1) Miami Herald, 2) Cleveland Press, 3) Atlanta Constitution

Went through March, 1926 of the Miami Herald in search of a film review, but found nothing. (Ever so slowly, I have been making my way through this Florida newspaper. It's a slow process because the lending institution will only loan two reels at a time, and is somewhat slow to fill loans - not that I'm complaining, mind you . . . . ) Also went through a month of the Cleveland Press, where I excavated a few articles and advertisements for the Denishawn performance there in November, 1923. (Curiously, this is one Ohio newspaper that the Ohio Historical Society - which I visited - does not have on microfilm, and so, I must request it via inter-library loan from an Ohio university.)  I also had the opportunity, last night, to go through a couple years of the Atlanta Constitution, where I uncovered a few articles and advertisements regarding the Denishawn performance there in January, 1923. All together, this week's collecting may not have been a down pour, but rather a gentle spring rain.

Beautiful you are

This beautiful colorized portrait of Louise Brooks is for sale on eBay. What is more lovely, the subject or the painting?

RadioLulu

Every month, I receive statistics for RadioLulu - the Louise Brooks-themed radio station I set-up on Live365.com  Here are this month's stats for the station (located at www.live365.com/stations/298896 )

Total Listening Hours
Last Month: 146
This Month: 142

Total Station Launches (the number of times individuals clicked on the listen button)
Last Month: 485
This Month: 361

Station Presets (the number of individuals who chose to bookmark RadioLulu)
Last Month: 389
This Month: 403

Favorite Station Designations
Last Month: 15
This Month: 15

All Hail Gianluca !!!

Gianluca Chiovelli, a longtime correspondent, a devoted Louise Brooks researcher, and the author/editor of a superb Italian website devoted to the actress, has done a great thing! Gianluca sent me photocopies of what are among the scarcest Louise Brooks-related item I have ever come across.

After a couple of unsuccessful attempts, Gianluca managed to convince an European library to make photocopies of two books - novelizations of the Louise Brooks films, La Vie d'une Fille perdue (Trois Pages d'un Journal), and Prix de Beaute. The first book, based on the Pabst film The Diary of a Lost Girl, was written by Rene Wild and published in France in 1930. The second book, based on the French film of the same name, was written by Boisyvon and published in 1932. [ I haven't been able to find out anything about Rene Wild, except that he may have contributed the scenario to a 1932 French film, Le Triangle de feu. Boisyvon, I believe, went on to write a number of books on film in later decades.]

Up until now, I knew very little about these ephemeral items. But from what I can deduce, each of these titles were inexpensive, softcover books (hence their ephemeral nature), and each were part of a series of novelizations published by Editions Jules Tallandier. (The series featured mostly French titles, though it did include a few German and American releases.) Each book features Louise Brooks on their pictorial cover, and each contains numerous scene stills scattered throughout the book. (In this regard, they remind me of the the early American photoplay editions.) Each also contains an advertisement in the back of the book listing other titles in the series.

Gianluca and I have long sought after Prix de Beaute. He and I searched the catalogs and records of libraries and bookdealers worldwide. I listed it on the LBS Help Wanted page, and sent queries to knowledgeable individuals. Nothing happened. We both thought we might be chasing a phantom reference. Until one day, I received an anonymous email stating that a certain library held this rare book. Gianluca, an Italian devotee of Brooks, wrote to the library and asked for a loan or copy. The library declined. Some time passed, and he wrote again. This time, the library said yes.

Gianluca received the prize, and emailed me with the good news. However, when scanning the advertisement of earlier books in the series printed in the back, he realized that another novelization of a Louise Brooks' film also existed! Gianluca wrote to the library, and acquired a photocopy of La Vie d'une Fille perdue.  And now, generously, he has provided photocopies of these items to the LBS. Thank you Gianluca Chiovelli.

Photoplay Edition (a review)

Recently, I wrote and posted online this review of Photoplay Edition, by Emil Petaja. My review follows.

"A pioneering guidebook for lovers of old movies and books"
by thomas gladysz

Throughout his life, the acclaimed fantasy & science fiction author Emil Petaja (1915 - 2000) was an avid film buff and collector of movie memorabilia. As a writer, he was especially interested in the literature of film. Petaja had a large collection of books about the movies, as well as an even larger collection of so-called photoplay books - movie tie-in editions dating from the silent film and early sound era. (Then, like now, novels that served as the basis for a film were republished with a scene or film star on the cover. Many also had stills from the film interspersed within the book. Film buffs, collectors, and bibliophiles have long sought out these variant editions - especially if they involved a particular actor, like Rudolph Valentino or Louise Brooks.)

Published in 1975, Photoplay Edition was the first ever book on the subject. Petaja based the book on his personal collection of photoplays, which at the time of publication, numbered more than eight hundred! (Petaja owned many rare examples, including a few autographed by film stars.) Photoplay Edition is composed of a checklist of books, with each entry detailing the book's movie title (which sometimes differed from the title of the novel), as well as it's author, publisher, date of release, the motion picture company which produced the film, it's leading actors, and the number of illustrations included within the book. Illustrating Petaja's guide are dozens of dustjackets and scene stills, each of which graced the original editions. Petaja also offers a short prologue, as well as a longer history of photoplay books. Another delightful, anecdotal chapter tells the story of the author's involvement in collecting these books.

Photoplay Edition has been surpassed by later guides. Nevertheless, this pioneering bibliographical study is a valuable testament to a by-gone era. Anyone interested in old movies or old books will want to own a copy.

When it rains it pours . . . .

When it rains it pours . . . . Five inter-library loans were waiting for me at the library this week! I found articles, reviews and advertisements for Love Em and Leave Em (1926) and Just Another Blonde (1926) in the Bridgeport Post (from Bridgeport, Connecticut). I also found a whole bunch of Denishawn material in the Baltimore American (Baltimore, Maryland), as well as in the Macon Telegraph (Macon, Georgia), Pine Bluff Commercial (Pine Bluff, Arkansas), and Kewanee Star Journal (Kewanee, Illinois). Citations for all of this material have been added to the LBS bibliographies.

Ayn Rand

According to an article about Ayn Rand in today's New York Times, today is the centennial of her birth. I don't own or haven't read any of her books, except for Russian Writings on Hollywood, which was published by the Ayn Rand Institute Press in 1999. 

Rand was born in czarist Russia in 1905, witnessed the revolutions of 1917 from her St. Petersburg apartment, and managed to make her way to the United States in 1926. Early on, she was something of a film buff, and at one time, Rand aspired to work in the film industry. (A couple of her novels would later be made into films.) The above mentioned book brings together early articles on the movies, along with other miscellaneous writings. Of note is the fact that Rand records having seen American Venus (1926) after her departure from the Soviet Union. According to her movie diary, Rand saw the film in Chicago on March 2 at the Terminal theatre. She had been in the United States less than one month. The American Venus was the eighth film she saw in America. She gave the film a 4-, or B- grade.

Some research notes

Weekly visit to the SFPL to look at my inter-library loans. I looked through three months of the San Antonio Express in hopes of finding some film reviews, but found nothing in Texas. Sometimes there just ain't nothin' there. . . . I am sure I will have better at the library luck next week.

Also, I spent a day in the microfilm room at the University of California, Berkeley. I have been there three or four dozen times over the last few years, and have come away with quite a lot of material. They have a huge collection of newspapers and magazines on microfilm, including a number of German, French and South American publications. I was prompted to return to this library because the microfilm room will be closed later this year for earthquake retrofitting. I figured I had better make a few trips before then.

On this visit, I continued my survey of La Prensa, one of the leading newspapers from Buenos Aires, Argentina. I managed to look through two years of La Prensa, where I found a review of Now We're in the Air (1927), or Tiburones en el aire as it was referred to in Spanish speaking South America. I also uncovered four portraits of Louise Brooks, a small mention of Just Another Blonde (1926) - which La Prensa referred to as The Charleston Kid, and a captioned scene still from The City Gone Wild (1927), or La ciudad del mal. All together, not a bad haul. Now, I just need look through a few months from 1929 and my survey of La Prensa should be complete. (It was at this library, while searching through La Prensa on an earlier visit, that I uncovered a review ofPandora's Box from the time it first screened in Buenos Aires in November of 1929. And I wondered if Brooks'  admirer Adolpho Bioy Casares, or his friend Jorge Luis Borges, saw the film during the week it played in the Argentine capital. . . .)

Though I took two years of Spanish in high school, I don't speak the language. I barely remember numbers, days of the week, and a few phrases. "Hablo usted un muy poco Espanol?" Nevertheless, I was able to navigate La Prensa by figuring out how the newspaper "worked." Most every Sunday, in the features section, the paper had a full page devoted to the cinema. I would skip ahead from Domingo to Domingo in search of the cinema page, and then scan it for pictures or mentions of  Louise Brooks or her co-stars. A large, comic portrait of Wallace Beery in avaitor goggles (just like the publicity pictures in American newspapers) tipped me off to a showing of Now We're in the Air. Two days later, the newspaper ran a review under "Notas Cinematograficas."

This survey method serves well enough, though I am sure I miss material. Looking through non-English newspapers (especially when I don't find that much stuff) can be very tedious. I fidget. And start to loose concentration. Thus, once I finished off La Prensa for 1928, I decided to change course and look through a small town California newspaper. The UC Berkeley microfilm collection, naturally, has lots of Northern California papers.

I chose the Selma Irrigator (what a wonderful name for a newspaper!), though I had never heard of this small agricultural community located in Fresno county. I zipped through three or four months, and only came up with an advertisement for a single day screening of A Social Celebrity(1926). Selma, seemingly, only had one movie theater in the mid-1920's - and no room for any kind of editorial comment about the movies in the local paper. And so, I switched to the Chico Daily Enterprise. (Chico is a college town located to the north of San Francisco.) I managed to get through one year - 1926 - of this small town paper. I came up with brief articles (supplied by the Publicity Bureau of the National Theaters Syndicate) regarding four of Brooks' films. As time was running out, I decided to stop there. I will finish my survey of this paper on my next visit.