Classic Hollywood - Louise Brooks

A nifty video "Classic Hollywood - Louise Brooks," from YouTube.

Paramount biography of Louise Brooks, circa 1927

I recently had the chance to see a scarce document, Biographies of the stars, featured players and directors who are appearing in Paramount pictures, by the Famous Players-Lasky Corp. Department of Foreign Publicity and Advertising. The document is dated 1927.

As is shown, Brooks was classified as a "Featured Player." This typescript-like document also contained biographical sketches of a number of other individuals associated with Brooks' time at Paramount, such as W.C. Fields (Star), Mary Brian (Featured Player), Lawrence Gray (Featured Player), Neil Hamilton (Featured Player), Percy Marmont (Featured Player), Adolphe Menjou (Featured Player), Esther Ralston (Star), Ford Sterling (Featured Player), and Lois Wilson (Featured Player). Each of their entries mention a film in which Louise Brooks appeared, as do the entries on directors Malcolm St. Clair and Frank Tuttle.

There are also entries on a few individuals who were yet to work with Brooks, including Richard Arlen (Featured Player), James Hall (Featured Player), and Thomas Meighan (Star).

L'épitaphe de Louise Brooks.... by Roland Jaccard

A couple of days ago, the French writer Roland Jaccard posted the following video on YouTube. As fans of Louise Brooks know, Jaccard contributed to and edited the first book about the actress, Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star, back in 1977.

Classic Movie Blog Association

The Louise Brooks Society blog has been voted a member of the Classic Movie Blog Association. The CMBA is a group of blogs dedicated to the celebration of classic cinema. More information about the group can be found on its website or Facebook page.

Louise Brooks included among The 100 coolest Americans

A major photography exhibition opening at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington asks the question, "what and who is cool?"

From Elvis Presley and James Dean to Johnny Depp, "American Cool" namechecks 100 actors, actresses, artists, musicians and writers in the United States whose creativity and style have shaped the concept of cool. The exhibit includes Louise Brooks.

The show was put together by jazz professor Joel Dinerstein and photography scholar Frank Goodyear. The two spent five years going through 500 names of charismatic Americans who might be regarded as cool. To make their selection, Dinerstein and Goodyear came up with four defining factors: 1) originality of artistic vision and especially of a signature style 2) cultural rebellion, or transgression in a given historical moment 3) iconicity, or a certain level of high-profile recognition 4) recognised cultural legacy lasting more than a decade. 

Another deciding factor was that there had to be a classic picture of the person; among the photographers featured in the show are Carl Van Vechten,  Philippe Halsman, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Annie Leibovitz, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Edward Steichen.

Early film stars illuminate the "roots of cool" section - screen legends like Greta Garbo, Buster Keaton and Mae West. The complete list:

Fred Astaire
Bix Beiderbecke
Louise Brooks
James Cagney
Frederick Douglass
Greta Garbo
Ernest Hemingway
Zora Neale Hurston
Jack Johnson
Duke Kahanamoku
Buster Keaton
HL Mencken
Georgia O’Keeffe
Dorothy Parker
Bessie Smith
Willie “The Lion” Smith
Mae West
Walt Whitman
Bert Williams


"American Cool" runs through September 7. The National Portrait Gallery's website is located at www.npg.si.edu.  "American Cool" is accompanied by a fully illustrated 192-page catalogue.

Seattle art exhibit with Louise Brooks inspired art

A Seattle art gallery is hosting an exhibit of work by Jack Chevalier which features a handful of works inspired by Louise Brooks, as well as some 20 smaller works related to other contemporary film actresses. The show is a mixed selection of Chevalier's work over the last 6 or 7 years - with war, politics, and celebrity being thematic.

The show, at the Linda Hodges Gallery, opens February 6th with a reception from 6:00 - 8:00 pm. It runs through March 1.

According to the gallery website, "Jack Chevalier has exhibited at Linda Hodges Gallery for over three decades. In his most recent solo exhibition, his 16th, Chevalier expanded upon his lexicon of social and political content to include historical references and the personalities that define them, in a format that assumes a condensed postmodern linear narrative. Utilizing a mixed-media approach, Chevalier creates a narrative through a juxtaposition of visual cues unlimited by a stylistic time frame, materiality, or morphology of depiction."

Born in Columbus, Ohio and educated at the Cleveland Art Institute and the University of Illinois, Chevalier arrived in Seattle in the late 1970s and lives and works on Vashon Island. Chevalier has exhibited widely in the Northwest, as well as in New York, Chicago, Cleveland, and Cincinnati.

 

Here are a couple of works in the show. The first, pictured above, is titled "Empty Promise" from 2012. The second is titled "Warrior Princess" from 2013. More work can be found on the gallery exhibit link.

The Linda Hodges Gallery is located at 316 First Ave S in Seattle, Washington, 98104. For further information, or to purchase a piece, call  (206) 624-3034. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 10:30 am to 5 pm. Check it out.

The artist has provided the Louise Brooks Society blog with a statement. It follows:

"I first laid eyes on Louise Brooks several years ago, when personally  researching the political and social history of 1920's America. A time that seems to live on, or (as some would say) rhymes, so well with our present human dynamic. With this in mind, I was at first  struck by how contemporary she looked in pictures, as if she could have walked off the movie set in 1925 and onto a set today and no one would notice the missing 90 years. But it soon became apparent that this was just the first layer of an amazing life of transparently clear intent lashed, as it were, with the often self defeating consequences of social mores  that would  favor power over natural inclination and expression. The fascinating thing about Louise Brooks (to me) is how she negotiated this contradiction, or rather, lived the contradiction.

On the one hand, she, seemed to hate Hollywood and its attendant careerism's but  rather relied on her own natural experiences and instincts and talents in movement  over convention, and went a long  way toward redefining the craft of acting. She loved modern art but never watched any of the movies she made (until late in life).  She meteorically rose to the top of all her endeavors; modern dance, showgirl follies, film actress, but was always eventually shot down for not playing whatever the inside game was. She entertained the social ladder without  embracing it ( probably out of curiosity). She was notably an unabashed sexual entity, but never used sex to further her career. She was married twice to millionaires and twice divorced without taking a penny. She would rather rendezvous with a lover than please her employer.When it all finally crashed around her she didn't become bitter or blame anyone but herself. Then she re-invented herself and was instrumental in own resurrection as a writer and critic of film history. For a person never empowered by  celebrity, or  outwardly political, or a champion of social causes, or even as a  cultural iconoclast, Louise Brooks continues to inspire in all these realms simply for having been herself.

One of my favorite quotes is:

'For two extraordinary years I have been working on it - learning to write - but mostly learning how to tell the truth. At first it is quite impossible. You make yourself better than anybody, then worse than anybody, and when you finally come to see you are “like” everybody - that is the bitterest blow of all to the ego. But in the end it is only the truth, no matter how ugly or shameful, that is right, that fits together, that makes real people, and strangely enough - beauty…'"

Pandora's Box screens tonight in UK at historic Aldeburgh Cinema

Pandora's Box (1929), starring Louise Brooks, screens tonight in the UK. Pianist Neil Brand will accompany the film at the Aldeburgh Cinema as part of their "Classic Silent Film& Live Music" series.

The Aldeburgh Cinema is located at 51 High Street in Aldeburgh, IP15 5AU. Telephone 01728 454884.

Neil Brand has worked around the globe with film and music for more than two decades. His mesmerizing series ‘Sound of Cinema: The Music that Made the Movies’ was broadcast to huge acclaim in on BBC in autumn 2013. In partnership with the Britten Pears Foundation, an educational programme of workshops and masterclasses has been devised and arranged and will be delivered by Neil Brand on the day of the evening shows.

The Aldeburgh Cinema has a fascinating history, and it has been screening films continuously since 1919 when the auditorium was built onto the back of a 19th century High Street store. For many years the cinema was privately run until in the mid-1960s, when there was the threat of closure. A group of local people, led by Lettie Gifford and including composer Benjamin Britten and his partner Peter Pears, banded together to purchase the cinema and run it on behalf of the local community. More information and images here.