LBS anniversary

This month, the Louise Brooks Society celebrates its 9th year on the internet. Since its humble beginings as a "fan page," the LBS has received approximately 1,000,000 hits. Not bad for a website about a silent film star.

The Louise Brooks Society is a "virtual fan club" in cyberspace. At last count, its 1000 members hail from 46 countries on six continents! From Canada to Argentina, from the Canary Islands to Hungary, from Australia to Zimbabwe, LBS members comprise a truly world wide web of Louise Brooks fans and silent film enthusiasts.

Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin

Earlier this year, I had read and enjoyed Marion Meade's biography of Buster Keaton. And so, I figured I would give her new book a try. I just finished reading Bobbed Hair and Bathtub Gin: Writers Running Wild in the Twenties, Meade's group portrait of four Jazz Age writers - Dorothy Parker, Zelda Fitzgerald, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Edna Ferber. I liked this book a good deal, though at times, I found the interwoven stories of the four writer's loves, lives, and literary endeavors a little jumbled.

Robert Bly photoplay edition

I hosted a poetry reading tonight for Robert Bly. Afterwords, I asked him to sign a few books, including my copy of The Saga of Gosta Berling, by Selma Lagerlof. (Though not so much read today, Lagerlof was a popular Swedish writer at the turn of the 20th century and the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. This novel, her most popular, was made into a film in 1924 by director Mauritz Stiller.)

I own this book because Greta Garbo is pictured on the cover. When I presented the book to Bly, he did not recognize it and said it was not his translation. I showed him his name inside the book. He acknowledged it was in fact his translation, but stated that he had never seen this edition before. It turns out this copy is an English language translation published in Sweden in 1982. I can't remember where I obtained this copy. Most likely, it was at a second hand book store in San Francisco or Berkeley.

Peggy Hopkins Joyce biography

Finished reading Gold Digger, by Constance Rosenblum. This excellent biography, originally published in 2000, tells the story of the "outrageous life and times of Peggy Hopkins Joyce" - a somewhat minor stage and film star of the Twenties and Thirties who led a rather interesting life. She was, certainly, one of the leading personalities of her time. "They don't make courtesans like Peggy Hopkins Joyce anymore - or so worthy of rediscovery - and they don't make biographies any more stylish and definitive than this one." - Barry Paris 

Audience fading for repertory movie theaters

San Francisco Chronicle movie critic Mick LaSalle has written a really interesting article on the future of repertory movie theaters. Though largely focussed on San Francisco, the article has national implications. This article is about the kind of local movie theaters that show silent films and pre-code films and the films that readers of this blog care about. Check out the article here.

Chicago research

Returned the other day from a work-related trip to Chicago, where I was attending the annual booksellers convention. While in the "Windy City," I spent some time researching Louise Brooks.

I spent a day and a half - about ten hours - at the Chicago Public Library. This is my third trip to the CPL. This time, I managed to more or less complete my survey of Chicago newspapers on microfilm. The papers I've looked at include the Chicago American, Chicago Daily Journal, Chicago Daily News, Chicago Evening Post,Chicago Herald-Examiner, and Chicago Tribune. I found additional reviews for Brooks' Chicago-area Denishawn performances, as well as substantial coverage of her nite club appearances in the 1930's. I also dug up a number of film reviews, as well as a handful of other miscellaneous articles, including front page coverage of Brooks marriage to Eddie Sutherland! All together, a good haul. (I also browsed the stacks, where I found a bit of interesting material in a few different books.)

I spent about seven hours at the library at the University of Chicago. There, I was able to look at rare German, Soviet and Japanese film periodicals from the late 1920's and early 1930's. (The Russian and German periodicals were on microfilm. The Japanese film periodical - Movie Times - was a reproduction of the original in bound volumes.) I found a handful of illustrated articles in each periodical! The Russian and Japanese periodicals are especially rare - and it was exciting to actually browse them and find pictures and articles about Brooks and her films.

The University of Chicago library has a lot of microfilm, and I wasn't able to look at everything I wanted. I did spend a little time looking at other publications, including the Daily Worker (this socialist newspaper based in New York City yielded a couple of brief articles), the Charleston News and Courier (found a Denishawn review and a film article in this South Carolina paper), and the Joliet Herald News (found some advertisements for screenings in the 1920's in this Chicago-area paper). Citations for these and all of the above material has been added to the LBS bibliographies.

Brooks event in Los Angeles

For those who live in Los Angeles and are so inclined, a Louise Brooks-inspired event will take place on Friday, May 21, 2004 at 10 pm. The Bricktops are presenting their second annual "Louise Brooks, LuLu in Hollywood Tributata. " 

For more info on the event, see http://www.parlourclub.com/club_page.asp?club_page=Bricktops (Fancy dress highly encouraged. $5.00 cover 21+ 10pm-2am. With resident DJ Bernice Bobs-Her-Hair and Pirate Jenny From Montpellier. ) Information on the Bricktops, and their home, the Parlour Club (7702 Santa Monica Blvd in the Russian Quarter of West Hollywood), can also be found through this page. If anybody goes, please post your observations! 

Redwood City

Ventured to the Redwood City Public Library, about a 40 minute drive south from my apartment in San Francisco. I searched through microfilm of the Redwood City Tribune, where I found a few advertisements and brief articles related to local screenings of films featuring Louise Brooks. Local patrons, as it turns out, largely went to nearby Palo Alto or San Mateo to take in the latest offerings from Paramount, MGM, etc....

This last newspaper survey largely completes my three year survey of Bay Area publications. In summation, here is what I looked at and where I found it: 

-- San Francisco Public Library (The Argonaut, Richmond Banner, San Francisco Bulletin, San Francisco Call and Post, San Francisco Call-Bulletin, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Daily News, The Marin and San Anselmo Herald)

-- Oakland Public Library (Oakland Tribune, Oakland Post-Enquirer)

-- University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley Daily Gazette, Contra Costa Gazette, Daily Californian, Oakland Morning Record, San Rafael Independent)

-- California State University, Hayward (Hayward Review, Hayward Daily Review, Oakland Free Press, San Leandro Reporter, Township Register)

-- San Mateo Public Library (San Mateo Times)

-- Stanford University (Daily Palo Alto, Palo Alto Times, Stanford Daily)

-- San Jose State University (Los Gatos Mail News, San Jose Evening News, San Jose Mercury Herald, San Jose Mercury News)

-- California State Library (Alameda Times-Star, Illustrated Daily Herald, Livermore Herald, Marin Journal, Santa Rosa Press Democrat)

Erich von Stroheim biography

Finished reading Stroheim, by the film historian and biographer Arthur Lennig. This is an impressive biography, one which I read with great interest. (It was fascinating, for example, to find out that Erich von Stroheim lived for a short time here in the San Francisco Bay Area.) My introduction to Stroheim came through my wife, who has long been interested in this individual and his films. One of our first dates was spent watching a video of The Wedding March. Now, we have many of Stroheim's silent films on DVD.

I have been meaning to read this book since I first met Lennig back in 1999. I had hosted him for an author event and booksigning around the time that Stroheim was first published in hardback. Then, my wife and I were able to spend a little time with this noted film historian. We went to party with Lennig (where we met Fay Wray - the star The Wedding March), and later went to dinner. Lennig is quite the raconteur. Over dinner, he spoke of researching and writing about this troubled actor / director - as well as Bela Lugosi, another fascinating figure whom Lennig both knew and has written about.

For those not familiar with Stroheim and his films (you should be!), here is a description of the book from the publisher. "Erich von Stroheim (1885-1957) was one of the true giants in American film history. Stubborn, arrogant, and colorful, he saw himself as a cinema artist, which led to numerous conflicts with producers and studio executives who complained about the inflated budgets and extraordinary length of his films. Stroheim achieved great notoriety and success, but he was so uncompromising that he turned his triumph into failure. He was banned from ever directing again and spent the remainder of his life as an actor.

For years Stroheim’s life has been wreathed in myths, many of his own devising. Arthur Lennig scoured European and American archives for details concerning the life of the actor and director, and he counters several long-accepted and oft-repeated claims. Stroheim’s tales of military experience are almost completely fictitious; the “von” in his name was an affectation adopted at Ellis Island in 1909; and, counter to his own claim, he did not participate in the production of [The] Birth of a Nation in 1914.

Wherever Stroheim lived, he was an outsider: a Jew in Vienna, an Austrian in southern California, an American in France. This contributed to an almost pathological need to embellish and obscure his past; yet, it also may have been the key to his genius both behind and in front of the camera. He had a fantastic dedication to absolute cinematic truth and believed that his vision and genius would triumph over the Hollywood system.

As an actor, Stroheim threw himself into his portrayals of evil men, relishing his epithet “The Man You Love to Hate.” As a director, he immersed himself in every facet of production, including script writing and costume design. In 1923 he created his masterpiece Greed, infamous for its eight-hour running time. The studio cut the film to two hours and burned the extra footage. Stroheim returned to acting, saving some of his finest performances for La Grande Illusion (1937) and Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950), a role he hated, probably because it was too similar to the story of his own life."

Roxie Theater

There is an article in today's San Francisco Chronicle about the Roxie, a local movie theater. It is the oldest operating movie theater in San Francisco. I have seen a number of films there over the years, including most memorably Dangerous Female (1931), the first film version of The Maltese Falcon (in which Louise Brooks is pictured as Sam Spade's girlfriend!), and a Norma Shearer film (introduced by Shearer's daughter.) My friend Lara works there as a projectionist.

Austrian newspapers

Came across a website which had historic runs of Austrian newspapers, including three papers from Vienna from the period of the 1920's. The papers are not searchable by keyword, so I had to scroll through them page by page looking for interesting material. I had hoped to find something about Pandora's Box, which, I believe, showed in Vienna the first week of March, 1929. Nothing turned up. The three papers I scanned didn't seem to report on or review the cinema. Found no articles or advertisements.

Does anyone know of any similar on-line access to European newspapers of the 1920's or 1930's?

Webpage updates

New songs have been added to RadioLulu. If you haven't already heard this internet radio station, please give a listen. The station can be found at http://www.live365.com/stations/298896RadioLulu features "all things Lulu" - the music of the Twenties through today. Included are theme songs from the films of Louise Brooks, songs by the actress' contemporaries, friends and co-stars, show-tunes and standards, vintage jazz, as well as contemporary pop songs about the silent film star. Everyone from George Gershwin, Josephine Baker and Marlene Dietrich to Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark and Soul Coughing are highlighted on this unique station.

The LBS Gift Shop pages have also been updated. Highlighted on these pages is information and links to Louise Brooks books, DVD's and videos, posters, prints, postcards and other products available for purchase over the internet and elsewhere.

The LBS home page has been refined. And many new citations have also been added to the various Louise Brooks bibliographies.

Beggars of Life

Having finished the Dietrich biography, I decided to next read Beggars of Life, by Jim Tully. I haven't read it before. And am intent on eventually reading all of the books which served as the basis for a Louise Brooks' film. So far, I am about 85 pages into the book. It's ok, so far - somewhat dated, but also somewhat engaging. Kinda rough-hewn, and written in thickly-dabbed, colorful, impressionistic prose.

I own two copies of Beggars of Life. One is a 1928 photoplay edition, with a dustjacket depicting Brooks, Richard Arlen and Wallace Beery. The other is a first edition from 1924. This copy was once owned by actress Colleen Moore, and has her bookplate on the endpaper. It is also inscribed by Tully to Moore. The inscription reads, "To Colleen Moore with the admiration of an Irish rover to a whimsical girl who knew him when. Jim Tully Hollywood, Calif 1926."



After a long period of being out-of-print, Beggar's of Life is available once again in a new edition from AK Press. I would be interested to know if anyone else has read this book.

Louise Brooks screenings in Washington D.C.

The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. is presenting "Film Series: Restoration Spotlight Louise Brooks in Europe" featuring 

Pandora's Box (Die Büchse der Pandora / Lulu)
May 16 at 4:30 p.m.
New materials from the original version were discovered at the Gosfilmofond archive in Moscow and were combined with an earlier German restoration for the most complete print to date. The new musical score for two pianos is performed live under Gillian Anderson's direction (G. W. Pabst, 1928, 120 minutes).

Diary of a Lost Girl (Das Tagebuch einer Verlorenen)
May 22 at 4:00 p.m.
This latest restoration, the most accurate reflection to date of the director's intentions, was compiled from source materials in Belgium, France, Germany, and Uruguay (G. W. Pabst, 1929, silent with piano accompaniment by Ray Brubacher, 98 minutes).

Miss Europe (Prix de beauté)
May 23 at 4:30 p.m.
in the transitional period between silents and talkies, Prix de beauté was conceived as a silent film. Until now, however, it has been viewable only with postsynchronized music, effects, and dialogue. Materials recently discovered in Milan have made possible the reconstruction of the original silent print, thus restoring the composition of the frames before a soundtrack was added (Augusto Genina, 1930, silent with piano accompaniment by Ray Brubacher, 108 minutes). 

For more info see http://www.nga.gov/programs/flmbrooks.htm

Marlene Dietrich and Louise Brooks

Some time ago, I came across an obscure drawing by the Polish writer Bruno Schulz (1892 - 1942) which I believe depicts Louise Brooks and Marlene Dietrich. If it is not them, then it bears a striking resemblance to the two cinematic femme fatales, Lulu and Lola.

Bruno Schulz is known for his short stories, and he is considered one of the great Polish writers of the 20th century. His brief literary career ended during World War II when he was gunned down by a German officer. John Updike, an admirer, has described the author as "one of the great transmogrifiers of the world into words." [Schulz's most famous work, The Street of Crocodiles (1934), was itself transmogrified into a 1986 film by the Brother's Quay. It is extraordinary - one of the most memorable and poetic films I have ever seen!] 

Schulz was also gifted artist. The drawing that I came across, which dates from 1930 but is now lost and only exists in reproduction, does seem to depict Brooks and Dietrich. In the title of the drawing, the two women are termed "temptresses." The standing Brooks figure is garbed in showgirl attire, a la Pandora's Box, while the Dietrich figure is seated with legs crossed, a la The Blue Angel. Perhaps I am wrong, but this image seems another link between the mythic characters of Lulu and Lola. 

Marlene Dietrich

Yesterday, I finished reading Marlene Dietrich: Life and Legend by Steven Bach. Wow! What an amazing life and what a remarkable biography. I was especially impressed with the scholarship (both quantity and quality) that went into writing this book. This engrossing biography is especially good on Dietrich's early life and career - and the background on German life and culture in the first decades of the 20th century is excellent. Highly recommended.



I think - in down-deep, subtle ways, Marlene Dietrich and Louise Brooks were similar sorts of people. Or at least similarly motivated. Both were very beautiful, sexually driven, and drawn to powerful men. (And both men and women were drawn to them.) Both projected their selves into their characters and onto the screen. Both sought to shape their legacies. Both scrubbed floors in atonement. (Their is also a subtle link between their two most famous roles as well:  Lulu = Lola. Dietrich, as everyone knows, was offered the role that Brooks would play - the role of Lulu - in Pandora's Box. A year later, Dietrich would go on to play Lola in the similarly themed film, The Blue Angel. G.W. Pabst directed Brooks, and Josef von Sternberg directed Dietrich: each director was a kind of Svengali to the actress.)

Has anyone else read this biography of Dietrich (or other books on the actress)? Any comments on the similarities between Lulu and Lola, the Blue Angel? 

"Neve Campbell to play 1920s star Louise Brooks"

Neve Campbell to play 1920s star Louise Brooks

Canadian Press
April 27, 2004 8:33 PM ET

VANCOUVER — Canadian actress Neve Campbell, who recently finished three days of work on Reefer Madness, the musical version of the 1936 cult pot howler being shot here for Showtime, says she's not sure what's next.

"I don't really like anything I'm reading," says Campbell, whose younger brother Christian is in the Reefer cast along with Tony winner Alan Cumming and TV's Steven Weber (Wings, The D.A.). "I've optioned a script about Louise Brooks, a silent film actress in the '20s. I'm working on producing that."

Brooks, who like Campbell was a dancer and actress, made two dozen movies between 1924 and 1938. She was best known for her trademark Dutch bob hairstyle and as Lulu, the heroine in the erotically charged 1929 film Pandora's Box by German director G. W. Pabst.

After sinking into obscurity for decades, Brooks re-emerged as a respected writer in the 1950s.

Campbell says she's also producing A Private War, about Tourette Syndrome, an inherited neurological disorder that causes involuntary movements and verbal outbursts, which afflicts her brother Damien.

Campbell's When Will I Be Loved, done with writer-director James Toback, is due out in September.

Campbell is also awaiting the release of Churchill: The Hollywood Years, where she plays a young Princess Elizabeth in this broad satire starring Christian Slater as a Churchill substitute hired because Hollywood decides the original isn't photogenic enough to win the Second World War.

"It's absolutely silly English humour." says Campbell.

Reefer Madness, which wraps shooting in June, will air on Showtime next year.

Another UC Berkeley research trip

Another trip to the periodicals room at the library of the University of California, Berkeley. Scrolled through microfilm of various newspapers, mostly from Mexico and Poland. Found a few advertisements. Also looked through a newspaper from Jerusalem dating from the 1920's. Found advertisements for films playing there, but none were Louise Brooks' films. Seemingly, Jerusalem had only a very few movie theaters, and the films shown were usualy the blockbusters from the United States or Europe.

Last trip to San Jose

Last trip (for the time being) to the combined libraries of the city of San Jose and San Jose State University, where I went through some more microfilm and even some bound periodicals. Found a few miscellaneous items. Also looked through the Los Gatos Mail News.

Bibliography updates

Recent additions to the various LBS bibliographies include citations from a bunch of American newspapers. I found Denishawn articles, reviews and advertisements in the Pittsburgh Chronicle Telegraph, Baltimore News, Peoria Journal, Savannah Morning Press and Lexington Leader.  I also dug up some films reviews in the Buffalo Courier Express, Minneapolis Tribune, Hartford Courant, and San Antonio Express. The search goes on!

New LBS / Cafepress stuff

There are new LBS products available at Cafepress, which can be found at www.cafeshops.com/louisebrooks  Check it out.

Buster Keaton

How I love Buster Keaton! I love his films. I love his never smiling face. I love his inventive brilliance. My wife and I own the recently released eleven disc boxed set of DVD's featuring many of Keaton's silent films. We have watched them all.

Two excellent books on the actor which I read in rapid succession are Keaton: The Man Who Wouldn't Lie Down, by Tom Dardis, and Buster Keaton: Cut to the Chase, by Marion Meade. I liked each of them a great deal.

I read Dardis' book first. It is one of the earliest books on Keaton, and contains a number of quotations by Louise Brooks regarding the "great stone face." (Dardis had interviewed Brooks, and had also corresponded with the actress.) Dardis' book is anecdotal and sympathetic in its telling of Keaton's rise and fall and rediscovery as an actor and film genius. When I was done, I wanted more. That's when I turned to Meade's detailed and thoroughly researched biography. The two books compliment each other.

More citations in Bibliography

The search goes on for more articles about Louise Brooks. Among the publications I've recently been looking at are the Lexington Herald, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Wheeling Intelligencer, and Selma Times-Journal. I found vintage reviews and articles in each. I also dug up some rare material in the Palm Beach Daily Post on Brooks' appearance as a ballroom dancer in Florida in 1935. Perhaps the most remarkable item I found was a short review of Pandora's Box published in 1929 in Kurjer Polski, a Warsaw newspaper. I would love to find reviews of Pandora's Box from each of the major Eastern European capitals.

Cape Town in San Jose

Another trip to the combined libraries of the city of San Jose and San Jose State University, where I have been going through microfilm the Cape Times, a newspaper from Cape Town, South Africa.  I have largely completed my survey of this very British paper. I was hoping to find something about Pandora's Box, as other German productions were shown in Cape Town. But alas, no luck. Though I found some worthwhile material, I am glad to be done with this particular search. The Cape Times was pretty boring, all-in-all. Citations for the reviews and articles I did come across have been added to the LBS bibliographies.

Site updates

The portrait galleries are off-line for the time being. The Merchandise and Recommended Books page have been updated.

I know the way to San Jose

Lately, I have been visiting the combined libraries of the city of San Jose and San Jose State University, where I have been going through microfilm of various regional and international newspapers. For some strange reason, this library has a run of the Cape Times, a newspaper from Cape Town, South Africa. I have been slowly working my way through the mid to late 1920's, where so far I have found a few short reviews of films featuring Louise Brooks. I have also found some simple advertisements promoting screenings of various Brooks films in theaters around Cape Town. (Some films were shown two or three times months apart in the course of a year.) Nifty to think that Brooks' films were shown 'round the world way back in the 1920's.

Lya de Putti

Finished reading Lya de Putti: Loving life and not fearing death, by Romano Tozzi and Peter Herzog. This is a 1993 biography of the lovely Hungarian-born silent film star (who died young) and who is probably best known today for her role in the 1925 German production Variety, which starred Emil Jannings as her jealous lover. I saw that film a while back. But before then, I was smitten by so many postcard images of de Putti which I had collected or seen for sale over the years. A number of these postcards adorn the endpapers of this hard-to-find biography.

Another trip to San Jose

Once again, I visited the combined libraries of the city of San Jose and San Jose State University. Today, I completed a survey of the the Salinas Daily Index. Found a number of reviews, articles and advertisements.

More about Neve from Liz

This bit ran in Liz Smith's Newsday column yesterday, which was subtitled "A Role That's a Lulu."

"Speaking of today's beauties looking to the past for inspiration, Neve Campbell, who made her mark in TV's Party of Five and in the Scream films, has a new project lined up, Lulu, about the great silent star Louise Brooks (Pandora's Box is her most  famous film). Brooks' close-cut, bobbed hair became the rage, but she was too smart, too restless, too much of an iconoclast to fit comfortably into Hollywood life. She quit films to read, paint and write -  books and film criticism. She died in 1985. Campbell, a serious, intense actress, with a similarly  independent spirit, would make a fine Louise."

Hold that thought

San Jose State University

Ventured about an hour south to San Jose, where I visited the combined libraries of the city of San Jose and San Jose State University. (I've been to the San Jose Public library in the past, before it merged with the university library.) Today, I completed my survey of the two San Jose newspapers of the 1920's and 1930's, the San Jose Mercury Herald and San Jose Evening News. Found lots of reviews, articles and advertisements - including what is likely to be the first mention of Louise Brooks in a Bay Area newspaper.

Also, took notes on microfilm and bound periodicals collections in order to plan out future trips. And, browsed the book shelves of the film section. There is much to be looked at !

UC Berkeley research trip

Another trip to the periodicals room at the library of the University of California, Berkeley. Scrolled through microfilm of various foreign newspapers, mostly Mexico and Argentina. Found a handful of articles, a review and some advertisements.

Ipso-Facto

Speaking of bob-haired women in England, Vincent sent a link to a youtube video featuring Ipso-Facto, a new all-female rock group (goth meets garage, meets grunge?) who sport short hair, including a couple of sharp bobs. I really like their new song, "Harmonise," which is also their first single.

More on Ipso-Facto can be found on their myspace page, located at www.myspace.com/ipsofactomyspace    Another new female British rocker sporting a bob is Theoretical Girl. Her song, "The Hypocrite," is pretty cool. Here is the youtube video for that number.

 

More on Theoretical Girl at her myspace page, www.myspace.com/iamtheoreticalgirl

Brooks screening in Germany

Die Büchse der Pandora will be shown in Erlangen, Germany on 31.01.2004 (January 31, 2004). Here is a link for further info.

UC Berkeley

Spend part of the day in the periodicals room at the library on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley. Scrolled through microfilm of various foreign newspapers, mostly - this time, from South Africa and South America. The library at this university has a tremendous collection of microfilm! This is at least the 25th times I have visited this library. Also spent some time scanning the local San Rafael Independent.

Vamp, by Eve Golden

Just finished reading Vamp: The Rise and Fall of Theda Bara, by Eve Golden. I liked this book quite a bit, and would recommend it to anyone interested in silent film. The book's photographic section is also quite worthwhile.

Bara was an early 20th century sex symbol. She was the original cinematic "vamp," and played Carmen, Salome, and other "bad girl" roles. Photographs of the actress as Clepoatra wearing a coiled-snake bra have become something of an iconic image. (I knew that image long before I became interested in silent film).

[Eve Golden has written a few other books which I own and hope to read someday soon. I have also read many of her biographical portraits of silent film stars - obscure and little known - in the pages of Classic Images.]

California State University, Hayward

Spent the afternoon at the library at the California State University, Hayward.Hayward is on the other side of the Bay from San Francisco, and it takes about 40 minutes to drive there. This is my fifth or sixth trip to that university library.

I scrolled through microfilm of the Washington Post dating from the 1920's in order to complete my survey of that newspaper. Found a bunch of cool stuff. I also looked through microfilm of a few local newspapers, such as the Hayward Review, Oakland Free Press, San Leandro Reporter, and Niles Township Register. The material I have been collecting lately from the multitude of Bay Area newspapers will likely end up in a book-length project I am working on called Lulu by the Bay: Louise Brooks and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Alameda

Spent the afternoon at the Alameda Free Public Library, where I scrolled through a few years of the Alameda Times Star in search of Louise Brooks material. The two microfilm readers at this small town library were in especially poor condition. The microfilm, as well, was quite worn.

Alameda is on the other side of the Bay from San Francisco. It took about 30 minutes to drive there. Alameda is just south of the much larger and better known towns of Oakland and Berkeley, and like them, in the 1920's, it had a few movie theaters. I found a few short reviews and some advertisements. The most interesting material had to do with The American Venus (1926), which featured Fay Lanphier, a local girl who was named Miss America in 1925.

San Mateo

Spent the morning and afternoon at the San Mateo Public Library, where I scrolled through nearly five years of the San Mateo Times in search of Louise Brooks material. Searching took a while, as the two microfilm readers at this small town library were in poor condition. The microfilm, as well, was worn.

San Mateo is about half-way between San Francisco and Palo Alto, and in the 1920's, it had a few movie theaters. I found a bunch of brief articles, a few short reviews, and some advertisements. The most interesting material had to do with The American Venus (1926), which featured Fay Lanphier, a local girl who was named Miss America in 1925.

Yet more citations

Some of the non-American newspapers I have been looking at on microfilm include La Epoca and ABC from Madrid, L'Action Francaise and Le Populaire from Paris, Kurjer Warszawski from Warsaw, and the Ottawa Citizen and Toronto Globe from Canada. Some of the American newspapers I have been looking at include the Morning Tulsa Daily World, Daily Oklahoman, Topeka Daily Journal, Kansas City Times, Boston Post and Boston Daily Advertiser. Each yielded a review, article or clipping. It is remarkable how many newspapers there were back in the Twenties and Thirties.

(n.b. L'Action Francaise was a French fascist newspaper. I managed to find reviews of both Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl in that publication. I have looked in a right-wing German newspaper affiliated with the Nazi party, but was unable to find any relevant material. However, it's unlikely that they would have written about the Pabst films, as Pabst was known as being left of center.)