I found some good material

A couple of inter-library loans arrived. I went through microfilm of the Daily Pantagraph, where I found good material relating to the two Denishawn performances in Bloomington, Illinois.

I also went through the March, 1926 microfilm of the Palm Beach Post. I was hoping to find articles about or references to the making of It's the Old Army Game, which was filmed in both Palm Beach and nearby Ocala, Florida. I did find one article, "Ocala is Enjoying Movie Popularity," which mentioned the film and its star, W.C. Fields. An article I had come across in the Fields fan club newsletter mentioned another article, but I failed to find that piece.

Pre-code film fest features Paramount flicks

"During the pre-Code era -- the five years before the imposition of a restrictive production code on July 1, 1934 -- Hollywood made a series of racy and socially daring films. This is widely known. What is not widely known is that the naughtiest studio of them all was Paramount."

The Balboa Theater in San Francisco is about to start a pre-code film festival. What makes this one special is that all of the films were made by one studio - Paramount. Author / photo historian Mark Vieira will be in attendance to introduce tomorrow night's film, as well as sign books. (Vieira is the author of the sexy, scholarly pictorial Sin in Soft Focus, as well as one of the two new books on Garbo.) Mick LaSalle, the film critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, has a long article in today's newspaper about the festival. It's well worth reading. I will be there Thursday night as well. (p.s. Amanda, I will get your copy of Sin in Soft Focus signed at this screening. At last!)

On this day in 1923

On this day in 1923, in it's review of the previous evening's Denishawn performance, the Baltimore News wrote " . . . for all the amazing nudity not once has a salacious note sounded."

Thank you James Dilworth

A big thank you to James Dilworth, who took some time and dug a bunch of reviews and articles out of the Reno, Nevada newspapers. The articles James found all date from the the 1920's. Here is one rather delightful item.

Further notes

This week, I put in an ILL request for two reels of microfilm of the Hannibal Courier-Post and Hannibal Journal. The Denishawn Dance Company, with Louise Brooks, performed in Hannibal, Missouri on January 2, 1924. The lending institution, the State Historical Society of Missouri, just raised their rates for out-of-state requests from $7.00 to $10.00. So, until I can deliver a new check, my search for this material will be briefly delayed.

On a related note, my ILL request for the Beaumont Enterprise was rejected, as there are no lending institutions. Anyone live in Beaumont, Texas willing to look up a couple of articles? Denishawn performed in Beaumont on Friday, February 2, 1923 at the Kyle Theatre and on  Thursday, January 10, 1924 at the Kyle Theatre.

Notes from the library

Earlier this summer, I ran across a 1925 clipping regarding The Street of Forgotten Men while looking through Neil Hamilton's scrapbooks at the New York Public Library. (Actor Neil Hamilton - best known as Commissoner Gordon on the 1960's BatmanTV series - was featured in The Street of Forgotten Men, which also happened to be Louise Brooks' first film!) And just now, at the end of October, I got around to borrowing the microfilm of the Wilmington Morning News, the Delaware newspaper in which that clipping appeared. I tracked down a few additional articles and advertisements. REMARKABLY, that film was paired with a (unknown to me) documentary short about the then recent Atlantic City beauty pageant. Of course, as any Brooks' fan knows, that beauty pageant - one of the early Miss America contests - provided the background subject for the next Louise Brooks' film,The American Venus, which was released just a few months later.

This is exciting. Who knows what is on that short film - perhaps some brief footage about the making of the feature film? (I doubt that Brooks was present in Atlantic City. But who knows . . . .) I also ran across a brief article entitled, "Beauty Pageant Showing At Stanley Theatres." The article reads thus: "The thousands of Wilmingtonians who did not get the opportunity to be present in Atlantic City during the Beauty Pageant just completed there on Friday will see the principal scenes of the entire celebration in film at the Queen, Arcadia and Majestic Theaters beginning today. The scenes were especially 'shot' by the Stanley cameraman for the theaters of this organization." I'll pay anyone a dollar if they can provide me with a copy of that short film. I think it is titled Atlantic City Beauty Pageant.

Today, five inter-library loans were waiting for me. I also looked at some Denishawn material from the New Haven Journal-Courier (from New Haven, Connecticut) and the Wisconsin State Journal (from Madison, Wisconsin). Each yielded some long, detail-filled reviews and a few neat advertisements.

And, as well, I went through a number of months of two "other" American newspapers, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin (from the Territory of Hawaii) and the Alaska Daily Empire (also then a territory, pre-statehood). My search through the Star-Bulletin was based on my having earlier found film reviews in the Honolulu Advertiser (microfilm of which I stumbled upon in Sacramento, California. The Star-Bulletin microfilm came on loan from the Library of Congress). I checked my Advertiser dates in the Star-Bulletin and came up with a  couple of new reviews.

However, the Alaska Daily Empire (from Juneau) yielded nothing. I skimmed nearly six months of this newspaper, which only ran only eight pages on a daily basis. I found advertisements and short, generic articles about films showing in town - but none featuring Louise Brooks. There were at least two or three movie theaters in Juneau in the late 1920's - and they showed motion pictures starring the likes of Buster Keaton and Erich von Stroheim. Apparently, Juneau didn't show many or any Paramount films. One day, I hope to find or acquire some Alaska citations for the LBS bibliographies. I have citations from almost every other state.

The LBS hopes to fully document

The LBS hopes to fully document the life and career of Louise Brooks. One ongoing project is the collection of magazine and newspaper articles about the actress, especially vintage reviews of Brooks' films. Hundreds of articles have already been found. But more await discovery. The LBS is especially interested in obtaining photocopies of newspaper articles and films reviews.

The LBS is interested in any and all clippings (film reviews, articles, advertisements, etc....) from Colorado, Utah, Montana (excluding those from the Helena Independent - those have already been excavated), Idaho, Arizona, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Alaska. As well, any clippings from Hawaii (excluding the Honolulu papers) and western Canada (excluding the Manitoba Free Press) would be useful. Clippings from Vancouver are of particular interest!

The LBS has many clippings from various Berlin newspapers, as well as from various German film magazines. The LBS would be interested in obtaining copies of vintage articles (especially about the two Pabst films) from any newspapers from Munich, Hamburg, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuggart, Dresden, etc. . . . Your consideration and help is appreciated!

More books on-line

The Open Content Alliance is scanning in hundreds of thousands of public-domain books. According to the Internet Archive, "At an Internet Archive event in San Francisco tonight 14 libraries and MSN joined the Open Content Alliance. MSN kicked off their association by committing to scan 150,000 books in 2006." That's good news for those engaged in Louise Brooks studies - who knows what Frank Wedekind, Ruth St. Denis, film related or Kansas history books may show-up. Or even other books of interest . . . .

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