Something to read about Louise Brooks, recently on the web

If you are stuck at home these days and are spending more time than ever looking for something to read or watch, might I recommend.... a couple of worthwhile articles which have popped up which I would like to recommend everyone check out.

The first is by Jan-Christopher Horak, and it is titled "The Last Days of Louise Brooks." It appeared on Jan-Christopher's blog, Archival Spaces: Memory, Images, History. Jan-Christopher is an impressive fellow. He is a film archivist, teacher, and the author or editor of a handful of books including Lovers of Cinema: The First American Film Avant-Garde, 1919-1945, and Dream Merchants: Making and Selling Films in Hollywood's Golden Age. I have met him a couple times over the years, and recently emailed him about his contribution to an Austrian book about Louise Brooks called Louise Brooks: Rebellin, Ikone, Legende. 

On August 15, Jan-Christopher posted the English-language version of the piece which appeared in the above mentioned Austrian book. (The piece was first published in German.) Besides his many accomplishments, Jan-Christopher was also once associated with the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York. And that's how he came to meet Louise Brooks. "I met Louise Brooks for the first time in 1975, long after her Hollywood career had ended, when she was living on N. Goodman Street in Rochester, N.Y., around the block from my apartment. At the time, I was a paid post-graduate intern at George Eastman House and confess that when I met her in Curator George Pratt’s office, she was to me just another silent film actress." Jan-Christopher's piece goes on to recount his observations of Brooks, and his visit to her spartan apartment. It is a special piece, which I recommend everyone take the time to read.

Another piece I think everyone might enjoy reading is "Double Lives: On Louise Brooks’s 'Thirteen Women in Films',” by Maya Cantu, which appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books on August 15. It is a consideration-meditation of Louise Brooks as a feminist icon. I think it is a thoughtful piece. Cantu, like Horak, is an academic. She teaches Drama and Literature at Bennington College, and is the author of American Cinderellas on the Broadway Musical Stage: Imagining the Working Girl from Irene to Gypsy.

While I agree with much of what Cantu says in her piece, I must disagree with her assessment (or her hinging part of her argument on) of a recently released docu-drama, Silent and Forgotten. I viewed it in pre-release, and think it is somewhat weak tea. [An earlier LBS blog on the video was posted here on September 14, 2019.] Nevertheless, I encourage everyone to watch it and to read the Cantu piece and to see for themselves.

In Silent and Forgotten, a single actress (Jacquie Donley) re-enacts the stories of 13 of the most famous actresses of the silent era, including Brooks. However, as one reviewer put it,   Donley "has a passing resemblance to Brooks and even seems to channel her pretty well, but makes an unconvincing everyone else."

Silent and Forgotten, an independent film our from Summer Hill Entertainment, is out on DVD at a reasonable $9.99, and is also available for streaming on Amazon Prime (at this time). Here is the long version of the trailer, which give the flavor of the film.

Silent and Forgotten - forthcoming film features Louise Brooks

A forthcoming docudrama, Silent and Forgotten, features Louise Brooks as its primary character and occasional narrator. The film, an independent release from Summer Hill Films, is set for release on November 12, 2019.

According to the film's producers, "In the years before talking pictures, movies relied on faces to tell a story. Silver screens around the world were illuminated by the incandescent beauty of actresses like Clara Bow, Lillian Gish, Louise Brooks, America's Sweetheart Mary Pickford, and many others. They were the most famous women in the world...adored by millions, worshiped by legions. They had fame, fortune and power. Behind the scenes, it was a different story. Early Hollywood lured thousands of young actresses with the promise of fame and fortune. Hidden in the enticement was exploitation, abuse and ownership by the men in power. Most of these starlets died young of drugs, alcohol and suicide. They have been silent until now. Hear their stories in their own words. In Silent and Forgotten, a single actress re-enacts the stories of 13 of the most famous actresses of the silent era."

That single actress is Jacquie Donley, who stars in the 150 minute film. Donley plays Brooks, as well as Clara Bow, Lillian Gish, Mary Pickford, Theda Bara, Colleen Moore, Marion Davies, Lottie Pickford, Olive Thomas, Marlene Dietrich, Pepi Lederer, Dorothy Arzner, and Virginia Rappe. Among the other individuals portrayed by other actors in this look at early film are Charlie Chaplin, Owen Moore, Jack Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, William Wellman, Richard Arlen, B. P. Schulberg, D.W. Griffith, Walter Wanger, Adolf Zukor, Will Hays, Elinor Glyn, and Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle.

A number of individuals associated with Brooks and her careers as a dancer and actress are also portrayed. They include James Card and Kenneth Tynan, Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, G. W. Pabst, Fritz Kortner and Alice Robert, Hal McCoy, and Lord Beaverbrook.

Silent and Forgotten is in pre-sale now at a discount. According to Donley, "Our hope is that we were as accurate as possible while giving one perspective of what Louise must have experienced emotionally during her lifetime. This movie was a labor of love, and our hope is that one of these days, we can get a star on the walk of fame for Louise."