Updates

The Louise Brooks Centenary page - listing Louise Brooks events happening around the world - has been updated. I've added a a few new happenings, as well as dates and details regarding other events which I have just learned.

I will be at San Francisco Silent Film Festival (one of the very few ALL SILENT film festivals in the world!) pretty much all weekend, and thus may not have time to post any entries to this live journal. Hope to see some of you there.

I noticed this piece as well

I noticed this piece as well because it also mentions "Beggars of Life."

German edition of Louise Brooks: Lulu Forever

I just came across this webpage, which announces the German edition of Louise Brooks: Lulu Forever, by Peter Cowie. The cover varies slightly from the American edition. And the descriptive text - copied below - reads with an interest. The book will retail in Germany for 49,80 euros and according to this page, will be available on September 15 (before the title is available in the United States).

Silent movie star and femme fatale Louise Brooks, who made 24 films between 1925 and 1938, is best known for her role as Lulu in the 1929 German classic Pandora’s Box. Lulu Forever is the opulently illustrated chronique scandaleuse of this seductive, rebellious nymphet with bob. Too intelligent for Hollywood, she was rediscovered in the 1970s and has become a 20th-century icon. German edition.

Schirmer/Mosel. With introductions by Dan Brooks and Jack Garner. 240 pages, 169 duotone plates. Size: 21,5 x 31,7 cm, hardcover. ISBN-13: 978-3-8296-0257-0.

A cartoon history of James Cagney

Here is something else I came across recently, a cartoon history of James Cagney. I noticed it because it mentions Beggars of Life. (Cagney starred in the stage production of Jim Tully's book which played in New York City in 1925.)

Berkeley Daily Planet article

An article on the upcoming San Francisco Silent Film Festival appeared in the Berkeley Daily Planet. The festival is screening Pandora's Box, and thus the article mentions the film and pictures Louise Brooks. Unfortunately, the article repeats the suggestions that Louise Brooks is largely remembered today because she slept with the right film historians - a rather stupid spin on the notion of the casting couch.

Saturday night will see a screening of Pandora’s Box, a German film directed by G.W. Pabst and starring the iconic American actress Louise Brooks. Brooks was not a great success in American films and she eventually made her way to Germany where she made three films in an effort to resuscitate her career. It is those films upon which her reputation rests today. Returning to America, she found herself blacklisted and never again had much success.

But later her talent for self-promotion, including at least one romantic relationship with a film historian, led to rekindled interest in her career and helped to retroactively establish Brooks as a great and important figure of the silent era. Her credentials as a great actress may be debatable, but her charisma, beauty and sexual appeal are undeniable, and Pandora’s Box presents her in her signature role as a seductive and dangerous woman who brings ruin to those she encounters.

I would suggest that the author was only repeating things he read elsewhere.

A cartoon history of Lillian Gish

Here is something I came across recently, a cartoon history of Lillian Gish from 1931.

Kansas City screening

The Diary of a Lost Girl, starring Louise Brooks, will be shown in the Film Vault of the Kansas City Public Library on July 24 at 6:30 p.m. (A DVD of the film will be screened.) The library, which has a regular program of classic films, is located at 14 West 10th Street in Kansas City, Missouri. For more information, see this library webpage.