Roberto Baldazzini's Hollywoodland published in France

Roberto Baldazzini's Hollywoodland, a graphic novel originally published in Italy in 2019, has just been published in France. The cover of the new French edition is picture below. Additional information about this new edition can be found HERE. 

Here is the publishers description, in French: "Hollywoodland : c'était l'enseigne qui trônait, il y a cent ans, en haut des collines surplombant Los Angeles, avant que le suffixe « Land » ne disparaissent. Des années qui virent la transformation d'une ville née en plein désert dans la Mecque du cinéma. Une Babylone en carton-pâte et ses décors magnifiques où se dissimulent toute la mesquinerie dont l'homme est capable. Dans une Amérique juste sortie de la première guerre mondiale, Hollywoodland est l'histoire de deux frères on ne peut plus différents, de leurs passions et de leurs désillusions. Ils ne le savent pas encore, mais le destin a déjà écrit pour eux des paroles de mort."

And here is the publishers description in English, after being run through a translation program: "Hollywoodland: it was the sign that sat enthroned, a hundred years ago, at the top of the hills overlooking Los Angeles, before the suffix "Land" disappeared. Years that saw the transformation of a city born in the middle of the desert in the Mecca of cinema. A cardboard Babylon and its magnificent decorations which conceal all the pettiness of which man is capable. In an America just emerging from the First World War, Hollywoodland is the story of two brothers who could not be more different, their passions and their disillusions. They don't know it yet, but fate has already written words of death for them." 

Pictured above is a sample page from the book, which hopefully will be published in English someday. (Others of Roberto Baldazzini's book have been published in the United States by NBM.) I have written about the artist and his earlier Italian edition in the past. Those earlier blogs can be found HERE and HERE. 

Roberto Baldazzini is a well know Italian comix artist. He has drawn many published works, many of which are erotic in nature. Baldazzini has also previously depicted Louise Brooks. Michele Masiero is also an Italian graphic novelist, with a number of publications to his credit.

Too cool Louise Brooks swag from Germany!

Yesterday, I received one of the best packages I have ever received. It came from Benjamin Meissner, a new Facebook friend who I met online during my recent appearance on Karie Bible's Hollywood Kitchen. Benjamin was one of the viewers, a posted some comments and questions which I was happy to answer.

 

In our chat, Benjamin posted a picture of a Louise Brooks picture which he spotted in a hairdresser‘s shop in a city called Flensburg, near the Danish border; he also offered to send me a Louise Brooks pin and postcard, which are available in Germany. Above is a picture of the Brooks photo in a German shop window, followed by a scan of the postcard and pinback button.

I was gobsmacked. The postcard and the pinback button are both very cool! Thank you Benjamin. The postcard is made by a German publisher,Gerstenberg Verlag GmbH (www.gerstenberg-verlag.de). Benjamin also sent me small box set of film star postcards which feature Louise Brooks, Marlene Dietrich, and Charlie Chaplin. Picture first is the Brooks card (which came with matching gold envelopes), followed by the front and back of the postcard box set.

Thank you Benjamin Meissner, Louise Brooks and film fan extraordinaire!
BTW: Benjamin is a BIG classic Hollywood fan and president of the international Marilyn Monroe fan club "Some Like It Hot" in Germany with members all over the world.
https://the-international-marilyn-monroe-fan-club-germany.jimdosite.com

German-language story from 1939 references Louise Brooks

Louise Brooks remained a recognizable, if not especially popular figure in Europe for at least a few years following the release of the two films she made in Germany -- Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl. Both were released in 1929, and both continued to be shown on and off around Europe for another two years. Brooks' sole French production, Prix de beaute, was released in 1930, and like the two German films, it too was shown all over Europe for another two years. (Despite speculation to the contrary, Prix de beaute enjoyed a rather robust exhibition history around the globe.) Also still in circulation in 1930 and 1931 in France and Germany and Poland and elsewhere were a few or Brooks' American films including Beggars of Life (1928) and The Canary Murder Case (1929), as well as A Girl in Every Port (1928), which enjoyed a singular vogue in Paris. In fact, A Girl in Every Port was a favorite of the intelligentsia, and Jean Paul Sartre took Simone de Beauvoir to see the film on one of their first dates.

I mention all this because I sometimes wonder about Brooks' "continuing popularity" in Europe, especially after she stepped away from her Hollywood career in 1931. Fame fades for everyone, even our beloved Louise Brooks. As I have found, and as I document in my forthcoming work, Around the World with Louise Brooks (due out later this year), the number of magazine and newspaper articles about the actress dropped off in 1932, as does the paper trail of product advertisements (notably the Lux soap ads), ephemera (postcards, product cards, etc...), and references in "Where are they now?" type articles.

And that's why I was surprised to find Brooks referenced three times in a short humorous story published in an Austrian magazine in November of 1939, two months after the beginning of the Second World War and a few years after Germany had occupied Austria. The publication where I found the reference was a weekly humor magazine titled Die Muskete, and it was published in Vienna between 1905 and 1941. According to it's German-language Wikipedia entry, "Like other humorous magazines founded at the time, Die Muskete combined the works of young local artists and draftsmen with the work of young Austrian writers. At the same time, the magazine attached great importance to the artistic design and the high quality of the content. The magazine was originally intended for officer circles and quickly gained great importance, as the aim was to make it an Austrian counterpart of Simplicissimus, which later made it more widely used and very popular. It fought against excesses in the political, bureaucratic, clerical, military and social areas. During the First World War it developed into a 'funny soldier's sheet'. In 1919 the subtitle 'Humorous Weekly' disappeared and the magazine changed from jokes to an illustrated men's magazine." 

The references to Brooks occur in a short story by Josef Robert Harrer titled "Thomas Raverley." I wasn't able to find out much about Harrer except that he was a writer of the time, mainly active during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, with a few novels and books of short fiction and poetry to his credit. Besides this story in a 1939 Austrian magazine, I also found a story of his in a 1930 Estonian publication.

 

 

I haven't translated the piece as of yet, but from best I can tell the awkward, unmarried protagonist of the piece, Thomas Raverley, meets a young women who seems to be a receptionist, or secretary. He describes her as an "adorable girl who is almost as beautiful as Louise Brooks," with the added implication that this "Brooksian girl" resembled his secret screen crush. Later, on the same page of the story (page 35, depicted below), the actress is again referenced when the feminine character is again described as "almost as beautiful as Louise Brooks." Two pages later, Thomas and the young women meet again, "A curtain is pushed aside and the girl, who looks like Louise Brooks, approaches Thomas with a smile."

 

I don't yet know what the author meant by evoking Brooks' name, but I would guess that it has something to do with her type - i.e. a flapper or neue frau, as another once popular American actress is also mentioned later in the story, "the sweet Clara Bow."  Perhaps, even at this late date, Brooks still served as someone one could reference in a story. [Obviously, though, the drawings which accompany the story look nothing like Brooks, especially in regards to her hair.]

 

 

American actress Alice Faye appeared on the cover of this issue, notably. And also referenced on the last page of this story are references to other bits of American culture, namely a saxophone and a Jazz band, Prohibition, and even Mark Twain.

I would appreciate hearing from anyone familiar with this story, or with the work of the author, Josef Robert Harrer. This story is not the only shout-out to Louise Brooks which I have come across dating from the 1930s. There was a similar usage in a crime fiction story published in a French pulp. Evidently, as a figure still remembered by some, Brooks served as a descriptor... a cultural reference.

New Louise Brooks novel released in Switzerland

French writer Daniel Bernard emailed me to let me know about his new novel, Un dernier Charleston, Louise (One last Charleston, Louise), which has just been published in France Switzerland by Editions Lemart. Here is the front and back cover.

And here is something the author sent me about the book:

"The novel begins in 1957 at Idlewild Airport in New-York. Two women meet as they have accompanied someone to the plane going to Europe. Suddenly, they begin to talk to one another. “I’m Louise, says a brunette, the Louise Brooks!” Angela, the other woman answers: “I’m Angela, please to meet you!”

Then begins this imaginary story about the well-known star, Louise Brooks, and diverse characters: Angela, who is a German immigrant, Helmut, a former assistant to Pabst, the director of Pandora’s Box, and perhaps a lover, and a few others.

Through chapters that are written a bit like film scripts, with a lot of dialogues, we go back to 1928, as Louise was in Berlin, for the shooting of her famous one and only masterpiece, Pandora’s Box, by Pabst, to 1937, as Angela meets Leni Riefenstahl in Minister Speer’s office, in the 50’s in Paris, when Henri Langlois calls Louise back to Europe discovering the fallen and forgotten star, and many other situations.

The plot mixes true events and fully delusive moments that attempt to depict Louise’s personality, if she ever would act that way, with a tender and gentle look. Illusion, images, life, sexuality and the German period of the late 20’s, that Louise had just seen in Berlin are the background, and New York.

The novel contains a great quantity of dialogue, concerning a star of the silent movies, which is stunning. You read it as if you were a witness, hidden somewhere in the scenes surrounding the actors of he novel. At times, hints on the story of cinema art, that has changed the world until now, tells you details and/or facts that a few are aware of. In the background, a drama, well described, in a parallel montage effect, which is a justification if not an explanation of the whole plot: there is no witness of this story written by a true connoisseur."

Another newly found poem which references Louise Brooks

Last week, I came across yet another published poem which references Louise Brooks. The poem, titled "The Time Machine," is by Jon Anderson (1940–2007), a contemporary American poet and educator. Anderson's first book, Looking for Jonathan, was an inaugural selection of the Pitt Poetry Series of the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1967. His second, Death & Friends, was nominated for the National Book Award. Anderson won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1976; the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America in 1983 for career achievement; and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry in 1986.

"The Time Machine" was included in the author's 1982 book, The Milky Way: Poems 1967-1982, published by Ecco Press. The poem appears in the section of new work, suggesting it was one of the poet's more recent efforts. I am not sure when exactly the poem dates from, but I did find it appeared in the 1981 winter / spring issue of the literary journal Antaeus.

 

In David Wojahn's review of The Milky Way in Prairie Schooner, a literary journal, Wojahn describes Anderson as a tonal poet, and his selected poems a "satisfactory achievement." Wojahn writes that most poets under 45 years old don't have cause for such a book -- as they have not yet truely found their voice. Wojahn writes, "Most poets find their subjects early in their careers, but arrive at at their voices much later, and this is not surprising; we all know what we would like to write about, but few of us can easily delineate our attitude toward the subjects that obsess us." Anderson, Wojahn writes, is an exception.

Some of the poems in The Milky Way concern other writers, artists and composers. Wojahn writes, "Another new poems, 'The Time Machine,' is an homage to the silent-movie actress Louise Brooks, who becomes another member of the Anderson pantheon. . . . Again and again in Anderson's work we see situations in which the speaker attempts to release himself from solipsism through his homages to his saints...."

To me, Anderson's poem is somewhat oblique, though its indirectness is not so much we don't know which scene in Pandora's Box the poet is meditating on. I wish Anderson were still alive, as I would like to write to him and ask him about his work. And why, and what was he referring to, when he titled this poem  "The Time Machine."

Pierre Bismuth - Following the Right Hand of Louise Brooks in Beauty Prize

Just coming to auction is Pierre Bismuth's "Following the Right Hand of Louise Brooks in Beauty Prize," a 2009 mixed-media piece. The piece, which will be featured in a live auction on September 30,  is permanent marker on Plexiglas with digital print on Dibond and measures 29.5 h × 39.3 w in (75 × 100 cm). The auction estimate is $2,000 - $3,000, with an opening bid of  $1,400. More information about the auction HERE.

Pierre Bismuth (b. 1963) is a French artist and filmmaker based in Brussels. His practice can be placed in the tradition of conceptual art and appropriation art. His work uses a variety of media and materials, including painting, sculpture, collage, video, architecture, performance, music, and film. He is best known for being among the authors of the story for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2005 alongside Michel Gondry and Charlie Kaufman. Bismuth made his directorial debut with the 2016 feature film Where is Rocky II? Among the other artists he has collaborated with is the late Clash guitarist Joe Strummer. This 2014 article in Document helps explain the artist's approach.

To create this works from the Following the Right Hand series, the artist projected a feature film on a Plexiglas sheet and followed the movement of the lead actresses right hand with a marker from the beginning of the film until the frame that seen behind the drawing appears. The piece is signed and dated to lower left 'Pierre Bismuth 09'. 

Provenance: Team Gallery, New York | Acquired from the previous in 2009, Important New York Collection 

Literature: Pierre Bismuth: Things I Remember I Have Done, But Don't Remember Why I Did Them-Towards a Catalogue Raisonne, Bismuth, Pinto and Schafhausen, pg. 171, no. 1013

A Google image search using the artist's name as keyword turned up a few other similar pieces featuring films stills depicting Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, Ingrid Bergman, Lauren Bacall, Audrey Hepburn, Sophie Loren and others. I also noticed a variant of the above pictured piece. The variance is apparent when one compares the tip of Louise Brooks' nose.

I also came across another manipulated image of Brooks, this time a still from Pandora's Box. 

If the artist, Pierre Bismuth, reads this blog, the two questions I would like to ask are "Why Louise Brooks?" and "Why her right hand?" He may answer those questions, or at least suggest his strategy, at the very beginning of this unrelated interview.

Two poems - one Louise Brooks, one Lulu - second installment in memory of my feelings

With time on my hands due to the coronavirus pandemic quarantine, I was digging around the corners of the internet the other day - two different corners actually, when I came across a couple of poems which I thought might be of interest to readers of this blog which concerns itself with all things Louise Brooks and Lulu. This is the second installment.

Unlike Frank O'Hara's poem featured in the previous blog, I don't know anything about Emilio Vasquez's poem, "Kutinijata Wa, Lulu!"

All I know about it is that it was published in the July-August 1929 issue if Amauta, a significant avant-garde journal published in Peru (though read around the world). Is this Lulu poem is some way about our Lulu, Louise Brooks? It is hard to say.  It was published a few months after Pandora's Box debuted in Germany, though a few months before the film made its way to South America. (Pandora's Box was first screened in Latin America in December of 1929, though coverage of the film began appearing the previous month.)

Here is a poor translation of the poem, via the google translation function. Words in bold I could not translated. Can anyone suggest a better translation, or suggest a meaning for the words in bold?

KUTINIJATA WA, LULU

So under those past moons
as kelluncho mananero
pecked in your eyes in my waters

Today looking for you in his cabin
my suicidal loneliness gallops desperately

Song of kena soledana
my voice calls yelling at you
           kirkincho rose from your ears

Your sneak like recent wikunite
and only the wind burns me with its kiss

My eyes lacewing you in false

Why do you throw me up to kiss the earth

            But
you will return at dawn of fresh milk
like the puqu-puqu to its nest another day

We will start later in song and dance
the same waynu started a sowing day

Your green skirt turns wonder
our path will set afire again


There is little online about the author, Emilio Vasquez, who is unfamiliar to me. However I did find a passing reference to him on the web which mentioned he is considered an Andean modernist. That led me to pull my copy of Dudley Fitts' 1942 New Directions collection, Anthology of Contemporary Latin-American Poetry, and I found this brief biographical blurb.

I emailed a scholar of Latin American poetry, but have yet to hear back.

Coincidentally, the Blanton Museum of Art (at the University of Texas at Austin) along with the Museo de Arte de Lima (in Peru) just organized a new exhibit, The Avant-garde Networks of Amauta: Argentina, Mexico, and Peru in the 1920s, which relates to the very magazine in which I found this poem. The exhibit description reads: "The 1920s were a period of rapid modernization and artistic innovation across the globe; magazines played an integral role in disseminating bold new ideas and movements. The Avant-Garde Networks of Amauta: Argentina, Mexico, and Peru in the 1920s explores this history in Latin America through the magazine Amauta, published in Peru from 1926 to 1930. With an expansive network of collaborators, Amauta captured major artistic and political conversations of the decade including international discussions of the avant-garde, traditional craft as innovation, the visual identity of leftist politics, and the movement of Indigenism. The exhibition has more than 200 objects — including paintings, sculptures, poetry, ceramics, tapestries, woodcut prints, publications, and ephemera —  that richly evoke the milieu of this radical period."

The musuem webpage has a rather nifty virtual tour of the exhibit, which to my eyes, suggests the influence of German expressionism on the Amauta artists. So who knows? Perhaps Emilio Vasquez was hip to what was going on in Germany, especially the considerable amount of coverage given Brooks and her role as Lulu in Pandora's Box, and was inspired to write a poem? Who knows?

Two poems - one Louise Brooks, one Lulu - first installment in memory of my feelings

With time on my hands due to the coronavirus pandemic quarantine, I was digging around the corners of the internet the other day - two different corners actually, when I came across a couple of poems which I thought might be of interest to readers of this blog which concerns itself with all things Louise Brooks and Lulu. This is the first installment.

The first poem is one I have known about for some time; it is called "F.Y.I. (Prix de Beauté)" and it is by Frank O'Hara (1926-1966), one of the key New York School poets and one of the key American poets of the 1960s. (His 1964 book, Lunch Poems, is a classic and a favorite!) Not only does the poem's title reference a Brooks' film, namely Prix de beauté (1930), it also begins with a quotation from that film, "Et peut-être je t'aimerais encore," or "And maybe I will still love you," which is ascribed to the actress. Here, the poem is dated 7/31/61.

I found the poem while looking through a keyword searchable database of post WWII small press publication which included some lesser known poetry magazines, or what we might today call 'zines. This find was surprising, in that it references the actress rather early on in the history of the Brooks' revival - and that it comes from a poetry journal, not a film journal. The publication was called Audit-Poetry, and it was published out of Buffalo, New York. This issue, vol IV, no. 1, from 1964, featured the work of Frank O'Hara.

I was first made aware of the poem by Bill Berkson (1939-2016), a good friend of O'Hara's and a poet of renown who is also associated with the New York School of Poets. I had known Berkson back when I lived in San Francisco. We met after I had mounted a small exhibit of Louise Brooks memorabilia at a local coffee shop in my San Francisco neighborhood. Among those who visited the exhibit were the artist/filmmaker Bruce Conner (who wrote in the guestbook, see below), the artist known as Jess (who was brought by the poet Norma Cole), and Berkson himself.

Berkson, who lived in my San Francisco neighborhood, suggested we meet. He told me about his own interest and affection for Brooks and that he had written a poem related to the actress which was titled "Bubbles." He also told me about "F.Y.I. (Prix de Beauté)" and his friendship with O'Hara. Berkson said that both of their poems were inspired by a July 31, 1961 screening of Prix de Beauté at the New Yorker theater in New York City which the two young poets attended. O'Hara's poem, dated to the day of the screening, was first published three years a later in Audit-Poetry, and then again in The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara, edited by Donald Allen, a book which shared the 1972 National Book Award for Poetry. [I treasure my old hardback copy of this collection, which I had autographed by the late poet John Ashbery (who once met Brooks, which he told me about) and who wrote the introduction. I regret that I did not have Donald Allen sign it as well, as I was acquainted with him during my days as a bookseller in the late 1990s. He was a bit of a curmudgeon.]

Well anyways, Berkson and I got to know one another a bit, and we talked about Brooks, poetry, and art when we met (Berkson was also well known art critic, and I recall the Philip Guston paintings which hung in his apartment). He gave me a copy of his 1984 book Lush Life, which contained "Bubbles." I put on a poetry reading with him at the bookstore where I worked. (The store used to issue trading cards for most all of its events, and I collected a set of signed cards.)

Around that time, I also began making a series of limited edition broadsides in conjunction with some of those bookstore readings, and one that I issued in conjunction with Berkson's reading was of his Brooks-related poem. These broadsides were printed at home on my laser printer on hand-fed watercolor paper (it was a laborious project trying to feed thick textured paper through a printer not meant to accept such paper), usually in an edition of 25 or 50 copies, with each autographed by the poet. Here is the "Bubbles" broadside , which includes a portrait of Brooks in The American Venus discretely drawn like a watermark into the background, just as the actress discretely inspired Berkson's oblique poem. (BTW: Some of the language in this poem is drawn from Brooks' own writings, especially her piece on the making of Beggars of Life.)

 

Bill told me he liked what I had made, and went about signing the edition of 50. I gave him a few copies, and he told me that one would go into his archive which a university was considering purchasing. I was pleased. I also told Bill about my hopes to make a similar broadside for O'Hara's "F.Y.I. (Prix de Beauté)". In fact, I showed him a draft copy, which Bill also liked. He was enthusiastic about the project, and gave me the email of O'Hara's estate so I could write and get permission to publish a broadside. I did so, but was turned down. Alas. And that was the end of that. Here is a low res scan of one of two draft copies. [I recall I gave Berkson one, and kept one.]

post script. I printed a few more broadsides back then, though not all were related to Brooks. Among those that were include an August Kleinzahler poem, "Watching Young Couples with an Old Girlfriend on Sunday Morning," which references Louise Brooks and her "annealed" hair. Beautiful. I also made a Barry Paris broadside at the time I put on event for his reissued biography of Brooks. That was back in 2006....  

 

One of my best efforts was a triptych of broadsides (edition of 25 copies per each poem, total edition of 75) made at the time I did an event with the acclaimed poet Mary Jo Bang for her superb book, Louise in Love. Here is a picture of the three poems, "Louise in Love, - " She Loved Falling" - The Diary of a Lost Girl", along with the cover of Bang's 2001 book.

This blog is a prose poem, if you will, written in memory of my feelings, as it were. The next blog,  the second installment, concerns a Lulu poem written by an obscure Andean modernist published in 1929. Stay tuned.

Louise Brooks - Two Parallel Lives by Laura Scaramozzino

I just became aware of a new book, Louise Brooks. Due vite Parallele (Louise Brooks: Two Parallel Lives) by Laura Scaramozzino. From what I can tell, it's an Italian noir fantasy novel in which features a character named Louise Brooks. 

The publisher's description reads: "Louise Brooks è una giovane attrice. Vive a Hollywood ed è un'esponente del Nuovo Cinema Impulsoriale: un'elaborazione moderna del cinema muto del passato. Dopo una notte trascorsa in compagnia della collega Greta, riceve sul cellulare un messaggio inquietante: Edmond J. Lermann è morto. La ragazza non conosce nessuno con quel nome e quando prova a risalire al mittente del messaggio fallisce nell'intento. Grazie a Internet, Louise scopre che l'uomo esiste ed è morto davvero, ucciso con un colpo di pistola a Torino, in Italia, e che era originario della sua cittadina natale: Cherryvalle nel Kansas. Inizia così un'avventura in cui la giovane attrice si trova costretta a fare i conti con il proprio passato. C'è una voce che la perseguita da quando aveva otto anni. Una minaccia che non l'ha mai abbandonata e recita: 'Questa bambina è mia'."

Which in rough translation reads: "Louise Brooks is a young actress. She lives in Hollywood and is an exponent of the New Impulsive Cinema: a modern elaboration of the silent cinema of the past. After a night spent in the company of her colleague Greta, she receives a disturbing message on his cell phone: Edmond J. Lermann is dead. The girl does not know anyone with that name and when she tries to trace the sender of the message she fails. Thanks to the Internet, Louise discovers that the man exists and really died, killed with a gunshot in Turin, Italy, and that he was originally from his hometown: Cherryvalle, Kansas. Thus began an adventure in which the young actress is forced to deal with her past. There is a rumor that has haunted her since she was eight years old. A threat that has never left her and says: 'This girl is mine'."

Apparently, the novel - which is something of a genre bender - has a contemporary setting, and in it silent films are still being made, though with contemporary methods. The book is being described as a noir thriller with elements of science fiction and fantasy. However, the fact that the novel's character is an actress named Louise Brooks, and she has a connection to Cherryvale (including an incident of sexual abuse), links the book to the historic silent film star.

image via Facebook

I don't know much about the author, Laura Scaramozzino. As best as I can figure, she has two other Italian books to her credit, including Screaming Dora (2019), which was published by Watson, the same publisher as Louise Brooks: Two Parallel Lives. I sent her an email with a few questions, but have yet to hear back.... I hope the book gets translated into English, as I would like to read it. There is an air of mystery about it that seems intriguing. An Italian-language review of the book, by Fabio Orrico, can be found HERE. Orrico concludes his review by stating, "Laura Scaramozzino, in a span of just over a hundred pages, links stories and history, realism and fantasy, elaboration of mourning and revenge." (This might make for a good Quentin Tarantino film.)

Richard Sala (1959-2020), friend of the Louise Brooks Society

With much sadness the Louise Brooks Society mourns the passing of Richard Sala (1959-2020), an acclaimed cartoonist, illustrator, and comic book creator and longtime friend to the LBS. Sala was found dead in his Berkeley, California home, having died on May 7th. He was only 61 years old.

One of Sala earliest comics was Night Drive, which he self-published in 1984. Soon afterword, he was "discovered" by Art Spiegelman and others, and he was published in RAW magazine in 1986. Sala's many admirers included his fellow cartoonists, such as Daniel Clowes, the author of Ghost World. Clowes  penned a moving tribute to Sala, a close friend, in Comics Journal. Other memorial pieces include those on Boing Boing, Comics Beat, and CBR.

Sala loved all manner of popular culture, where it was pulp illustration, silent movies, German expressionism, science fiction and horror, or mod music. I first became aware of Sala around the time he published Peculia (Fantagraphics, 2002), whose plucky heroine was loosely inspired by Louise Brooks. (Peculia is a mysterious girl whose name is a reference to a childhood misspelling of the Spanish word "pelicula," or "movie"). In a 2007 interview with Comics Reporter, Sala stated:

So, I sat down and began to create model sheets for characters -- the kind you see that are done for animation -- just so I'd have a guide to what my characters would look like from every angle. The more I drew women, the more they evolved into whatever it is they've become. I really like the way women were drawn in old comic strips and early "golden-age" comic books, so I was looking at those. I also referred to photos of silent movie actresses like Clara Bow and Louise Brooks -- women who were spunky and sexy and cute and strong and innocent and smart -- all at the same time. And I looked at vintage illustrations of flappers, which captured that same spirit -- often in drawn in what seems like a single graceful, gently curving line from head to foot. So that became the basic type for many of the female characters.

Around the time Peculia was published, I was managing an author event series in San Francisco. Enthused by Sala's new book, I begged his publishor for an event with the artist, but Sala wouldn't do it. I never understood why until later, when I learned of his crippling anxiety and agoraphobia. We exchanged a few emails back then (more senseless begging for an event by me, and chat about Louise Brooks), and a few years later, with the rise of Facebook, we connected once again, occasionally liking and commenting on each other's posts. It has been a long time, but I think I sent him a copy of my first book, the Louise Brooks edition of The Diary of a Lost Girl. I guess Louise Brooks is my Peculia.

For more about this singular talent, check out his Facebook page, or his blog/website titled HERE LIES RICHARD SALA. Though we never met, I consider you a friend, a kindred soul. Good passage Richard.

Video Diary of a Lost Girl - Louise Brooks homage from Pandora's Talk Box Productions

Here's something unusual from, a Louise Brooks homage titled Video Diary of a Lost Girl from a indy film group called Pandora's Talk Box Productions. This 2012 video, which I only recently came across on YouTube, described itself as "A rock and roll horror fantasy where we meet the immortal Louise and her beloved Charlie. Unfortunately due to Louise's supernatural origins, every man she sleeps with must die so that she can survive! A heart felt love letter to 80's horror, punk, VHS and German expressionism." 

I think most fans of Louise Brooks will pick-up on the various allusions relevant to our favorite silent film star. The cast includes Priscilla McEver as Louise, Chris Shields as Charlie, Casey Puccini as Michael, Monica Panzarino as Jane, and Erica Gressman as Emily. Video Diary of a Lost Girl was named  given an Audience Award at the Chicago Underground Film Festival, and named an Official Selection at the Brisbane Underground Film Festival, an Official Selection at the South Texas Underground Film Festival, and an Official Selection: Dark Carnival Film Festival. Here is the trailer, which should give you a taste of the film:

I understand there has been a video release. Also, Video Diary of a Lost Girl screens on TruIndie TV. However, back on March 19, the film's Facebook page announced "While everyone is quarantined for the next few weeks (or months?), Video Diary of a Lost Girl will be available to watch for free on Youtube! The link below is unlisted, so all I ask is to share the link with a friend who is bored and needs a good laugh and/or scare! Happy Apocalypse my fellow demon babies!" The link to the temporary free full version on YouTube can be found HERE.

RadioLulu off the air, with a few recommended videos

After 18 years of streaming Louise Brooks and silent film related music, Radio Lulu has come to an end. The Louise Brooks Society online station was begun in 2002, and has reached countless listeners all over the globe. For more on this sad occasion, see the earlier LBS blog post, "Louise Brooks Society announcement regarding RadioLulu".

The station rotation began with "Louise," sung by Maurice Chevalier. In fact, it was my love of this song that led me to launch RadioLulu. In the early days of the Louise Brooks Society, a brief snippet of Chevalier's famed recording launched whenever someone clicked on the LBS website. I was not alone in my love for this particular recording. I recall once receiving an email from a fan who said they visited the LBS website everyday just to hear the snippet!

Because you likely want to hear it again, here is another video recordings of "Louise, a song which originally had nothing to do with our Louise. "Louise" was a show-stopping number from the 1929 film, The Innocents of Paris, Paramount's first musical. The song is sung by Maurice Chevalier, with the Leonard Joy Orchestra,  and it peaked at #3 on US Music Charts in 1929. Today, however, "Louise Brooks" has become associated with Brooks.

And finally, here is Chevalier performing the song in 1932. Chevalier recorded the song a few times over the years, but usually stuck to this original arrangement. Enjoy!

Louise Brooks Society announcement regarding RadioLulu

The economic uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic is leading many of us to reevaluate our needs and expenses. Who knows what the future holds? For me, these expenses includes various costs incurred in running the Louise Brooks Society and its website. There are domain and web hosting fees, subscription fees, costs associated with research and with editing software, etc.... I have been running the Louise Brooks Society for 25 years, and it all ads up.

Listen while you can!

I intend to continue the Louise Brooks Society for as long as I can, but have decided to cut costs where I am able. Thus, with great regret, I am announcing that RadioLulu will cease streaming in the first week of April. I will also be cutting back on other background expenses associated with my wordpress website.

A melancholy Louise Brooks listens to a 78 rpm record in Prix de Beauté (1930)

I launched RadioLulu back in 2002, and enjoyed sharing with others the considerable amount of Louise Brooks-related audio and musical material I had gathered. The station's description reads "RadioLulu is a Louise Brooks-inspired, silent film-themed internet station streaming music of the 1920s, 1930s, and today. Located on the web at http://192.99.8.170/start/radiolulu/ — RadioLulu features vintage and contemporary music related to Louise Brooks as well as the silent and early sound eras."

In the early years, I found an audience.... Famed film critic Leonard Maltin once rated the station a “Wow” on his website. The Pulitzer-Prize winning graphic novelist Art Spiegelman (author of Maus) told me he tuned-in on occasion. As had the award-winning science fiction writer Richard Kadrey, and celebrated Dr. Who actor Paul McGann. In fact, when I first met McGann some years ago, his first words were "You’re the guy that does RadioLulu. It’s incredible. I listen all the time." In 2015, I received an email from a listener named Nick. He was employed at the Vito Russo Library at the Gay Center in New York City; Nick wrote to say that RadioLulu was played at the library every Saturday, and that “Everybody loves it.” It was nice to have a fan or two!

In the beginning, RadioLulu found a home on Live365, a streaming service for aspiring DJ's like myself. However, when that platform crashed in 2016 (read more HERE), and the expense involved in streaming skyrocketed, RadioLulu was left without a home. After a couple of months, it found a second home on SHOUTca.st, which was syndicated to other channels and devices through TuneIn. For a time, you could even listen to RadioLulu through your TV via ROKU.

However, that second home on SHOUTca.st, while affordable -- was limited and problematic. If too many individuals listed, then I exceeded my bandwidth and the station was knocked off the air until the beginning of the next usage cycle. All too often, I received emails from individuals asking what happened to the station. I was dissapointed to be dissapointing others.

I am not sure what the future holds for RadioLulu. Hopefully, I would like to make use of its many hours of content and turn it into thematic podcasts with shows devoted to different topics -- like the music of Prix de beaute or Beggars of Life, with shows of songs recorded by Brooks' co-stars and contemporaries, with vintage music about the movies, etc.... RadioLulu features more than 850 recordings! And notably, many of them come from rare 78 rpm discs you’re unlikely to hear anywhere else. It is important that this old music still be heard.  I am referring to vintage track like George Gershwin’s “Somebody Loves Me” (Brooks knew Gershwin, and this was her favorite Gershwin song according to Barry Paris), Xavier Cugat’s “Siboney” (recommended by Brooks in her rare booklet, Fundamentals of Good Ballroom Dancing), and a few numbers by Sid Kay’s Fellows (the jazz band seen playing in the wedding reception scene in Pandora’s Box). Read more about RadioLulu's programming HERE.

Louise Brooks holding a portable record player, circa 1925

Louise Brooks inspired film The Chaperone shows in Australia

The Louise Brooks inspired film The Chaperone will be shown on Tuesday, February 25 at the Stanton Library in North Sydney, New South Wales. More information about this event can be found HERE.

The library announcement reads, "Join us @Stanton_Library for our Books to Movies screening of 'The Chaperone' based on the 2012 novel by Laura Moriarty about teenage Louise Brooks, who dreams of fame and fortune in New York City in the company of a watchful chaperone. All welcome!" Additionally, the library notes, "This friendly group meets to screen films based on both classic and popular books. And it is not necessary to have read the book! Filmic appreciation mixed with lively debate makes this event all the more interesting."

The Chaperone, produced as a film by PBS in the United States, is based on the bestselling 2012 book of the same name by Laura Moriarty, a Kansas novelist. Curiously, The Chaperone has received a lot of "love" in Australia, perhaps as much as the film received in the United States. The titular star of the film, Elizabeth McGovern, flew to Sydney were she introduced it at the Australian premiere. An earlier LBS blog on the Australian opening can be found HERE.

 via Facebook

Though Academy Award nominee Elizabeth McGovern, famous for her role in Downton Abbey, was the star of The Chaperone, many including myself felt actress Haley Lu Richardson stole the show. Richardson plays Louise Brooks in what I would describe as a bravura performance, one worthy of at least an Oscar nomination as best supporting actress. Regrettably, she did not receive a nomination. Here is a slightly different, more briskly edited Australian trailer for the film.

I think it is wonderful that Australia has embraced The Chaperone and Louise Brooks' story. (A major retrospective of the actress' film was held late last year at the Melbourne Cinémathèque. Read more about it HERE. ) I hope a bunch of people turn out for the Stanton screening, and a bunch of people check out a copy of Laura Moriarty's fine novel. The Louise Brooks Society recommends both!

Louise Brooks Frank Martin signed etching for sale

Besides Herbert Bayer's photomontage "Profil en Face" (1929), one of the most significant works of fine art to depict Louise Brooks is Frank Martin's 1974 etching of the actress. A copy has just come up for sale HERE.

Frank Martin (1921-2005) created this limited edition signed etching on copper in the early 1970s (which is somewhat early in the timeline of Brooks' post WWII rediscovery). It was published by Christie's Contemporary Art in 1974. 

According to the sellers' website, "Frank Martin was a printmaker, illustrator and teacher, born in Dulwich, southeast London. He read history at Oxford University and then studied at St Martin’s School of Art. After army service in World War 2 he gradually established himself as a freelance artist, although he taught at Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts from 1953-1980. He illustrated many books, including Charles Lamb’s Essays, 1963 and William Hazlitt’s Essays, 1964. From 1966 he turned his attention to a long series of prints of Hollywood actresses of the silent film era.

Originally a Ziegfeld Follies Girl, Louise Brooks made films in Hollywood in the late 1920s. Her high reputation as an actress rests on her performance as Lulu in Pandora's Box, made in Germany in 1928."

This print, which originates from an antique dealer in Yorkshire, is number 26 of 110. Antique's Atlas is asking $2161.50 or £1650.00, or €1958.55. I am not sure if the latter price is still current as the UK has left the European Union. (The Louise Brooks Society does not own a copy of this work of art: if anyone wanted to purchase it and donate it to the author of this blog, that would be splendid.) 

Personally, I very much like the artist's rendering of Brooks almost somber face, as well as the Cubist-like background, the latter of which suggests Brooks' modernity. My only criticism is the artist's handling of Brooks' breasts, which I think are too full, somewhat evoking the curved lines of the background.

Louise Brooks at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1977 and 1980

I concluded my previous post concerning a book about avant-garde women of the 1920s by posting a picture of Herbert Bayer's extraordinary 1929 photomontage, "Profil en face." I thought it appropriate to show the use of Louise Brooks' image within modernism, specially the work of an artist associated with the Bauhaus.

Herbert Bayer's "Profil en face" (1929)

After finishing the blog, I thought to spend a bit of time web surfing and followed a link someone had just posted to Facebook and checked out an article on one of my favorite websites, Open Culture. The 2016 article, Every Exhibition Held at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Presented in a New Web Site: 1929 to Present, detailed a digital exhibition archive which presents various materials such as installation photos, checklists, brochures, and catalogs related to every show mounted at the famed New York City museum.

Skipping through MoMA's remarkable exhibition history, I came across a show called "Herbert Bayer: Photographic Works." I have always liked this artist, and checked out the supporting materials. Guess what I found? Bayer's little-known photomontage was included in the exhibit, and there was Louise Brooks' image (or at least half her profile) hanging in the Museum of Modern Art in New York between October 31, 1977 and January 29, 1978.

Some of Bayer's most iconic images - photograph by Katherine Keller

I was excited. And though I already own two other books on Bayer's work, I tracked down a second-hand copy of the out-of-print catalog for this particular show and ordered it. Hopefully, it might contain some information on Bayer's use of Brooks' image.

I continued my tour of MoMA's exhibition history and came across another show which included not one, but two images of Brooks. This exhibit, "Hollywood Portrait: Photographers, 1921–1941" ran December 5, 1980 to February 28, 1981.  It included the famed pearl portrait taken by Eugene Robert Richee, as well as another publicity portrait of Brooks in men's clothing taken around the time she made Beggars of Life.

Hollywood photography at its best - photograph by Mali Olatunji

This particular exhibit, one of a number of nifty film related exhibits mounted by MoMA, was put on at the height of the Brooks' revival prior to her death. The pearl portrait is third from the left.

More great Hollywood photography - photograph by Mali Olatunji

The Beggars of Life publicity portrait of Brooks is sixth from the left. And below is a larger view of the image.

I find it very interesting that Brooks' image was included in exhibits at NY MoMA. I hadn't known they were ... but more than that, it shows Brooks herself to be part and parcel of 20th century modernism, and not just a cult figure within the realm of film history. That is fascinating!