Louise Brooks Society blog nominated for a LAMMY Award

The Louise Brooks Society has been nominated for a LAMMY Award by the Large Association of Movie Blogs. The nomination came in the Best Movie Element Blog category. 

The award is "given for outstanding achievement by a blog, podcast or vlog that specializes in a specific element of the movie experience. Examples include sites dedicated to a specific actor, actress or director; sites dedicated to a particular filmmaking craft like cinematography, costume design, film editing, or set decoration; sites chronicling one’s own experiences as a scriptwriter, producer, projectionist, movie theater employee or Hollywood assistant; sites dedicated to the technology of film preservation or 3-D innovations; sites that focus on food in the movies, or musical scores, or movie posters and paraphernalia, or reading the books that movies have been adapted from."

The All-Important Link to the Ballot is here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/T6PCWCN

Cool pic of the day - Louise Brooks

Cool pic of the day: the one and only Louise Brooks, circa 1925.

 

Alfred Hitchcock silent films

If you ever seen an early Alfred Hitchcock film, especially his silent efforts, than you may be aware his movies were influenced by German filmmaker of the 1920's - notably Fritz Lang and G.W. Pabst. From June 14 through June 16, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival presents the "Hitchcock 9" - the filmmaker's 9 silent films. It is a special event, without a doubt. More information at www.silentfilm.org/special-events/the-hitchcock-9

Pictured above: Czech actress Anny Ondra, who appeared in a number of German films in the 1920's, starred in Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929).

Nine silent films by Alfred Hitchcock, newly and beautifully restored by the BFI, presented with live musical accompaniment over three incredible days at the Castro Theater in San Francisco!

Friday, June 14

BLACKMAIL

Saturday, June 15

CHAMPAGNE

DOWNHILL

THE RING

THE MANXMAN

Sunday, June 16
THE FARMER'S WIFE

EASY VIRTUE

THE PLEASURE GARDEN

THE LODGER

The Hitchcock 9 is a joint venture of the BFI, Rialto Pictures/Studiocanal, and Park Circus/ITV Studios. Presented in association with BAMcinématek and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Louise Brooks and the Missouri Review

Seemingly, The Missouri Review has a thing for Louise Brooks. . . .  My writer friend, Lisa K. Buchanan, was kind enough to give me her copy of the Fall 2012 issue of The Missouri Review. She did so because, unbeknownst to me, there was a BIG article about Louise Brooks in this distinguished literary journal. The article, an illustrated essay which runs 25 pages, is titled "The Thoroughly Modern World of Louise Brooks." It is by Kristine Sommerville.

The theme of this particular issue of The Missouri Review is "risk." Here is how the journal introduces Sommerville's essay: "Finally, the life and career of dancer and silent screen star Louise Brooks is a paradigm of risk, especially in art. As a young girl in Kansas, Brooks fearlessly pursued modern dance. When she was barely out her teens, her obvious talent and unique good looks caught the attention of Hollywood. Paramount put her under contract before the other studios could get their hands on her and cast her as the prototypical flapper. The risk she’s most remembered for and that ultimately made her career is her flight to Weimar Germany to work with G.W. Pabst in silent films—most notably his adaptation of Pandora’s Box—while Hollywood studios were racing to make talkies. Later in life, forgotten or ignored by the film industry, Brooks bravely made a second successful career as a film historian."

I like the use of the quote by Tennessee Williams on the first page of the piece, "People who are beautiful make their own laws."

Interestingly, this is not the first time The Missouri Review has run a major piece about Louise Brooks. Back in 1983, the journal ran "Lulu in Rochester: Self-Portrait of an Anti-Star" by Robert McNamara. "In 1928 — at the age of 22 — Louise Brooks gave one of the best performances in the silent cinema as Lulu, an amoral woman of pleasure whose character had fascinated German artists since the 1890s. Director G.W. Pabst had searched for his star all over Europe, and he was ready to sign Marlene Dietrich when he heard that Louise Brooks, a refugee from Cherryvale, Kansas, a former Ziegfield girl and rising Paramount star, was willing to take the role. As Brooks recalls, contemporary critics complained that her performance was an utter blank: 'Louise Brooks cannot act. She does not suffer. She does nothing.' But, this was precisely the point."

“The Missouri Review is, quite simply, one of the best literary journals in the world,” says Pulitzer Prize winning novelist and Louise Brooks devotee Robert Olen Butler. Copies of The Missouri Review may be ordered through the journal's website at http://www.missourireview.com/

The Diary of a Lost Girl book signing

A reminder that I will be signing copies of my "Louise Brooks edition" of Margarete Bohme's The Diary of a Lost Girl (PandorasBox Press) today, Saturday, March 23 from 2 to 5 pm at the first annual Noe Valley Authors Festival. Please join me an other local authors at this special event.

The event takes place at St. Philip the Apostle Parish Hall, 725 Diamond Street, between 24th and Elizabeth Streets, in the Noe Valley neighborhood of San Francisco. A bit more about the event can be found on the San Francisco Chronicle website or below

Louise Brooks exercise video

Here it is, the original Louise Brooks exercise video . . . .

Tagebuch einer Verlorenen poster

Speaking of Tagebuch einer Verlorenen, or The Diary of a Lost Girl (see my earlier post), I recently came across this image of an early 20th century German poster and would like to more about it. Anyone got a clue? I might hazard a guess and mention that this might be a poster for the stage play adaption of Bohme's novel, or possibly the lost first film adaption, from 1912, of the book, or something else all together. This is the highest resolution scan I have. 

Book signing for the Louise Brooks edition of The Diary of a Lost Girl

I will be signing copies of my "Louise Brooks edition" of Margarete Bohme's The Diary of a Lost Girl (PandorasBox Press) on Saturday, March 23 from 2 to 5 pm at the first annual Noe Valley Authors Festival. Please join me an other local authors at this special event.

The event takes place at St. Philip the Apostle Parish Hall, 725 Diamond Street, between 24th and Elizabeth Streets, in the Noe Valley neighborhood of San Francisco. A bit more about the event can be found on the San Francisco Chronicle website at http://events.sfgate.com/san_francisco_ca/events/show/315357843-thomas-gladysz-book-signing

I will be happy to speak about the book and my continuing research into the amazing life of this lost classic. Feel free to ask me about the book being banned from coming into Canada, about it being written about in Sigmund Freud's journal of psychoanalysis, or about what I think is its very earliest American newspaper review - in a San Francisco newspaper! Here, for example, is one of my other new finds - a newspaper article about a lawsuit filed by Bohme in the wake of the torrents of negative publicity she received as a result of having published this controversial and contested bestseller. Variations of this article ran in newspapers around the world. This particular clipping is from a newspaper in Perth, Australia. 

Silent film star bookplates

Buzzfeed ran a rather swell piece featuring the bookplates of a number of famous individuals, including authors and a few early film stars. Be sure and check it out.

Included are the bookplates of H.P. Lovecraft, Charles Dickens, Sigmund Freud, Lewis Carroll and others, including silent film stars such as Greta Garbo, Charlie Chaplin and a joint bookplate belonging to Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. There is also a Paulette Goddard bookplate seemingly designed by Chaplin.

Above are a couple of examples from the Buzzfeed piece. Below is Louise Brooks' bookplate, which was not included in the Buzzfeed piece.