Pola Negri

There is a Pola Negri retrospective taking place in New York City, and a Polish radio station did a story on the Polish-born actress. Follow this link to read the article or to listen to the even longer (approximately 5 minute) program.    http://www.polskieradio.pl/polonia/article.asp?tId=42221&j=2

A Centenary Tribute to Louise Brooks

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art presents A Centenary Tribute to Louise Brooks, October 12 - 21. Click here for more info.

October 12 - October 21 
A Centenary Tribute to Louise Brooks Louise Brooks was born one-hundred years ago this November 14 in Cherryvale, Kansas. Though she lived a mere six of her seventy-nine years in the glare of celebrity, she has become a cinematic icon without equal. A trained dancer who toured with Martha Graham, Brooks happily ascended to showgirl heaven in the Ziegfeld Follies, where she honed her real talents: attending parties and dazzling men. Brooks started a fashion craze with her geometric black haircut and soon appeared in magazines as an emblem of the Roaring Twenties. When the movies came knocking, she started packing, and after a brief affair with Charlie Chaplin in the summer of 1925, Brooks surfaced in Hollywood with a Paramount Pictures contract. She later married director Edward Sutherland, blazed a trail through the celebrity colony, and attracted plenty of photographers along the way. Unfortunately, her career was going nowhere until a third-act role as a gold-digging circus performer in Howard Hawks’s A Girl in Every Port caught the eye of the renowned German director Georg Wilhelm Pabst. Under pressure to cast the part of Lulu, the amoral temptress at the heart of Pandora’s Box, Pabst miraculously saw in Brooks an actress who, in the poetic words of critic Lotte Eisner, “Needed no directing, but could move across the screen causing the work of art to be born by her mere presence.” Brooks flew immediately to Berlin and embarked on a creative collaboration that produced three major films (of which one is considered a masterpiece) and ensured her fame for generations to come.

The story of Louise Brooks’s disappearance, rediscovery, and rehabilitation is a fascinating biography. By 1930, the icon had been etched on celluloid and the legend seeded. One of the curious aspects of Louise Brooks is how her admirers have tried to express her mysterious effects on the viewer. In 1955 Henri Langlois, director of the Cinematheque française, proclaimed to the audience, “There is no Garbo! There is no Dietrich! There is only Louise Brooks!” Anita Loos, the author of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, is the most succinct in her reference to Brooks as the most beautiful of all “black-haired blondes.” However, nothing equals theater critic Kenneth Tynan’s verbal paroxysm, with phrases like “shameless urchin tomboy” and “prairie princess,” before he retreats to the relatively sage “a creature of impulse, a creator of impulses, a temptress with no pretensions.” Perhaps Brooks put it best herself when she dryly wrote, “I guess Lulu’s life is about as close to my own as anyone’s can be.”

The films in this tribute are silent with live musical accompaniment.

Thursday, October 12, 7:30 PM
Pandora's Box
Friday, October 13, 7:30 PM
Pandora's Box
Saturday, October 14, 7:30 PM
Pandora's Box
Friday, October 20, 7:30 PM
A Girl in Every Port
andDiary of a Lost Girl
Saturday, October 21, 7:30 PM
Prix de Beauté (the restored silent version, with spoken translation of the French intertitles)

Along with the four film series being presented by the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York this looks like the most ambitious series of screening happening in the United States.

Louise Brooks exhibit

Hollywood Lost: The Power of Louise Brooks
from www.eastmanhouse.org/exhibits/container_56/index.php

George Eastman House is celebrating the centennial of famed silent-film star Louise Brooks (1906-1985) - the magnetic and mysterious performer who lived out the last act of her life in Rochester. The anniversary is being highlighted with a film series as well as a photography exhibition, Hollywood Lost: The Power of Louise Brooks, on view Nov. 11, 2006 through Feb. 18, 2007.

The exhibition of more than 40 vintage images will span Brooks'  childhood to the end of her life, featuring personal portraits, publicity stills, photographs from the star's private collection, and personal momentos. The exhibition also will feature a media presentation and audio installation featuring Rochester native Donald McNamara's 1979 interview with Brooks.

Brooks had a close relationship with George Eastman House, coming to Rochester in the 1950s to be near the museum and its collections, spending her final days as a painter and author. At Eastman House she spent many hours conducting research for her own articles on cinema and her biography. In 1982, she was granted the prestigious George Eastman Award for her work in motion pictures.

Brooks, who was born and raised in Kansas, started her career as a dancer with the Denishawn Dance Company in 1922, performed with theZiegfeld Follies on Broadway in 1925 and went on to act in 24 films in Hollywood and Europe. She signed with Paramount Pictures in 1925, appearing at first in bit parts and eventually moving up to supporting roles in box-office hits. Due to her distaste for Hollywood filmmaking, she terminated her contract with Paramount and accepted an offer from legendary German director G. W. Pabst to make films in Germany. There Brooks emerged as a screen icon who outraged censors with her frank behavior.

Her rediscovery and reevaluation began in 1955 with the Cinémathèque Francaise’s retrospective film series covering 60 years of cinema. The Cinémathèque’s founding director Henri Langois vaulted Brooks into the realm of the iconic with the declaration: “There is no Garbo! There is no Dietrich! There is only Louise Brooks!”

"Brooks' films were a revelation to many - ritics were unanimous in their praise for her no-holds-barred performances, and audiences were enraptured with her talent, style, and beauty,  said Caroline Yeager, co-curator of the Eastman House exhibition and the Museum’s assistant curator of motion pictures. “Sporting her signature straight-cut bangs and bobbed hair, Brooks hardly seems to be acting; her performances are more about ‘being’ than anything else, as if she were effortlessly living the parts she played. Her work combines a natural ease before the camera with a raw, exuberant energy that is both startling and exhilarating.”

Louise Brooks Film Series: The Dryden Theatre at George Eastman House will screen Louise Brooks films every Tuesday in November, marking the day of her 100th birthday with a lecture, booksigning, and screening of her most famous film on Tuesday, Nov. 14.

Tuesday, Nov. 14th event at 6:30 pm
Peter Cowie and Jack Garner present “The Art of Louise Brooks”. On the occasion of her 100th birthday, George Eastman House will pay special tribute to the legendary Louise Brooks. Noted author and film critic Peter Cowie will discuss the alluring mystery and fascinating career of the great movie star who spent the last third of her life here in Rochester. The presentation will conclude with a question-and-answer session with Cowie and Gannett Syndicated Film Critic Jack Garner. After the event, Cowie will sign copies of his new book, Louise Brooks: Lulu Forever, which features a foreword by Garner. Tickets are $10 general admission and $8 members and students. Advance tickets are available starting October 14, 2006, at the Dryden Box Office, the Museum’s admissions desk or by credit card online at www.eastmanhouse.org or by calling (585) 271-3361 ext. 218. (Ticket includes admission to screening of Pandora’s Box.)

Lulu extended

Lulu - the Silent Theatre production currently at the Victoria Theatre in San Francisco - has been extended through October 29th. The production is now showing Thursdays through Saturdays at 8pm, and Sundays at 7pm. There will be no performances on September 23, 29, 30 and October 5, 2006. I plan to see it at least once more, and also plan to take in the company's "Vaudeville" - which is being performed on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Jen Anderson

Tonight, I had the pleasure of meeting Jen Anderson, the gifted Australian composer and musician. Jen is on tour with the Larrikans - a musical group - accompanying screenings of The Sentimental Bloke (1919), an Australian film being shown around the United States. It is a charming film. And I liked Anderson's original score a good deal. It is certainly the first Australian silent film I have ever seen.

It was a pleasure to meet Anderson because she is also the composer of an original score for Pandora's Box, which accompanied the Louise Brooks film when it was screened "down under" around 1993. And one of her songs from that soundtrack - "Lulu: The Song" - is featured onRadioLulu. (It's one of my favorite contemporary Louise Brooks-themed songs.) It was nice to at last meet, as we had exchanged emails a long, long time ago. Perhaps ten years ago! Tonight, I asked Jen about the availability of copies of the Pandora's Box soundtrack. She said that she thought it was out of print, though there may be a very few left. If anyone is interested in purchasing a copy, email me and I will let you know what I find out when I find out more. Jen said she would let me know.

Jen Anderson also told me that she had just been to Rochester, New York - where she performed at a screening of The Sentinmental Bloke at the George Eastman House. (It's that institution that owns the 35mm print which was screened this evening.) While there, the musician said, she was shown some of Brooks' possessions. No doubt, they were preparing for the upcoming exhibit devoted to the actress.

Lulu review - SF Chronicle

Lulu - the Silent Theatre production currently at the Victoria Theatre in San Francisco - just got a terrific review in the San Francisco Chronicle. If you live in the Bay Area and haven't already seen this enjoyable production, do check it out. It's really good - and Kyla Webb as Lulu is terrific! From today's review:

It's not just the title character, though Kyla Louise Webb's Lulu is almost as irresistible an embodiment of female sexuality as Louise Brooks was in G.W. Pabst's 1928 film, "Pandora's Box." As conceived and directed by Tonika Todorova, Silent's "Lulu" is a feast of exaggerated silent movie-style comic and melodramatic acting -- in living black and white, with blown-up supertitles and composer Isaiah Robinson's period-perfect piano accompaniment -- with a surprisingly flavorful tragic aftertaste. . . . 

"Lulu" also has something of a local connection. Though he was born in Germany, mostly raised in Switzerland and never visited America, Benjamin Franklin Wedekind's parents met in San Francisco and he was conceived in Oakland. Perhaps in keeping with his founding father namesake, Wedekind set out to revolutionize German theater, becoming a prime mover in the creation of expressionism and a major influence on Brecht, among many others. . . . 

Brooks, whose centennial is being celebrated this year, memorably captured that quality on film. Webb, in classic Brooks black bob, re-creates it onstage in a combination of expressionist stylization, Jazz Age jitterbugging verve and a more contemporary sexual assertiveness. But she doesn't do it alone. The entire company brings her fatal attraction to life, from her succession of doomed husbands and other lovers to the observers of her rise and tawdry fall. . . .

Adolphe Menjou book

I just received this book in the mail, which I had ordered from a book dealer in France. Its a short, 64 page, softcover book about Adolphe Menjou - his beginings, his films, and his adventures. It was published in June, 1927. As one would expect, it contains a number of portraits and stills from Menjou's films up to that time. Among the stills are a few from A Social Celebrity (1926), which featured Louise Brooks. And among them is one which depicts Louise Brooks - which makes this book the earliest I know of to include an image of Louise Brooks. I was secretly hoping that might be the case when I ordered it - and it turned out to be so. There is also a bit of text - a paragraph - about the film and Menjou's role in it. Notably, the book is co-authored by Robert Florey, who ten years later would direct Louise Brooks in King of Gamblers.

Legendary Sin Cities

I recently rented a DVD documentary, Legendary Sin Cities, which I want to recommend.  This three-part Canadian CBC documentary focuses on the most notoriously decadent cities in modern history: Berlin, Paris and Shanghai during the 1920s and 1930s. I was especially impressed with the uncommon film clips, intelligent commentary, and interesting line-up of experts offering perspective and opinion.

Plot Synopsis: Of all the remarkable events of this century perhaps the most fascinating has been the spontaneous growth, flowering and then decay of a handful of great cities. These cities were places where art, culture and political liberties co-mingled with corruption, brutality and decadence. Everything and just about anyone could be bought and sold. The immigrant would struggle beside the artist. Gamblers, thieves and prostitutes co-habited with soul-savers, the rich and the powerful. The exhilarating combination of the seamy with the sublime made these places a magnet for all the lost souls and refugees of the world. Pushing the limits of tolerance and freedom, they defined the social, political and sexual culture of the 20th century.

Contemporary footage mixed with rare and richly evocative archival films, stock shots and stills give resonance to the stories of an extraordinary cast of characters: novelists and artists, musicians and journalists, rogues and sinners. Added to the mix are excerpts from feature films, married with the music of those remarkable times. What results is a richly drawn portrait of a time and place that helped define our century. Contains nudity :) but no mention of Louise Brooks, who briefly inhabited both Berlin and Paris in their decadent heyday.