Lulu by the Bay: Louise Brooks and Pandora's Box in the San Francisco Bay Area

On Saturday May 6th, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival will show Pandora's Box (1929) at the Paramount Theater in Oakland. This special live cinema event, featuring a restored print, will feature live musical accompaniment by the Club Foot Orchestra and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. More information about the event can be found HERE. Ticket are on sale.

In honor of this forthcoming event, I'm posting a recent snapshot of yours truly wearing a vintage Clubfoot Orchestra Pandora's Box t-shirt. I likely obtained this shirt in the late 1990s, probably around the same time I purchased a massive poster depicting the same image found on the shirt. I may not look my best, but the shirt is still cool.

 
The upcoming Oakland screening is significant for a couple of other reasons. One is that it marks the first ever showing of the film in Oakland, California - at least as far as I could tell. The May screening is also significant as it marks something of homecoming for the character of Lulu, whose creator, Frank Wedekind, was almost born in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

As film goers likely know, Pandora’s Box is loosely based on two plays, Earth Spirit (1895) and Pandora’s Box (1904), by the German writer Frank Wedekind (1864–1918). Today, he is best known as the author of Spring Awakening (1891), which was turned into a hugely popular Broadway musical few years back.

What’s little known is that Wedekind’s parents were one-time residents of San Francisco in the years following the 1849 Gold Rush. Wedekind's German father was a physician and progressive democrat whose participation in the Revolutions of 1848 (in what would become Germany) led him into exile. Wedekind’s Swiss mother was an attractive singer and Gold Rush actress / entertainer twenty-three years his junior. This unlikely and unconventional union has led some scholars to speculate that the relationship between Wedekind’s parents could have served as a model for the similar, unconventional relationship between the older and respected Dr. Schon and the much younger showgirl Lulu in Pandora’s Box. 

Of course, such things are open to interpretation. However, what we do know is that Friedrich Wedekind and Emilie Kammerer’s second child—the future writer—was conceived in San Francisco, and later born in what is now Hanover, Germany. According to the future writer's biography, early in the pregnancy the homesick couple risked a return to Europe and Friedrich Wedekind's homeland, and stayed. And that’s where Benjamin Franklin Wedekind, named for the free-thinking American writer, was born in 1864. Fast foreword....

 
Controversial, censored, cut, and critically disregarded when it first debuted, Pandora’s Box is today  considered one of the great films of the silent era, largely in part because of the stunning performance given by Louise Brooks in the role of Lulu. However, that wasn't always so. 

Pandora’s Box had its world premiere in February of 1929 at the Gloria–Palast theater in Berlin. Reviews at the time were mixed, even dismissive. Some months later, in December of 1929, when Pandora’s Box opened at a single theater in New York City, American newspaper and magazine critics were similarly ambivalent, and even hostile. In its now infamous review, the New York Times critic stated, “In an introductory title the management sets forth that it has been prevented by the censors from showing the film in its entirety, and it also apologizes for what it termed ‘an added saccharine ending’.” Adding salt to the wound, the Times critic noted, “Miss Brooks is attractive and she moves her head and eyes at the proper moment, but whether she is endeavoring to express joy, woe, anger or satisfaction it is often difficult to decide.” 

Yikes!

Despite poor reviews, the film drew crowds. The New York Sun reported that Pandora’s Box “ . . . has smashed the Fifty-fifth Street Playhouse’s box office records,” and was held over for another week. With its brief run completed, Pandora’s Box fell into an obscurity from which it barely escaped. Though the film was shown sporadically in the United States in the early and mid 1930s, it was hard to be a silent film at the beginning of the talkie era. Few film goers cared. (For a detailed account, see my earlier 2018 blog, The Lost History of Pandora's Box in the United States.)

Things have changed, and the reputation of Pandora’s Box has grown steadily. The film has been screened numerous times in the last few decades, and perhaps nowhere more often in the United States than in the San Francisco Bay Area. Chances are if you are still reading this piece, you saw an earlier print at the Castro Theater in San Francisco or the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, where between those two venues the film has been shown nearly two dozen times since the mid-1970s.

As far as I have been able to document, the first screening of Pandora’s Box in the City of San Francisco took place at the old Surf Theater in January of 1974, as part of a double bill with The Last Laugh. A couple of years earlier, in October of 1972, the Pacific Film Archive screened it in Berkeley in what was one of the film’s earliest East Bay screenings. 

One of the early Berkeley screenings was likely prompted by film critic Pauline Kael, who was then living in the Bay Area and had a hand in local film exhibition. At that time, Kael was also corresponding with Louise Brooks, who was living in Rochester, New York. On at least one occasion in their exchange of letters, Kael implored Brooks to come to the Bay Area to be present at a screening of Pandora’s Box. But Brooks, who was reclusive, wouldn’t budge. (Louise Brooks even had family in the area.... but still she wouldn't budge.)

But before that, in all likelihood, the very first screening of Pandora’s Box in the greater Bay Area took place in 1962, when the Monterey Peninsula College in Monterey screened a print of Pandora’s Box as part of its Peninsula Film Seminar. The event was organized around a visit by Brooks’ early champion and friend James Card, who brought with him a small collection of rare films, including a messy, unrestored version of the Pabst masterpiece. 

At the time, Card’s print of Pandora’s Box was probably one of the very few prints of the film in the United States. And in all likelihood, Pandora’s Box and the other films shown at the Seminar were works the attendees had only heard of but not seen. 

According to newspaper reports of the time, the Peninsula Film Seminar was a big deal in local film circles. And notably, it was attended by Bay Area cognoscenti like Pauline Kael, future San Francisco poet Laureate Jack Hirschman, a few East Bay film promoters involved with the Berkeley Film Guild, and others. And there, in Monterey, the seeds were first sown for the film’s now large reputation in the Bay Area.   

 

That's me again, with my Clubfoot orchestra shirt. To my right is a large poster for the 2006 San Francisco Silent Film Festival showing of the film, which not only took place during the Louise Brooks centenary, but which I and artist / filmmaker Bruce Conner introduced.

In honor of the May 6, 2023 screening of Pandora's Box (1929) at the Paramount Theater in Oakland, here is a list of all known theatrical showings of the film in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. If you know of others, please send an email. Or, if you attended any of the early screenings of the film, especially those marked in bold, I would love to hear your memories.

1960s - 1970s: Monterey Peninsula College in Monterey (between Aug. 2-5, 1962 as part of Peninsula Film Seminar); Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley (Oct. 5, 1972 as part of Women's Works); Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley (Oct. 21, 1972 special matinee); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco (Nov. 21, 1972); Cento Cedar Cinema in San Francisco (February 1-7, 1973 with Threepenny Opera); Surf in San Francisco (Jan. 22-23, 1974 a “new print,” with The Last Laugh); Pacific Film Archive (Wheeler Auditorium) in Berkeley (July 24, 1974); Cento Cedar Cinema in San Francisco (Sept. 18-20, 1975 with The Blue Angel); Wheeler Auditorium in Berkeley (Nov. 9, 1975 with L’Age D’Or); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco (Nov. 7, 1976); Noe Valley Cinema (James Lick Auditorium) in San Francisco with Oskar Fischinger’s Composition in Blue (May 21, 1977); Wheeler Auditorium in Berkeley (Feb. 10, 1978 with L’Age D’Or); Sonoma Film Institute in Sonoma State University (Feb. 28, 1979 with The Blue Angel); 

1980s: Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley as part of “Tapes from the Everson Video Revue” (Jan. 20, 1980); U.C. in Berkeley with The Threepenny Opera (March 10, 1980); Roxie in San Francisco with The Blue Angel (Mar. 31, 1980); Noe Valley Ministry in San Francisco (April 11, 1980 with Un Chien Andalou); Castro in San Francisco with A Girl in Every Port (May 2-3, 1980); Rialto in Berkeley with The Threepenny Opera (May 14-20, 1980); Castro in San Francisco with The Threepenny Opera (Aug. 28, 1980); Strand in San Francisco with The Threepenny Opera (December 15, 1980); Rialto in Berkeley with The Threepenny Opera (December 17-23, 1980); Roxie in San Francisco with A Girl in Every Port (Feb. 17-19, 1981); Showcase Cinema in Sacramento with Foolish Wives (Mar. 3, 1981); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco (March 6, 1981); Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley (Mar. 7, 1981 as part of the series “Starring Louise Brooks” with Organ Accompaniment By Robert Vaughn); Rialto in Berkeley with Salome (June 24-27, 1981); Rialto in Berkeley with A Girl in Every Port (Feb. 12-16, 1982); Electric in San Francisco with The Blue Angel (Mar. 10-11, 1982); Avenue in San Francisco with She Goes to War (May 6, 1982); York in San Francisco with The Threepenny Opera (June 22, 1982); Roxie in San Francisco with A Girl in Every Port (Oct. 17-18, 1982); UC in Berkeley with A Girl in Every Port (Oct. 25, 1982); Darwin / Sonoma Film Institute at Sonoma State University (Jan. 20, 1983); Showcase Cinema in Sacramento with M. (Feb. 1, 1983); Castro in San Francisco with Diary of a Lost Girl (Oct. 26 – Nov. 3, 1983); Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley with Kameradaschaft (Dec. 7, 1983); Santa Cruz Film Festival in Santa Cruz with A Conversation with Louise Brooks (Jan. 19, 1984); Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley (Jan. 27-28, 1985 with M.); U.C. in Berkeley (Sept. 18, 1985); Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley (Oct. 13, 1985 as part of the series “A Tribute to Louise Brooks (1906-1985),” accompanied on piano by Jon Mirsalis); Castro in San Francisco with The Threepenny Opera (Nov. 29, 1985); Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley (Oct. 29, 1986); San Francisco Public Library (main branch) in San Francisco (Dec. 18, 1986); Castro in San Francisco (Feb. 26, 1987 as part of “Vamps” series); Castro in San Francisco (Jan. 7, 1988); U.C. in Berkeley (June 30, 1988); Castro in San Francisco (Nov. 8, 1988); Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley (Nov. 17, 1988); 

1990s: Red Vic in San Francisco (Feb. 13-14, 1990); Castro in San Francisco (Aug. 7, 1990); Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley (Dec. 4, 1990 as part of the series “Surrealism and Cinema”); Castro in San Francisco (Apr. 29, 1991); Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley (Apr. 5, 1992 as part of the series “Silent Film Classics”);  Castro in San Francisco (May 11, 1992 with Diary of a Lost Girl); Castro in San Francisco (May 5-8, 1995 accompanied by the Club Foot Orchestra, as part of the San Francisco Film Festival); Castro in San Francisco (Dec. 16-17, 1995 accompanied by the Club Foot Orchestra); Castro in San Francisco (Apr. 2, 1996 with Wings, accompanied on organ by Robert Vaughn); Towne Theatre in San Jose (June 28, 1996 accompanied on organ by Robert Vaughn); Castro in San Francisco (May 18, 1998 as part of Femme Fatale Festival); 

2000s: Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley (May 28, 2000); Stanford in Palo Alto (Sept. 5, 2001); Jezebel’s Joint in San Francisco (Feb. 10, 2003); Castro in San Francisco (July 15, 2006 as part of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, with introductions by Thomas Gladysz and Bruce Conner); Rafael Film Center in San Rafael (Nov. 11, 2006 introduced by Peter Cowie); California in San Jose (Mar. 9, 2007 as part of Cinequest); Castro in San Francisco (July 14, 2112 as part of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival); Niles Essanay Film Museum in Fremont (Sept. 12, 2015); Stanford in Palo Alto (Sept. 23, 2016); Niles Essanay Film Museum in Fremont (March 23, 2019).

Notably, Pandora's Box was also shown on local PBS broadcast television in Northern California. Here are some early instances, which include Christmas eve and Christmas day showings. I wonder how viewers felt watching this film over the Holidays and seeing the murderous Jack the Ripper scene at the film's end - a scene which takes place around Christmas: KTEH Channel 54 – San Jose television broadcast (Dec. 18, 1977 and Dec. 24, 1977 and Dec. 25, 1977); KQEC Channel 32 – San Francisco television broadcast (Dec. 24, 1977 and Dec. 25, 1977); KVIE Channel 6 – Sacramento television broadcast (Dec. 18 and Dec. 24 and Dec. 25, 1977). Incorrectly, the PBS promo image shown below incorrectly identifies Lulu as a London streetwalker. A Berlin showgirl is more like it.

THE LEGAL STUFF: The Louise Brooks Society™ blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society  (www.pandorasbox.com). Original contents copyright © 2023. Further unauthorized use prohibited.