been absent for too long from American screens?) A few of these actresses - Kay Johnson, Mary Lawlor, Catherine Moylan, Molly O'Day  - are unfamiliar to me.




Wednesday, December 15, 2021

Searching Ling long magazine for Louise Brooks

I recently noticed that a number of issues of Ling long magazine were online on the Internet Archive. Ling long was a popular women's magazine published in Shanghai from 1931 to 1937, during a time of dramatic social and political change in China. Today, the magazine offers researchers (and the curious like myself) an unique glimpse into women's lives in Republican-era China. 

I know most all of Louise Brooks' American films were shown in Shanghai at one time or another. And so, I was curious to know if anything about the actress or her films might find their way into this attractive illustrated magazine which sometimes featured American film stars on its cover. I was disappointed not to find anything about the actress - but I did find a lot of nifty stuff which I thought to share on this blog. 

I found stuff about short hairstyles for women (shown last - but very interesting to devotees of the bob hairstyle), as well as stuff about American movie stars of the time like Adolphe Menjou (Brooks' two time co-star), Anna May Wong (the Chinese-American actress who starred in Picadilly), Marion Davies, Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo, Pola Negri and even Peggy Fears (Brooks' Ziegfeld Follies friend). But alas, no Brooks. The search goes on.... (The paired pages are my composite, and are not as they originally appear in the magazine.)

Adolphe Menjou and other stars in caricature
 

Marion Davies - Brooks' friend and confidant
 

Fay Wray - who I once had the chance to meet

Pola Negri

Norma Shearer

Mary Brian, star of The Street of Forgotten Men
 
 
Is this Esther Ralston?

 
Garbo - can anyone tell me what these pages say? What is it with the tree and the snake?


A rather curious juxtaposition of images? A suggestion of lesbian longing?

A mannish Marlene Dietrich

The one and only Peggy Fears

Something about how much money the stars make?

Carole Lombard and Myrna Loy - a blonde comparison

"Sweetheart Bob"

"Girlie Mannish"

"Boyish Bob"

"Egyptian Bob"

"Pineapple"


Can anyone tell me what this page is about? Does the image depict slavish devotion?

Tuesday, December 14, 2021

Two more letters from Louise Brooks

Following the last couple of blog posts discussing letters from Louise Brooks, Philip Vorwald sent me scans of two letters which he owns and asked that I share them. Like the filmography in the form of a letter to Hollywood theater owner John Hampton, the second of the two letters posted here also discuss the actress' films.

If one didn't know better, it might be thought that Brooks had little if any interest in her own career. She quit Hollywood early on, and often declared that she never bothered to watch her own films. But, as these and the earlier posted letters show, she was a keen observer and knew most all of the details (the actors, the personal behind the camera, who visited the set, etc....) regarding her films.

This first brief note is dated March 10, 1967.  The second longer letter is dated June 13, 1967. Both are typed and signed in crayon, as was Brooks' usually manner of correspondence.







A few observations: with such attention to detail, it is evident that Brooks was keen on accurately documenting her own career, whether it be regarding correct cast credits, acquiring stills and writing articles, or in finding out who might still have prints of her surviving films. Louise Brooks was 50 years old at this point. That is not old by today's "standards," but it was then considered a bit older than it is now. At this point in one's life (I've been there), one does start to consider legacy - what one will leave behind. With one's accomplishments largely in the past, one strives to make sure that they are at least accurately recorded, if not recognized. 

It is interesting that Brooks was aware of Edna Mae Oliver's minor role in The American Venus (1926). Brooks herself had only a small role. (It was her second film appearance, following The Street of Forgotten Men, but her first screen credit.) Edna Mae Oliver was a popular character actor in the 1930s, and if your have ever seen A Tale of Two Cities (1935), starring Ronald Colman, you won't forget her. 


It is also interesting that Louise Brooks thought Now We're in the Air "a lot of fun," though she never bothered to see it. It is fun. I wish more of it had survived.

By the way, my book on that film is widely available: One can buy it NEW from Amazon (USA) | Indiebound | Bookshop.org | Powells | Barnes & Noble | Books-a-Million | Larry Edmunds (Hollywood, CA) | George Eastman Museum (Rochester, NY)

Or, buy the English-language edition from Amazon Australia | Brazil | Canada | France | Germany | India | Italy | Japan | Mexico | Netherlands | Poland | Singapore | Spain | Turkey | United Arab Emirates | United Kingdom    The English-language edition is also available from Open Trolley (Indonesia) and MightyApe (New Zealand)

Monday, December 13, 2021

A small, but telling archive of Louise Brooks letters

A few months ago, a generous collector shared scans of a small number of handwritten Louise Brooks letters, postcards, and Christmas cards which he recently acquired. He shared them with me on the condition I do not share them, which was ok by me, as I was simply eager to read them. However, I was allowed to gleam information from them, which I have added to one of my three Louise Brooks chronologies located on the Louise Brooks Society website. The newly updated chronology is Louise Brooks: Day by Day 1940-1985.

These letters and postcards are addressed to Don Smith (who she once addresses as Donn Smith), a Brooklyn resident with whom Brooks corresponded in the 1960s and 1970s. None of the letters are very extensive, but they do include the occasional interesting detail. There is a good number of mentions of fudge, which Louise Brooks made and liked to share with select friends. All together, these letter and postcards show Brooks had an active mind and was curious about the world, despite her relative isolation in Rochester.

I am very grateful to PM for sharing these precious items with me. What follows are some of the new chronology entries. (I have added additional comments in red text.)

 * * *

December 9, 1964
Writes a letter to friend Don Smith complaining about friend Jan Wahl, who she notes she met in Copenhagen in 1957. Brooks also states she sent $10 to Wahl, who was then a struggling writer. Brooks also tells Smith not to send her the Dictionary of Film, which she says Herman Weinberg had already sent her. She also notes that the book says she appeared in two films in which she did not actually appear, Steel Highway and Hollywood Boulevard. Brooks also writes, "Hollis Alpert of Saturday Review was here last Friday to tape me for a series of articles he and Arthur Knight are doing on Sex and Censorship for Playboy." She also asks Smith "Can you find out to whom Jan Wahl sold his print of Prix de Beaute? And how Hollis can see it?" (I wonder which Dictionary of Film Brooks is referring too? Also, Brooks' reference to films she did not appear in is notable in light of this blog's previous post. Also, I wonder if the Hollis Alpert audio tapes still exist?)

July 21, 1965
Writes a note to friend Don Smith asking him to go by a New York City store to ask if they have sent her the two copies of Sight & Sound she had mail ordered.

August 25, 1965
Types a letter to friend Don Smith stating she has just got a letter from Bill Everson, who has a friend who is anxious to see Love Em and Leave Em. She also wondered about possible plans to visit New York City, suggesting that Canadian film archivist Fraser MacDonald may accompany her on a flight to NYC. She also mentions her $250.00 monthly allowance from William Paley and that should she decide to travel she wouldn't be able to afford a hotel room that costs more than $10.00 per night. Brooks goes on to state, "People are so wrong about liking silent pictures better than sound pictures. We can not know a person till we know their voices." Brooks also mentions she called G. W. Pabst's son, Michael. (The cost of living back then !)

October November 9, 1965 (mistakenly dated)
Types a letter to friend Don Smith asking him for details regarding his intention to screen Prix de Beaute in New York City, adding "If I decide to come down, I will give the talk I gave when it was shown in 1960 at the YMHA." She also asks for help paying her expenses, her "awful fear" of planes "although I will travel no other way," and that a friend named Mike Hall will help get publicity. She also writes, "For the last 6 months I have been living in apprehension and depression over my 59th birthday next Sunday. My mother died suddenly at this point. It is silly for me to worry. But I do." Brooks goes on to state that she calmed by reading the English essayist Samuel Johnson, except that the edition she is currently reading has tight margins and opening the book sufficiently causes her hands to ache. Brooks also adds a critique, "The modern editions, both of Johnson and Boswell's Life and Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides have been so 'improved' by modern editors, so cut, rewritten, and clawed at, that they are a sinful mess." 

February 16, 1967
Writes a postcard to friend Don Smith thanking him for copies of Sight & Sound magazine. She also notes she got a Buster Keaton postcard, and asked where one could get them.

December 17, 1967
Writes a letter to Don Smith reporting she had received a letter from Jan Wahl who wrote that he had befriended Asta Nielsen. Brooks also wrote of the forthcoming publication of her piece "On Location with Billy Wellman" in London Magazine. About it she writes, "At last I have found a mold to hold my peculiar blend of autobiography, film history and truth. "Location" tell how I lost my high standing and self-respect in Hollywood by going to bed with my double who the next day asked me before the whole company whether I had syphilis."

December 16, 1975
Writes a Christmas greeting to friend Don Smith, stating "I did 2 TV interviews - one for West Germany Public TV - one for Canadian Broadcasting - on Pabst and Lulu - maybe they will buy them for the States." (I wonder what ever happened to the German and Canadian TV footage?)

December 17, 1976
Writes a letter to Herman Weinberg. Also writes a letter to friend Don Smith complaining about her disabling arthritis and mentioning she had seen a doctor, who suggested hip replacement surgery, which she declined to have because she still suffered from arthritic knees. Also mentioned that Christopher Isherwood had telephoned her and noted that he was coming to the Eastman House to see Diary of a Lost Girl. Isherwood also told Brooks that he was sending her his new book, Christopher and His Kind. Brooks adds, "From Gore Vidal's review I gather they are beating the drum for Gay Lib - which will set it back years."

December 1979
Writes a Christmas card to friend Don Smith saying she seldom watches TV except for Fred Astaire, and notes that public TV will be running her 1974 conversation with Richard Leacock. "And you must look out, on whatever network, for Thames Television, Hollywood - The Pioneers. On episode 9, I talk about Clara Bow." (Brooks is referring to the Kevin Brownlow documentary.)

* * *

Louise Brooks in 1972
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