Searching for the lost films of Louise Brooks

Last week's announcement that Flicker Alley and the San Francisco Film Preserve is set to release Focus on Louise Brooks - a single disc compilation of the surviving material from four Brooks films once considered lost, got me thinking... thinking about which other of Brooks "lost" films I would like to see. What is their status today? What are the chances prints of these films might be found? A fan can hope, can't he?

Screen Test (1925) 

Louise Brooks

In early 1925, Louise Brooks was a featured dancer with the Ziegfeld Follies. The Broadway revue was widely celebrated, and all manner of notables turned out to see shows, with some making a bee-line to the performer’s dressing rooms. Among those who visited Brooks was producer Walter Wanger, then a Paramount talent scout. In late April, 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.”

According to various sources, Wanger had heard Edmund Goulding (the British-born screenwriter and director) rave about Brooks, and so Wanger and Townsend Martin (a Paramount screenwriter and another dressing room visitor) arranged to test Brooks for a role in Herbert Brenon's The Street of Forgotten Men, which was already filming at the Astoria Studios on Long Island. Brooks’ screen test was overseen by famed director Allan Dwan. It went well, with the result being the absent Ziegfeld dancer was assigned a bit part as a moll, the girlfriend / companion to a criminal. Wouldn't it be marvelous to see that screen test?

The American Venus (1926)

This film is presumed mostly lost, though a few bits and pieces were found in the late 1990’s. The surviving material includes fragments, variously in black and white, tinted, and in Technicolor, from two theatrical trailers, as well as fragments from the film itself. Cumulatively, this surviving material — some of which repeats — runs about 8 minutes. The footage from the film includes interior scenes involving Brooks and Ford Sterling and another woman, an outdoor chase scene involving an automobile and a train, and a technicolor sequence of a fashion show. In 2018, the BFI announced they had found a three second piece of Technicolor stock from the film which depicts Louise Brooks. Most all of this material was restored in 2025, and will be seen in Focus on Louise Brooks.

The American Venus is a romantic comedy set against the backdrop of a beauty pageant, namely the actual 1925 Miss America contest in Atlantic City. (The American Venus features the actual Miss America from 1925, Fay Lanphier.) The film is the second in which Brooks appeared, though the first for which she received a screen credit. Brooks made something of a splash, and it was this film and her next, A Social Celebrity, which proved to be her “break-out” roles. Though largely eye-candy and once described as a "flesh show", many fans and at least a few critics responded positively to The American Venus. Wouldn't it be wonderful to see this film in its entirety?

Louise Brooks in The American Venus

A Social Celebrity (1926)

A Social Celebrity is a romantic comedy about a small town barber who follows his heart and heads to the big city where he hopes to join high society. Brooks plays the barber’s love interest, a small town manicurist who also heads to the big city to become a dancer. The film is the third in which Brooks appeared, the second for which she received a screen credit, and the first in which she had a starring role.

This film is presumed lost. Some of it's last known public screenings took place is Asia, in Shanghai in September, 1930 and in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea in March 1931. According to the Barry Paris biography, Brooks reported seeing the film at the Eastman House in 1957. Lotte Eisner also stated she saw the film, in Paris in 1958, at the Cinémathèque Française. The latter copy was destroyed in a disastrous vault fire in 1959, while the Eastman House copy has since deteriorated. [A mysterious individual named F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre, whose claims could not be verified and were often thought suspect by film historians, once told me that he had seen a deteriorated nitrate print of A Social Celebrity (owned by a private European collector) in the 1990s. MacIntyre died in 2010, and so have his spurious claims that the film has survived.]

Louise Brooks and Adolphe Menjou in A Social Celebrity

Evening Clothes (1927)

Evening Clothes was the first film Louise Brooks made in Hollywood, and at Paramount’s suggestion, the first in which she did not wear her signature bob hairstyle. It's a romantic comedy about a gentleman farmer (played by Adolphe Menjou) who — spurned by his bride, goes to the big city to loose his rustic ways and win back his new wife. Brooks plays Fox Trot, a hot-to-trot Parisian.

This film is presumed lost. Evening Clothes continued to circulate for some four years following its American release. Along with Costa Rica and present day Vietnam, there were also documented screenings in the Australian outback in 1930, and another in New Guinea in September, 1931. 

Adolphe Menjou and Louise Brooks in Evening Clothes

Rolled Stockings (1927)

This film -- one of a number of similarly-themed films aimed toward the youth market of the 1920s -- is presumed lost, which is a shame, as Rolled Stockings (the second film Brooks made on the West Coast) is the only one of Brooks' American silents in which the actress was given top billing. 

As with Evening Clothes, it continued to be shown into the early sound era, with documented screenings taking place overseas in Suriname (August, 1930), Papua New Guinea (October, 1930) and in a tent in Darwin, Australia (October, 1931). Rolled Stockings, along with A Social Celebrity, are the two Brooks films I would most like to see. Who knows, perhaps a print of the film is sitting on a shelf in some far flung place?

James Hall, Louise Brooks, and Richard Arlen in Rolled Stockings

The City Gone Wild (1927)

This early gangster film directed by the noted director James Cruze is presumed lost. In it, Brooks once again plays a moll, this time the deliciously named Snuggles Joy, the “gunman’s honey.” The film was well regarded, and continued to be shown into the early sound era. Documented screenings took place in Fairbanks, Alaska (pre-statehood) and elsewhere around the United States well into 1930. As with Rolled Stockings, the last documented public screening of The City Gone Wild took place at the open air venue known as The Stadium in Darwin, Australia in September 1931. Also showing as part of a double bill was Under the Southern Cross, a New Zealand film with a “purely Maori cast.” 

According to Kevin Brownlow, the film was largely extant as recently as 1971. In his 1990 book, Behind the Mask of Innocence, Brownlow wrote, “David Shepard, then with the American Film Institute’s archive program, had a list of 35mm nitrate prints held in a vault Paramount had forgotten it had. He asked me which title I would select, out of all of them, to look at right away. I said The City Gone Wild. He called Paramount to bring it out of the vaults for our collection that afternoon. The projectionist went to pick it up. ‘O, there was some powder on that,’ said the vault keeper ‘We threw it away.’ The film had been unspooled into a tank of water (recommended procedure for decomposing nitrate). Shepard complained officially to Paramount, who promised it would not happen again. He tried to rescue it, even from its watery grave, but a salvage company had carted it off by the time he got there.” 

This account was confirmed in a conversation I had with David Shepard in June 2016. Shepard recalled that Paramount would, at the time, discard any film which showed any degree of decomposition.

Louise Brooks and Thomas Mieghan in The City Gone Wild

And here are two additional films worth looking for....

Beggars of Life (1928) - the sound version

This outstanding William Wellman directed film was released as both a silent and part sound film; in fact, Beggars of Life is considered Paramount’s first sound film!

The sound version included music, sound effects, a bit of dialogue, and a song reportedly sung by Wallace Beery (either “Hark the Bells” or “Don’t You Hear Them Bells?” or “I Wonder Where She Sits Tonight”). While the silent version is extant -- and has been released on DVD and Blu-ray by Kino Lorber, what's now considered lost are the sound elements. Wouldn't it be remarkable to find / restore the sound version.

The Canary Murder Case (1929) - the silent version

This early murder mystery was also released as both a silent and sound film. The film was initially shot as a silent, and shortly thereafter reworked for sound. Malcolm St. Clair shot the silent version, while retakes for the sound version were directed by Frank Tuttle. Both versions were shown and reviewed at the time of the film's release, and some thought the silent version the better movie.

The sound version of the film is extant. A 35mm print is held at the International Museum of Photography and Film at the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, New York. The print of the "silent version" is also held at the Eastman Museum, but reportedly, this print is only the sound version without sound. Lesser quality prints have been released on VHS and DVD over the years; the best sound version was recently released on Blu-ray by Kino Lorber as part of a Philo Vance set.

THE LEGAL STUFF: The Louise Brooks Society™ blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society  (www.pandorasbox.com). Original content copyright © 2025. Further unauthorized use prohibited. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.