Arabic-language newspaper article

My friend Gianluca also sent me a link to a recent Arabic-language newspaper article which mentions Louise Brooks. It can be found at www.sharghnewspaper.com/840516/html/cinema.htm  Does anyone know enough Arabic to read this and relay a sense of what it discusses?

Japanese Anime

Today, my Italian friend Gianluca sent me an email about a Japanese Anime artist. According to this page on the Anime News Network, "Rumiko Takahashi's design for Nabiki Tendo is patterned after silent film actress Louise Brooks (1906-1985)." It is amazing how many comics, cartoons, graphic novels and anime Louise Brooks has inspired. Thank you Gianluca.

Garbo article by Mick LaSalle

There is an article about Greta Garbo by Mick LaSalle (author of Complicated Women and Dangerous Men - two fine books on pre-code Hollywood) in today's San Francisco Chronicle. And don't forget, Kevin Brownlow's new documentary on Garbo debuts tomorrow night on TCM. I can't wait!

LBS website

Due to a long planned overhaul of the website, large portions of the Louise Brooks Society are off-line. If all goes according to plan, pages and sections of the site will be brought back in the course of the next few weeks. The LBS homepage will remain on-line. Also still available is the message board, and a newly revised page of links, Lulu in Cyberspace. (Check it out.) The LBS gift shop at Cafepress.com, as well as Radio Lulu, and Louise Brooks Studies, are all still active. This blog - the LBS at LJ - will also continue during the site overhaul. I hope to get a lot of work done on the site over the Labor Day weekend. Check back throughout September for updates.

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.