Louise Brooks event on April 20

Here is the press release for an upcoming event . . . .

FROM HOLLYWOOD TO ROCHESTER: THE LIFE OF LOUISE BROOKS
Sponsored in collaboration with the Little Theater
Thursday, April 20th, 6:15 pm - 9:00 pm

The Little Theater, 240 East Avenue
Rochester, NY 14604
$15 for RHS members, $18 for non-members

This November 14th will mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of film icon Louise Brooks. Conventional wisdom holds that Brooks — a cult figure in American and European pop culture, and one of the most recognizable symbols of the Jazz Age — ended her career in the late 1930s, only to spend the remainder of her life in seclusion. Here in Rochester, we know that this is only partly true, and certainly misleading. In 1956 at the urging of George Eastman House film curator James Card, Brooks set up home at 7 North Goodman Street and began a second, if less visible, career as a respected film scholar and critic. Never one to pass quietly, this one-time femme fatale left many a biting critique.

Join us at the Little Theater for a special showing of Brooks’s legendary film Pandora’s Box, along with a talk by Rochester Democrat and Chronicle film critic and Brooks acquaintance Jack Garner.

For reservations, call Karen McCally at (585)271-2705 or email at kmccally@rochesterhistory.org

Movie star pics

Doctor Macro's is a nifty web site with lots of high quality scans of movie stars - including Louise Brooks! There are also wallpapers and pics of Ziegfeld girls. Check it out.

Louise Brooks character included in Seattle stage production

According to an article in the current issue of The Stranger, Seattle's alternative weekly, a stage production there features a character based on Louise Brooks. The piece, The Invisible, by Jessica Jobaris and Luke Allen, is being staged at the Chamber Theater (915 E Pine St). This theater piece is described as "part silent film, part Hollywood satire, part surreal comic drama." This from The Stranger review

I thought The Invisible was a wry, if sometimes messy, satire of the movies until I talked to choreographer/director Jessica Jobaris. She said it was actually about the frustration of being an artist in the modern world. "But," she added generously, "there's room for interpretation."

The Invisible is a varied piece of dance theater with five characters from film history—Eadweard Muybridge, Clara Bow, Louise Brooks, Shirley Temple, and Erast Garin—who clown, roll, and pose on the stage in themed scenelets. They dance-fight in a lampoon of action sequences, chase and reject each other like a hacky romantic comedy. In voiceover asides, Garin (a Soviet-era actor) keeps reminding the audience that he's "very intense." Deanna Mustard (as proto-sexpot Brooks) spreads her legs, wiggles her tail, and slams herself viciously on the floor, over and over and over again. (It's painful just to look at her deep yellow bruises.) The Invisible uses dancers for actors, actors for dancers, and a soundtrack ranging from the Kinks to slamming doors in a confusing (usually delightfully so) performance hash.

Then there's the film bit, with its voiceover asking heavy questions about meaning and aspiration while the characters skate around an ice rink. The audience laughed—parts of it were very funny—which surprised Jobaris. "I think that part is really sad," she said. "Maybe I haven't, you know, learned—" I cut her off, saying any jerk can be lugubrious, but it's the rare artist who can translate depth into light, accessible performance—think of sad-but-funny clowns like Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. Superficiality can be an asset.

For those interested, here is another review.

The search goes on

After a week away, I returned to the library, where three inter-library loans were waiting for me. In short, I excavated some articles, reviews and advertisements regarding Louise Brooks / Denishawn performances in the Stamford Advocate (from Stamford, Connecticut), the Fond du Lac Daily Reporter (from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin), and the Oklahoma City Times (from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma). Louise Brooks was mentioned in a couple of the reviews, and was singled out in one of the reviews. All together, a nice haul. The search goes on.

Prix de beauté review

A review of the new KINO release of Prix de beauté has turned up on-line at dvdtalk.com. "The script by Pabst and Rene Clair repeats the tale of beauty entrapped by possessive men, a pattern almost identical to the Dorothy Stratten tragedy told in Bob Fosse's Star 80." More from the review by Glenn Erickson can be found here.

Bruz Fletcher

Recently, while working on new programing for RadioLulu, I came across the name of Bruz Fletcher, a now little known musician and nightclub singer. Fletcher led an interesting life, and was something of a fixture on the Hollywood social scene in the late 1930's. His name frequently shows up in articles and in gossip columns of the time. I would recommend everyone check out Tyler Alpern's informative web pages devoted to this unique talent.

My interest was peaked because, according to newspaper reports, Louise Brooks attend performances by Fletcher on at least five different occasions in 1937 and 1938. (Well known costume designer Travis Banton, who was gay, was her companion on two of those reported outings.) Fletcher was also gay. And, he developed a somewhat campy though coded routine which he showcased at Club Bali, a nightclub he "owned" in Hollywood. That's where Brooks, and many other celebrities, saw him perform.

Tyler Alpern's webpages are a treasure trove of information. I emailed Alpern, as I was curious to know what Fletcher's act was like, and he generously provided me with a few rare recordings. One of those songs he sent me, "Drunk with Love," can now be heard on RadioLulu. Thank you Tyler Alpern!

Leatherock undergoes huge renovation

The Parsons Sun newspaper (from Parsons, Kansas), reports that the Leatherock Hotel in Cherryvale is to undergo a huge renovation. Built in 1912, the two-story brick hotel is across the street from the former Frisco and Santa Fe railroad depots in Cherryvale.

Hallowell began work on the project several years ago. The bed and breakfast now has three rooms available for rent and an apartment.

One small room, Bertha's Room, is named for Bertha Leatherock, the wife of Fred Leatherock who was influential in the hotel being built to serve as a place for railroad workers and passengers to get a bite to eat or spend the night. The room is decorated in early 1900s motif. Other rooms will honor Cherryvale residents and actresses Louise Brooks, a very famous silent screen artist, and Vivian Vance, who played Ethel on "I Love Lucy."

Hallowell said the bed and breakfast's hallway will someday be a museum, with Cherryvale history on one side and U.S. and world history on the opposite wall. "It's a little bit of a different concept for a museum," Hallowell said.

For more on this hotel, check out www.leatherockhotel.com The hotel website even has a page on Louise Brooks and other local celebrities.

Early review for "Flapper"

An early, if not entirely praiseworthy, review of Flapper, by Joshua Zeitz, has shown up on-line. Despite the mixed review, I am looking forward to this book. I had exchanged a few emails with the author a while back, and helped with a fact or two. This new book includes a chapter on Louise Brooks and some of the other film personalities of the time. "In California, where orange groves gave way to studio lots and fairytale mansions, three of America’s first celebrities - Clara Bow, Colleen Moore, and Louise Brooks, Hollywood’s great flapper triumvirate - fired the imaginations of millions of filmgoers." Another review describes the book as ". . . an entertaining, well-researched and charmingly illustrated dissection of the 1920s flapper, who flouted conventions and epitomized the naughtiness of the Jazz Age as she 'bobbed her hair, smoked cigarettes, drank gin, sported short skirts, and passed her evenings in steamy jazz clubs'." More on this title, which will be released on March 14th, can be found here.