Some thoughts .... Hurricane Katrina

For the last few days, I have been watching television coverage of the disaster along the Gulf Coast. It is frightening. The loss of life and of material goods is so distressing. I work at a bookstore - and wonder about the bookstores in New Orleans. Did any survive? How about the libraries and archives, the old movie theaters, and historic buildings? Along with life itself, these are some of the material / cultural things I hold dear. So many of the cities hit by Hurricane Katrina and mentioned on the news are familar to me - New Orleans, Baton Rouge and Meridian, Mississippi are all cities visited by Louise Brooks when she was a member of the Denishawn Dance Company. By some strange coincidence, at the library today I looked at microfilm of the Baton Rouge State Times, where I found a bunch of Denishawn material from 1924. The lending institution was Louisiana State University. I wonder if these mere microfilm rolls have a dry home to go back to? My thoughts are with those in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama (including members of the LBS and a few dear friends - namely Tim & Laura Dwyer, who live in New Orleans) who have suffered through this awful event. I hope you are safe.

On this day in 1930

On this day in 1930, The Hollywood Filmograph reports that Louise Brooks was among the celebrities present to see Duke Ellington perform (on August 21st) at the Cocoanut Grove in Los Angeles. "Duke Ellington's famous dusky orchestra of the Ziegfield Follies discoursed dandy jazz music for an hour and made a great hit." Other celebrities present included Roscoe Arbuckle, Mack Sennett, Loretta Young, Mervyn LeRoy, Skeets Gallagher, Carl Laemmele, and Carl Laemmele Jr. The regular band at the Cocoanut Grove, led by Gus Arnheim, featured vocals by The Rhythm Boys.

Lulu in Honolulu

On Friday, I visited the California State Library. I had intended to look at some more California newspaper, but instead spent the afternoon browsing three and a half years of microfilm of the the Honolulu Advertiser. (Only recently did I discover that the California State Library has a few non-California newspapers.) I found advertisements and/or articles and reviews for every Louise Brooks' film from The American Venus (1926) through The City Gone Wild (1927). These are the first citations from Hawaii (which was then the Territory of Hawaii) I have found.

"American Venus" Discloses Her Beauty Secrets

Here is a nifty, 1922 article I came across today. I think it nifty because it refers to Dorothy Knapp (Louise Brooks' later friend in the 1925 Ziegfeld Follies) as The American Venus.

Diary of a Lost Girl screening

Diary of a Lost Girl will be shown at the Northbrook Public Library in Northbrook, Illinois on September 7th. Live piano accompaniment performed by Dave Drazin. For more info see northbrook.info/lib_programs_films.php  Here is info on other films in the series:

September 14 - Sex
The vampish "Spider Woman" breaks up homes and marriages but retribution soon strikes in a devious way.
Starring: Louise Glaum, Irving Cummings, Viola Barry (90 minutes)

September 21 - Show People
A delightfully funny early glimpse of Hollywood as a girl from the sticks tries to make it in movies.
Starring: Marion Davies, William Haines, Polly Moran (82 minutes )

September 28 - Sunrise
One of the first Oscar winners. A farmer plans to murder his wife, led on by another woman.
Starring: Janet Gaynor, George O'Brien, Margaret Livingston (110 minutes)

Today

I spent half-a-day at UC Berkeley, where I went through two-and-a-half years of Neie Freie Presse, a daily newspaper from Vienna, Austria. All I managed to find, however, was a single 1928 review and advertisement for Eine Pariser Ehe, which shown in the United States as Evening Clothes (1927). I was lucky to spot this, as the Austrian title differs from the German title, Ein Frack Ein Claque Ein Mandel. The review did not mention Louise Brooks.