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.