Fourteen hundred and counting

Some time during this still very young year, the Louise Brooks Society posted its 1400th blog! The LBS starting blogging back in 2002 at LiveJournal, and moved here to Blogger in June of last year. Between the old blog at http://louisebrooks.livejournal.com/ and this new blog at http://louisebrookssociety.blogspot.com/ there have now been more than 1400 entries. Wow! That's a lot.*

Admittedly, some of these blogs have been brief. Others, though, have been somewhat extensive. And a few have revealed previously unknown things about the actress. Nevertheless, that's a lot of blogging. Had you ever asked me to put together 1400 things to say about this very special silent film star - I would have said "impossible."

In 2010, the Louise Brooks Society will celebrate its 15th anniversary online. (The LBS was a pioneer among silent film websites.) I think 2010 will be a good year for all things Lulu. There will be much to look forward to. I guess we had better get back to work and start writing the next 1400 blogs.

*And no, we're not counting the various Twitter tweets or updates at the LBS profile on Facebook!

Louise Brooks and Redskin

Rugged silent screen star Richard Dix - who appeared in a number of Paramount films in the 1920's (including one almost with Louise Brooks) - will be celebrated at the Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum in Fremont, California on Saturday, January 9th.

Tomorrow's events including an author appearance & booksigning with the actor's son, Robert Dix, and a screening of Richard Dix's best known silent film, The Vanishing American (1926). More on the day's activities and the Hollywood careers' of "Dix & Son" can be found at my column on examiner.com.

Throughout his long career, Richard Dix appeared in a number of Westerns. And in some of those, like The Vanishing American, he played a Native American. That's true as well for his 1929 Paramount film, Redskin.

What's little known is that Louise Brooks almost appeared in Redskin. The film was in production in 1928. And Brooks was cast in the film as "Corn Blossom," a Native American girl. Pictures of the actress, in costume wearing Indian type dress, were taken.

However, it was not to be. Brooks was withdrawn from the film and was instead placed in the role of "The Canary" in the early sound film, The Canary Murder Case (1929). Gladys Belmont ended up playing the role of Corn Blossom.

How Paramount executives could have imagined Brooks - an actress known for her roles as a pert and sassy flapper - in a Western I just don't know! Nevertheless, they did.

Brooks, of course, finished her career in two Westerns with contemporary settings - Empty Saddles with Buck Jones in 1936, and Overland Stage Raiders with John Wayne in 1938. More about Redskin can be found at http://www.richarddix.org/redskin.htm

The Louise Brooks Society tweets

Yes, it true. The Louise Brooks Society tweets.

It's an easy and fun way to keep up with bits of news, mentions in the press, blogs, and other related happenings in the world of silent film. The upper left hand corner of this blog displays the LBS twitter feed.

If you would like to follow the Louise Brooks Society on Twitter, please visit its homepage there at http://twitter.com/LB_Society

As of today, the LBS has 143 followers on Twitter. Are you one of them?

Ain't she sweet

Louise Brooks in pictures

~ Glamour of the Past ~ | MySpace Video

Pandora's Box screens in Chicago Jan. 2

Tomorrow, on January 2, 2010 the Bank of America Cinema in Chicago, Illinois will screen a 35mm print of Pandora's Box. The screening will feature live electronic theater organ accompaniment by Jay Warren.

The film starts at 8:00 pm at Bank of America Cinema, which is located at 4901 W. Irving Park Rd., Chicago, IL 60641. Entrance is in the back. Admission is $5 or $3 if you're over 55 or under 10. Popcorn is a one dollar, parking is free.

The schedule of films for the first half of the year for the Bank of America Cinema can be found on its blog.

This event received a write-up by Michael Philips in today's Chicago Tribune. The author described Louise Brooks, who stars as Lulu in Pandora's Box, as "her own island of allure." The author also quoted Henri Langlois, director of the Cinematheque Francaise, who years earlier said this of the actress.

"Those who have seen her can never forget her. She is the modern actress par excellence....As soon as she takes the screen, fiction disappears along with art, and one has the impression of being present at a documentary. The camera seems to have caught her by surprise, without her knowledge."

Auld Lang Syne

As mentioned in my previous post, I come across a lot of interesting material while researching Louise Brooks and her films. One item, pictured here, made an impression. I thought it moving, though a little sad.

And, as it is a kind of send-off or good-bye, I also thought it might make a good post for the final day of the year. "Auld Lang Syne."

This newspaper advertisement, for the Sonora Theatre in the Sonora, California, dates from November, 1927. As can be seen in the ad, the theatre was showing Paradise for Two (staring Richard Dix) on November 26th, and The Midnight Sun (starring Laura LaPlante) on November 27 and 28th. [My apologies for any difficulty in reading this ad. But that is how photocopies off microfilm often look.]

What struck me about this clipping was the personal message from the manager of the Sonora Theatre. "This is our closing program" notes that the manager, A.G. Clapp, was leaving and would no longer conduct this theatre.

Obviously, A.G. Clapp loved his job - and he loved presenting movies to the people of Sonora and Tuolumme County.

I don't know why the manager left, but I did notice that the Sonora Theatre closed not long after this advertisement ran in the local paper. Whatever the case, its sad when you stop doing what you love doing. I think that is why A.G. Clapp said goodbye, in the form of a newspaper advertisement.

[The Sonora Theatre never showed any Louise Brooks' films, as far as I have been able to tell. All of her films that did show in Sonora did so at the Star Theatre.]

Did small pox kill The Canary Murder Case?

I come across a lot of unusual things while researching Louise Brooks and her films. Here is one more example.

In the same June, 1929 issue of the North Sacramento Journal  that carried an advertisement for a local showing of The Canary Murder Case at the Del Paso theater, the newspaper also ran an informational advertisement concerning a supposed small pox infestation at the same theater. Here is that advertisement.

According to Wikipedia, "Transmission of smallpox occurs through inhalation of airborne variola virus, usually droplets expressed from the oral, nasal, or pharyngeal mucosa of an infected person. It is transmitted from one person to another primarily through prolonged face-to-face contact with an infected person, usually within a distance of 6 feet, but can also be spread through direct contact with infected bodily fluids or contaminated objects (fomites) such as bedding or clothing. Rarely, smallpox has been spread by virus carried in the air in enclosed settings such as buildings, buses, and trains."

And apparently, it was believed by some back in 1929 that one could become infected by sitting in a theater seat.

I didn't notice any later articles mentioning that people stayed away from the Del Paso and its June 7-8 screening of The Canary Murder Case, which starred William Powell and Louise Brooks. But, if the Del Paso was concerned enough to place a newspaper advertisement, I could imagine many individuals did not go the movies at a certain theater in north Sacramento in 1929. [The Del Paso theater, located at 2120 Del Paso Blvd, closed at some later date. Curiously, there is no Cinema Treasures webpage devote to it.]

David Levine, painter and illustrator, has died

The New York Times reports that David Levine, "a painter and illustrator whose macro-headed, somberly expressive, astringently probing and hardly ever flattering caricatures of intellectuals and athletes, politicians and potentates were the visual trademark of The New York Review of Books for nearly half a century, died Tuesday in Manhattan. He was 83 and lived in Brooklyn." The NYT article can be found here.

To fans of Louise Brooks, Levine is well remembered as the creator of an especially charming and pointed caricature of the silent film star and memoirist. He drew her for the NYRB at the time Lulu in Hollywood was published. That likeness, among Levine's finest, was reproduced countless times on the subscription cards inserted into thousands and thousands of newsstand copies of the publication. (I know I have one of those somewhere in my files. I just can't lay my hands on it right now.)

Levine's likeness of Louise Brooks was also reproduced on the cover a book of postcards of the illustrator's art which was published a few years back. That book is pictured above.

Levine's reputation is quite high. According to the write-up in the New York Times, "Mr. Levine’s drawings never seemed whimsical, like those of Al Hirschfeld. They didn’t celebrate neurotic self-consciousness, like Jules Feiffer’s. He wasn’t attracted to the macabre, the way Edward Gorey was. His work didn’t possess the arch social consciousness of Edward Sorel’s. Nor was he interested, as Roz Chast is, in the humorous absurdity of quotidian modern life. But in both style and mood, Mr. Levine was as distinct an artist and commentator as any of his well-known contemporaries. His work was not only witty but serious, not only biting but deeply informed, and artful in a painterly sense as well as a literate one. Those qualities led many to suggest that he was the heir of the 19th-century masters of the illustration, Honoré Daumier and Thomas Nast."

As a book lover and longtime reader of the New York Review of Books, I saw many of Levine's caricatures. They stood out. They were distinct. And, his caricature of Brooks is one of my favorites. I am even fortunate enough to own a signed limited edition print of the image, which I obtained from the artist. It can be seen in the image below. Brooks is just over my right shoulder, along with a few other treasures at "LBS headquarters."

Levine's death was breaking news. I expect the New York Times will run a full obituary sometime soon. That will be worth looking for.