Snapshots from Louise Brooks' Rochester, NY (part 1)

I recently had the pleasure of visiting Rochester, New York in order to conduct some research on Louise Brooks at the George Eastman House Museum. During my four day visit, I had the chance to meet friends, talk on the radio, and walk the streets of a city Louise Brooks once called home. I also spent two and a half days reading through Brooks' notebooks. (More on that at a later date.)

While I was in Rochester, I had the chance to visit a few sites of interest to fans of Louise Brooks. My thanks to Rochester resident Tim Moore who was my valued guide. All of the snapshots below were taken by myself, unless otherwise noted. Here they are, in no particular order.

Rochester Public Library, which Louise Brooks visited many times.

The one-time site of the Regent Theater, the first theater to show a Brooks' film in Rochester.

Under a different name, this is the restaurant where Brooks and Kenneth Tynan once ate.
(Photo by Tim Moore)

Outside the Eastman Theater, where Louise Brooks danced as a member of the Denishawn Dance Co.
(Photo by Tim Moore)

Inside the Eastman Theater. Brooks danced upon that very stage!

Outside Brooks' longtime Rochester apartment on North Goodman street, which is not far from the GEH.
(Photo by Tim Moore)

Another view of Brooks' apartment building in Rochester.

Outside the newly renamed George Eastman Museum.

At my work station inside the George Eastman Museum, where I spent 2 1/2 days reading Brooks' notebooks.
(Photo by Tim Moore)

The Dryden Theater is attached to the Eastman Museum. Most all of Brooks surviving films
have been shown there, and the actress herself watched movies there.

To be continued ......

Pandora's Box starring Louise Brooks plays in Rochester, New York on April 21

The George Eastman House in Rochester, New York will be screening the classic 1929 German silent, Pandora's Box, on April 21st. The film, which will be shown in the Dryden Theater at 8pm, stars Louise Brooks as Lulu. (Undoubtedly, Louise Brooks watched this film in this  theater.)

Here is what the GEH website says:

(Die Büchse der Pandora, Georg Wilhelm Pabst, Germany 1929, 133 min., 35mm)

"For James Card, there was only one Louise Brooks. The cineaste referred to his lifelong infatuation as an emotional devotion that had begun at the age of 14, calling Brooks an inadvertent femme fatale who could in no way be coquettish or even deliberately seductive—ideal for the role of Lulu in Pandora’s Box, heroine of Frank Wedekind’s beloved German plays. An innocently immoral sexual predator, Lulu discards and destroys men as she tries to get ahead, until she meets Jack the Ripper. The steamy story is a tangled web of intrigue and deception—the camera work, sets, and direction brilliantly economical, powerfully simple."

“Pabst’s was the keyhole system: I’ll put your eye to the keyhole—become a voyeur of this scene and make of it what you will. A viewer is forced to participate intellectually in a Pabst film.” – James Card

Live piano by Philip C. Carli.

About Rochester NY where Louise Brooks had lived

Here is a New York Times story about Rochester, New York - the city where Louise Brooks lived for the last part of her live. Check it out.

Louise Brooks' drawings in Rochester, New York

Tim Moore posted on Facebook that Hogan's Hideaway, a restaurant not far from Louise Brooks' longtime Rochester, New York residence, has moved their drawings of the actress to their maitre d' station / loo area. And, they've added a write-up about the star. [The image at the top left, however, resembles Clara Bow.]

Tim also noted: "The place was a grocery when Brooks moved to the neighborhood in '62. Not her closest option. The Hideaway, opened in 1980, was a bistro in the back while she was alive; now the grocery is gone, the restaurant is up front, and a bar is in back."