Monday, July 9, 2007

An invitation to the Commonwealth of Happiness

Check out this rare promotional card from the 1924 George White Scandals. Louise Brooks is not named - she really wasn't important or famous enough to be named - but there she is.



I am not sure what the purpose of the card might have been, except promotional. On the back of the card it reads "Commonwealth of Happiness - G.W.S. - PERMIT.” The owner of the card plans to sell it at auction. I betcha it goes for a bunch!

Sunday, July 8, 2007

French colors



From an article about the La Rochelle film festival in Le Monde, the French newspaper. ( Click here for the article.) I guess Louise Brooks is something of a pop art star.

Saturday, July 7, 2007

A Beautiful Fairy Tale

I have been meaning to write something more about A Beautiful Fairy Tale: The Life of Actress Lois Moran, by Richard Buller. I had taken it with me to New York City, where I read long passages while waiting at the airport, in-flight, and while waiting for various buildings to open. I was so glad to have it with me in NYC - a kind-of mythical place for anyone interested in Louise Brooks and a place important as well in the life story of Lois Moran. A Beautiful Fairy Tale is a great read. I really enjoyed it. Richard Buller did a fine job in both researching Moran's life and in writing about it.

Moran led a fascinating life. Did you know, that as a teenage girl, Moran lived in the same Paris hotel as James Joyce? She was photographed by Man Ray, and knew Kiki of Montparnasse. Also fascinating is her later friendship (and maybe more ?) with Jazz Age writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Moran was a major star in the mid-1920's, and she knew and worked with many of the other leading stars and directors of her day. I would recommend this biography to anyone interested in movies of the 1920's.

Be sure and check out the author's website at www.loismoran.com/

Friday, July 6, 2007

Domenic Priore

Tonight, I hosted an event with rock music historian Domenic Priore, author of the just released book Riot on Sunset Strip: Rock'n'Roll's Last Stand in Hollywood. His book is really fascinating and detailed look at the explosion of art, youth culture and music in Los Angeles in the mid-1960's. (One of the special guests at the event was Michael Stuart-Ware, the drummer for LOVE, one of the bands profiled in Priore's book.)

I mention this somewhat off-topic event only because Priore - as it turns out - is a big Louise Brooks fan. Before the event, while we were still setting up, I found him sitting by himself looking at Peter Cowie's book, Louise Brooks: Lulu Forever. That led to a conversation about the actress and her continuing appeal . . . .

By the way, if you visit Domenic's MySpace page, you will notice a link to one of his MySpace friends - actually the name of a L.A. rock music club - called "Pandora's Box." This contemporary club takes its name from a legendary 1960's establishment - also called Pandora's Box - which was torn down in 1967. How cool is that ! That there was a club called Pandora's Box - not that it was torn down. (And while you are there, don't forget to listen to the Keith Allison's 1967 recording, "Louise," which can be found on the club's MySpace page.)

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Some interesting books

One of the books I recently received via inter-library loan is The German Bestseller in the 20th Century: A Complete Bibliography and Analysis 1915-1940, by Donald Ray Richards. This 1968 book does NOT make for interesting reading, as it is mainly composed of charts and listings. I borrowed the book on a hunch. I wanted to find out if Margarete Bohme's novel, The Diary of a Lost One, was really a "bestseller" - as it is sometimes described. Bohme's book - now little known to American readers - was the basis for the 1929 Louise Brooks' film, The Diary of a Lost Girl.

Well, as it turns out, it was a big, big seller. The book was first published in 1905. And, if I understand Donald Ray Richards' analysis correctly, by 1931 Bohme's book had sold an astounding 563,000 copies. How does that compare to other titles? Bohme's sales placed it among the top 15 selling books for the period between 1915 and 1940. The bestseller for the period was Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks, which sold more than 1,300,000 copies in about as many years. And seemingly, Erich Marie Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front sold more than 900,000 copies in one year's time. Remarque's anti-war novel, which was also made into a film, placed third.

It would be interesting to know if Pabst's 1929 film helped boost sales of Bohme's book? I also wonder if there was any sort of movie tie-in edition issued in Germany or Austria . . . .

Late last year and earlier into this year, I had searched the online used book market in hopes of acquiring just such an edition. But no luck. However, I did acquire a number of other interesting editions including an illustrated copy, a dramatization, and a rare parody of Bohme's book.
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A couple of other interesting books I borrowed were two by Christa Winsloe, The Child Manuela and Girls in Uniform. If these titles sound somewhat familiar, they should. Each served as the basis for Madchen in Uniform, the extraordinary and provocative 1931 German film about a sensitive girl sent to an all-girls boarding school who develops a romantic attachment to one of her female teachers. IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THIS FILM - GO OUT AND RENT IT IMMEDIATELY. IT IS REALLY EXCELLENT - AND SOMEWHAT THEMATICALLY REMINISCENT OF DIARY OF A LOST GIRL. The Wikipedia entry on the film has lots of interesting background information.



I wasn't sure about the exact relationship of the two books to the film. What I found out is that Girls in Uniform is a play in three acts. And, according to the title page, it was "Adapted from the German Play Gestern und Heaute Upon Which the Film Madchen in Uniform Is Based."Girls in Uniform was published in English translation in the United States in 1933. The Child Manuela, which is a novel, was also published  in English translation. According to a publisher's note found in that book, "The author of the play Children in Uniform and the film Maedchen in Uniform originally conceived the story as a novel and so wrote it. The novel, here published for the first time, tells in detail the story of the child Manuela and her family before she left to go to the school which was the setting of both the motion picture and the play."

I am looking forward to reading the play sometime soon.

Has anyone who might read this blog ever seen Madchen in Uniform?

Tuesday, July 3, 2007

"Pandora's Box" screens tonight in NYC

Pandora's Box , starring Louise Brooks, will be shown tonight in New York City.

The screening will take place at the Film Society of Lincoln Center. The film will be accompanied by Ben Model on the mighty Miditzer virtual theater organ.
Pandora’s Box
Series: 30 Years of Kino International [June 29 – July 12, 2007]
Director: G.W. Pabst,, Country: Germany, Release: 1929, Runtime: 100

G.W. Pabst’s immortal film version of the Wedekind play gave us one of the most enduring presences in cinema: Louise Brooks’ Lulu. She was a “new kind of femme fatale,” wrote J. Hoberman in The Village Voice, “generous, manipulative, heedless, blank, democratic in her affections, ambiguous in her sexuality.” As Brooks herself put it to Kenneth Tynan, “It was clever of Pabst to know even before he met me that I possessed the tramp essence of Lulu." She has inspired countless bob-haired imitators, but Brooks still reigns supreme. With Fritz Kortner and Franz Lederer.
For more information, see www.filmlinc.com/wrt/onsale/kino07/pandora_sbox.html
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