John Canemaker

It was a real treat to see Winsor McCay on the big screen last night. The PFA exhibited 35 mm prints of four of his films, and John Canemaker - who was very  informative - gave a running commentary. There was also live piano accompaniment. And at long last, I got Canemeker (who won an Academy Award for one of his own recent animated films) to sign my copy of his book on Winsor McCay. I then proceeded to spend even mor emoney by purchasing a DVD of McCay films which was put together by Canemaker. A splendid time was had in Berkeley.

Jen Anderson

I am excitied to find out that Jen Anderson, the gifted Australian composer and performer of the lovely "Lulu - The Song" (as heard on RadioLulu and elsewhere), as well as the composer of a soundtrack to Pandora's Box (which was released in Australia on CD with Louise Brooks on the cover in 1993), will be coming to the San Francisco Bay Aea. Anderson will be performing her score to The Sentimental Bloke on Sunday, September 17 at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California. Apparently, Anderson will be touring the country with this film. Here is the descriptive text from the PFA website.

The Sentimental Bloke Raymond Longford (Australia, 1919) 
Musical Accompaniment by Jen Anderson and the Larrikins 

The Sentimental Bloke is considered the jewel of Australia's surviving silent cinema. Of the thirty films directed by Raymond Longford, this delightful work, based on a popular book of verse entitled The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke, is the only one that now exists intact. Its charming depiction of a romance between commoners Bill (Arthur Tauchert) and Doreen (Lottie Lyell) and its colorful use of colloquial language appealed to audiences of its day; the film achieved record box-office returns and screened widely in Australia, New Zealand, and Britain. Plans for a theatrical release in the States, in a shortened, re-edited version, never panned out; however, the original 35mm camera negative ended up at George Eastman House and was used in this recent restoration. We are pleased to present this classic with a score composed and performed by Jen Anderson and the Larrikins (Dave Evans and Dan Warner), written for instruments that would have been available to working-class Australians in 1919: piano, accordion, guitar, mandolin, violin, tin whistle, and vocals. — Susan Oxtoby 

• Written by Raymond Longford, Lottie Lyell, from The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke by C. J. Dennis. Photographed by Arthur Higgins. With Arthur Tauchert, Lottie Lyell, Gilbert Emery, Stanley Robinson. (109 mins, Silent, B&W, tinted and toned, 35mm, From George Eastman House, permission National Film and Sound Archive, Australia). PFA acknowledges the Australian Film Commission for sponsoring the North American tour of this restored film with trio accompaniment.

Tonight, at the PFA, I am going to see John Canemaker, author of a book about the comic strip artist Winsor McCay. Canemaker will be speaking prior to a screening of animated short silent films by McCay.

Lulu in Japan

Louise Brooks adorns the cover of a 1929 Japanese magazine, which is for sale on eBay.

Lulu in NY Fringe Fest

Wow, did anyone see the absolutely fabulous review by Jason Zinoman which Lulu recieved in this past Saturday's New York Times ? I am so excitied about seeing this production when it comes to the Victoria Theater in San Francisco in a few weeks. Here is an excerpt from the article.

The Silent Theater Company of Chicago is dedicated to the idea that the theater doesn't need the spoken word, which it proves with panache in its first production, Lulu, an ingeniously staged version of the Louise Brooks 1929 silent film Pandora's Box.

Stylishly directed by Tonika Todorova, this dreamlike play without words is about an insatiable hedonist who leaves death in her tracks. It opens with a wild freak show - peopled by a bearded lady, a dwarf and a man on stilts - dressed and lighted in a noirishly severe black and white, like the cover of a 1920's scandal sheet burst to life. Last to enter is the knockout showgirl Lulu (Kyla Louise Webb), a good-time girl who is clearly bad news.

In the seasoned hands of Ms. Brooks - whose black bob, imitated here, may be the most famous haircut in film history - the role inspired oceans of critical drooling. Kenneth Tynan once wrote that she was "the only star actress I can imagine either being enslaved by or wanting to enslave."

The charismatic Ms. Webb, who wears a blankly innocent expression, letting her jitterbugging body do the seducing, may not bring on such dark thoughts, but her pursuit of unbridled pleasure is so persuasive that you are sure that after the show she will seduce the rest of the cast members and then break all their hearts.

Backed by the moody piano of Isaiah Robinson, this coolly stylized presentation, which could benefit from a few more tech rehearsals, communicates a remarkable amount of plot - in a few crisply designed scenes that slip back and forth between erotic and macabre.

The glamorous Lulu is a reminder of how effective the great silent performers were in their ability to cut directly to the heart of a scene, something Billy the Mime also accomplishes superbly. If you don't have the crutch of language, you need to be able to tell a story with discipline and clarity, and these wordless artists developed a vocabulary every bit as articulate as that of any playwright in the Fringe. They are particularly eloquent with comedy and horror, two areas in which the theater often lags behind film. When was the last play you saw that was really scary or made you explode in belly laughs?

Unlike talking actors, who generally shun the grand gesture as hammy, these silent performers are willing to go for the jugular. They treat their limitation in speech as an opportunity to exploit the rest of their repertory, which may be the reason that their shows seem bolder, faster and meaner than any others I saw this week. Silence, in an odd way, has liberated them.

Acorn Books

Acorn Books: I have written about this San Francisco store in the past . . . . They are going out of business and everything is now 70% off. I was there yesterday, and there are still a fair number of good books to be found - especially film books, and older film magazines including periodicals from the 1920's. What did I buy? I found a scarce copy of Screwball: The Life of Carole Lombard from 1975, the Intimate Journals of Rudolph Valentino from 1931; a nice hardback copy of Hot Toddy, a book on the murder of Thelma Todd; some vintage photoplay editions (I collect them); an autographed William K. Everson hardback book; a couple of other hardback Everson titles; a book on gangster movies, etc.... and all for cheap!

Nittany Lion perspective

Perspective on the times from the Nittany Lions.

My weekly research trips

My weekly research trips to the library continue. . . .  I uncovered Denishawn articles, ads and reviews from the Daily British Whig, the local newspaper from Kingston, Ontario. This material, dating from April 1924, included a review which mentioned Louise Brooks.  With just four  more inter-library  loan requests from Canada, I will have completed my Candadian-Denishawn research. By then, I will have obtained articles, advertisements and reviews from each of Louise Brooks' Canadian Denishawn performances. This week, I will also be looking for Denishawn material from the St. Paul Dispatch (from St. Paul, Minnesota.)

And lately, I have also been requesting and looking through other papers in search of yet more film reviews. These papers include the Hartford Courant, (from Connecticut), Queens County Evening News (from New York), Salem World (from Oregon), and the San Bernardino Evening Telegram & Evening Index (from California). I found a bit of material.

And the other night, I found online access to historic issues of the Penn State Collegian (the student newspaper at Penn State University). There, I found a few advertisements for Louise Brooks films. Here is one of them.



I would like to find more material from college newspapers. So far, as opportunity has arisen, I have scoured the papers at the University of Michigan, as well as Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. And in each, I found advertisements and some articles and even reviews. Imagine, college students writing about Brooks' films back in the 1920's! (In the past, I have also looked through the student newspapers from what are now Michigan State University and San Jose State University, but found nothing.) If anyone lives in a college town - the bigger the school the better - and would want to scroll through microfilm looking for Brooks material . . . . your help would be appreciated.

And for those keeping track, two of my ILL requests were rejected. Hoping to get small town reviews of Denishawn performances, I had requested the M'Alester News-Capital (from Mcalister, Oklahoma) and the Evening Chronicle (from Pottsville, Pennslyvannia). As it turns out, no state library seems to have these papers for the period requested.