All Around the World with A Girl in Every Port (1928)

The 1928 Howard Hawks buddy film, A Girl in Every Port, tells the story of two sailors (Victor McLaglen and Robert Armstrong) and their romantic adventures in various ports around the world. The film screens on August 1 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. More information about that  event can be found HERE.

The film features a somewhat large cast of supporting players -- the various girls in various ports -- headed by Louise Brooks. She plays Marie (or Mam’selle Godiva), the girl in Marseille, France. Also in the film was Spanish beauty queen Maria Casajuana (soon to be Marie Alba), who plays Chiquita, the girl from Buenos Aires, as well as Natalie Joyce and Elena Jurado as girls in Panama, Natalie Kingston as a South Sea Island girl, Sally Rand as a girl in Bombay, Phalba Morgan as Lena, a girl in Holland, Greta Yoltz (Eileen Sedgwick -- one of the five Sedgwicks) as another girl in Holland, Caryl Lincoln as a girl in Liverpool, and Myrna Loy as a girl in China (in an uncreditted role). 

Writing in the Hollywood Daily Citizen, Elena Brinkley noted, “It seems to me they’ll never finish signing girls for Victor McLaglen’s A Girl in Every Port.” Early on, among those she reports cast in the film was Anna May Wong. I wonder if Myrna Loy assumed her part?

With its bevy of beauties and with so many locales to call attention to -- A Girl in Every Port proved popular all around the world. Under its American title, documented screenings of the film took place in Australia (including Tasmania), Bermuda, British Malaysia (Singapore), Canada, China, Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) France, Hong Kong, Ireland, Jamaica, Japan, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom (England, Isle of Man, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales).

Elsewhere, A Girl in Every Port was shown under the title Poings de fer, coeur d’or (Algeria); Una novia en cada puerto and Una chica en cada porto (Argentina); Das Verdammte Herz – Zwei lustige Matrosen (Austria); Une fille dans chaque port (Belgium, French) and Een liefje bij elke landing (Belgium, Dutch); Uma noiva em cada porto (Brazil); Una Novia en Cada Puerto (Cuba); Dívka v každém prístavu (Czechoslovakia) and Dievca v kazdom pristave and Vsade ine dievca (Slovakia); Blaue jungens, blonde Mädchen (Danzig); En Pige i hver Havn (Denmark); Una Novia en Cada Puerto (Dominican Republic); Een Liefje in iedere Haven and In iedere Stad een andere Schat! (Dutch East Indies – Indonesia); Poings de fer, coeur d’or and Une femme dans chaque port and Une fille dans chaque port (France); Blaue jungens, blonde Mädchen (Germany); Az ocean Don Juana (Hungary); Kærasta i hverri höfn! (Iceland); Capitano Barbableu and Il Capitano Barbableu and Capitan Barbablù (Italy); 港々に女あり or Minato Ni on’na ari (Japan); Ein zeitgemasser Don-Juan and Meitene katra osta (Latvia); Mergina kiekviename uoste (Lithuania); Poings de Fer – Coeur d’Or Blaue Jungen – Blonde Madchen (Luxembourg); Una novia in cada puerto (Mexico); In iedere Stad … een andere Schat! and In elke stad een andere schat (Netherlands); En pike i hver havn (Norway); A kochanek miał sto and Dziewczyna w kaz.dym porcie and Era Pogoni Za Bogatym Memzem (Poland); Uma Rapariga em Cada Pôrto and Uma companheira em cada pôrto (Portugal); O fata in fiecare port (Romania); Una novia in cada puerto and Un Amor en Cada Puerto and Una xicota a cada port (Spain, including The Canary Islands); En flicka i varje hamn (Sweden); and Poings de fer et coeur dor (Switzerland).

Here are various advertisements for the film from around the world, gathered from the far corners of the Louise Brooks Society archive.

Shanghai, China, June 1928 -- another naval-themed film follows

 

 

 

Adelaide, Australia, August 1928 -- it's "speshul"

Warsaw, Poland, March 1929 -- premiere showing

Vilnius, Lithuania, April 1929 -- a Russian-language newspaper

Sumatra, Indonesia, June 1929 -- a "super production"

La Chaux-de-Fonds, Switzerland, December 1929 -- Brooks is described as"perverse"

Japan, 1929 -- from a magazine

More about A Girl in Every Port can be found on the newly revamped Louise Brooks Society website on its A Girl in Every Port (filmography page).

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.

Program notes: Howard Hawks' A Girl in Every Port, starring Louise Brooks

Here are the program notes I (Thomas Gladysz) wrote in 2013 for Howard Hawks' A Girl in Every Port when it was screened at the University of Wisconsin Cinematheque. The film will be screened on August 1 at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. More information about that forthcoming event can be found HERE.

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Howard Hawks' A Girl in Every Port is a well-crafted and entertaining "buddy film" widely considered the director's best silent. It's also a film with a special legacy.

A Girl in Every Port features a romantic triangle – a reoccurring motif in many of Hawks' later works. It tells the story of two sailors (Victor McLaglen and Robert Armstrong) and their adventures in various ports of call around the world. Louise Brooks plays Marie (Mam'selle Godiva), a high diver and sideshow siren and the love interest of both sailors. Other girls in other ports of call include Myrna Loy, Sally Rand, Leila Hyams, and Maria Casajuana (the future Maria Alba).

Released by Fox in February of 1928, A Girl in Every Port debuted at the 6,000 seat Roxy Theater in New York City. For days on end, the film played to a packed house. Ads placed by the studio in trade publications claimed it set a "New House Record – and a World Record – with Daily Receipts on February 22 of $29,463." Considering ticket prices of the time, that's a lot of money.

Popular as well as critically acclaimed, the film received good reviews in New York's daily newspapers. The New York Times described it "A rollicking comedy," while the New York Telegram called it "a hit picture." The Morning Telegraph pronounced it a "winner."

The Daily News noted, "Director Howard Hawks has injected several devilish touches in the piece, which surprisingly enough, got by the censors. His treatment of the snappy scenario is smooth and at all times interesting. Victor's great, Armstrong's certainly appreciable, and Louise Brooks is at her loveliest."

Reviewing the premiere, TIME magazine stated, "There are two rollicking sailors in this fractious and excellent comedy. . . . A Girl in Every Port is really What Price Glory? translated from arid and terrestrial irony to marine gaiety of the most salty and miscellaneous nature. Nobody could be more charming than Louise Brooks, that clinging and tender little barnacle from the docks of Marseilles. Director Howard Hawks and his entire cast, especially Robert Armstrong, deserve bouquets and kudos."

A number of critics singled out Brooks. The New York American stated, “Then comes THE woman. She is Louise Brooks, pert, fascinating young creature, who does high and fancy diving for a living. . . . Miss Brooks 'takes' our hero in somewhat the manner that Grant took Richmond. . . . Louise Brooks has a way of making a junior vamp and infantile scarlet lady seem most attractive."

A reviewer for the English Kinematograph Weekly echoed American reviews of the film, and picked up on the film's somewhat different bromance. "Louise Brooks made a charmingly heartless vamp. . . . It has the novelty of a love interest that does not materialize, which is replaced by the friendship between two men."

The film made a bigger splash in France. Writing in 1930 in his "Paris Cinema Chatter" column in the New York Times, Morris Gilbert noted ". . . there are a number of others – mostly American – which have their place as 'classics' in the opinion of the French. . . . They love A Girl in Every Port, which has the added distinction of being practically the only American film which keeps its own English title here." The film enjoyed an extended run in the French capitol, and lingered for decades in the French consciousness.

Writing in Cahiers du Cinéma in 1963, French film archivist Henri Langlois stated, "It seems that A Girl in Every Port was the revelation of the Hawks season at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. For New York audiences of 1962, Louise Brooks suddenly acquired that 'Face of the Century' aura she had had, many years ago, for spectators at the Cinema des Ursulines. . . . That is why Blaise Cendrars confided a few years ago that he thought A Girl in Every Port definitely marked the first appearance of contemporary cinema. To the Paris of 1928, which was rejecting expressionism, A Girl in Every Port was a film conceived in the present, achieving an identity of its own by repudiating the past."

Brooks, under contract to Paramount, was loaned to Fox for her role in A Girl in Every Port. Anticipating the female types cast by Hawks in later works, the bobbed-hair actress stands as what might well be the first "Hawksian woman." Years later, the director stated, "I wanted a different type of girl. I hired Louise because she's very sure of herself, she's very analytical, she's very feminine, but she's damn good and sure she's going to do what she wants to do."

Film histories note that A Girl in Every Port ranks as the most significant of Hawks' silent films; additionally, historians claim, it seemingly persuaded G.W. Pabst to cast Louise Brooks in Pandora's Box. Such a claim was likely first made by James Card of the George Eastman House in his 1956 article, "Out of Pandora's Box: Louise Brooks on G. W. Pabst." It was repeated by others, including Brooks herself, in filmed interviews in the 1970's.

In Germany, Pabst came to cast Brooks as Lulu only after a well publicized nationwide search which concluded months after A Girl in Every Port premiered in New York City. Not quite content with a German actress (including, legend has it, Marlene Dietrich), Pabst wrote to Paramount asking after Brooks, then an American starlet. The German director was also in search of a "different type."

Chronologically, the assumption that Pabst saw his Lulu in Hawks' Marie makes sense – Brooks plays a temptress in both films. Records show, however, that Blaue jungens, blonde Madchen (the German title for Hawk's film) was not shown in Germany until December, after production on Pandora's Box was finished.

Could Pabst have seen A Girl in Every Port well prior to its release in Germany? Or, might Pabst have noticed Brooks in one of her earlier American films, like Die Braut am Scheidewege (Just Another Blonde) or Ein Frack Ein Claque Ein Madel (Evening Clothes)? Each were shown in Berlin while Pabst was looking for Lulu, and each received press which highlighted Brooks.

Whatever the answer to this small mystery, A Girl in Every Port remains an entertaining film worthy of greater recognition – not only because it stars Louise Brooks, and not only because it may or may not have led Pabst to cast the actress as Lulu in Pandora's Box.

It's deserving because it is an early work by great director which introduces the themes and characters Hawks would continue to explore throughout his long and distinguished career.

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More about A Girl in Every Port can be found on the newly revamped Louise Brooks Society website on its A Girl in Every Port (filmography page).

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.

Reminder: A Girl in Every Port, starring Louise Brooks, screens at NY MoMA on Aug 1

A Girl in Every Port, the 1928 Howard Hawks silent film starring starring Louise Brooks and Victor McLaglen, is set to screen at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on August 1. This special screening, which is part of MoMA's Silent Movie Week 2024, will feature piano accompaniment by Ben Model. More information about this event can be found HERE.

The NY MoMa page doesn't say much about the film, except to offer these minimal credits: "A Girl in Every Port. 1928. USA. Directed by Howard Hawks. Screenplay by Hawks, James Kevin McGuiness, Seton I. Miller, Sidney Lanfield, Reggie Morris, Malcolm Stuart Boyland. With Victor McLaglen, Louise Brooks, Robert Armstrong, Maria Casajuana (later Maria Alba), Leila Hyams, Eileen Sedgwick, Natalie Kingston, Myrna Loy. 35mm print courtesy of the George Eastman Museum. 78 min." [The film also features Sally Rand as the "Girl in Bombay," and William Demarest in an uncreditted bit part.] 

A Girl in Every Port is a "buddy film," the comedic story of two sailors and their adventures with various women in various ports of call. Sailor Spike Madden (played by Victor McLaglen), a happy-go-lucky Lothario, finds that another sailor is a rival for his girl friends in various ports of call. He finally overtakes Salami (Robert Armstrong), the other sailor, and they become fast friends. Spike believes he has fallen in love with Marie (Louise Brooks), an especially attractive gold digger in France, but his friend dissuades him and they continue their merry way.

The film was shot in November and December, 1927 at Fox's studios in Hollywood. Location shooting was done on a boating trip to Santa Cruz Island, located along the California coast. Under contract with Paramount, Louise Brooks was loaned to Fox for the film.

The film received glowing reviews. TIME magazine stated, "A Girl in Every Port is really What Price Glory? translated from arid and terrestrial irony to marine gaiety of the most salty and miscellaneous nature. Nobody could be more charming than Louise Brooks, that clinging and tender little barnacle from the docks of Marseilles. Director Howard Hawks and his entire cast, especially Robert Armstrong, deserve bouquets and kudos.” Weekly Film Review noted that the audience "Cheered it - and loved it!" 

More about A Girl in Every Port can be found on the newly revamped Louise Brooks Society website on its A Girl in Every Port (filmography page). AND, for those interested, here is a link to a program essay, "A Girl in Every Port: The Birth of Lulu," which I wrote for the University of Wisconsin Cinematheque back in 2013.

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.

Two new releases of Pandora's Box coming this Fall

Two new releases of Pandora's Box, the sensational silent film starring Louise Brooks as Lulu, are scheduled to be released this Fall. Here is what we know.

Criterion has just announced they will be re-releasing Pandora's Box on DVD and Blu-ray on October 15, 2024. That is great news, as their prior release of the film is out-of-print and now sells for BIG bucks. More information on this release can be found HERE.

Criterion had released Pandora's Box on DVD back in 2006 (the year that marked the Brooks centenary). It was an excellent package, with a handful of bonus items including:

• Four musical scores, by Gillian Anderson, Dimitar Pentchev, Peer Raben, and Stéphan Oliva
• Audio commentary by film scholars Thomas Elsaesser and Mary Ann Doane
• Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu (1998), a documentary by Hugh Munro Neeley
• Lulu in Berlin (1971), a rare interview with actor Louise Brooks, by Richard Leacock and Susan Steinberg Woll
• Interviews with Leacock and Michael Pabst, director G. W. Pabst’s son
• PLUS: An essay by critic J. Hoberman and notes on the scores
  

The 2024 release will contain the same extras. And, as both the 2006 and 2024 versions are based on the Munich Film Museum restoration (a 2K digital restoration), some may ask what is the difference? 

I would also like to point out that this restoration is NOT a new restoration, as the Criterion website claims. The Munich Film Museum restoration goes back years, and it claim it is new (and thus somehow different) is disingenuous. If I am wrong on this point, I would like to know -- as would Louise Brooks many fans.

Except for new cover art (pictured below) on the 2024 release, the two releases are the same -- except that the 2006 Pandora's Box has a 133 minute run time, while the 2024 movie has a listed 141 minute run time. I emailed Criterion to ask what might account for this 8 minute difference, but they never answered. I even held up this post waiting for an answer.... but nothing came. I was disappointed.

Also set for a Fall release in the UK is a different restoration of the film. This release comes from Eureka, as part of their "Masters of Cinema" series. Eureka had released Pandora's Box last year, in a limited edition of 3000 copies, but it too has gone out of stock. More information about that release can be found HERE.

Eureka is set to re-release Pandora's Box as a region B Blu-ray on September 16, 2024. Notably, the run-time is given as 133 minutes. More information about this forthcoming disc can be found HERE.  Its cover art and special features appear to be the same as the earlier, 2023 release. They are:

• 1080p HD presentation on Blu-ray from a definitive 2K digital restoration
• Optional English subtitles
• Orchestral Score by Peer Raben
• Audio commentary by critic Pamela Hutchinson
• The New Woman & The Jazz Age: The Dangerous Feminine in Pandora’s Box – Visual appreciation by author and critic Kat Ellinger
• Godless Beasts – Video essay by David Cairns
• Lulu in Wonderland – Video essay by Fiona Watson
• Restoring Pandora’s Box – Interview with Martin Koerber
• A collector’s booklet featuring an essay by film critic and historian Imogen Sara Smith, author of Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City
  

When I reviewed the Eureka disc for PopMatters, I pointed out that "This release is notable on a couple of accounts. It marks the film’s first-ever release on Blu-ray in England, and it marks the first-ever release anywhere of the Hugh Hefner-funded Martin Koerber-Deutsche Kinemathek restoration completed in 2009. In all likelihood, this 133-minute, 2K digital restoration is the best version of the film we may see in our lifetime."

I emailed Eureka a few weeks ago asking if there were any significant differences between the 2023 and 2024 releases, but didn't hear back. I also asked them if they would be revising or correcting any of the errors found on the earlier release. As a silent film buff, as Louise Brooks fan, and as an admirer of G.W. Pabst's film, I am very glad that Eureka released the film on Blu-ray; however, I am just as disappointed in some of the bonus material. As readers of this blog may recall, back in January I wrote a piece pointing out the handful of factual errors and the inclusion of images that are 1) not from Pandora's Box, and 2) not Louise Brooks!

Regarding Eureka's use of images from Diary of a Lost Girl in a booklet about Pandora's Box; I should mention that Eureka is not alone in this blunder. Criterion beat them too it years ago in the booklet which accompanied their 2006 release of the film. See page 48 of "Reflections on Pandora's Box", the booklet which accompanies the Criterion box set.

I am very glad Pandora's Box is being re-released. As I have copies of both of the earlier releases, I likely won't purchase either of these forthcoming releases -- unless something new turns up. But come on Criterion. Come on Eureka. You can both do better when it comes communicating and "getting it right."

For more about Pandora's Box, see the newly revamped Pandora's Box filmography page on the new revamped Louise Brooks Society website. ==  Also, the podcast Ticklish Business just dropped a new program about Pandora's Box. 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.

A notable new find regarding Louise Brooks and Pandora's Box

The San Francisco Bay Area has long been a hotbed of activity around Louise Brooks and what is, undoubtedly, her best known film, Pandora's Box. I am not sure why that is ... but the local exhibition history of the film makes it clear that Brooks is a local favorite. I would even speculate that, with the possible exception of New York City, no other metropolitan area in the United States has seen more screenings of Pandora's Box in the post WWII era than the San Francisco Bay Area. 

Obsessive that I am, I have documented dozens of screenings going back as far as August 1962, when Pandora's Box made its Northern California debut when it was shown at Monterey Peninsula College in nearby Monterey during that year's Peninsula Film Seminar. James Card, curator at the Eastman House in Rochester, New York was in attendance at that historic event -- as was Pauline Kael and other Bay Area film devotees. In fact, as very few prints of the film could then be found in the United States, it was Card who likely supplied the print which was screened. 

It would be another ten years before the film was screened again, this time twice in Berkeley in October 1972 at the Pacific Film Archive, and then the following month in San Francisco at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. (The first Berkeley screening, on October 5, was a scheduled screening; the second, on October 21, was an added matinee to meet popular demand.) Since then, the film has been screened almost every year, sometimes twice a year in venues large and small across the great Bay Area. The most recent screening of Pandora's Box took place just last Spring -- in April 2023, when the Hugh Hefner funded restoration was shown to a large crowd at the Paramount Theater in Oakland in an event sponsored by the good folks at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

James Card, the one-time curator of film at the George Eastman House (now Eastman Museum) is integral to the story of Pandora's Box and its post WWII rediscovery and revival. Early on, in the 1950s, he acquired a print of the film, and championed it and Louise Brooks when ever he could. In fact, Card's program notes -- "Psychological Masterpieces: Pandora's Box" -- for the film's first ever showing in California in 1962 (at UCLA in Los Angeles, predating the Monterey screening by a couple of months), can be found online! They make for fascinating reading.

Recently, I came across something I never knew existed, an audio recording of James Card introducing Pandora's Box at the Pacific Film Archive in 1978. That audio tape can be heard on the Internet Archive. How cool! Also heard is some of Robert Vaughn's piano accompaniment.

Despite Card's pioneering efforts (dating to the mid-1950s), he wasn't the first American to take an interest in Pandora's Box following the second World war. That distinction belongs to Frank Stauffacher. Though not well known today, Stauffacher (1917-1955) was an experimental filmmaker best known for directing the "Art in Cinema" series at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art from 1946 to 1954. 

Just yesterday, I came across two remarkable letters from Stauffacher on the Internet Archive which date from 1946 and 1947, respectively. In each, Stauffacher, as the SFMoMA film programmer, wrote to other film programmers and film historians in the hopes of securing a print of Pandora's Box to show as part of "Art in Cinema". Had he succeeded ... that might well have led to an earlier rediscovery of Brooks. Though he was not able to secure a copy of the film, it is amazing that someone as early as 1946 and 1947 was expressing interest in Pandora's Box !

The first letter, to renown film historian Herman G. Weinberg, is dated November 8, 1946. It can be read HERE. Interestingly, Stauffacher suggests to Weinberg (a later friend and correspondent of Brooks) that he is looking for certain films in which others have expressed interest. Those films are:

The second letter from Stauffacher, to Dr. Morley, notes that they have been unable to secure a number of films which they are interested in screening, including Pandora's Box. The letter also mentions that they believe they have some leads on copies of these films in Paris. This second letter can be read HERE.

Amazingly, Stauffacher notes that their correspondent in Paris might contact various individuals who might provide leads. These individuals include not only the Cine Club of Paris, but also Andre Breton, Jean Cocteau, Jean Epstein ("if he is still alive"), Luis Bunuel and others. Wow!

These two letters are part of a cache of fascinating letters from programmers at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Pacific Film Archive to other programmers, film historians and film makers (including Man Ray - then living in Los Angeles) which detail the world of film exhibition before international film archives and online catalogs and the internet changed access to everything. To me, it is fascinating to realize Louise Brooks and Pandora's Box had not been entirely forgotten - even in the late 1940s.

For more about Pandora's Box, see the newly revamped Pandora's Box filmography page on the new revamped Louise Brooks Society website.

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.