Lulu play

This brief article, by Wally Rubin, appeared in the September 10 issue of Variety.

"Presented by Fearless Productions as part of the New York International Fringe Festival at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, 121 Christopher St., NYC, Aug. 24-28.

Lulu is a new musical by two graduates of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, based on two plays by German Expressionist playwright Frank Wedekind. The plays were also the basis for an opera by Alban Berg and a 1929 silent movie starring Louise Brooks, famed for her bobbed hairstyle. It is the story of Lulu, a young, amoral man killer, and of the unbidden effects of love, how passion and lust can overrule rational impulses.

Composer-lyricist Adam Gwon and Courtney Phelps, who wrote the book with Gwon and directed, have set this Lulu against the backdrop of the roiling 1920s, when jazz, booze, and silent movies were all the rage. Think La Ronde meets The Wild Party, which, not so incidentally, are both works that have been musicalized by Michael John LaChiusa, who is clearly on influence on Gwen. The style (if not the effect) of the writing is similar, with the same penchant for a restless sound that distrusts melody, and an arch tone that is equal parts bitter and wistful. Gwon shows potential, but he needs to find his own voice and allow his characters greater specificity, giving us reasons to care more about them. At the moment, they seem like ideas culled from other sources.

Broadway veteran Brooke Sunny Moriber was Lulu. She has the perfect 1920s face, with a small mouth and pale porcelain skin, and is gifted with both a distinctive belt and soprano. Jessica Morris, Selby Brown, Daniel C. Levine, and Maggie Letsche all have strong voices, and it was a treat to hear them unmiked. Kevin Kern as a young screenwriter with sunken cheeks and curly blond hair had a melancholic manner that appropriately set him apart. Trevor McGinness' costumes were impressively all of a piece."

Calgary Herald

Another newspaper achive I've come across is that for the Calgary Herald, which is part of the early Alberta newspaper collection. Unlike other newspaper archives, this collection is not searchable by keyword. Instead, the archive contains rather large images of individual pages from the newspapers in its archives. I went through months and months of the Calgary Herald, and managed to find a bunch of articles, reviews and advertisements from the 1920's. (Citations have been added to the appropriate bibliographies on the LBS website.) Does anyone know of any other Canadian publications with searchable on-line archives?

Harvard Crimson

While crawling around the world wide web, I ran across the website for the Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper at Harvard University. That publication has put its archive, dating back to 1873, on the internet. My search under keywords "Louise Brooks" only turned up a few minor mentions, including this brief review of A Girl in Every Port.

Does anyone know of any other student publications with searchable on-line archives?

Rare Louise Brooks soundtrack

Yesterday, I won an eBay auction for a contemporary soundtrack recording for Le Journal dUne Fille Perdue, or The Diary of a Lost Girl. Brooks is pictured on the front and back of the record sleeve. This rare French LP (PSI / Musimage 20716) was released in 1981, and contains original music for String Quartet by Robert Viger and Solo Piano by Alain Bernaud. I assume this soundtrack recording accompanied the film at some time during its then recent rerelease by Connaissance du Cinema.

Los Angeles trip

Besides the USC and UCLA libraries, my wife and I visited some film-related sites during our recent trip to Los Angeles.

We took the Sony Pictures studio tour, which led us around the old MGM lot in Culver City. There were a number of historic buildings still standing on the lot, and the tour guide knowledgeably filled us in on what building related to Irving Thalberg, Buster Keaton, etc.... The tour was worthwhile, and comparable to the Paramount Studio tour - which we had taken a few years earlier. We also visited the site of the old Hal Roach studio (now a movie production facility), where my wife's sister was working on Team America, a forthcoming film. We got to see the film's sets, as well as a scene being shot. Nifty. Later, we stopped in front of the old Chaplin Studios - now home to Jim Henson Productions.

We spent a few hours walking around downtown Hollywood, where we once again visited the Roosevelt Hotel (home to the first ever Academy Awards), Grauman's Chinese Theatre, the Kodak Theater (new home to the Academy Awards), and some of the memorabilia shops and bookstores which line Hollywood boulevard. Unfortunately, Larry Edmunds bookshop was closed.

A highlight of our time spent in Hollywood was our first ever trip to the Hollywood Heritage Museum (located across the road from the Hollywood Bowl). Over the years, we have tried to visit this little museum on at least three occassions, but could never make it when the building was open. (The building is currently open on weekends from 11:00 am to 4:00 pm.)                                                                                                                                   

"The Hollywood Heritage Museum is housed in the beautifully restored Lasky-DeMille Barn (c. 1895). The Museum features archival photographs from the silent movie days of motion picture production, movie props, historic documents and other movie related memorabilia. Also featured are historic photos and postcards of the streets, buildings and residences of Hollywood during its heyday." Louise Brooks' name and image can be found on at least four or five pieces of memorabilia inside the museum, including a rare image of Brooks and Adolph Menjou standing outside of the building, circa January, 1927. In this photo, a bearded Menjou is seen observing Brooks, who has climbed up a ladder leaning against the "old barn". Supposedly, these two Paramount stars are helping paint the building. If you are a silent film buff, the Hollywood Heritage Museum is well worth a visit. There is a lot of really cool stuff inside - as well as a gift shop!

Another memorable visit was to the Hollywood Forever cemetery. We have been there a few times, but this visit coincided with the annual Rudolph Valentino memorial service - which is held every year on August 23. About a hundred people gathered for the service this year, which was set up inside the mausoleum where the Valentino is laid to rest. The speakers included the "lady in black," musician Ian Whitcomb - who performed a couple of vintage songs about Valentino, film historian Annette D'Agostino Lloyd (author of the just published Harold Lloyd Encyclopedia), and Tracy Ryan Terhune - author of a new book called Valentino Forever - The History of the Valentino Memorial Service. This was the first time we have attended the memorial service. Perhaps we shall go again some year.

USC and UCLA

Short vacation to Los Angeles. Spent one day each in the special collections departments of the libraries at USC and UCLA, where I uncovered a bunch of new material - including previously undocumented articles and reviews from a smattering of American, British, German, French, and Spanish publications.

I was able to look through about four years worth of bound volumes of Picturegoer, the British fan magazine. Also examined vintage copies of two very rare trade journals, The Film Mercury and Hollywood Filmograph. Each was based in Los Angeles, and each offered a somewhat different perspective on the film world than East Coast trade journals like Variety and Film Daily. Also looked at individual issues of other American fan publications, such as Movie Monthly. One very cool find was an illustrated fictionalization (in short story form) of The American Venus.

The most significant item I looked at was a book about the films of G.W. Pabst published in Moscow in 1933. (That's just four years after Pabst made his two films with Louise Brooks!) I have known of the existence of this book for some time - but have been unable to examine it. USC is, seemingly, the only library in the United States which owns a copy of this very rare item - and its rarity and fragility prevents them from loaning it.

And so, as I sat in "the cage" - the special collections viewing room - I was nearly trembling with excitement. Finally, resting on the desk before me was a copy of this elusive book. I paged through it ever so slowly, and though I don't read Russian, I found an entire chapter devoted to the two Brooks films. (There was also an image of the actress.) Certainly, this is the earliest chapter in any book ever devoted to Louise Brooks.

My thanks to the special collections staff at UCLA and USC for their help. I especially want to thank Ned Comstock of USC, who more than went out of his way to help me with my research. Thank you Ned!

K'Scope

A recent eBay purchase: a copy of K'Scope (also called Kaleidoscope), a film magazine from 1967 featuring an overview of the movies made from the S.S. van Dine murder mysteries, including The Canary Murder Case.

Mammoth Book of Roaring Twenties Whodunnits

There is a new anthology of mostly contemporary crime fiction called The Mammoth Book of Roaring Twenties Whodunnits. The book is edited by Mike Ashley and features a cover image obviously based on Louise Brooks.

                        

Book description: "In Chicago and New York, in sleazy speakeasies and on Easy Street, to the strains of jazz and the beat of the Charleston, the twenties roared. The horrors of the Great War behind it, the decade went mad with abandon-and mad over the movies, radio, telephones, and the motorcar. But beneath the froth and the folly, the razzle and dazzle, lay a darker world, a hard and often violent world, for the twenties belonged as much to the gangster as they did to the flapper. The stories in this vastly entertaining collection of whodunnits crafted by talents like Amy Myers, Robert Randisi, Jon L. Breen, Edward D. Hoch, Marilyn Todd, and Mike Stotter reflect the allures - and the deadly dangers - of both those worlds."