More Treasures from American Film Archives 1894-1931

Have heard that the recently released DVD, More Treasures from American Film Archives 1894-1931, contains a trailer from the now lost 1926 Louise Brooks film,The American Venus. I have not yet seen this for myself. Here is the description of the DVD.

"Like the first Treasures from the American Film Archives produced by the National Film Preservation Foundation, More Treasures takes as its starting point the preservation work of our nation's film archives. More Treasures covers the years from 1894 through 1931, when the motion pictures from a peepshow curio to the nation's fourth largest industry. This is the period from which fewest American Films survive. Five film archives have made it their mission to save what remains of these first decades of American film: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, George Eastman House, The Library of Congress, The Museum of Modern Art and the UCLA Film and Television Archive. More Treasures (made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities) reproduces their superb preservation work-fifty films follwed by six previews for lost features and serials."

Somewhere in Time

Christopher Reeve has died. And as I write this entry I am watching, for perhaps the tenth time, his 1980 film Somewhere in Time. I know this film is sentimental, and some of the acting in it akward. And I know that some will balk at the notion that Reeve's character can, literally, will himself back into the past. But how I love this film. It has long been one of my favorites. I feel that if time travel ever does become feasible, it will be achieved not through some mechanical device, but as a result of sheer will power. Wishful thinking . . . .

New play about Kenneth Tynan

Amanda sent word about a new play based on the life of the acclaimed British critic Kenneth Tynan. (Tynan had interviewed Louise Brooks, and wrote the famousNew Yorker essay "The Girl in the Black Helmet.") An article appeared in Guardian newspaper.

"Kenneth Tynan has inspired one play in Smoking With Lulu. Now he is the subject of a one-man show, adapted from his diaries by Richard Nelson and Colin Chambers, and immaculately performed by Corin Redgrave. Presented as part of the RSC's New Work Festival, it reminds us that, even when overcome by ennui, melancholy, and emphysema, Tynan wrote with a precision and grace that most journalists would give their eye-teeth for."

There was a review in the Guardian a few days later. As well as this article in the Telegraph. Thank you Amanda.

Le regard de Buster Keaton

The other day on eBay, I won a copy of Le regard de Buster Keaton by Robert Benayoun. I already own a copy of this book in English, but was pleased to acquire this inexpensive softcover French edition because it contains Louise Brooks' brief piece on Keaton translated into French.

Blog search

Came across a few different 'meta" weblog / blog search engines, including Bloogz and Technorati and BlogPulse . A search for "Louise Brooks" turned up a handful of results on each search engine, though some of the results turned out to be broken links.

I wonder how extensively blogs (LiveJournal, Blogger, Movable Type, etc...) are indexed? And how long lasting are the entries? Will someone be able to read this entry in ten or twenty years?

(Two other blog search engines worth checking out are are Blogdex and Popdex.)

More Jewish Daily Forward

While looking at microfilm of vintage newspapers and magazines, it's not unusual to run across nifty material about other film stars. (Though I try to stay focussed on Louise Brooks, I have somehow managed to acquire thousands of photocopies of interesting articles, interviews, clippings, magazine covers, etc...... relating to other actors and actresses. What I will do with all this stuff, I do not know.)

Here are a couple of interesting things I copied from December, 1929 issues of the Jewish Daily Forward. The one on the left pictures a captioned photo of Clara Bow on the front page (top fold) of the Forward ! The one on the right is a feature photo of Anna May Wong, with its caption in both Yiddish and English. The English text reads "CHINESE ACTRESS CANNOT KISS ENGLISHMAN IN FILM  -  Anna May Wong, the charming Chinese motion picture star, who must not kiss John Longden, English actor, co-starring with her in a British talkie, according to a ruling by the English film censor."

Jewish Daily Forward

My weekly trip to the San Francisco Public Library yielded some rather interesting and unusual results. I visit the library once a week to place inter-library loan requests, and to go through what ever material has arrived from earlier requests.

This week I went through microfilm of the Buffalo Evening News and New Orleans Item-Tribune dating from the 1920's. I found a few more reviews, articles and advertisements in those publications for films featuring Louise Brooks.

The rather interesting and unusual items I found were advertisements, an image of Brooks, and what might also be an article about Pandora's Box dating from 1929 - all of which came from the Jewish Daily Forward, the Yiddish language newspaper from New York City. That metropolis was alive with non-English language newspapers in the 1920's and 1930's. And the Jewish Daily Forward, like the New York Times, Daily News, etc.... ran material on movies showing in town. Pandora's Box had its American debut in New York City in December, 1929.

Now, I can add this bit of Yiddish perspective to similar material I have already excavated from other New York-based German and Russian language newspapers of the period. (I have also looked at Italian and Polish language newspapers from NYC, but without finding anything regarding Pandora's Box.)

Does anyone read Yiddish? I don't, so I may well have missed some articles. However, I made photocopies from the microfilm of what seemed like relevant material. Here is the advertisement for the film's showing at the 55th Street Playhouse.

"Secret Life of Humphrey Bogart"

Just came across a book entitled The Secret Life of Humphrey Bogart: The Early Years (1899 - 1931), by Darwin Porter. (The book was published in 2003 by Georgia Literary Association.) This book is an account of Bogart's early life, especially his years as a Broadway and Hollywood actor. Porter claims to base much of the book on the papers of Bogart's friend, actor Kenneth MacKenna (who had a part in The American Venus), as well as interviews with various Hollywood actors of the twenties and thirties.  Despite these claims, the book has no footnotes, no noted sources, and no bibliography - just acknowledgements.

I haven't read the entire book, but only skimmed it for material on Louise Brooks, of which there is more than a few pages. The author claims to have interviewed Louise Brooks, but does not say when. (The back of the book depicts a number of actresses, including Brooks, and next to an apparent quote by Brooks, it reads "as told to the author in Rochester, NY.")

Personally, I have a hard time believing this book. It just doesn't seem to ring true. For me, the best thing about this book was its selection of images, including this portrait of Brooks.