San Francisco Silent Film Festival

Go to www.silentfilm.org/ to find out about the screening of a new print of Pandora's Box at this year's San Francisco Silent Film Festival in July. I'll be there !

Polly Glotto Translates & Reads Translations

In searching for new Louise Brooks material, I look at webpages and documents from around the world and in many languages. One tool I use is Babel Fish ( babelfish.yahoo.com ), which can perform rudimentary translations of text or webpages from one language to another. One new nifty tool I've come across is Polly Glotto, which also translates from one language to another and - what's more - reads the translations. Check it out at www.pollyglotto.com.

American silent film

The other day, I finished reading William Everson's American Silent Film. It's an excellent book - and one of the few I know of which surveys silent film in the United States. The book was originally published in 1978, and is still in print. I would recommend it. A few chapters I found quite nearly thrilling. Everson mentions Louise Brooks a few times, and speaks highly of Love Em and Leave Em and Beggars of Life. My next book is James Card's Seductive Cinema. I read parts of it in the past, but have never say down and read the whole thing. And, so far so good. I am about 40 pages in. Card has referenced Brooks a few times already - and it's very opinionated.

Wladyslaw Starewicz

If you've never seen the animated films of Polish-born animator Wladyslaw Starewicz (1892 - 1965), then be sure and check out these links. His work - all mostly done in the teens, twenties and thirties - is poetic and surreal.

The Insect's Christmas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1CRSeH8Hv4&search=starewicz

The Cameraman's Revenge part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gScJFDxPPkU&search=starewicz

The Cameraman's Revenge part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ggcRVBD3XA&search=starewicz

The Town Rat & The Country Rat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZxt-xvqcvM&search=starewicz

The Frogs Who Wanted A King
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkdWsJsnvP8&search=starewicz

Voice of the Nightingale part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7dAd_Pcqog&search=starewicz

Voice of the Nightingale part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ToZCO880do8&search=starewicz

George Grantham Bain news photograph collection

The Library of Congress has announced that the George Grantham Bain news photograph collection (about 40,000 glass negatives) have been digitized and are available in the LOC's Prints and Photographs Online Catalog. You can start searching for your favorite subjects or film stars (be they Louise Brooks or Clara Bow or Olive Thomas) at http://memory.loc.gov/pp/ggbainhtml/ggbainabt.html. I know you will find at least a few photographic treasures.

"The George Grantham Bain Collection represents the photographic files of one of America's earliest news picture agencies. The collection richly documents sports events, theater, celebrities, crime, strikes, disasters, political activities including the woman suffrage campaign, conventions and public celebrations. The photographs Bain produced and gathered for distribution through his news service were worldwide in their coverage, but there was a special emphasis on life in New York City. The bulk of the collection dates from the 1900s to the mid-1920s, but scattered images can be found as early as the 1860s and as late as the 1930s."

Scattered thoughts

At the library today, I looked at yet more microfilm! I dug Denishawn material out of the Poughkeepsie Evening Star and Enterprise (from Poughkeepsie , New York), Marshalltown Evening Times Republican (from Marshalltown, Iowa), and Pueblo Chieftain (from Pueblo, Colorado). As much as I enjoy research, I am looking forward to the day when I have finished looking for Denishawn material for each and every performance. The end is near, I think. 

I also looked for film reviews in the Hartford Courant (from Hartford, Connecticut) and the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner (from Fairbanks, Alaska). I found nothing in either publication. The Fairbanks newspaper is the second Alaska newspaper I have looked at. I failed to find any Louise Brooks material in either - as Fairbanks and Anchorage were small towns at the time and didn't seem to support very many movie theaters. I had planned to look at another Alaska newspaper, but will not. I can't imagine it will yield any material. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any vintage reviews from Alaska, as I have most nearly every other state. (I do have a bunch of pre-statehood Hawaiian reviews.) Wyoming is also proving elusive.

This just in . . .

Turner Classic Movies will air the television premiere of five Rudolph Valentino films during a film festival dedicated to the silver screen's first male sex symbol on Sunday, May 21. The schedule for the film festival is as follows:

     8 p.m.      Beyond the Rocks (1922) - TV premiere of recently discovered Valentino/Swanson film
9:45 p.m.       Moran of the Lady Letty (1922) - TV premiere 
   11 p.m.      The Young Rajah (1922) - TV premiere with still reconstruction by Jeffrey Masino
   12 a.m.      The Delicious Little Devil (1919) - TV premiere 
1:15 a.m.      Stolen Moments (1920) - TV premiere
     2 a.m.      The Conquering Power (1921)
3:30 a.m.      Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921)

More information is available at the TCM Web site at www.tcm.com

To the LOC

I leave for Washington D.C. in eight days. I am very excited. Because, in less than 10 days time I will be hunkered down at the Library of Congress pouring over their massive collection of newspapers on microfilm. I've prepared an extensive checklist of papers I hope to look through. And, if I'm lucky, I may also look through bound issues of certain newspapers not on microfilm. And, I am also very excited that I was able to secure an appointment to view the surviving reels of The Street of Forgotten Men, Louise Brooks' first film. More to come. . . .