Louise Brooks & Her Films as Seen in the Portuguese-American Press

The Louise Brooks Society blog is participating in the 2024 Luso World Cinema Blogathon. This blogathon celebrates the contributions of Portuguese-speaking peoples and their descendants to world cinema. This post is the first of three related posts. More information on the Luso World Cinema Blogathon, including a list of other participants and topics, may be found HERE. I would encourage everyone to check it out!

In the United States, stories about the movies and film stars weren’t limited to the country’s mainstream, English language press. In fact, in the 1920s and 1930s, there were as many as a thousand non-English language publications in America. Most were newspapers, and most focused on the interests of their respective communities; however, a few of these ethnic and / or émigré publications acted akin to the mainstream press in reporting the general news of the day – albeit in German, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Yiddish, or some other language -- including Portuguese.

Notably, this broader coverage occasionally included entertainment news along with bits about whichever movies were playing locally. And occasionally, this broader coverage put a spotlight on Louise Brooks. This entry in the 2024 Luso World Cinema Blogathon looks at Louise Brooks & Her Films as Seen in the one Portuguese-language newspaper, Diario de Noticias.

New Bedford is a historic port city in Massachusetts. During the first half of the 19th century, it was one of the world's most important whaling ports. (The city even served as a setting in Herman Melville's 1851 novel, Moby-Dick.) Later in that same century, immigrants from Portugal and its colonial possessions in the Atlantic — namely Cape Verde, the Azores, and Madeira — began settling in New Bedford and the surrounding area, attracted by jobs in the still active whaling industry.

Diario de Noticias (or Portuguese Daily News) was a Portuguese-language newspaper in New Bedford which served the area's Portuguese-language readers. During the silent film era, it covered the movies and ran advertisements for local screenings just like other local English-language papers. But interestingly in a different language.... and sometimes with a cultural twist.

In New Bedford, the Empire theater ran most every new Paramount film. The clipping and two newspaper advertisements above promote local screenings of Brooks' first two films. Notably, the titles of Brooks' films were translated, with The Street of Forgotten Men becoming A Rua dos Homens Esquecidos, and The American Venus becoming A Venus Americana. 

Translating the title of a film in order to make it more relatable to non English-language readers was something many ethnic newspapers practiced, but not always consistently.

More clippings from Diaro de Noticias. Onthe left,  Brooks is featured in a studio-supplied piece promoting A Social Celebrity, which here retains its English-language title in an article which has been translated from English. On the right are three film advertisements in which the Paramount films retain their original English-language titles: A Social Celebrity is advertised as an “interesting film.”  It’s the Old Army Game features “the beautiful actress Louise Brooks.” While The Show Off is described as a “magnificent film”.

Diario de Noticias returned to translating the titles of American films into Portuguese. Ama-O E Dexia-O is the Portuguese title of Love Em and Leave Em, the film showing at the Empire theatre on New Year’s Eve, 1926. Twinkletoes, starring Colleen Moore, followed on New Year’s Day. Just Another Blonde is titled in this Portuguese ad without an “e” -- and they even left off Brooks’ name!

Louise Brooks is pictured far left in the publicity still shown above; here, Diario de Noticias identifies the actress' 1927 film The City Gone Wild as A Cidade que Enlouqueceu, which literally translates as  the slightly different “The City That Went Crazy.” Unlike her other Paramount films, this screening was not held at the Empire, but instead was shown at the local Olympia theatre. Perhaps, distribution agreements had changed in New Bedford.

The City Gone Wild likely proved popular, because the film came back to New Bedford as The City Gone Wild six months later for a encore showing at the Orpheum at the same time that the then newly released 1928 Brooks' film, A Girl in Every Port, was showing at The State theater.

In the 1930's, Brooks film career went into decline. She was cast in lesser roles in lesser films which more often then not were poorly distributed. One of the last of Brooks' films to screen in New Bedford was God's Gift to Women (1931), a Warner Bros. production.

This Portuguese-language newspaper ad notes God’s Gift to Women is playing at the State (as O Presente de Deus Para as Mulheres) along with The Public Enemy (as O Inimigo Publico), another Warner Bros. film in which Brooks was cast but did not appear.

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Compared to the the mainstream big city or even small town newspapers, accessing ethnic or émigré publications can be challenging. Many don't seem to be well archived or made available, and of those that are, many of them kept focused on the immediate concerns of their readers and left mainstream cultural coverage to others.

I did manage to access one other Portuguese-American newspaper, A Colonia Portuguesa, from Oakland, California. In August of 1931, this community newspaper ran this cluster of advertisements. It notes that on Wednesday and Thursday the local Premier theater would be showing another of Brooks lesser 1930's films,  It Pays to Advertise (1931), along with Utah Kid, a 1930 Western which starred Boris Karloff.

Some of the above material will be included in my forthcoming two volume work, Around the World with Louise Brooks, a transnational look at the career and films of the actress. It is due out later sometime in 2025, or so. For more interesting, unusual, and even surprising material, stay tuned to this blog. And consider subscribing. 

And be sure and tune-in tomorrow for another Louise Brooks Society installment in the 2024 Luso World Cinema Blogathon. Tomorrow's post ventures to Brazil to look at the time when Pandora’s Box was featured in a 1930 Chaplin Club newsletter from Rio!

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