The Scotsman

I just read that a searchable archive for The Scotsman, the leading Edinburgh newspaper, is now on-line. The archive contains most all issues of the paper dating from 1800 - 1950. And so, I purchased a subscription to see what (if any) Louise Brooks material I could find. My approach in searching this archive is similar to the way I approach other on-line databases. First I try searching under "Louise Brooks." Then I try each individual film title. Then I try other keywords and names, such as G.W. Pabst, Frank Wedekind, or Lulu.

What I found this time were listings/plain text advertisements for screenings of a half-dozen of Brooks' American silent films. Among them were American Venus, Love Em and Leave Em, and The City Gone Wild. Each showed in Edinburgh about a year after it's American release. I also uncovered an advertisement for a recording of Beggars of Life, by the Troubadours, which noted that it was the theme song to the film of the same name. Among these listings, the only one which named Brooks was that for The Canary Murder Case. Brooks and William Powell were given top billing. I had hoped to find something about Pandora's Box, but came up empty. The only full-fledged review I found was for King of Gamblers, which screened in Edinburgh in September, 1937.

One interesting, related article I uncovered reported on a 1929 lawsuit brought against actor Percy Marmont. The article stated that he had been accused of abandoning his wife in 1903. Marmont, it was claimed, was then known as Garland Scholes, and one day, he simply dissappeared. Some twenty years later, the women said that an actor she saw in the movies was her long missing husband! At the trial, the woman went on to say that she had seen her husband in a film in which he played a blind man - The Street of Forgotten Men.

I think I found all of the Brooks-related material there was. I did notice a bunch of other articles about G.W. Pabst (he was referred to time and again as one of the world's great directors), as well as Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino, etc.... I hope to return to The Scotsman  archive sometime in the future in search of other interesting stuff.

A visit to an archive

As there were no inter-library loans waiting for me at the San Francisco Public Library (SFPL), I decided to walk over to the near-by San Francisco Performing Arts Library and Museum (SF-PALM). I had been there once before (perhaps two or three years ago?) to research Louise Brooks, when I looked through their clipping files and books. At that time, I came away with copies of a few choice items.

This time, I had it in mind to browse dance magazines from the 1920's. Like most libraries and archives, this institution has scattered holdings. I looked through actual issues (not microfilm) ofDance Lovers and The Dance - as these were the only periodicals which they had from the 1920's. I had hoped to find three particular articles, and ended up with two. One of them, "The Rhythmic Road to Hollywood" from 1927, was about film actresses who got their start as dancers or showgirls. It featured a portrait of Brooks as well as a paragraph of text about the actress which noted her apprenticeship with Denishawn and experience with the George White Scandals and Ziegfeld Follies. The other, a two-and-a-half-page article from 1928 entitled "The Wichita Wow," was all about Brooks and her beginnings as a dancer. This is one of the most interesting early pieces I have ever read about the actress. Especially since the author seemed to have actually interviewed Louise Brooks!

Copyright Reform to Free Orphans?

Wired News has an interesting article on copyright reform. I would encourage everyone to read it, as it is relevant to anyone interested in silent film and early 20th century culture. There are also links on this page to other interesting, related articles.

Brick collectors

Did you know that there are people out there who collect old bricks for their decorative or historic value? And I am now one of them. . . .  How could I pass up this vintage sidewalk brick from Cherryvale, Kansas - Louise Brooks' hometown.



I found this item on eBay, of course. The seller has another brick for sale, a nifty one with a double sunflower design. (Kansas is the sunflower state.)

The Lawless Decade

The Lawless Decade: a somewhat sensational, though nifty website about the 1920's. This website is based on a book (which I have), and which you may also find interesting.

Notes on a marathon session

Yesterday's visit to the San Francisco Public Library resulted in a marathon session. After a long drought, a whole bunch of inter-library loans had arrived! And so, I spent about five hours pouring over microfilm of newspapers from the United States and Canada. What fun . . . . 

Based on the dates of film reviews I had found earlier in the Toronto Sun, I was now able to uncover a few more reviews in the Toronto Globe and Mail. Among the films I found articles and reviews for was Rolled Stockings (1927), which the Globe and Mail  advertisements amusingly described as "The Romance of a Collegian and His Girl Friend" and "A Fast Stepping Romance of the Varsity Schockers." I also went through a couple of months of the Duluth News Tribune (from Duluth, Minnesota), where I found a couple of film reviews. As well, I scanned theCharlotte News from February, 1923 and found an article, a couple of advertisements, and a review for the Denishawn performance in that North Carolina university town. The Denishawn Dance company, which the paper had described as "home brew dance," drew a "good crowd" according to the review.

The Hartford Daily Times (from Hartford, Connecticut) and Illinois State Register (from Springfield, Illinois) both yielded a bunch of interesting Denishawn material and film reviews. . . . The sold out Springfield performance took place on New Years day at the state arsenal, and many of the articles about the performance published prior to the event were placed on the newspaper's society pages. A December 31st article entitled "One of the Largest Audiences Ever Assembled in Arsenal is Expected for Denishawn Dance Monday Night," stated "Coming on the opening day of the year, the Denishawn local engagement will assume many of the atributes of a holiday social function, the Illini Country Club, the Sangamo club and several other prominent organizations having arranged their New Year's night programs so that they will follow the arsenal performance." Some of the articles were focussed on those who were lucky enough to be chosen as an usher for the performance, while others detailed after-event parties and dances which were planned. I am not sure if Louise Brooks and the Denishawn dancers attended any of these parties, though they may have. (Articles found in other small town newspapers indicate that the Denishawn dancers did attend local society gatherings and parties given in their honor.) The Springfield performance was well reviewed. Brooks was referenced in the review, which claimed that the dancers "captivated the city with their art."

I also went through eight reels of the Pittsburgh Chronicle Telegraph, one of the lesser papers from this large industrial city from the time when most major urban areas had three or more newspapers. (And of course, Pittsburgh is also the future home to Brooks' biographer Barry Paris). I found a review of the December, 1923 Denishawn performance entitled "Pantomine Artists Give Pleasing Performance," as well as reviews for six of Brooks' films.

All together, it was a good haul. Despite my bleary eyes and stiff back,  I ended up with some 75 copies. I plan to add citations for much of this material to the LBS bibliographies within the next few days. (I have recently revamped this page, and retitled it "Bibliographies and Documentation.")

Diary of a Lost Girl screening

Diary of a Lost Girl will be screened at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, New York on April 10th. Here are the details.

DIARY OF A LOST GIRL Sun. April 10 With live piano accompaniment by Ben Model.
G. W. Pabst. 1929. 116 m. NR. Germany. Silent. Kino International.
Twenty-two-year-old Louise Brooks, from Kansas, plays an unwed teenage mother who is cast out of her bourgeois home and sent to an exceptionally creepy reformatory - from which she escapes to a high-class brothel. This was the second and last film Brooks made under the sensitive direction of G. W. Pabst (the first was Pandora's Box, also 1928), who knew a great camera subject when he saw one: He just keeps gazing at his young star and she rewards him with a cooly radiant performance.
3:00: Q&A with film critic Terrence Rafferty

from the "JBFC Program Notes by Terrence Rafferty"

Diary of a Lost Girl (1929)
A hyperventilating French critic once wrote, "Louise Brooks is the only woman who had the ability to transform no matter what film into a masterpiece." Her filmography doesn't support that claim, but when you watch her in Diary of a Lost Girl you can see what that panting Frenchman meant. Although the film is beautifully directed by G.W. Pabst, it's the coolly compelling presence of Brooks that raises the rather ordinary material above the level of well-mounted soap opera and turns it into something memorable. The screenplay (based on a popular novel by Margarete Böhme, which had already been filmed once before) follows the fortunes of a teenaged unwed mother who is exiled by her loathsome bourgeois family to a school for wayward girls--a place of such Dickensian awfulness that even a life of prostitution looks like an improvement. Brooks had herself turned her back on a middle-class upbringing (in Kansas) at 15 and had knocked around Broadway and Hollywood for six or seven years until, at the age of 22, she was invited by Pabst to come to Germany and play the demanding leading role-also a "fallen woman"-in his 1929 Pandora's Box. She was lucky because Pabst was, of all the German filmmakers of his time, by far the best director of actors. He was luckier because Brooks proved to be an extraordinarily subtle artist: an actress who could embody women's suffering without descending to self-pity-neither standing on her dignity nor ever, for a moment, surrendering it.

Mary Pickford on PBS

Did anyone catch the Mary Pickford documentary on PBS last night? I thought it pretty good. There seemed to be a fair amount of fresh footage. Louise Brooks (along with Clara Bow, Greta Garbo and one or two others) was pictured briefly when the narrator mentioned the rise of new types of film stars during the Jazz Age. And Kevin Brownlow was included as an interveree.

Beyond the Rocks

There is an interesting article about film preservation and the discovery of a previously lost Rudolph Valentino film in today's New York Times. The restored print of Beyond the Rocks (1922), starring Valentino and Gloria Swanson, will be shown in NYC (tonight?) and screenings and film festivals around the United States in the fall.