New articles - "Louise Bobs Her Hair"

There is an article about Louise Brooks and Lulupalooza in the current issue of CityPaper from Washington D.C. (CityPaper is the free weekly.) The article can also be found online for the next four weeks.

And today's "Weekend Update" in the Richmond Times-Dispatch ran this bit. "Lulupalooza '05: A Celebration of the Cinematic Life of Louise Brooks" screens cult favorites from the'20s and'30s, beginning with remarks and special presentations at 10:30 a.m. Saturday at the Firehouse Theatre, 1609 W. Broad St., running through 10:30 p.m. Sunday. All events are at the Firehouse, except for the 1:30 p.m. Saturday showing of "Pandora's Box" at the Byrd Theatre, 2908 W. Cary St. $37.50 weekend; $17.50 per day; $5 per film, except "Pandora's Box," which is $12.50. www.lulupalooza.org or 355-2001." Don't forget !

"That '20s Girl: Lulupalooza celebrates the work of a screen goddess" appears in the current issue of Style Weekly, a free newspaper in Richmond, Virginia. The article can be found on-line as well.

Louise Brooks' art from 1974

I just came across this rather interesting art depicting Louise Brooks. It dates from 1974. The piece, entitled "Louise Brooks," is by Frank Martin (b. 1921). It is an intaglio print on paper and measures 371 x 273 mm. The work is owned by the Tate Gallery in England, and was presented to that museum by Christie's Contemporary Art through the Institute of Contemporary Prints in 1975. Does anyone know anything more about this artist? (Stylistically, the piece looks like its from the 1920's. For me, it recalls the Cubist aesthetic and the work of Leger.)

Diary of a Lost Girl shows in Columbus, Ohio

Diary of a Lost Girl will be screened tonight in Columbus, Ohio as part of an ongoing film series. According to theColumbusalive website. "The Summer Abroad series continues on Wednesday, July 20, with two extraordinary examples of early German cinema: G.W. Pabst’s silent classic Diary of a Lost Girl, in which the luminous Louise Brooks is a naïve girl who stumbles onto the path to ruin when she becomes pregnant, and Fritz Lang’s M, one of the first, best and most thoughtful serial killer movies ever made. Between M star Peter Lorre’s constant humming of Grieg’s “Peer Gynt” and the live accompaniment toDiary by Scrawl’s Sue Harshe, you’ll be leaving the theater with a song in your head."

Gavin Lambert (1924 - 2005)

"Gavin Lambert, an incisive observer of life in Hollywood through his screenplays, novels and film histories, died on Sunday at a hospital in Los Angeles. He was 80." For those interested in early film, Gavin Lambert is best  known as the author of outstanding biographies of Norma Shearer and Nazimova. (The Nazimova biography earned the William K. Everson Film History Award from the National Board of Review.)  Lambert also authored "On Cukor," and appeared in the recent documentary. I recently read Lambert's biography of Shearer, and enjoyed it a great deal. And his book on Nazimova sits on my stack of books I must read. I remember speaking with Gavin Lambert on the phone a few years back regarding his books.

According to an Associated Press article, "In April, Lambert joined author Gore Vidal and others at a motion picture academy salute to Greta Garbo. That's believed to be one of his last public appearances." A short biography of author and Oscar-nominated screenwriter appeared in today'sNew York Times. Here is the link to a longer article in the Hollywood Reporter.

Australian crime fiction writer Kerry Greenwood

I received an email recently from Mark Armstrong-Roper, a longtime LBS correspondent from Melbourne, Australia. Mark wrote to tell me about an Australian crime fiction writer named Kerry Greenwood, whose work certainly shows some awareness of Louise Brooks. Mark wrote "I live not far from the Australian crime writer Kerry Greenwood. In fact she has the launches of her new books at my local cinema. I've been to several of these launches and at one a few years back she mentioned that she was a big fan of Louise Brooks and had modelled some of the aspects of her 1920's detective heroine, Phryne Fisher, on Louise. Over the years with various repackagings and reprintings of the series of now 15 books the artwork on the covers has come to resemble LB more and more, until with Kerry's current publisher, Allen & Unwin, the similarity is more than just a coincidence! Have a look: http://www.phrynefisher.com/."

I checked out the author's website and agree with Mark. The books look appealing. Has anyone read any of these works ? Descriptive text for the most recent title in the series, Death by Water, reads thus: "Phryne Fisher, with her Lulu bob, green eyes, Cupid's bow lips and Chanel travelling suits, is exactly the sort of elegant sleuth to take on a ring of jewellery thieves aboard the high seas - or at least, aboard the SS Hinemoa on a luxury cruise to New Zealand. With the Maharani - the Great Queen of Sapphires - as the bait, Phryne rises magnificently to the challenge." Here is my favorite cover, the first book in the series.

Lulupalooza article

There is an article in today's Richmond Times-Dispatch about Lulupalooza. The article, "Lulu of a film fest recalls Jazz Age," can also be found on-line. The two-day festival starts next Saturday. For more info, see www.lulupalooza.org

Around reading (Ali Smith and Toby Litt)

I recently received a copy of New Writing 13, a literary journal from England. This 350-page publication contains "new writing from established writers and names to watch" from around the British Isles. Admittedly, I am not very familar with contemporary British lit. The only authors I recognized in this 46-author collection are David Mitchell, John Berger, Fay Weldon, Kate Atkinson, and Muriel Spark. (For those interested, here is the amazon.co.uk page on the book.) However, I did recognize the names of the journal's two guest editors, Ali Smith and Toby Litt. Each are themselves authors with a handful of books to their credit. Each author has been critically acclaimed. And each share a particular interest in - Louise Brooks.

In speaking about her first book, Free Love and Other Stories (Virago, 1994), Ali Smith stated in an interview with the Times of London that her editor "kindly let me have the cover I wanted, a picture of Louise Brooks from the G. W. Pabst film Diary of a Lost Girl (1929)." ( link to article ) Like many first books, it was published in a small edition, gained a few reviews, and quietly won a prize. In another interview, Smith noted, "My first book, a collection of short stories called Free Love, had almost no promotion at all. It had a charming photo of Louise Brooks on it, though, and was an interesting size, slimmer and longer than your usual book of short stories, and has become, apparently, very rare and highly collectable. That's what comes of a *really* tiny print run." On another occassion, the author added "Best was when I saw a man in front of me in a queue buying my first book. That was very exciting. I think it was the picture of Louise Brooks that did it for him. I often wonder if he liked the stories." I have been searching the internet in vain for a scan of a first edition of Ali Smith's first book - with the Louise Brooks cover, but have been unable to find an image. Does anyone have a copy ? Would anyone be able to send a scan ?

It was a Louise Brooks book cover that caught Toby Litt's attention. In a 2004 interview with the London Independent ( link to article ), the British novelist said "I'd never heard of Adolfo Bioy-Casares' The Invention of Morel (New York Review of Books £7.99). Initially attracted to it by the beautiful cover photo of silent film actress Louise Brooks, I found it to be an equally beautiful novel of unrequited love and parallel worlds." Elsewhere, in writing about Bioy-Casares' seminal 1940 novella, Litt said "This is a strange book. . . . The narrator falls in love with one of them, Faustine. . . . Faustine is based upon the great silent film actress Louise Brooks, star of Pandora’s Box and Diary of a Lost Girl. (It was her picture on the cover that first attracted me to this book.)" **  Notably, Pandora's Box also makes Toby Litt's list of the all-time top ten films on the author'swebsite.

Perhaps it's just coincidence, but here we have two "emerging" 21st century authors who have an interest in a 20th century icon and muse, Louise Brooks. Has anyone read either author?



** The Louise Brooks Society webpage devoted to Adolpho Bioy-Casares played some small part in putting the actress on the cover of the NYBR reissue of The Invention of Morel, a classic work of "magical realism." Prior to its publication in 2003, the publisher (who had come across the LBS webpage) contacted me about finding an appropriate image for the cover. I steered them toward this picture of Brooks asleep and dreaming, books at her feet.