New edition of Laura Moriarty's The Chaperone from Spain

A new edition of Laura Moriarty's The Chaperone is out today in Spain. This handsome softcover edition of the bestselling American novel features Louise Brooks on the cover. The book was translated by Carlos Milla and Isabel Ferrer.


The Chaperone, in Spanish titled Una acompañante en New York, tells a story focusing on the 15 year old Louise Brooks and her trip to New York City in the summer of 1922 to join the Denishawn Dance Company. "Inspirada por la vida de la estrella de cine mudo Louise Brooks. esta es la historia de dos mujeres que representan dos mundos opuestos, y del verano que cambió su vida."

This Spanish edition has French folds which have additional text about Louise Brooks not included on the American editions. Also, the Louise Brooks Society is credited.

Here is a bit more text about the book in Spanish, from the publisher's website. "En 1922, la joven y precoz Louise Brooks y su amiga, Cora Carlisle, una mujer casada muy tradicional, viajan juntas desde Witchita, Kansas, a Nueva York, la metrópolis de moda de la época. Cada una tiene sus propios motivos para hacer ese viaje: la rebelde Louise se ha inscrito en la academia de danza vanguardista Denishawn, porque sueña con llegar a ser una famosa bailarina. Una ilusión que cumplirá de largo, convirtiéndose en una conocida actriz del cine mudo y en la mujer más deseada del Hollywood de la época. Por su parte, Cora no solo busca escapar de la monotonía de su vida, sino que quiere cumplir un deseo que lleva tiempo postergando: encontrar sus orígenes, ya que nunca ha conocido a sus padres. Obligadas a pasar juntas un verano en la fascinante y caleidoscópica ciudad de moda, estas dos amigas aprenderán a entenderse y descubrirán que la vida les tienere servadas muchas sorpresas. "

Ramona, the song (at San Francisco Silent Film Festival)

Tonight, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival screens the 1928 historical drama Ramona, based on Helen Hunt Jackson's popular 1884 novel of the same name. Directed by Edwin Carewe, the film stars Dolores del Rio and Warner Baxter. Ramona was the first United Artist film with a synchronized score, though it was not a talking picture.

For decades, this 1928 version of Ramona was thought to be lost until archivists rediscovered it in the Národní Filmový Archiv in Prague, Czech Republic. Transferred to acetate safety stock, the restored version had its world premiere in the Billy Wilder Theater at the University of California, Los Angeles on March 29, 2014.

Dolores del Rio, the first Latin American star to be recognized internationally, can be heard singing the film's theme song on RadioLulu, the Louise Brooks Society's online radio station streaming music of the Teens, Twenties, Thirties and today. "Ramona" is one of a number of vintage recordings of silent-era theme songs heard on RadioLulu. The song, as sung by Dolores del Rio in 1928, is also embedded in the video below. (To listen to "Ya Va Cayendo" ["Falling in Love"], the B-side of the 78 rpm of "Ramona," follow the link. "Ya Va Cayendo" was, incidentally, recorded in the Blossom Room of Hollywood's Roosevelt Hotel in 1928.)

 

Ramona / words by L. Wolfe Gilbert, music by Mabel Wayne

I wander out yonder o'er the hills
Where the mountains high, seem to kiss the sky
Someone's up yonder o'er the hills
Waiting patiently, waiting just for me

Ramona, I hear the mission bells above
Ramona, they're ringing out our song of love
I press you, caress you
And bless the day you taught me to care
I'll always remember
The rambling rose you wore in your hair

Ramona, when the day is done you'll hear my call
Ramona, we'll meet beside the waterfall
I dread the dawn
When I awake to find you gone
Ramona, I need you, my own

Ramona, when the day is done you'll hear my call
Ramona, we'll meet beside the waterfall
I dread the dawn
When I awake to find you gone
Ramona, I need you, my own

The popularity of the film and its charming theme song led it to be recorded by a number of different artists, including the Brunswick Hour Orchestra, with vocal chorus by Frank Munn (see the audio-video embedded below).



The song was also recorded by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, featuring Bix Beiderbecke with vocals by Austin Young and Jack Fulton, and the popular crooner Gene Austin, with orchestra and pipe organ (for the latter, see the audio-video embedded below, with promotional images from the film).



Ramona was a hit in Europe, as was its theme song. In fact, the Ramona theme song was recorded in a handful of different languages. Here is a French language version of the song sung by Fred Gouin, which can also be heard on RadioLulu.



As well, there were cover versions of "Ramona" recorded at the time in Belgium (as "Ramonache") by Esther Deltenre, in Germany by Dajos Bela and his Tanzorchester, and by Berlin cabaret celebrity Paul O'Montis, and in Poland, by Tadeusz Faliszewski for Syrena-Electro in 1929. The audio video for this last version is embedded below.

Lulu's debut. . . on this day in 1905

On this day in history, Lulu made her debut in Vienna.

The premiere of Frank Wedekind’s Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora’s Box), a restricted performance due to difficulties with the censor, had already taken place in Nuremberg  in 1904. A second staging, in Vienna, was arranged at the instigation of the critic and satirist Karl Kraus. This second stage production took place at the Trianon Theater in Vienna, Austria on May 29, 1905.

The production was notable, as was the cast. It featured dramatist Frank Wedekind as Jack the Ripper, Tilly Newes (Franks Wedekin's wife, Tilly Wedekind) as Lulu, Arnold Korff as Dr. Hilti (Korff also played the Elder Count Osdorff in the 1929 film, Diary of a Lost Girl), and Irma Karczewska as “Bob.” The play’s producer, Karl Kraus, played Kungu Poti.

Who was Irma Karczewska? She was a striking personality and noted beauty who was involved in an erotic triangle with Kraus and Sigmund Freud's first biographer, the pioneering psychologist Fritz Wittels. Read all about it in Freud and the Child Woman: The Memoirs of Fritz Wittels, edited by Edward Timms, published by Yale University Press in 1995.

According to the publisher, Yale University Press, "In his memoirs, Wittels writes frankly and vividly about the erotic subculture of fin-de-siècle Vienna, early controversies within the Psychoanalytic Society, and the interactions between the two. Freud himself plays a crucial role in the story, and the erotic triangle in which Kraus, Wittels, and Irma Karczewska were involved is shown to have impinged directly on the activities of the famous Society."

One wonders who might have been in the audience on that historic day. Perhaps Sigmund Freud? If not, was he aware of or had he read Frank Wedekind's Lulu plays?

On a not unrelated note, it is known that members of Freud's circle had read and written about Margarete Bohme's famous book, The Diary of a Lost Girl.

Also, on this day in 1967, G.W. Pabst, who directed Louise Brooks in Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl, died in Austria.

The Holocaust, Heinrich Himmler, Jodi Picoult, and The Diary of a Lost Girl

I am continuing to research The Diary of a Lost Girl, Margarete Böhme's controversial 1905 novel which served as the basis for the equally controversial 1929 film starring Louise Brooks. In 2015, I plan on issuing a revised and expanded print edition of my 2010 "Louise Brooks edition" of The Diary of a Lost Girl which will include new findings. Among them are these two items.

Heinrich Himmler, one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and one of the individuals most directly responsible for the Holocaust, is known to have read Böhme's novel in 1920, 15 years after it was first published and three years before he joined the Nazi party. That's according to two books on Himmler which I have just come across.

Both Bradley F. Smith's Heinrich Himmler: A Nazi in the Making (Hoover Institution Press, 1971) and Peter Longerich's Heinrich Himmler (Oxford University Press, 2012) record that the then 20 year old student read Böhme's The Diary of a Lost Soul (an alternate title). Himmler kept a record of his reading, and notes having read Böhme's book in March 1920, while in Munich and Ingolstadt. At the time, according to Longerich, Himmler's reading was largely novels and stories "concerned with love, erotic attraction, and the battle of the sexes."

According to Smith, The Diary of a Lost Soul caused Himmler to "reexamine his attitudes" and doubt "the scorn he usually poured on those who had wandered from the path of virtue." It was a book, Himmler noted, "that offers insight into dreadful human tragedies and makes one look at many a whore with different eyes." Afterwords, he went on to read other not-unrelated books, including Henrik Ibsens's A Doll's House.

I also just recently learned that The Diary of a Lost Girl received a shout-out in The Storyteller, a 2013 novel from author Jodi Picoult. The Storyteller, a #1 New York Times bestseller, is based on an incident which took place during the Holocaust. In one scene, a key character is preparing to flee, and is gathering important possessions.

I contacted Picoult, and asked about her character's mention of The Diary of a Lost Girl. Picoult wrote back, "I was looking for a book of the time period that would have been something Minka might have read - so I did a little digging for some popular titles of the time!"

Picoult's choice is apt. Böhme was an especially popular author, especially with women, and apparently with somewhat curious males like Himmler.

From the time it was first published in 1905, The Diary of a Lost Girl continued to sell and remained in print in various editions all the way into the early 1930's, when it was driven out of print by right wing German groups upset with its story. (Himmler read an edition published in 1917.) Along with the anti-war novel All Quiet on the Western Front and works by Thomas Mann, Böhme's The Diary of a Lost Girl was one of the dozen bestselling books in Germany in the period from 1900 to 1939. It is believed to have sold more than 1.2 million copies. The book is back in print in Germany and the United States.

Pictured here is a newly acquired edition of Böhme's bestseller. This rare softcover copy was published in 1919.

Louise Brooks as a lost girl

Louise Brooks in a scene from Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), directed to G.W. Pabst. She awaits tomorrow's shocking post here on the Louise Brooks Society blog.

Louise Rutkowski, Diary of a Lost Girl

A new album by Louise Rutkowski titled Diary of a Lost Girl was released on Jock Records in February of 2014.

Recently, I emailed the Scottish singer songwriter and asked if her new album of ethereal electro pop had any relationship to Louise Brooks. She wrote back, "There is indeed a relation between my new album title and Louise Brooks.  I have been a fan since I was a teenager."

Diary of a Lost Girl is the first solo album from Rutkowski,  former vocalist with This Mortal Coil and The Hope Blister.  Rutkowski signed with CBS Records at age 19, recording three singles and an album with soul producer Pete Wingfield. However, it's her work with cult independent label 4AD and the above named bands for which she is best known.

Funded through the direct-to-fan platform PledgeMusic, Diary of a Lost Girl has been described by supporters as "A truly haunting and beautiful album," and "Beautiful, stirring, and alive with emotion." The Daily Express called it "a gorgeous and simple album that highlights her powerful voice." The Scotsman said it was "immaculately produced" and "elegantly accomplished." The Louise Brooks Society agrees.

Louise Rutkowski in 1996

Produced by Irvin Duguid, the album includes mixes by Calum Malcolm (The Blue Nile), and Steve Orchard; it also marks Rutkowski's return to writing original material – her first compositions since her music career began with the soul-influenced band Sunset Gun.

Rutkowski went on to note: "I first came across Louise Brooks when I was in my early 20s and in my first band.  I saw a photograph of her and was totally enchanted by her look.  I collected many photographs (two of which are still on my walls at home), I read Barry Paris’ biography, and went to see her films at the Scala in London (now a music venue).  Sadly, my book and photograph collection got destroyed in a house fire, but I still have a few things left.  One is the Diary of a Lost Girl poster, which hangs in my flat. I also remember watching an interview with her when she was older?  I have Kenneth Tynan in my head but not sure if that’s correct."

"I also had my hair in a bob for many years! I was, and still am, inspired by her.  It wasn’t just her look, it was her acting and who she was as a person – so feisty and witty."

"As for the album title, I had been searching for a while for a suitable one, and found myself staring at the poster one night, realising 'that was it'!  I chose it as it fitted perfectly with the feeling behind the songs as a collection.  This is a very personal album, written mostly around the time of my mother’s death (also a huge film fan and admirer of LB), and the word 'lost' rather fitted at that point. It has such a beautiful ring to it in any event."

Louise Rutkowski in 2014

The Louise Brooks Society encourages everyone to check out Louise Rutkowski's new album, Diary of a Lost Girl.