Screen Debuts: Louise Brooks first film - The Street of Forgotten Men (1925)

This year, as it has in the past, the Louise Brooks Society blog is taking part in the Spring 2024 CMBA (Classic Movie Blog Association) blogathon. This year’s theme is Screen Debuts & Last Hurrahs -- a look at beginnings and endings of film careers. The Spring 2024 CMBA blogathon runs May 20-24. More information on the Spring 2024 CMBA blogathon, including a list of other participants and topics, may be found HERE. I encourage everyone to check it out.

Today's post looks at Louise Brooks first film, The Street of Forgotten Men (1925). On May 24, the blog will look at Louise Brooks' last film, Overland Stage Raiders (1938).

Besides marking Louise Brooks first screen appearance, The Street of Forgotten Men was also the subject of my 2023 book, The Street of Forgotten: From Story to Screen and Beyond. The book is a a deep dive into the history of a single film - its literary source, its making, exhibition history, critical reception, and, most surprising of all, its little known legacy. Few film titles become a catchphrase, let alone a catchphrase which remained in use for half-a-century and resonated throughout American culture. The Street of Forgotten Men (1925) is one such film. (Order your copy HERE.)

This provocative stab at realism was described as "strange" and "startling" at the time of its release. The Street of Forgotten Men was directed by Herbert Brenon, who is best known for Peter Pan, The Great Gatsby, Beau Geste, Laugh, Clown, Laugh and other early classics. The film was shot by Harold Rosson, one of the great cinematographers whose credits include Gone with the Wind and Singin' in the Rain. And, it features a stellar cast (Percy Marmont, Mary Brian, Neil Hamilton) which includes a future screen legend at the very beginning of her career (Louise Brooks).

The Street of Forgotten Men: From Story to Screen and Beyond tells the story of the film in rich, historical detail. As this book shows, this forgotten gem is exemplary of film making & film culture in the mid-1920s. Along with vintage clippings and unusual images - including rare production stills and location shots, this new book features all manner of historical documents including the short story on which the film was based, the scenario, a rare French fictionalization, newspaper advertisements, lobby cards, posters, and more. Among the book's many revelations:

-- Multiple accounts of the making of the film - suggesting what it was like on the set of a silent film.

-- A survey of the film's many reviews, including one by the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Carl Sandburg, another by a contributor to Weird Tales, and another by Catholic icon Dorothy Day, a candidate for sainthood.

-- Newly revealed identities of some of the film's bit players - a noted journalist, a future screenwriter, a soon to be famous actress, and a world champion boxer - which include accounts of their working on the film. There is also the story of Lassie's role in the film (no, not that Lassie, the first screen Lassie).

-- A look at the music associated with this silent film: the music played on set, the music depicted in the film, the music heard before the film was shown, and the music played to accompany the film itself (including the rare Paramount cue sheet and an alternative score).

-- And more... from the film's censorship records to its mention on the floor of Congress to its showing in multiple churches to its purchase by the United States Navy to a notice for the film's last documented public screening - at, of all places, a Y.M.C.A. in Shanghai, China in 1931 - six years after its release!

The Street of Forgotten Men: From Story to Screen and Beyond includes dozens of illustrations and images and features two forewords; one is by noted film preservationist Robert Byrne, whose restoration of  the film saved it from undeserving obscurity. The other, by acclaimed film historian Kevin Brownlow, is an appreciation of Herbert Brenon which reveals little known details about the movie drawn, in part, from his correspondence with Louise Brooks.

As this blog is meant to look at Brooks' first screen appearance, I thought I would run a few brief excerpts from the book which tells the story of how Brooks first entered films.

*****

"By mid-April, most of the cast had been chosen, as bits in newspapers and magazines reported the signing of various actors and actresses. Some were actors or crew with which Brenon had worked in the past. In early May, with filming well under way, Billboard magazine gave a near complete summary of where things stood. “Working under the direction of Herbert Brenon, who is making The Street of Forgotten Men at the Paramount Long Island Studios, are: Percy Marmont, Mary Brian, Neil Hamilton, Riley Hatch, Josephine Deffry, Dorothy Walters, John Harrington and Juliet Brenon, daughter of the late Algernon Brenon, music critic of The Telegraph and niece of Director Brenon. The cast also includes Lassie, canine movie star.” (5-9-1925) Not mentioned by Billboard was one of film’s uncredited players, Louise Brooks, who had only recently been given a screen test and assigned a small role. Beating Billboard to the punch, the screen notes column in the New York Herald Tribune gave the aspiring actress a shout-out, writing a week earlier, “Louise Brooks, one of the Ziegfeld beauties from Louis the 14th, will have a part in Herbert Brenon’s production of The Street of Forgotten Men.” (5-2-1925)"

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"In early 1925, Brooks was a featured dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies. The Broadway revue was widely celebrated, and all manner of notables turned out to see shows. Some made a bee-line to the performer’s dressing rooms. Among those who visited Brooks was producer Walter Wanger, then a Paramount talent scout. According to various sources, Wanger had heard Edmund Goulding (the British-born screenwriter and director) rave about her, and so Wanger and Townsend Martin (a Paramount screenwriter and another dressing room visitor) arranged to test Brooks for a role in The Street of Forgotten Men, which was already filming at the Astoria Studios on Long Island. Brooks’ screen test was overseen by Allan Dwan. It went well, with the result being the Ziegfeld dancer was assigned a bit part in The Street of Forgotten Men, which was already in production.

In his celebrated profile of Brooks in The New Yorker, Kenneth Tynan quoted Brooks on her time at the Astoria studio. “The stages were freezing in the winter, steaming hot in the summer. The dressing rooms were windowless cubicles. We rode on the freight elevator, crushed by lights and electricians. But none of that mattered, because the writers, directors, and cast were free from all supervision. Jesse Lasky, Adolph Zukor, and Walter Wanger never left the Paramount office on Fifth Avenue, and the head of production never came on the set. There were writers and directors from Princeton and Yale. Motion pictures did not consume us. When work was finished, we dressed in evening clothes, dined at The Colony or ‘21’ and went to the theater.”

Brooks, a dancer by training, was a newcomer to film acting when she appeared in The Street of Forgotten Men; during her short time on screen, she plays her bit part large, vamping over Bridgeport White-Eye (John Harrington) and then dashing across the screen once a fight breaks out between White-Eye and Easy Money Charlie. Brooks wrote in her diary, “I ran around like Carol Dempster, being very frightened and graceful and having a lovely time.”

In 1928, after she became an established star, film magazines carried a piece about her debut and her reaction to praise sent by a fan. “Louise Brooks must have been very satisfied when she received her first fan letter from a girl in Brooklyn who said she saw her in The Street of Forgotten Men, because after reading it, she immediately took a photograph of herself that she had hanging in her dressing room and sent it to the girl in thanks.”

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"Because of his attention to detail and involvement in most every aspect of a film, Brenon gained a reputation as a demanding director, someone who ruled over his sets and pushed his actors and crew. In a 1925 profile, Film Daily described Brenon as a studio “Svengali,” suggesting he was somehow able to manipulate others. While on-set reports from The Street of Forgotten Men intimate as much, they never go so far as to state Brenon was harsh, or that those working under the director resented his behavior.

However, all may not have been as depicted in the press at the time. In 1979, film historians Richard and Diane Kozarski interviewed Louise Brooks regarding her work at the Astoria studio. The Kozarskis noted that Brenon’s handling of actors favorably impressed the 18-year-old, then a newcomer to film. However, when Brooks saw a sandbag crash to the stage a few feet from where the director was standing, she suspected relations with the crew might not have been entirely positive.

In late April, 1925 Variety reported that Brooks, “one of the most popular members of Louie the 14th” (a Ziegfeld production) had “mysteriously disappeared from the cast of this musical comedy several days ago and her absence has been traced to the scouting agents of a moving picture company with studios on Long Island.” (4-25-1925) It was around then that Brooks was given a screen test. By the first week of May, various publications including the New York Herald Tribune and New York Evening Post reported Brooks had been cast in The Street of Forgotten Men.

Brooks’ screen test, held on a set at the Astoria studio, was overseen by director Allan Dwan. It went well, with the result being Brooks was assigned a bit part as a moll, a companion to Bridgeport White-Eye (John Harrington). John Russell’s notes describe her character as a “trull” or “doxie” with whom Whitey “plays the scene over the newspaper. Let her appear actually heavy: a hard-boney, sneering little rip of a woman, with a face like flint – frankly predatory, so that we hate her at sight.”

Sometime following her screen test, and with the film already in production, Brooks was introduced to Brenon. On May 16, she and the director attended the Kentucky Derby in Louisville, Kentucky. A few days later, on May 20 according to some sources, Brooks’ brief scene was shot. The newcomer appears in only one scene near the end of the film in which there is a brawl in the saloon. Brooks is on screen for a couple of minutes, and though she vamps and acts somewhat melodramatically and dashes across screen like a dancer – she makes an impression.

Throughout her career, Brooks reportedly didn’t bother to see herself act on screen. The one exception may have been her brief appearance in The Street of Forgotten Men. In a 1928 interview with Pour Vous regarding Die Büchse der Pandora, Brooks told the French magazine that she had not seen the German film, as it was a principle for her “not to go see herself on the screen. ‘I did,’ she said confidently, ‘during my first film. I won’t do it again, though I can’t say why. Seeing myself gives me an uncomfortable feeling’.” (12-6-1928) Later in life, Brooks said little about her debut, except to acknowledge her role in the film. In Lulu in Hollywood, she dryly commented, “In May, at Famous Players-Lasky’s studio, in New York, under Herbert Brenon’s direction, I had played with no enthusiasm a bit part in Street of Forgotten Men.”

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"Such “drab” realism led the anonymous [Los Angeles] Times critic to also find fault with the acting of Mary Brian and Neil Hamilton, which the critic suggested was dull. However, favor was shown to others in the cast. “[T]he character work, in addition to the artistry of Marmont – who is a great enough actor to give conviction even to the maudlin ending, where the man who has sacrificed for love makes some time worn remarks on the eternal scheme of things – is excellent. As the ‘blind’ beggar, John Harrington is appallingly real, while Dorothy Walters, as the faithful old housekeeper is the final word in comfortable motherliness. Juliet Brenon and Josephine Deffry, ladies of the demi-monde, also merit commendation.”

The anonymous Times critic ended their review by highlighting the work of an uncredited, bit player in the film. It was the only publication to do so. “And there was a little rowdy, obviously attached to the ‘blind’ man, who did some vital work during her few short scenes. She was not listed.” (8-31-1925) That uncredited bit player was Louise Brooks, who received her one and only notice for her role in The Street of Forgotten Men. As such, it was her first film review."

If you are interested in reading more about Brooks' first film, be sure and check out my 2023 book, The Street of Forgotten Men: From Story to Screen and Beyond. It is a detailed, heavily illustrated, 380+ page immersive look at the film  and the silent film era. (Order your copy HERE.)

The Louise Brooks Society is a proud, longtime member of the CMBA (Classic Movie Blog Association). Back in 2018, the CMBA profiled the LBS. Check it out HERE.

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 © 2024. Further unauthorized use prohibited. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.