Thursday, April 3, 2014

Overland Stage Raiders, starring John Wayne

To mark the publication of Scott Eyman's terrific new book, John Wayne the Life and Legend (just out from Simon and Schuster), here are a couple of lobby cards from the one film John Wayne and Louise Brooks appeared in together, Overland Stage Raiders. Eyman devotes half-a-page to the 55 minute Western, which was released in 1938.

Though a minor film, its making was a key moment in the career's of both actors. Overland Stage Raiders was the last film Brooks would make. Her 13 year career was over. Wayne, only a year younger, just just getting started: he would soon rocket to stardom in Stagecoach (1939), directed by John Ford. Read more about Eyman's new book at the publisher's website (or check out the previous entry here on the Louise Brooks Society blog).



Wednesday, April 2, 2014

New book: John Wayne the Life and Legend, by Scott Eyman

Scott Eyman, the author of eleven books and the critically acclaimed biographer of Hollywood legends Mary Pickford, Ernst Lubitsch, Cecil B. DeMille, Louis B. Mayer, and John Ford (as well as the author of highly recommended study The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926-1930), has now penned a great big detailed and highly readable biography of John Wayne. Eyman's new book, John Wayne the Life and Legend, is just out from Simon and Schuster. It mines new sources and new material to bring readers the definitive biography of the legendary leading man. Learn more, read more, about this terrific new book at the publisher's website.


According to the publisher, "John Wayne was one of Hollywood’s most famous and most successful actors, but he was more than that. He became a symbol of America itself. He epitomized the Western film, which for many people epitomized America. He identified with conservative political causes from the early 1930s to his death in 1979, making him a hero to one generation of Americans and a villain to another. But unlike fellow actor Ronald Reagan, Wayne had no interest in politics as a career. Like many stars, he altered his life story, claiming to have become an actor almost by accident when in fact he had studied drama and aspired to act for most of his youth. He married three times, all to Latina women, and conducted a lengthy affair with Marlene Dietrich, as unlikely a romantic partner as one could imagine for the Duke. Wayne projected dignity, integrity, and strength in all his films, even when his characters were flawed, and whatever character he played was always prepared to confront injustice in his own way. More than thirty years after his death, he remains the standard by which male stars are judged and an actor whose morally unambiguous films continue to attract sizeable audiences.

Scott Eyman interviewed Wayne, as well as many family members, and he has drawn on previously unpublished reminiscences from friends and associates of the Duke in this biography, as well as documents from his production company that shed light on Wayne’s business affairs. He traces Wayne from his childhood to his stardom in Stagecoach and dozens of films after that. Eyman perceptively analyzes Wayne’s relationship with John Ford, the director with whom he’s most associated and who made some of Wayne’s greatest films, among them She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, The Quiet Man, and The Searchers. His evaluation of Wayne himself is shrewd: a skilled actor who was reluctant to step outside his comfort zone. Wayne was self-aware; he once said, 'I’ve played the kind of man I’d like to have been'."

This past weekend, director Peter Bogdanovich gave the book a great review in the New York Times. Read his review here.

As fans of Louise Brooks know, the actress appeared in one film with John Wayne, Overland Stage Raiders, from 1938. The film, which features a group of characters called the "Three Mesquiteers" (a play on the French "Three Musketeers") is set in the modern-day West, where buses bearing gold shipments to the East are being hijacked. To thwart the bad guys, the Mesquiteers ride their horses and even use an airplane to track the buses and capture the crooks. Brooks has a supporting role in the 55 minute film. Long available on VHS, Overland Stage Raiders was released on DVD and Blu-Ray in 2012 by Olive films.

The "Three Mesquiteers" was the overall title of a series of 51 B-westerns released by Republic Studios between 1936 and 1943. The films feature characters Stony Brooke, Tucson Smith, Lullaby Joslin, and Rusty Joslin. Over the run of the series, each were played by various B-western stars.

John Wayne, Ray Corrigan and Max Terhune along with Louise Brooks
Overland Stage Raiders marked Wayne's second appearance in the series. Wayne took over the role of Stony Brooke in 1938, and appeared in eight Mesquiteer films over the course two years. During that time, he was joined by Ray Corrigan as Tucson Smith and Max Terhune as Lullaby Joslin in six films, while former silent film star Raymond Hatton (who starred alongside Brooks in Now We're in the Air) played Rusty Joslin in two more films. All eight Mesquiteer films featuring Wayne were directed by George Sherman.

Eyman devotes about half-a-page in his new book to Overland Stage Raiders. Eyman writes, "It's a fairly standard Mesquiteer's picture, except for the fact that the leading lady was Louise Brooks, the luminous erotic icon of G.W. Pabst's Pandora's Box, who drank and talked her way out of a potentially great career."

Eyman goes on to quote Brooks. "At sunrise one August morning I was driven in a company car to location on the ranch where Republic shot all its westerns. Where was I supposed to go I wondered, after I got out of the car and stood alone in a cloud of dust kicked up by a passing string of horses. . . . Up the road a bunch of cowboys were talking and laughing with two men who had stood slightly apart from them. When the company car honked for them to get off the road, the two men looked around saw me, and came to greet me. One was a cherub, five feet tall carrying a bound smile; the other was a cowboy, six feet four inches tall, wearing a lovely smile. The cherub, who was the director, George Sherman introduced me to the cowboy who was John Wayne ..... Looking up at him I thought, this is no actor but the hero of all mythology miraculously brought to life."

Louise Brooks and John Wayne at the
wrap party for Overland Stage Raiders.
Along with Empty Saddles (1936), an earlier B-Western starring Buck Jones, Overland Stage Raiders is one of the more atypical and least interesting films to feature Brooks. Why did she do it? When asked in later years, Brooks replied that she needed the money. "I felt that I was reaching the end of my career in 1938. . . . the sorely needed $300 salary did little to cheer me up at the prospect of working in a typical Hollywood western whose unreality disgusted me." This prosaic programmer turned out to be the last film Brooks ever made.

At the height of Wayne's popularity in the 1950's and 1960's, a number of his earlier films were reissued, including Overland Stage Raiders. These re-releases were screened in theaters, usually local revival houses, and shown on local television, often as the "afternoon movie." In all likelihood, Overland Stage Raiders marked one of Louise Brooks' very first appearances on American television.


Here is the trailer from the 1950s reissue of Overland Stage Raiders. Unfortunately, it doesn't include any footage of Brooks, as the original 1938 trailer had. At the time, Brooks was largely forgotten and wasn't considered a draw. Likewise, the posters, lobby cards and other promotional materials from the time also left-off Brooks' name.


If you have an interest in John Wayne and like reading film biographies, the Louise Brooks Society highly recommends this new book by Scott Eyman. Wayne started in films during the silent era, and John Wayne the Life and Legend is a detailed, revelatory study of one of the longest lasting careers in Hollywood history. The early notices have been rightly positive.

“Scott Eyman has taken a legend and a statue and given us an odd, decent, muddled but deeply likeable man. That’s what makes this book so readable and so touching.” (David Thomson, author of The New Biographical Dictionary of Film and Moments That Made the Movies)

“Drawing deeply on interviews with family and friends, acclaimed biographer Eyman colorfully chronicles Wayne’s life and work. . . . Compulsively readable.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review))

"A fine show-biz biography, delivering what fans want about the star’s career but probing with uncommon depth into his personality.” (Booklist)

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

A Louise Brooks nude like you've never seen....

A Louise Brooks nude like you've never seen.... because this is not Louise Brooks, just a badly photo-shopped image. Don't you think the head is out-of-proportion to the body? Happy April Fools day.


And, since this is April Fools Day, here is another impossible image of Louise Brooks which has been circulating around the web.

Sunday, March 30, 2014

A new project

I've started a new project today. I am creating an index to Lulu in Hollywood. Surprisingly, no edition of the book that I have has an index - and I feel the book cries out for one. I am indexing all of the proper names and place names. My index, when finished, can be used with the original hardback edition from Knopf as well as the more recent University of Minnesota reprint from 2000. The pagination for each of these books is the same. The index will also be useful with two British editions (which I own), the softcover published by Hamish Hamilton in 1982 and a later paperback reprint from Arena published in 1987. Indexing is very tedious work. Nevertheless, I plan to see it through to the end by doing a couple of pages a day. I hope to be done in a couple of months time.

Documentary based on Jim Tully bio nearing release

The documentary based on the book, Jim Tully: American Writer, Irish Rover, Hollywood Brawler (Kent State University Press), is nearing release. Here's the opening clip.

Saturday, March 29, 2014

A Social Celebrity - A Round-up of Reviews

A Social Celebrity, Louise Brooks' third film, was officially released on this day in 1926. The film is a comedy about a small town barber's son who poses his way into New York high society. This Paramount film was directed by Malcolm St. Clair. Adolphe Menjou played Max Haber, Louise Brooks played Kitty Laverne, and Chester Conklin was Johann Haber. The film is lost.




A Social Celebrity proved popular. Here is a round up of magazine and newspaper reviews and articles drawn from the Louise Brooks Society archive.

Marzoni, Pettersen. "Picture Reviews." Birmingham Age, March 29, 1926.
--- "A newcomer also provides color to A Social Celebrity. She is Louise Brooks, who flashed a moment of inspiration in The American Venus." (brief review in Birmingham, Alabama newspaper; the film was also deemed acceptable by the Better Films Committee of Birmingham in an adjunct column)

Tinee, Mae. "Adolphe Menjou Proves He's No One Role Actor." Chicago Tribune, March 31, 1926.
--- "Louise Brooks, who plays the small town sweetheart who want to make a peacock out of her razorbill, is a delightful young person with a lovely, direct gaze, an engaging seriousness, and a sudden, flashing smile that is disarming and winsome. A slim and lissome child, with personality and talent."

Hughston, Josephine. "Adolphe Menjou At Liberty in A Social Celebrity." San Jose Mercury Herald, April 2, 1926.
--- "Louise Brooks is Kitty, the girl who sets the pace in leaving the small town to dance in a New York night club."

anonymous. "A Social Celebrity." New York Morning Telegraph, April 19, 1926.
--- "Besides Menjou's capital performance, various rosettes and medals should go to Josephine Drake, Louise Brooks, Chester Conklin and Elsie Lawson. . . . Louise Brooks, provocative, alluring, would have been enhanced by better lighting or darker make-up, but that will doubtless come in another picture. She is, Heaven knows, potent enough as it is."

W., M. "Mr. Menjou in Another Cinema Joy on Valentine Silver Sheet." Toledo Times, April 19, 1926.
--- "Louise Brooks, who left Mr. Ziegfield's 'Follies' for a career on the shadow stage, has her first important role opposite him and does admirably. She is a captivating little brunette with the figure of a Venus."

McGowen, Rose. "Social Celebrity Shaved Off Nobility by Chance Remark." New York Daily News, April 20, 1926.
--- "Louise Brooks would have been ample excuse for making any picture. Here is a young actress who has fresh young beauty reinforced by one of the most expressive faces I have ever seen on the screen."

Pelswick, Rose. "New Pictures on Broadway." New York Evening Journal, April 20, 1926.
--- "It is about 85 per cent top grade entertainment and consequently much better than the average. . . . Louise Brooks is an unusually attractive girl who stirs the hero to ambition by leaving the same small town to do the inevitable Charleston in a Broadway night club."

Fred. "A Social Celebrity." Variety, April 21, 1926.
--- "And in Louise Brooks it looks as though Famous has a find that might rank in the Colleen Moore class providing they handle her right."

anonymous. "Adolphe Menjou in A Social Celebrity." Film Daily, April 25, 1926.
--- "Louise Brooks a cutey and with a quantity of good looks. She isn't exactly the heroine type though. She would make a far better baby vamp."

Montfort, Lawrence M. "Menjou Funny in Granada's Screen Farce." San Francisco Illustrated Daily News, April 26, 1926.
--- "Louise Brooks, who plays the small town girl who coaxes Menjou to emulate her example and try luck in New York is a comer and awfully good to look upon. Her straight-cut bob, black eyes and not too sweetly pretty face are different, and she displays some acting ability."

B., D. W. "Films of the Week." Boston Evening Transcript, April 28, 1926.
--- "In this instance the manicurist is no less provocative a morsel than Miss Miss Louise Brooks, remembered for her bit in that specious puff-pastry, The American Venus. Miss Brooks has anything but a rewarding task in A Social Celebrity. Yet it would be ungracious not to comment on the fetching qualities of her screen presence. She affects a straight-line bang across the forehead with distressingly piquant cow-licks over either ear. Her eyes are quick, dark, lustrous. Her nose and mouth share a suspicion of gaminerie. Her gestures are deft and alert - perhaps still a shade self-conscious. In body she is more supple than facial play and her genuflectory exertions in the Charleston might well repay the careful study of amateurs in that delicate exercise."

anonymous. "Menjou, Heart Breaker, Tries Hand at Barbering." Portland Oregonian, May 11, 1926.
--- "It introduces to the movie public a new heroine in the person of the sleek and boyish Louise Brooks. A little young, perhaps, but buoyant and of most engaging smile. There is no opportunity to learn whether or not she can act, but in her role of chorus girl she reveals the most beautiful pair of legs in the movies - which is a rather broad statement and a comment which would have been in very poor taste in crinoline days."

anonymous. "The Screen in Review: A Barber-shop Chord." Picture-Play, August, 1926.
-- "Louise Brooks is the young lady with the black hair who saved The American Venus from a fate worse than death. This young lady, very recently from Kansas, is the newest of all those new faces that have been cropping up lately. And the prettiest, too."

Thursday, March 27, 2014

Day 2: The Diary of a Social Celebrity features Louise Brooks


According to the movie herald pictured above and below, March 27th is day two in the diary of a social celebrity - "a bobbed hair barber who bobbed up at the right time." The film it promotes, A Social Celebrity, which starred Adolphe Menjou (as "social celebrity" Max Haber) and Louise Brooks (as Kitty Laverne), was officially released on March 29th, 1926. (A round-up of reviews will run on this blog in two days. Please check back.) In the meantime, here is the Paramount herald for the film.

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