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.

Louise Brooks film screens in Berkeley, California

As part of its 25 film, four month Howard Hawks retrospective, the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California will screen A Girl in Every Port. The 1928 Louise Brooks film, by consensus the best of Hawks' silent efforts, is set to play on Tuesday, January 24 at 7 pm.

A Girl in Every Port is a buddy film which tells the story of two sailors (Victor McLaglen and Robert Armstrong) and their encounters with various women in various ports of call. Brooks, under contract to Paramount at the time, was loaned to Fox for the film. She plays the girl from Marseille, France. Myrna Loy, Sally Rand, Leila Hyams, Natalie Kingston and Maria Casajuana (the soon to be Maria Alba) are among the other girls in other ports of call.

Brooks is cast as a vamp, a circus artiste / high-diver known as Marie (Mam’selle Godiva). McLaglen and Armstrong, each suitors, offer a towel and more. 'Mlle Godiva' handles each with Lulu-like aplomb.

When A Girl in Every Port premiered in February of 1928 at the massive Roxy Theater in New York City, it played to a packed house. At the time, advertisements placed by Fox claimed the film set a “New House Record – and a World Record – with Daily Receipts on February 22nd of $29,463.” Considering admission was likely less than a dollar, that’s a lot of movie-goers in a single day – then or now.

Popular as well as critically applauded, the film received good reviews in New York’s many daily newspapers. Mordaunt Hall, writing in the New York Times, described it as "A rollicking comedy,” while the New York Telegram called it “a hit picture” and the Morning Telegraph pronounced it a “winner.”

Irene Thirer, writing in 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. The rest of the gals from other ports are good to look at, too. Roxy’s got a winner this time.”

Similar sentiments would be echoed in other New York City papers including the German-language New Yorker Volkszeitung, the trade journal Women's Wear Daily, and even the socialist Daily Worker.

Reviewing the Roxy premiere, the anonymous critic for TIME magazine wrote, “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.”

Critics singled out Brooks, and some described her as “pert.” Regina Cannon, writing in 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.”

As well received as the film was in the United States, it was even more highly regarded in France, where it has been regularly revived.

Writing in Cahiers du Cinéma in January 1963, the 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.”

A Girl in Every Port is considered by many scholars to be the most important of Hawks' early works because it was his first to introduce the themes and character types he would continue to explore throughout his long and distinguished career. And, notably, Louise Brooks is the first to portray what became known as the "Hawksian woman."

More info: A Girl in Every Port screens on Tuesday, January 24 at 7 pm as part of "Howard Hawks: The Measure of Man," a retrospective  at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley. The film will be introduced by UC Berkeley professor Marilyn Fabe; Judith Rosenberg will accompany on piano. Details at http://bampfa.berkeley.edu/film/FN19308