Tuesday, May 6, 2003

Rudolph Valentino biography

Currently reading the new Valentino biography, Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino, by Emily W. Leider. I am about 125 pages into the book, and am enjoying it a great deal. I would recommend it highly to anyone interested in the life and times of the actor, or anyone interested in silent film. I will post further thoughts on the book once I am done reading it.

For those interested in checking out the book (and the author), Emily Leider will be giving a talk in San Francisco. Here are the details.

EMILY W. LEIDER
reading & booksigning for "Dark Lover: The Life and Death of Rudolph Valentino"
May 7th, 7 pm
at The Booksmith (1644 Haight Street, San Francisco)
This event is free and open to the public. For further information, call 415-863-8688 or visit www.booksmith.com

Sunday, April 27, 2003

Site Updates

Added a few more images to the Vintage Magazine Covers page, including a 1926 Danish magazine with Louise Brooks on the cover. Also, scanned my recent eBay purchase of a 1928 issue of Film Weekly with Brooks on the cover. That image was also added to the aforementioned page. Recently, I added a page of vintage Related Magazine Covers, though there are only three examples. Hopefully, I will find others.

Thursday, April 24, 2003

S.S. Van Dine

Recently finished reading Alias S.S. Van Dine, a biography by John Loughery of the man who wrote The Canary Murder Case. I enjoyed the book a good deal, and would recommend it to those interested in 20th century American cultural history. Willard Huntington Wright (aka S. S. Van Dine) was an interesting, though perhaps disagreeable, person who knew many leading figures of the time. (Louise Brooks is mentioned in passing in this book; she had the left the set of the Canary Murder Case by the time Van Dine arrived to lend his then considerable fame to the film.) Having finished the biography, I then decided to read the celebrated mystery novel which served as the basis for the 1929 film. As of today, I am nearly through with the book. Just about 50 pages to go. I will finish it, though I find the book somewhat tedious.

Tuesday, April 22, 2003

New material

Yesterday, I received photocopies of some six dozen vintage clippings from various Philadelphia newspapers. The clippings are part of the Philadelphia newspaper morgue housed at Temple University. (I came across a reference to this material while searching for newspaper archives on the internet.) Though the clippings I received were mostly small, wire service articles from the 1930's, they are of some interest. Citations for this material have been added to the appropriate bibliographies.

Through interlibrary loans over the last few months, I have been slowly working my way through the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Syracuse Post-Standard, Chicago Daily News, and Newark Star Eagle - and have recently started looking through the Houston Chronicle, Omaha World Herald, Seattle Times and Birmingham News. Last week, I also spent a day at home looking through some of the websites which reproduce old newspapers. There, I found scattered articles and reviews from a number of small town newspapers such as the Reno Gazette from Nevada, Denton Journal from Maryland, and Daily Northwestern from Oshkosh, Wisconsin. One goal behind this research is to accumulate a representitive selection of reviews from across the United States.

One of the websites I looked through had some Canadian and Mexican newspapers. While I didn't find any articles about Brooks or her films in these North American newspapers, I did manage to find advertisements for the actress' films. The best material were some half-dozen advertisements for films featuring Luisa Brooks in Il Informador from Guadalajara, Mexico.

Saturday, April 12, 2003

Sacramento trip

At the California State Library in Sacremento, I looked through the Pasadena Star-News, La Opinion and some Los Angeles newspapers for the period of the mid-to-late 1920's. I found a bunch of film reviews, advertisements and articles in the Pasadena newspaper, but little in La Opinion. (This Spanish-language paper, based in Los Angeles, ran frequent articles on Hispanic film stars such as Dolores del Rio, Raquel Torres, Ramon Navarro, etc . . . , but nothing that I could find on Louise Brooks.) I also took the time to search through four Los Angeles newspapers for material on Just Another Blonde, Evening Clothes and The City Gone Wild. My efforts in this regard were successful, and I found reviews, articles, ads and more. Citations for all of the material that I have found have been aded to the bibliographies.

Tuesday, March 25, 2003

Clara Bow

Finished reading Clara Bow: Runnin' Wild by David Stenn. A good biography, sympathetically told. I would love to see a picture book devoted to her. Clara Bow was so lovely, and such a gifted, natural actress. She is one of my favorite silent film stars.

Thursday, March 20, 2003

Trip to Sacramento

Depending on (the war and) how things go, I plan to travel to the California State Library in Sacramento next week. (I live in San Francisco, and Sacramento is about 100 miles away. It's a two hour drive.) This will be my fifth trip to the State Library, which is a major repository of California newspapers on microfilm. To date, I have been able to survey newspapers from most all of the major metropolitan areas in California. (See the various bibliographies for the citations and material that has been collected so far.) On this trip, I hope to dig through the Pasadena Star-News and La Opinion (a Spanish-language newspaper based in Los Angeles) for the period of the mid-to-late 1920's. I will be looking for film reviews and other articles. If there is enough time, I may also look at the papers for Long Beach and Santa Monica.

Sunday, March 16, 2003

Site redesign

A comprehensive redesign and site rebuild is underway. (This page is an example of the new look which most every page on the LBS will eventually assume.) The implementation of the rebuild will take some time, as the size of the Louise Brooks Society now stands at more than 200 pages. The intention of this redesign is to give the LBS a more up-to-date look. Also, some outside links - notably the old translation module at the bottom of every page, were no longer functioning. A comprehensive site rebuild will fix broken links, conform site code to current html standards, and give the overall site a cleaner, more contemporary feel.
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