A follow-up to last week's blog about how and where Paramount films were distributed, as well as Paramount's presence in the Middle East in the late 1920's and early 1930s, at the height of Louise Brooks' career.
As I also noted earlier, fourteen of the twenty-four films in Brooks' filmography were Paramount productions, which leads me to wonder if and when and where some of those fourteen films might have been shown anywhere in the Middle Eastern. Of course, much has changed since the 1920s, cities have changed names and new nations have arisen, but then - as now - major cities like Istanbul, Ankara, Alexandria, Cairo, Jerusalem, Beirut, Damascus, and others all presumably had movie theaters.
According to the "List of Paramount Offices Around the World" reproduced in my March 6th post, the Italian office was responsible for distribution of Paramount films into Turkey, and the French office was responsible for distribution into Egypt, Algeria, Tunis, and Morocco. Back in the 1920s' and 1930s, film distribution and which theaters showed which films was a territorial affair, and one wouldn't - generally speaking - find an MGM or Warner Bros film playing in a Paramount house. I haven't been able to find information about how Paramount films might have found there way to those countries named above, nor have I been able to find clippings, advertisements or even reviews of any of Brooks' films in the Middle East, with only a few exceptions.
I know
The Canary Murder Case was shown in Cairo, and I have found listings for most all of Brooks' Paramount films in French-controlled Algeria. All these clippings date to around the time of the film's first release. As reproduced in the March 6th post, I have also found an advertisement for
Prix de beaute in Turkey in 1931. And, I have found listings for the Buck Jones western
Empty Saddles (which featured Louise Brooks) showing in Jerusalem in 1937 - and the John Wayne western
Overland Stage Raiders (also featuring Louise Brooks) showing in Haifa and Jerusalem in 1942, during the second World war and some four years after it was first released.
I have a feeling other of Brooks' films were shown in Arab speaking countries, either in the Middle East or North Africa - but I haven't been able to explore newspapers from those regions. What few publications I have been able to look at "operate" differently from American or European newspapers, in that their entertainment listings and coverage is sparse. Documentation is a challenge.
The in-house publication,
Paramount Around the World, ran material on the film company's operations overseas. For example, there was a piece when the Paramount smash hit
Beau Geste received it's first Arabic review.
Here is an interesting clipping on the distribution of Paramount films into Egypt and beyond. It notes, among other things, that there were only 30 theaters in Egypt, and only 27 in both Syria and Palestine. It also notes that those theaters ranged from movie palaces in Cairo to "desert shacks that are a long way removed from even the nickelodeon of yore." Lastly, it mentions that the exhibition of films lagged behind the United States, and that Middle eastern audience preferred outdoor action films, which likely explains why the non-Paramount productions
Empty Saddles and
Overland Stage Raiders were shown in Palestine.
If you are reading this post and know of instances of Louise Brooks' films being shown anywhere in Middle East or North Africa
, please let me know! I would love to get clippings from Tunis or Casablanca or Cairo or Amman or Ankara
. [With the use of the word legionnaire, I realize all this has the whiff of cultural imperialism about it, but nevertheless, this is interesting stuff and well worth diocumenting. I'll finish with the prerequisite picture of Louise Brooks, here dressed in vague Arabesque costume.]
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