Louise Brooks: At the Beach

It's summer. So here are a few images of Louise Brooks at the beach.

As a member of Denishawn, in 1923. Louise Brooks is second from right.
Martha Graham is center. Picture taken on the Atlantic Coast.

As a Paramount actress, in 1927. Louise Brooks is center, with
Sally Blane (left) and Nancy Phillips (right). Pacific Coast.

Southern California in 1927, with Nancy Phillips.

At the Cavilier Beach Club, Virginia Beach, in 1929.

In a scene from Prix de beaute, filmed in France in 1929.
I would guess this was taken on the Mediterranean.

Louise Brooks: Modelling a bathing suit

Cool pic of the day: Louise Brooks models a bathing suit, circa 1927.

New book - Lady in the Dark: Iris Barry and the Art of Film

I have recently finished reading Lady in the Dark: Iris Barry and the Art of Film, by Robert Sitton. The 496 page book is out from Columbia University Press. I found this compelling biography to be gracefully written, always interesting, and well researched.

Alas, there is no mention of Louise Brooks, which I find a bit surprising, as an encounter between Brooks and Barry is recounted in the Barry Paris biography. However, other individuals close to Brooks do figure in the book, namely Henri Langlois of the French Cinematheque, and James Card of the George Eastman House. Perhaps Iris Barry's famous rejection of Pandora's Box for inclusion in the collection of the NY Museum of Modern Art had something to do with the antagonistic relationship between herself and Card, who was not only a professional rival, but a surprising political "enemy" as well. (According to Sitton, during the anti-communist witch hunts of the 1950s, Card may have informed the United States government of Barry's leftist sympathies. This caused her a great deal of trouble, which eventually necessitated the intervention of her longtime friend and supporter, Nelson Rockefeller, the future Vice President of the United States.)

Anyone interested in film history, particularly in the history of film history and film preservation, will want to read this book. Iris Barry is a key figure, and she led a fascinating life.

From the publisher: "Iris Barry (1895--1969) was a pivotal modern figure and one of the first intellectuals to treat film as an art form, appreciating its far-reaching, transformative power. Although she had the bearing of an aristocrat, she was the self-educated daughter of a brass founder and a palm-reader from the Isle of Man. An aspiring poet, Barry attracted the attention of Ezra Pound and joined a demimonde of Bloomsbury figures, including Ford Maddox Ford, T. S. Eliot, Arthur Waley, Edith Sitwell, and William Butler Yeats. She fell in love with Pound's eccentric fellow Vorticist, Wyndham Lewis, and had two children by him.

In London, Barry pursued a career as a novelist, biographer, and critic of motion pictures. In America, she joined the modernist Askew Salon, where she met Alfred Barr, director of the new Museum of Modern Art. There she founded the museum's film department and became its first curator, assuring film's critical legitimacy. She convinced powerful Hollywood figures to submit their work for exhibition, creating a new respect for film and prompting the founding of the International Federation of Film Archives.

Barry continued to augment MoMA's film library until World War II, when she joined the Office of Strategic Services to develop pro-American films with Orson Welles, Walt Disney, John Huston, and Frank Capra. Yet despite her patriotic efforts, Barry's "foreignness" and association with such filmmakers as Luis Buñuel made her the target of an anticommunist witch hunt. She eventually left for France and died in obscurity. Drawing on letters, memorabilia, and other documentary sources, Robert Sitton reconstructs Barry's phenomenal life and work while recasting the political involvement of artistic institutions in the twentieth century."

PRAISE FOR Lady in the Dark: Iris Barry and the Art of Film

Iris Barry was film's first great archivist and a crucial figure in turning a curious novelty into the most significant new art form of its century. She has long deserved a biography as graceful and expert as the one Robert Sitton has delivered so handsomely. It offers a lively portrait of modernist New York when it was fresh and new and is the better for the richness of its quotations from Barry's stirring writings. It cannot be praised too highly. - Richard Schickel

I confess that I thought of Iris Barry as an English snob who had rejected many exceptional silents as products of the much-despised Hollywood, but she is so much more interesting -- and maddening -- than I ever suspected. Her autobiographical fragments are superb, remarkable descriptions of history as it happened -- a Zeppelin raid on London in World War 1, the Depression in America making the rich richer. As she describes them, these incidents are as evocative as any film, and the book is beautifully illustrated with excellent-quality portraits. Somebody should film it. - Kevin Brownlow, author of The Parade's Gone By…

Robert Sitton's remarkably well researched and evocatively written biography of Iris Barry's hitherto largely unknown position at the forefront of film appreciation is long overdue and most welcome. She led a fascinating private and public life and had an extremely complicated female odyssey in the world of her times, which she profoundly influenced through her writings and cultural actions. That influence still reverberates today. - Peter Bogdanovich

Another rare Louise Brooks related comic

This rare 1930 cartoon featuring the "life story" of Thomas Meighan also mentions the 1927 Louise Brooks film, The City Gone Wild. I have other examples of this strip featuring other Brooks' co-stars like Richard Arlen, James Hall, Neil Hamilton, Esther Ralston, and Carole Lombard.

Louise Brooks: A Glastonbury First

Over the years, there have been great performances and historic moments at the annual Glastonbury Festival. This year should be no different.

Along with predictions of rain, there are rumours that Prince will make a surprise appearance. The five day festival, which runs through Sunday, June 29, features an eclectic line-up of musical acts; scheduled to perform are Arcade Fire, Lily Allen, Jack White, Robert Plant, Lana Del Ray, The Black Keys, Foster the People, Blondie, Yoko Ono, Dr. Feelgood, Dolly Parton, Nick Lowe, Suzanne Vega, and the tUnE-yArDs, among others.

One act breaking new ground are the Dodge Brothers, a five man quartet (I'll explain later) that play a sometimes exuberant, sometimes raucous hybrid of country blues, rockabilly, jugband and skiffle. Some have called what they play roots music, others call it Americana. Whatever it's called, it rocks.

On Saturday, June 28, the Dodge Brothers are set to become the first band to accompany a silent film at Glastonbury. The film is Beggars of Life (1928). Directed by the great William Wellman the year after he made Wings (the first film to win an Academy Award), Beggars of Life is a American drama about a lovely girl (the beautiful Louise Brooks) dressed as a boy who flees the law after killing her abusive stepfather. On the run, she rides the rails through a hobo underworld where danger is always close at hand.

Based on a novelistic memoir by hobo author Jim Tully, the film also features future Oscar winner Wallace Berry and the early African-American actor Edgar "Blue" Washington. Girls dressed as boys, race mingling, pastoral life gone wrong, and desperation among the glitz and glamour of the Twenties -- there is a lot of friction in Beggars of Life. In her book, 100 Silent Films, BFI curator Bryony Dixon calls it a movie to "wallow" in. And indeed, Beggars of Life is rich with mood, tension, sentiment, harrowing danger, and beauty. Dixon has noted, "Never has a film and a band been more perfectly matched than Beggars of Life and the Dodge Brothers - deep dish Americana, rail-riding hoboes and Louise Brooks - they were made for each other."

For the record, Beggars of Life is not the first silent film shown at Glastonbury. That honor belongs to Metropolis (1927), which was first screened in the 1980s. The Dodge Brothers, however, will be the first band to play live music to accompany a silent. It is something they've done before.

The Dodge Brothers are Mike Hammond (lead guitar, lead vocals, banjo), Mark Kermode (bass, harmonica, vocals), Aly Hirji (rhythm guitar, mandolin, vocals), and Alex Hammond (washboard, snare drum, percussion). Joining the band at Glastonbury and elsewhere when they accompany silent films is composer and silent film accompanist Neil Brand, a regular at London's National Film Theatre.

According to founder Mark Kermode, who doubles as film critic for The Observer, "all this started because Neil Brand approached us with the idea of playing to silents as they used to with local pickup bands. Neil can do this as he's a solo performer, but we were concerned about doing this as a band, and whether our music would fit with the films. He said 'Trust me - it'll work'. I've found that as long as I can see Neil's left hand I can follow what he's doing. The more we play silent films the less we use our cue sheets and the more we play to the film itself. This means that every performance is different."

Over the last few years, the Dodge Brothers have accompanied Beggars of Life around the UK, including well received gigs at BFI Southbank, The Barbican London, National Media Museum, and other venues. Aly Hirji, who performs under the name Aly Dodge, recently remarked "As we'd played to silent films all over the country, I thought it was time we took it to Glastonbury. I contacted the festival and they happened to be looking for something that would be different enough to draw an audience from the big music stages on Saturday night." Even if the band draws only a fraction of the estimated 175,000 people expected to attend the Festival, Glastonbury's Pilton Palais Cinema Marquee should prove their largest audience to date.

For those keeping track, the Dodge Brothers are not the only Glastonbury performer with a connection to Louise Brooks. (The silent film star is becoming something of a rock icon.) Also set to perform at this year's Festival on Sunday is Caro Emerald, whose 2013 "Tangled Up" video features three hard-to-miss images of the actress, one of which is the poster forPandora's Box (1929). And then there is Metallica, who perform Saturday. In 2011, they collaborated with Lou Reed on Lulu, their oblique, noisy riff on the legendary character played by Brooks in the film version of Pandora's Box.




The Glastonbury Festival is a five day music festival that takes place near Pilton, Somerset, England. In addition to contemporary music, the festival hosts dance, comedy, theatre, circus, cabaret and other arts. More at www.glastonburyfestivals.co.uk

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This piece by Thomas Gladysz was originally published on the UK Huffington Post in the entertainment section, where it rose as high as the #1 featured blog post.

Where and Why Miss Louise Brooks Draws the Line

A follow up to yesterday's post: Newspapers around the country ran an illustrated article on the draped nudes scandal entitled ''Where and Why Miss Brooks Draws the Line.'' This widely syndicated article ran in the Sunday supplement & Sunday magazine section of various papers, including the Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Post, and Sacramento Union. For a larger scan of the article, see  www.cartoonretro.com/louise/brooksmodestysm.jpg
What was all the fuss about? The following nude image (right) appeared in the December, 1925 issue of Artists & Models magazine.

Posing Regretted by Louise Brooks, Erstwhile "Friend" of Charlie Chaplin

As promised, here is one of the rarest bits of Brooksiana and Chapliniana you are likely to see . . . . the four panel comic strip "history" of the summer long affair between the then little known showgirl Louise Brooks and international film star Charlie Chaplin. Tongues were wagging in 1925.

Gossip made the news. The related feature photo below was syndicated across the country. I have found many instances of this captioned image in newspapers from across the United States.