Just Another Blonde, featuring Louise Brooks, was released on this day in 1926

Just Another Blonde, featuring Louise Brooks, was released on this day in 1926. The film is a romantic drama about two small-time gamblers and the two Coney Island girls they romance. For the film, Louise Brooks was loaned out by Paramount to First National. Of the four principals, Brooks has the smallest role, playing a supporting role as the brunette to blonde Dorothy Mackaill, the star of the film.

More about the film can be found on the Louise Brooks Society website filmography page.

The film was shot in and around Luna Park, an amusement park on Coney Island in Brooklyn. During production, stories came out on the excitement generated by the making of the film. The New York Evening Post reported that the stars mingling among the crowds generated too much attention, so much so visitors threatened to demolish the dance hall were one scene was set. Director Alfred Santell was forced to wait until the park closed, and then recruited 200 extras and “kept them busy dancing for the rest of the night.”

Despite its promotion as a “dainty, dazzling, golden glorification” of a “thrill packed tale of love and romance,” Just Another Blonde fared poorly among critics. To capture local interest, the film was shown in-and-around New York City as The Girl from Coney Island. But even the local angle couldn’t spare the film from the barbs of local critics. The New York Telegram was the most blunt, “The Girl from Coney Island, the so called feature picture, is interminable and stupid.” Dorothy Herzog of the New York Daily Mirror was less cutting, “Dorothy Mackaill, as Blondie, and Louise Brooks, as Blackie, enter in celluloid during the second reel. Apparently most of them was left on the cutting-room floor to permit the sub-titler a chance to resurrect jokes so old that even Cleopatra would have been prompted to justifiable murder.”

Some criticized what they saw as a rather slight story. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote, “The new film at the Strand Theater in Manhattan, The Girl From Coney Island, appears to be an excellent example of the common practice in Hollywood to stretch two-reel screen materials in to so-called feature productions. This mildly amusing picturizatlon of Gerald Beaumont’s story, ‘Even Stephen,’ would, I daresay, have made a fairly interesting short-reel movie. In its padded state of six or seven reels the drama falls considerably short of maintaining its pace beyond the very earliest sequences…. And so The Girl From Coney Island wallows along, a mawkishly sentimental narrative heavily burdened with lengthy subtitles.” Eileen Creelman of the New York American was a bit more forgiving, “Santell has taken a fifth rate plot, surrounded it with first rate atmosphere and a couple of amusing characterizations, and turned out a picture.”

What critics did appreciate was the acting, and Brooks. The Atlanta Constitution wrote “Although Miss Mackaill and Mr. Mulhall’s parts are listed as the leading roles, the acting of Louise Brooks and William Collier, Jr., as second roles, has a vital part in the picture and must be given due credit. Their acting was unusually good throughout.”

The Cincinnati Post went a little further, “Jack Mulhall is assisted in this bit by William Collier Jr., and two really good-looking girls, Dorothy Mackaill and Louise Brooks. Somebody told us Brooks was ‘Miss America’ a year or two ago. At any rate, she will knock your eye out and Mackaill will attend to the other one.” The Cedar Rapids Republican gushed, “Louise Brooks, who is said to be Clara Bow’s only rival as cinema’s most ravishing flapper, is a convincing argument in favor of modernism."

Under its American title, Just Another Blonde, documented screenings of the film took place in Australia, Canada, China, India, Ireland, Jamaica, New Zealand, South Africa and the British Isles (England, Isle of Man, and Northern Ireland). When shown in and around New York City, Just Another Blonde was promoted under the title The Girl from Coney Island. In the United States, the film was advertised under the title Just Another Blond (Portuguese-language press). The film was also shown under the title The Charleston Kid in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Cuba, and Czechoslovakia.

Elsewhere, this motion picture was known to have been shown under other-language titles including The Charleston Kid and Una de Tantas (Argentina); Die Braut am Scheidewege (Austria); The Charleston Kid (Australia); The Charleston Kid and Entre a Loura e a Morena and O Garoto do Charleston and Laços de amor (Brazil); The Charleston Kid (Cuba); The Charleston Kid and Pouze jiný svetlovlasý (Czechoslovakia); Den blonde fares (Denmark); Le Danseur de Charleston and Marchands de Beaute (France); Die Braut am Scheidewege (Germany); Girl from Coney Island (Hungary); Blonde Piker and Sommerflirt (Norway); Caixeiro Viajante (Portugal); Una de Tantas (Spain); and Den blonda faran (Sweden).

SOME THINGS ABOUT THE FILM YOU MAY NOT KNOW:

— Just Another Blonde was based on Gerald Beaumont’s short story, “Even Stephen,” which appeared in Red Book magazine in October, 1925. Beaumont (1880 – 1926) died shortly before the film was made, and a few advertisements noted his passing. During the silent and early sound era, dozens of his stories would be turned into films.

— Just Another Blonde began production under the working title The Charleston Kid. Though released under Just Another Blonde, the film was shown in and around New York City under the title The Girl from Coney Island.

— Just Another Blonde was also an early effort by cinematographer Arthur Edeson. By the time he shot Just Another Blonde, Edeson had already shot The Three Musketeers (1921), Robin Hood (1922), The Thief of Bagdad (1924), The Lost World (1924), Stella Dallas (1925), and Subway Sadie (1926). His later credits include All Quiet on the Western Front (1929), Frankenstein (1931), The Invisible Man (1933), Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Sergeant York (1941), The Maltese Falcon (1941), and Casablanca (1942).

— According to rare surviving records of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, the film came under the glare of local censors in St. Louis, Missouri who thought advertising copy which accompanied the film, i.e. “Neckier than Subway Sadie,” was in poor taste, and an example of “bad advertising.”

— Does anyone read this far? The surviving footage from Just Another Blonde is set for release on DVD sometime within a year's time.

More about Just Another Blonde can be found on the newly revamped Louise Brooks Society website on its Just Another Blonde (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.