Louise Brooks and Los Angeles: Getting the facts straight

I want to address, yet again, a factual error that's making the rounds....

The other day, I was listening to a podcast. On March 11, the podcasters known as 5282 dropped their "Louise Brooks Special" episode. This podcast, which focuses on popular and fringe culture, originates in the UK. The Brooks' episode is a talk through her career with the three 5282 hosts, highlighting films such as Beggars of Life and Pandora's Box. At the end of the podcast, one of the hosts gave a shout-out to the Louise Brooks Society as a source for information.

However, in the course of the 5282 podcast, one of the three hosts repeated something about Louise Brooks and Los Angeles that they didn't get from the Louise Brooks Society website. That something is this ... that Brooks left home at age 15 to join the Denishawn Dance Company in Los Angeles. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.

If I were a betting man, I would guess that the 5282 podcaster who repeated this "fact" likely got it from Wikipedia. The Wiki page on the actress states, "Brooks began her entertainment career as a dancer, joining the Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts modern dance company in Los Angeles at the age of 15 in 1922." In support, this sentence is twice footnoted, once to a 1926 Picture-Play article, "Just a Prairie Flower," and once to Brooks' own 1982 book, Lulu in Hollywood. In the first cited source, Brooks' joining Denishawn is not explicitly mentioned (it is only stated that Brooks danced with Ruth St. Denis), and in the second cited source, Brooks herself says she went to join Denishawn in New York City.

And anyways, anyone who has read or seen The Chaperone, the PBS film which depicts Brooks leaving home to join Denishawn -- will know that Brooks did so in New York City -- not Los Angeles. (I know The Chaperone is fiction, but it is based on fact.) Besides Brooks' own account, as found in Lulu in Hollywood, the facts around Brooks first venture to LA can be found in the definitive biography of the actress by Barry Paris. In it, Paris notes that Brooks went to Los Angeles for the very first time in 1927, when her studio, Paramount, had her move from their East Coast production facility to their West Coast studio in Hollywood. 

Part of the confusion regarding Brooks, Denishawn and Los Angeles likely stems from the fact that the dance company had two "headquarters," one in NYC and one in LA. (They also had a summer retreat in Mariarden in Peterborough, New Hampshire.) But still, that doesn't change the fact that Brooks joined Denishawn in New York. Let me also add that I have done considerable research on Brooks' two seasons with the dance company. I have tracked the Denishawn tours city by city, and can state that the furthest west the company ever got while Brooks was a member of Denishawn was Colorado.

I mention all this because not only did an incorrect, but not insignificant, fact make its way from Wikipedia to an UK podcast, but it can also be found on a key, authoritative site like Janus Films, the company behind the theatrical release of the latest restoration of Pandora's Box. Back on January 27 of this year, I posted a blog about the Pandora's Box restoration, and pointed to the handful of factual errors and sloppy writing found on the Janus press release. At the time I stated, "The Louise Brooks Biography included in the Press Notes, for example, is riddled with factual errors. I count five or six. Here is one: Louise Brooks did NOT join the Denishawn Dance Company in Los Angeles, as the biography states. She went to New York City, as stated in the Barry Paris biography and as depicted in The Chaperone. Likewise, the Production History essay makes a few questionable (read inaccurate) conclusions...." I sent an email to Janus, but never heard back.

Let me end with an image. It is scanned from the Barry Paris biography and depicts Brooks' arrival in Los Angeles for the first time in 1927. The caption reads "Louise Brooks greeted by Eddie Sutherland's friend Monte Brice upon her arrival in Hollywood, January 6, 1927."

The note on the reverse of the original of this Paramount publicity image, in Brooks' own hand, states, "First arrival in Hollywood, Jan 1927."

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