Whatever Happened to .... a missing print of Pandora's Box, starring Louise Brooks

Of late, I have been going through a few different archives and uncovering some rather remarkable material. There are things I didn't know (which ain't saying much), things not mentioned in the Barry Paris biography (which is saying a lot), and things I don't think anyone knows about (wowza). Here is one example, a handwritten note by Louise Brooks likely dating from the 1960s or 1970s. It reads 

"1934 - When Pabst was under contract to Warners - he got them a print of Lulu, hoping to get me for A Modern Hero -

1943 - this was the print Iris Barry at MOMA saw and decided not to buy Lulu because 'it was not of lasting interest'."

 

Brooks' note suggests in no uncertain terms Warner Bros obtained a copy of Pandora's Box back in 1934, and still had it nine years later, in 1943.

 

How Brooks knew Pabst supplied a print to Warners I can't say, but I know that she was in touch with Pabst in 1934 around the time of A Modern Hero (which Pabst made in Hollywood), and may have been told then. 

I wonder what ever happened to that vintage print. I wondered if it still exists, shelved and forgotten in the Warner's vault? Who would think to look for that film where it shouldn't be?

 

I emailed a couple of individuals to try and find out. I wrote to Martin Koerber, who has long been involved in the restoration of Pandora's Box. He said, "I am not aware of an original print of LULU in any archive in the US, even though I looked everywhere in 1996/7 when we made the search for the Berlinale retrospective and a restoration campaign for those films that needed it".

 

Regarding another early Pabst film, Koerber stated, "Warner Bros definitely had original prints of THE THREEPENNY OPERA back in 1997 when we searched for material everywhere. Could be that they were at, or later went to UCLA, because Warner probably didn’t want nitrate on the lot. I thought at the time that this had to do with the fact that they co-produced this film with NERO."

 

I also emailed George Feltenstein at Warners, who wrote "we have no record of any print of that film ever being at the studio. That said, documentation for such an unusual set of circumstances may not have survived in the intervening decades. All of our nitrate holdings, including prints have been on deposit at UCLA since 1979. There is no record of a print of that film being part of that deposit. It’s theoretically possible that the studio might have repatriated the print in the years after the end of WWII, but this is just a hypothesis."

 

The mystery continues.... Whatever happened to that vintage print of Pandora's Box? Where might it be hiding?

 

 

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 © 2026. Further unauthorized use prohibited. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.