Louise Brooks to shine in Orinda, California (home of Fay Lanphier)

On March 1st at 1 pm, author Robert Murillo will read from his new Louise Brooks inspired novel, The Vanity, at Orinda Books in Orinda, California. Robert and his novel will be introduced by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society. If you can't make this event and would like a signed copy of Robert's new book (and / or the Louise Brooks edition of The Diary of a Lost Girl, edited by Thomas Gladysz), please contact the store by phone or email to place an order. The event has been getting a good deal of media attention, including this article in the nearby Contra Costa Times.

March 1, 2014 - 1 pm
Orinda Books
276 Village Square
Orinda, Ca 94563
925-254-7606

Believe it or not, but the Northern California community of Orinda has an unusual connection with one of Brooks' films. Orinda was home of Fay Lanphier, who starred in The American Venus (1926), Brooks' second film and the first film for which she received a film credit. (One of the other actors in The American Venus, Lawrence Gray, was born and raised in San Francisco.)

Lanphier was Miss America in 1925, the first Californian to win the honor. (She was also the 1925 Rose Bowl Queen.) As a renowned beauty, she was offered a film contract, and was starred in a major Paramount release, The American Venus, the storyline of which centers on a beauty contest.

According to an Oakland Tribune obituary, Lanphier "won the Miss California crown twice before being judged the most beautiful girl in the nation in Atlantic City, N.J. She was a 19-year-old secretary here when she was judged Miss America. The blond, hazel-eyed girl started her career as Miss Alameda, although she made her home in Oakland. She first won the Miss California title in 1924 and placed third in the national contest at Atlantic City that year. The next year she was chosen Miss California again and won the national contest in a walk-away."

After her controversial win as Miss America, Lanphier became an overnight celebrity, traveling to New York in President Coolidge's special railway car. Motorcycle officers escorted her through Manhattan. She was also toasted at a round of parties by such celebrities as Rudolph Valentino, Mae Murray, and Will Rogers. Lanphier estimated she earned $50,000 on a 16-week personal appearance tour during the year she wore the crown of Miss America. Despite her charms, Lanphier's film career never really took off. She appeared in only one other film, a Laurel and Hardy short called Flying Elephants (1928). She died at the age of 53 in 1959.

Lanphier was married to Sidney M. Spiegel, son of a wealthy Chicago store owner. That marriage ended in divorce after six months. In 1930, she married her former high school sweetheart Winfield J. Daniels, a Berkeley and San Jose book store operator, and settled down to life as a housewife in Orinda.

Both Lanphier and Brooks can be seen in the film clip below.

When You're in Love - a round-up of reviews

When You're in Love was released on February 27th, 1937. The Robert Riskin directed and written film stars Grace Moore, Cary Grant, and Thomas Mitchell. Louise Brooks has an uncredited bit part as a dancer. (I've seen the film a few times, and have never been able to spot the actress.) Grace Moore, then a well-known opera singer, is delightful. She plays opposite Cary Grant, who was then just coming into his own as an actor and star. When You're in Love is a charming and entertaining film deserving of greater recognition.

The film was quite popular in its day. Here is a round up of reviews and articles drawn from the Louise Brooks Society archive.

Soanes, Wood. "Curtain Calls." Oakland Tribune, December 31, 1936.
--- "Louise Brooks is certainly starting her come-back from the lowest rung of the ladder. She is one of a hundred dancers in the ballet chorus of Grace Moore's When You're in Love emerging from Columbia. In 1929 she was featured in The Canary Murder Case."

anonymous. "Moore's You're in Love Swell; Star at Her Best." Hollywood Reporter, February 13, 1937.
--- "With a more substantial story than the last two Grace Moore vehicles, When You’re in Love is a signal triumph for the foremost diva of the screen, for Cary Grant who should soar to stardom as result of his performance in this, and for Robert Riskin, here notably handling his first directorial assignment."

Maloney, Russell. New York World-Telegram, February 19, 1937.
--- "A glib and amusing discussion of things romantic and musical, it is one of the best films Miss Moore has had - a literate, tonic, diverting entertainment that may be attended by all in search of witty comedy and lilting melody."

Cinemaid. "Grace Moore Humor, Songs Enliven New Musical." San Francisco Call-Bulletin, February 26, 1937.
--- "Robert Riskin has equipped Miss Moore and Mr. Grant with a very amusing screen play and he has directed it to make the most of the humorous aspects of a marriage of convenience."

anonymous. "Torch-Song Diva." Literary Digest, February 27, 1937.
--- "Riskin, recalling shrewdly that scenarios were at their level best when minor characters were shuffled around in such a way as to sharpen the importance of majors in the cast, brings the same formula into his direction, and with like triumphant results for the cinema."

Schallert, Edwin. "Grace Moore Film Clever Offering." Los Angeles Times, March 4, 1937.
--- "However, the qualities of the film are quite Riskinish. There's no mistaking that."

Harris, Mary. "A Grace Moore Hit is on View at the Earle." Washington Post, March 6, 1937.
--- "Grace Moore gallantly sets out to prove she can suit every musical taste in her latest picture."

Wagner, Rob. Rob Wagner's Script, March 6, 1937.
--- "Here is the perfect combination - the director who writes his own script and delivers perfectly. . . Yes, I’m raving, not only because I’m 'a little boy who likes motion pictures,' as Fulton Oursler says, but because I’m a priest of beauty; and this picture thrilled me."

Today's three articles on Robert Murillo's The Vanity

On March 1st at 1 pm, author Robert Murillo will read from his new Louise Brooks inspired novel, The Vanity, at Orinda Books in Orinda, California. The event has received a good deal of  local publicity, including these three articles today.

The first, "An Orinda Author's Obsession: New novel melds fact and fiction, shines light on silent film star," appeared in the Lamorinda Weekly.

The second, "Louise Brooks to shine in Orinda," appeared on examiner.com.

And the third, "Orinda author turns fascination into novel," appeared in the San Jose Mercury News.

There was also an earlier article, "Orinda Resident Swaps Suits and Ties for Literary World," in the Orinda News in January.

Louise Brooks Encyclopedia: Fritz Kortner

Welcome to a new feature of the Louise Brooks Society blog - a monthly entry from Louise Brooks Encyclopedia. This second entry is devoted to actor Fritz Kortner.  The Austrian-born stage and film actor and later theater director played Dr. Ludwig Schön in G.W. Pabst's Pandora's Box (1929).

Fritz Kortner with Louise Brooks in Pandora's Box (1929).

Born into a Jewish family in Vienna, Kortner studied at the city's Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Kortner took part in Vienna's rich cultural life, and around this time met the critic and satirist Karl Kraus, who helped shape the hopeful actor's thinking on the theater as well as his Jewish identity. (Earlier, in 1904, Kraus was instrumental in helping Wedekind stage his Lulu plays in Vienna.) After graduation, Kortner moved to Berlin to make his name. He joined Max Reinhardt's theater company in 1911, performing in King Oedipus, Faust, and Frank Wedekind's Erdgeist, where he likely met Tilly Wedekind. After five years with Reinhardt, Kortner joined Leopold Jessner's company. Kortner's breakthrough came in 1919 with his performance in Ernst Toller's Transfiguration; soon afterward, Kortner became one of Germany's best-known actors and the nation's foremost performer of Expressionist works. He went on to appear in many classical and modernist plays, including works by Arthur Schnitzler and Bertolt Brecht. 

Fritz Kortner (far right) as Schigolch in a 1919 production of Wedekind's Die Büchse der Pandora.Mirjam Horwitz (middle) played Lulu.

Kortner played Schigolch in a 1919 production of Die Büchse der Pandora at the Hamburger Kammerspiele. And in a 1926, in production at the Schauspielhaus Berlin, he was both Dr. Schön and Jack the Ripper. (The role of Lulu in the latter production was played by Gerda Müller, an actress with whom he had performed in Macbeth. Her circle included Brecht and the noted conductor Hermann Scherchen, to whom she was briefly married.)

Fritz Kortner (far right) as Jack the Ripper in a 1926 production of Wedekind's Die Büchse der Pandora.
Gerda Müller (left) played Lulu, and Lucie Hoflich played the Countess Geschwitz (middle).

On stage, Kortner was known for his powerful voice and explosive energy; in the 1920's, however, his work began to incorporate greater realism as he developed a more controlled delivery and greater use of gesture. His considerable fame during the years of the Weimar Republic was linked to his playing Shakespeare's most problematic characters, Othello, Richard III, Hamlet, and especially Shylock. His presentation of the latter made him a target of the right, with Nazi pundits depicting the actor as a lecherous Jew. In March of 1929, not long after the debut of Pandora's Box, Kortner was falsely accused of raping a gentile woman.

Kortner appeared in over ninety films. His specialty was complex, sinister characters. His films include starring roles in Warning Shadows (1923, with Fritz Rasp),  The Hands of Orlac (1924), Beethoven (1927), The Woman One Longs For (1929), The Ship of Lost Men (1929, with Marlene Dietrich), Atlantic (1929, with Francis Lederer), Dreyfus (1930, with Fritz Rasp), and Chu Chin Chow (1934, with Anna May Wong), as well as later supporting roles in The Razor's Edge (1946) and Berlin Express (1948). In Pabst's Pandora's Box, Kortner reprised the role of Dr. Schön, a respected, middle-aged newspaper publisher entangled in a love affair with Lulu.

Like Pabst, Kortner was artistically and politically aligned against the Nazis. With Hitler's rise to power, the Jewish actor left Germany, emigrating in 1933 to Vienna, then to London, and then New York–where he renewed his friendship and was an advisor to the influential American journalist and broadcaster Dorothy Thompson. Eventually, Kortner ended up in Hollywood, where he found work as a character actor and theater director. His stay in Los Angeles brought him into contact with new acquaintances like Charlie Chaplin, and old friends and fellow exiles like Brecht, Salka Viertal, and Heinrich Mann. Following the war, Kortner along with Brecht and others committed themselves to rebuilding the German stage. The actor returned to his shattered homeland in 1949. In the decades that followed, he was noted for his innovative and sometimes controversial staging of classics by Molière, Schiller, and Shakespeare; in the latter's Richard  III (1964), the King crawls over piles of corpses at the play's end. Kortner penned his memoirs and died in Munich in 1970, at the age of 78.

Below are some scenes from Warning Shadows featuring Kortner.

Event for Robert Murillo's Louise Brooks-inspired novel "The Vanity"

On Saturday March 1st at 1 pm, author Robert Murillo will read from his new Louise Brooks inspired novel, The Vanity, at Orinda Books in Orinda, California. Robert and his novel will be introduced by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society. Here is the description from the Orinda Books' Facebook event page:

"Local author Robert Murillo makes his first appearance at our bookstore! He debuts his new time-travel mystery starring jazz age screen icon Louise Brooks. Thomas Gladysz, the founding Director of the Louise Brooks Society, opens the event. He discusses the silent film actress who has fascinated many with her beauty and naturalistic performances. Courtesy of Robert, we have memorabilia on hand featuring Brooks and her signature bob. A signing and refreshments follow."

March 1, 2014 - 1 pm
Orinda Books
276 Village Square
Orinda, Ca 94563
925-254-7606

Cool pic of the day: Louise Brooks

Wow, what a lovely image of Louise Brooks