The 1928 Louise Brooks film, Beggars of Life, will be shown at the Studio, Hull Truck Theatre in Hull, England on June 8. Musical accompaniment will be provided by Jonny Best, who will improvise his score. More information about this event can be found HERE.
According to the venue website: "Louise Brooks is best known today for her starring roles in GW Pabst’s 1929 classics, Pandora’s Box and Diary of a Lost Girl, but before that pair of masterpieces, she teamed up with one of early Hollywood’s greatest action directors, William Wellman, a former WW1 flyer with a reputation for hard drinking, punch-ups, and dangerous stunts. The Beggars of Life shoot was notorious for all of these and the speeding train stunts still startle today - Brooks herself was nearly thrown beneath the wheels during one shot.
Based on an autobiographical novel by Jim Tully, Louise Brooks plays Nancy, who goes on the run disguised as a boy and falls in with a handsome young hobo, Jim, played by Richard Arlen. Amidst all the action thrills, Beggars of Life is a tender, touching story of unlikely love and in it we see the first inkling of the Louise Brooks who would go on, two years later, to become not just an international star but an imperishable icon.
As usual, the film will be brought to life by Jonny Best’s live, improvised score."
Dir William A. Wellman | 1928 | United States | U | 100 mins | Silent
Want to learn more this riveting film? My 2017 book, Beggars of Life: A Companion to the 1928 Film, looks at the film Oscar-winning director William Wellman thought his finest silent movie. Based on Jim Tully’s bestselling book of hobo life—and filmed by Wellman the year after he made Wings (the first film to win the Best Picture Oscar), Beggars of Life is a riveting drama about an orphan girl (played by Louise Brooks) who kills her abusive stepfather and flees the law. She meets a boy tramp (leading man Richard Arlen), and together they ride the rails through a dangerous hobo underground ruled over by Oklahoma Red (future Oscar winner Wallace Beery). Beggars of Life showcases Brooks in her best American silent—a film the Cleveland Plain Dealer described as “a raw, sometimes bleeding slice of life.” This first ever study of Beggars of Life includes more than 50 little seen images, a mention of the Dodge Brothers, and a foreword by actor and author William Wellman, Jr. (the director's son).
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