Google Scholar

The search engine Google has announced the launch of Google Scholar. According to the website, "Google Scholar enables you to search specifically for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all broad areas of research. Use Google Scholar to find articles from a wide variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web."

A search under "Louise Brooks" produces a few interesting results. There are citations for articles from scholarly journals (such as "Consuming Distractions in Prix de beauté," from Camera Obscura), references to the actress in scholarly books, and previously undocumented scholarly papers delivered at conferences from around the world. One I found, "The Overcoming of Desire: Prostitution and the Contract in Pandora’s Box (1929) ," was no longer online but could still found in the Google cache.

One curiousity which turned up was "The ‘arrayjob’package Management of arrays in (La) T E X" by Zhuhan Jiang, an Australian professor of Mathematics and Computing. In this paper, the author used Louise Brooks and the names of other actresses as examples in writing programming language.

Hopefully, more and more scholarly material will be indexed through Google Scholar, and hopefully, some of that material will be related to Louise Brooks.

Harold Lloyd's Hollywood Nudes in 3D

Last night at the Booksmith in San Francisco, I hosted an author event with Suzanne Lloyd, the granddaughter of silent film great Harold Lloyd. Suzanne - who was raised by her grandfather and lived with him for twenty years - spoke about Harold Lloyd's Hollywood Nudes in 3D!, a new book of photographs she edited by the comedic actor. The event was a lot of fun. Suzanne gave a brief talk, showed slides of images from the book, and took questions from the dozens of silent film and stereoscopic photography fans in the audience.

Suzanne told a story about how she came to realize Harold Lloyd was a movie star. One day in the early 1960's, she took a phone call from a man who identified himself as Cary Grant. Suzanne, who was then a young girl and unaware of her grandfather's fame, couldn't believe that the debonair actor- someone she had just seen on television - would call her home! In disbelieve, she hung up on Cary Grant. When Harold Lloyd asked who had called, Suzanne said it was someone whoclaimed to be the famous actor. It was then that Harold Lloyd explained that he too was an actor and was friendly with movie stars like Cary Grant!

Mary Pickford, Clairvoyant

What strange force led me to browse the newstand at The Booksmith in San Francisco? Was it mere coincedence, or something else? But there I found myself, drawn to something familiar, yet strange. . . 

Silent film star Mary Pickford adorns the cover of the October, 2004 issue of Fate magazine. Along with articles on strange occurances, combustible women, harmonic concordances, Russian precognition cases and the language of Sasquatches was an article entitled "Mary Pickford: Superstitious Superstar." Lina Accurso's four page piece on "America's Sweetheart" unconvincingly probes the super-rational leanings of the actress. "But what looked like a charmed life to her legions of fans had indeed been filled with sunshine, shadow, and more than a little of what she called 'superstition.' Today, this ability may be more accurately described as premonitions."

Seemingly, Mary Pickford did have an interest in the paranormal. I recently spotted a handful of books from the actress' library - each of which had some occultish theme - at Allan Milkerit books. A number of them were inscribed by the author to Mary Pickford.

Thank you Bryan Goldberg

I just recieved, through the mail, a half-dozen photocopies of rare articles about Louise Brooks. Thank you Bryan Goldberg. This dedicated Louise Brooks fan took the time to visit the Kansas State Historical Society, where he went through the Louise Brooks clippings file. (Some of this material is on-line here.) Among the material Bryan sent were clippings from the 1930's and 1950's which I had never seen before. Thank you Bryan Goldberg.

Lulu's Back in Town

Spotted this article, "Louise Brooks Lulu's Back in Town," in the on-line edition of the New York Post. (It ran on Sunday, November 14th - Louise Brooks' birthday.) The article mentions that Pandora's Box will be shown tomorrow and Saturday in New York City.

"Pandora's Box will unreel Thursday and Saturday at 9:30 p.m. at Anthology Film Archives, part of a four-day showcase called "German Cinema: Silent Into Sound." Also in the series, running Thursday through next Sunday, are two by Fritz Lang, M (1931) and Metropolis (1926), plus Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari(1919) and Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel (1930). The Anthology is at Second Avenue and Second Street in the East Village; (212) 505-5181."

At the library this morning

Microfilm for three newspapers was waiting for me at the library this morning. Call me nerd, but I do enjoy researching. . . . Three months of the Cleveland Plain Dealer arrived, which enabled me to more-or-less complete my survey of that newspaper in preparation for my visit to the Ohio Historical Society. Tracking down dates for screenings of Brooks' films in the Plain Dealer will enable me get through microfilm of the three or four other Cleveland newspapers much more effeciantly.

Four reels of another Mid-west newspaper, the Milwaukee Herold, also arrived. The Herold was a rather impressive German-language newspaper, and in it, I found brief articles and substantial reviews of the two Denishawn performances in Milwaukee at the Pabst Theater. Though I don't read German, I was able to tell that Brooks was singled out (along with Martha Graham) in one of the reviews.

Two reels of the Asheville Times also arrived. In this North Carolina newspaper, I dug up articles, advertisements and a review of the 1923 Denishawn performance in that town. Brooks was mentioned in one item. The other reel - containing the last couple of months of 1927 - contained material on the local showing Now We're in the Air and The City Gone Wild. Citations for these newly uncovered articles and reviews will be added to the LBS bibliographies.

The American Venus on TCM

A two minute trailer for The American Venus (1926) - a lost Louise Brooks film and her first credited film role - will be shown on the cable station, Turner Classic Movies, during the evening of Sunday, November 21st. Consult your local television listings for the time and channel.

This two minute film is part of program of trailers of lost films, and one of four such Paramount trailers which will be shown the evening of the 21st. For further information, see http://www.turnerclassicmovies.com/ThisMonth/Article/0,,84023,00.html

Louise Brooks was born on this day

Future silent film star Louise Brooks was born on this day in 1906 in Cherryvale, Kansas. The Cherryvale Daily News ran a small item on the front page of newspaper. Happy Birthday, Louise.

If you haven't already seen them, you can still take a look at the remarkable batch of photographs which were recently auctioned off in New York. The photo's were part of the estate of the William Klein, a Rochester, New York film critic and longtime friend of the actress. (Klein can be seen in the 1998 documentary Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu.) There are some singular images here, including Louise Brooks at the age of three in her first public performance.