Virginia Valli and Margaret Livingston on screen at Niles in October

The Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum in Fremont has an October schedule worth checking out - especially if you don't mind a little fright. There is an early Douglas Fairbanks comedy - before he turned swashbuckler, a quirky, forward-looking 1925 film featuring a Tele-Visionphone (think smart-device), a downright creepy Lon Chaney movie before Halloween, a couple of Koko the Clown cartoons, and a film featuring two actresses who were once Louise Brooks co-star. Each is presented with live musical accompaniment. Here's what's playing.

"Saturday Night at the Movies," with Judy Rosenberg at the piano
Saturday, October 6 at 7:30 pm

Douglas Fairbanks and Constance Talmadge team up in The Matrimaniac (1916, Triangle), a romantic comedy written by the legendary husband and wife team of John Emerson and Anita Loos. The film tells the story of young lovers who elope but are separated before they can secure a minister and marry - all the while, the bride's irate father and a group of lawmen are in hot pursuit. Among the noted actors in uncredited parts in support of Fairbanks and Talmadge are Monte Blue, Mildred Harris, and Carmel Myers, while future great Victor Fleming (Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz) served as cinematographer. This rarely screened feature will be preceded by two shorts, The Dumb-Bell (1922, Hal Roach Studios) with Snub Pollard, and The Surf Girl (1916, Keystone) with Raymond Griffith and Ivy Crosthwaite.

"Saturday Night at the Movies" with Frederick Hodges at the piano
Saturday, October 13 at 7:30 pm 

Virginia Valli

Loosely based on a Broadway play by Owen Davis, Up the Ladder (1925, Universal) is something of a curiosity, with a plot involving the invention and use of a Tele-Visionphone. Directed by Edward Sloman, the film stars former Essanay Chicago studio actress Virginia Valli (Evening Clothes), Margaret Livingston (Canary Murder Case), as well as Forrest Stanley. The remarkable in-camera special effects are by cinematographer Jackson Rose, who also got his start at Chicago Essanay. 

Also in the cast is Olive Ann Alcorn, another beauty, who despite small roles in Chaplin's Sunnyside (1919) and Phantom of the Opera (1925), is best remembered today for the stunning nude photographs of her taken by the Alta Studio of San Francisco. Those images, reminiscent of the Louise Brooks nudes, are still in circulation today. Up the Ladder will be preceded by two shorts, Koko’s Field Daze (1928, Out of the Inkwell) with Koko the Clown, and Mystic Mush (1920, Hank Mann Comedies) with Hank Mann and Vernon Dent.

The Diary of a Lost Girl: A brief history of a banned book

Every year since 1982, the American reading public observes Banned Books Week. This year, as in the past, hundreds of libraries and bookstores draw attention to the ongoing problem of censorship by hosting events and by creating displays of challenged works. It’s all about creating awareness.

In 2010, the Louise Brooks Society did it's part by helping bring a once censored work back into print. The book is The Diary of a Lost Girl. It's by a turn of the last century German writer few today have heard of, Margarete Böhme. Her book, a once-controversial bestseller, had been out of print in the United States for more than 100 years.

Though little known today, The Diary of a Lost Girl was a literary phenomenon in the early 20th century. It is considered by scholars of German literature to be one of the best-selling books of its time.

The Diary of a Lost Girl is an unlikely work of social protest. It’s also a tragedy – in 1909, a newspaper in New Zealand called it “the saddest of modern books.” In 1907, the English writer Hall Caine described it as the "poignant story of a great-hearted girl who kept her soul alive amidst all the mire that surrounded her poor body." Many years later, a contemporary scholar called it “Perhaps the most notorious and certainly the commercially most successful autobiographical narrative of the early twentieth century.”

The book tells the story of Thymian, a young woman forced by circumstance into a life of prostitution. Her story goes something like this. Seduced by her Father’s business associate, the teenage Thymian conceives a child which she is forced to give up; she is then cast out of her home, scorned by society, and ends up in a reform school – from which she escapes and by twists of fate hesitantly turns to life as a high-class escort. Prostitution is the only means of survival available to her. If its story sounds familiar, it likely because the book was the basis for the 1929 German movie of the same name. That silent film, still shown in theaters around the world, stars Louise Brooks.

The Diary of a Lost Girl, editions then and now

The author of The Diary of a Lost Girl, Margarete Böhme (1867-1939), was a progressive minded writer who meant to expose the hypocrisy of society and the very un-Christian behavior of some of its leading members. She also meant to show-up the double standards by which women of all ages suffer. Böhme’s frank treatment of sexuality (by the standards of the day) only added fuel to the fire of outrage which greeted the book in some quarters.

First published in Germany in 1905 as Tagebuch einer Verlorenen, Böhme’s book proved an enduring work – at least for a while and despite attacks by critics and social groups. The book was translated into 14 languages, and was reviewed and discussed across Europe. It inspired a popular sequel brought about by a flood of letters to the author, a controversial stage play banned in some German cities, a parody, lawsuits, two silent films - each of which were in turn censored, and a score of imitators.

The book confronts readers with the story of a likeable young women forced into a life of degradation. The complicity of her family – and by extension society – in her downward turn is provocative. However, Thymian – a truly endearing character and a heroine till the end, refuses to be coarsened by her experiences. She also refuses to let others define her - she defines herself. At the time, Böhme’s book helped open a dialogue on issues around the treatment of women.

In 1907, when the book was translated into English, its British publisher placed an advertisement in newspapers. The ads proclaimed Böhme’s work “The Book that Has Stirred the Hearts of the German People,” but somewhat defensively added “It is outspoken to a degree, but the great moral lesson it conveys is the publishers’ apology for venturing to reproduce this human document.”

In response to a review of the book in the Manchester Guardian, the Rev. J.K. Maconachie of the Manchester Association Against State Regulation of Vice wrote a surprising letter to the editor. He stated, “The appearance in Germany of this remarkable book, together with the stir it has made there and the fact that its author is a woman, betoken the uprising which has taken place in recent years amongst German women against the evils and injustice which the book reveals. . . . It may be hoped that discriminating circulation of The Diary of a Lost One will help many here to realize, in the forceful words of your reviewer, ‘the horror of setting aside one section of human beings for the use of another.’”

Back in Germany, the same sorts of groups which objected to the book also objected to the two films made from it. The first, from 1918, is considered lost, but we know from articles of the time that it was withdrawn from circulation because of its controversial story. The second film, which starred Louise Brooks, has come down in censored form.

As records from 1929 show, various groups including a German morality association, a national organization for young women, a national organization of Protestant girl’s boarding schools, and even the governor in Lower Silesia all voiced their objections to aspects of the film. As with the book, these groups objected to various key scenes. Each found the work to be demoralizing.

At the end of the Twenties, The Diary of a Lost Girl was still in print and was still being reissued in countries across Europe. It had by then sold more than 1,200,000 copies – ranking it among the 15 bestselling books of the era. Twenty five years after it was first published, however, Böhme's “terribly impressive book, full of accusations against society” was still considered a provocation. That’s why, just a very few years later at the beginning of the Nazi era, conservative groups still unsettled by its damning indictment of society deliberately drove it out-of-print.

In 1988, after decades of obscurity, a facsimile of the special 1907 edition was published in Germany. It was followed in 1995 by a small paperback which featured Louise Brooks on the cover. The recent "Louise Brooks edition" reprint of the original English language translation, also with Brooks on the cover and with some 40 pages of introductory and related material, appeared in 2010.

The impetus behind publishing a new edition of The Diary of a Lost Girl was about creating awareness. More importantly, it gives voice to a story which critics had long tried to silence. For additional background, check out these articles on Deutsche Welle and RTV Slovenia.


The 2012 Banned Books Week runs through October 6. The Diary of a Lost Girl is available through Indiebound and Amazon.com and other select bookstores and libraries.

Fritz Kortner : The Jewish Actor Who Would Not Be Intimidated

The Jewish Daily Forward has a good article on Fritz Kortner, the acclaimed Austrian-born Jewish actor who starred as Dr. Schön opposite Louise Brooks in Pandora's Box. The article can be found here.

Louise Brooks and the back of Fritz Kortner in
a scene from Pandora's Box (1929).

The article outlines Kortner's rather remarkable career. According to Wikipedia: "Kortner was born in Vienna as Fritz Nathan Kohn. He studied at the Vienna Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. After graduating, he joined Max Reinhardt in Berlin in 1911, and then Leopold Jessner in 1916. Also in that year he made his first appearance in a silent film. He became one of Germany's best known character actors. His specialty was playing sinister and threatening roles, though he also appeared in the title role of 1930's Dreyfus.

With the coming to power of the Nazis, Kortner, being Jewish, chose to flee Germany in 1933. He emigrated to the United States, where he found work as a character actor and theatre director for a time before returning to Germany in 1949. Upon his return, he became noted for his innovative staging and direction, particularly of classics such as his Richard III (1964) in which the king crawls over piles of corpses at the end."

Below is a German-language video clip of Kortner sharing his memories of Gustav Gründgens, the German actor who collaborated with the Nazi regime, inspiring Klaus Mann’s 1936 novel Mephisto and its 1981 screen adaptation.

While writing this blog, I learned that there is a book on the actor, From Shakespeare to Frisch: The Provocative Fritz Kortner, by Richard D. Critchfield. It was published in 2008 by Synchron Publishers. I will have to try and track down a copy to see if there is anything in it about Pandora's Box or Louise Brooks. In closing, here is  swell vintage postcard of Kortner as Beethoven in Das Leben des Beethoven (1927).

Louise Brooks - Without Bangs

This YouTube video is a little unusual. It is mostly composed of images of Louise Brooks without her trademark bangs and bob. What do you think?

Louise Brooks: The New Woman in Film

Join Vanessa Rocco, former Associate Curator at ICP, Assistant Professor of Art History at Southern New Hampshire University, and Saul Robbins, Adjunct Professor at ICP and Board Member Emeritus, The Camera Club of New York, as they discuss The New Woman in Film. Rocco and Robbins will present excerpts from such classics as Blue Angel (Marlene Dietrich), Pandora’s’ Box (Louise Brooks), Metropolis (Brigette Helm), and the mythology of Mulan, while also discussing the environment in which Amelia Earhart made best use of newsreel technology to promote herself and her aeronautics adventures.
 

Images of flappers, garçonnes, Modern Girls, neue Frauen, and trampky—all embodiments of the dashing New Woman—symbolized an expanded public role for women from the suffragist era through the dawn of 1960s feminism. Chronicling nearly a century of global challenges to gender norms, The New Woman International: Representations in Photography and Film from the 1870s through the 1960s, is the first book to examine modern femininity’s ongoing relationship with the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’ most influential new media: photography and film. This volume of original essays examines the ways in which novel ideas about women’s roles in society and politics were disseminated through new media technologies, probing the significance of radical changes in female fashion, appearance, and sexual identity. Additionally, these essays explore the manner in which New Women artists used photography and film to respond creatively to gendered stereotypes and to re-conceive of ways of being a woman in a rapidly modernizing world.

The event is free and open to the public.

Saturday, September 29, from 4-6 pm at The Camera Club of New York,
336 West 37^th Street (between 8 and 9 Avenues).

http://www.cameraclubny.org/conversations.html

Seating is limited. Please rsvp to: info@cameraclubny.org

Vanessa Rocco is co-editor with Elizabeth Otto of The New Woman International: Representations in Photography and Film from the 1870’s to the 1960s (University of Michigan Press). Saul Robbins’ photographs have been widely exhibited and published, including The Bolinas Museum, Blue Sky Gallery, chashama Windows, NYC, Deutsche Haus at NYU, MICA, Museum of Fine Arts – Houston, New Orleans Photo Alliance, Portland Art Museum, Aufbau, Berlin Tagesspiegel, CPW Quarterly, Feature Shoot, FlavorWire, Glo.com, More, The New York Times, Real Simple, and Wired.

http://icphoto.tumblr.com/post/32522891199/the-new-woman-in-film

Bronze medallion depicting Louise Brooks

These show up on eBay from time to time, a bronze medallion depicting Louise Brooks. I believe they were made in France, where the actress is more popular than she is in the United States. For completeists only...... I would guess.

Amateur Photographer magazine features Louise Brooks

Amateur Photographer, the "world's #1 weekly photo magazine," has a long piece by David Clark in their new issue called "Louise Brooks by Eugene Robert Richee - Iconic Photograph." 

"This striking image of Louise Brooks by Eugene Robert Richee captures the spirit of the 1920s and is one of the great Hollywood portraits," writes the author. Check it out here.

Gods Like Us: On Movie Stardom and Modern Fame

How—and why—do we obsess over movie stars? How does fame both reflect and mask the person behind it? How have the image of stardom and our stars’ images altered over a century of cultural and technological change? Do we create celebrities, or do they create us?

Ty Burr, film critic for The Boston Globe, answers these questions in a new book, Gods Like Us: On Movie Stardom and Modern Fame, a lively and fascinating anecdotal history of stardom, with all its blessings and curses for star and stargazer alike. From Florence Lawrence and Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin to Archie Leach (a.k.a. Cary Grant) and Marion Morrison (a.k.a. John Wayne) and Julia Roberts to today's instant celebs famous for being famous, Burr takes us on an insightful and entertaining journey through the modern fame game at its flashiest, most indulgent, occasionally most tragic, and ultimately, its most revealing. And yes, there is mention made of Louise Brooks.

Ty Burr will be discussing his new book on Saturday, September 29 at Book Passage in Corte Madera, California. Burr will be in conversation with Thomas Gladysz.

Did you see Pandora's Box in Denver?

If you happened to attend yesterday's screening of Pandora's Box at the Denver Silent Film Festival, please leave a comment or observation in the comments field below. We would love to know what you thought of the film or of its star, Louise Brooks. [An expressionistic scene from the the film is pictured above.]