Best film books of 2014

Looking back, 2014 was a banner year for books about the movies. Whether you are into biographies, film history, pictorials, "making of" books, or critical studies, there was something for everyone. In fact, this past year may prove to have been one of the best years for film books in a long time. Not only was there quantity (nearly three dozen books are mentioned below), there was also an impressive quality to many of the year's new releases.

Considering the current state of race relations in the United States, there may be no more relevant new release than Dick Lehr's The Birth of a Nation: How a Legendary Filmmaker and a Crusading Editor Reignited America's Civil War. More social history than film history, Lehr's book revisits the year 1915 and the confrontation between two men, D. W. Griffith, the pioneering and successful movie director, and Monroe Trotter, a black American newspaperman. Their clash over Griffith's hugely popular 1915 film The Birth of a Nation pitted white against black, Hollywood against Boston and free speech against civil rights. The Birth of a Nation marks its centenary this year, and is scheduled to be shown at the Kansas Silent Film Festival in February.


Another sometimes controversial early director was Charlie Chaplin. Like Seth Rogen's recently released The Interview, Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940) satirized a head-of-state to the point of ridicule. Both made politicians and the public nervous.

Sometimes controversial though always brilliant, Chaplin is, arguably, the most written about individual in film history -- and the subject of a handful of new books. Wes D. Gehring's Chaplin's War Trilogy: An Evolving Lens in Three Dark Comedies, 1918-1947 (McFarland) discusses The Great Dictator and other films, while John Fawell's The Essence of Chaplin: The Style, the Rhythm and the Grace of a Master (McFarland) looks at the actor's work behind the camera.

Award-winning novelist and biographer Peter Ackroyd has turned out Charlie Chaplin: A Brief Life (Nan A. Talese). Chaplin's own A Comedian Sees the World (University of Missouri), edited by Lisa Stein Haven, presents the first American book publication of the Little Tramp's travels in the early 1930's. Due out later this year is a massive new book, The Charlie Chaplin Archives (Taschen), edited by Paul Duncan, with an astonishing list price of $200.00. First edition copies feature a filmstrip from the classic City Lights (1931), cut from a print in the actor's archives.

Chaplin is the greatest comedian in film history, and is rated as such in James Roots' idiosyncratic and IMHO over-opinionated The 100 Greatest Silent Film Comedians (Rowman & Littlefield). His contemporary and chief rival, Buster Keaton, is the subject Lisle Foote's notable Buster Keaton's Crew: The Team Behind His Silent Films (McFarland). Their contemporary and Louise Brooks' fellow performer, W. C. Fields, also started on the stage before moving into film. He is studied in Arthur Frank Wertheim's W. C. Fields from Burlesque and Vaudeville to Broadway: Becoming a Comedian (Palgrave Macmillan), the promising first half of a two-volume work. Also out is Bill Cassara's Nobody's Stooge: Ted Healy (BearManor Media), a biography of the early stage and screen star who gave birth to the act that became The Three Stooges.

Two first ever biographies of early actresses are James Zeruk Jr.'s Peg Entwistle and the Hollywood Sign Suicide: A Biography (McFarland), released in late 2013 but copyright in 2014, which tells the story of the starlet who jumped to her death from the HOLLYWOOD sign in 1932, and Mariusz Kotowski's problematic Pola Negri: Hollywood's First Femme Fatale (University Press of Kentucky). Problematic because this significant star, popular and critically acclaimed on two continents, deserves a more thorough biography.


Male actors are also the subject of notable new releases. Leading the pack is Scott Eyman's John Wayne: The Life and Legend (Simon & Schuster), one of the best film books of the year. Eyman's book contains some discussion of the Overland Stage Raiders (1938), the one film in which Brooks appeared with Wayne. A lesser recently released alternative is Marc Eliot's American Titan: Searching for John Wayne (Dey Street Books).  

Douglas Fairbanks and the American Century (University Press of Mississippi), by John C. Tibbetts and James M. Welsh, which profiles the "Ultimate American" and original swashbuckler, is rich in its coverage of the early years of the legendary star's career; it also covers in detail several films previously considered lost. Academy Award winning film historian and filmmaker Kevin Brownlow has added a foreword to the Fairbanks' book, and Vera Fairbanks (his daughter-in-law) has added an introductory note. Also new is Scott O'Brien's fine George Brent - Ireland's Gift to Hollywood and its Leading Ladies (BearManor Media), with a foreword by Jeanine Basinger, and James L. Neibaur's recommended James Cagney Films of the 1930s (Rowman & Littlefield).

Other recommended works from 2014 include Hal Erickson's From Radio to the Big Screen: Hollywood Films Featuring Broadcast Personalities and Programs (McFarland), Gerd Gemünden's Continental Strangers: German Exile Cinema, 1933-1951 (Columbia University Press), and Jan-Christopher Horak's remarkable study of the great graphic designer, Saul Bass: Anatomy of Film Design (University Press of Kentucky). Kindred works are Gemma Solana's Uncredited: Graphic Design & Opening Titles in Movies (Gingko Press), which includes a DVD with opening titles, and the impressive Criterion Designs (The Criterion Collection). Especially new and noteworthy is William Mann's sensational Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood (Harper).


Keep in mind Styling the Stars: Lost Treasures from the Twentieth Century Fox Archive (Insight Editions), by Angela Cartwright and Tom McLaren, with a foreword by Maureen O'Hara, and Warner Bros.: Hollywood's Ultimate Backlot (Taylor Trade Publishing) by Steven Bingen with Marc Wanamaker, and a foreword by Doris Day. There's also E. J. Stephens and Marc Wanamaker's Early Poverty Row Studios (Arcadia Publishing), Paul G. Bahn's The Archaeology of Hollywood: Traces of the Golden Age (Rowman & Littlefield), Eric Hoyt's Hollywood Vault: Film Libraries before Home Video (University of California Press), and Karina Longworth's Hollywood Frame by Frame: The Unseen Silver Screen in Contact Sheets, 1951-1997 (Princeton Architectural Press). Competing for book of the year is Robert Sitton's Lady in the Dark: Iris Barry and the Art of Film (Columbia University Press), the fascinating biography of the founder of the Museum of Modern Art's Film Library and the individual who helped institutionalize film studies.


Two other titles in the running for book of the year are Cecilia de Mille Presley and Mark A. Vieira's sumptuous Cecil B. DeMille: The Art of the Hollywood Epic (Running Press) and Ruth Barton's Rex Ingram: Visionary Director of the Silent Screen (University Press of Kentucky). In different ways, each looks at the life and careers of an innovative director. Also worth noting is "It's the Pictures That Got Small": Charles Brackett on Billy Wilder and Hollywood's Golden Age (Columbia University Press), edited by the estimable Anthony Slide. Remarkable for its revealing of the hidden career of a minor genius is Noah Isenberg's Edgar G. Ulmer: A Filmmaker at the Margins (University of California Press). Before they came to the Unioted States, both Billy Wilder and Edgar Ulmer contributed to the terrific German film, People on Sunday (1930).

It would be a crime not to not mention two exceptional small press publications. Be sure and search out Randy Skretvedt, Peter Mikkelsen and John Tefteller's wonderful Laurel & Hardy on Stage: Rare and Unreleased Live Performances 1942-1957 (Tefteller Publishing), which features two CD's, one of rare live recordings of legendary duo, the other a 70-minute interview with Stan Laurel recorded just one week after Oliver Hardy's death. It is a beautiful labor of love. Also well worth searching out is Jordan R. Young's King Vidor's THE CROWD: The Making of a Silent Classic (Past Times), which features an introduction by Kevin Brownlow. The Crowd (1928) is one of the great films of all-time, and this book helps bring its greatness into focus.

Lee Israel, writer who forged Louise Brooks letters, has died

Lee Israel, a writer and biographer who forged a series of letters from Louise Brooks and others, has died. She was 75 years old. The New York Times has an extensive obituary on her.

Earlier in her career, Israel had published a popular biography of the actress Tallulah Bankhead, but as a writer, fell on hard times. She turned to forging letters from famous personalities, including actors, entertainers and writers such as Humphrey Bogart, Ernest Hemingway, Eugene O'Neil, and Louise Brooks.

The New York Times noted, "In the early 1990s, with her career at a standstill, she became a literary forger, composing and selling hundreds of letters that she said had been written by Edna Ferber, Dorothy Parker, Noël Coward, Lillian Hellman and others. That work, which ended with Ms. Israel’s guilty plea in federal court in 1993, was the subject of her fourth and last book, the memoir Can You Ever Forgive Me?, published by Simon & Schuster in 2008." Brooks' name, x'ed out, appears on the cover. (Read the New York Times review of the book, which mentions Brooks, here. Also, check out the Los Angeles Times review here. And the NPR story can be read or listened to here.)

After her memoir was published in 2008, Israel turned to selling her forged letters (as such) on eBay. As I noted on this blog at the time: "The eBay description reads, 'Lee Israel, author of the recently published Can You Ever Forgive Me? Memoirs of a Literary Forger, which The New York Times called 'pretty damned fabulous,' is offering several letters for sale – the hilarious forgeries that experts from coast to coast could not distinguish from the extraordinary letters written by the silent film star. These are the letters Lee Israel had not yet sold when the FBI came knocking at her door. $75 each, suitable for framing to bamboozle your literary friends. Letters of inauthenticity provided."

I didn't buy any of Israel's forgeries, but did email her. We exchanged a couple of notes, but all-in-all, she was reticent to talk about what she did. In an interview with Vice magazine, she said this:

VICE: Well, it could’ve been that they didn’t fuss because you went to such great lengths to make the content of the letters believable and entertaining.

LEE ISRAEL: Yes. For instance, my Louise Brooks letters were based on her actual letters. In the beginning, I spent weeks reading these fabulous letters by her in the library. I got into her soul and her sensibilities and gained lots of knowledge about her life. So when I sat down to do the forgeries, I was just taking baby steps. In the beginning those letters were mostly Louise’s words with a bunch of stuff just changed around. But when they started to sell like hotcakes, I got surer of myself and moved farther and farther away from the model. The Noël Coward and Dorothy Parker and Edna Ferber stuff was not even based on real letters. I was using things written in other forms and incorporating them into my work.

One of Lee Israel’s forged Louise Brooks letters, reproduced in Can You Ever Forgive Me?

Degrees of separation

Degrees of separation: Recent snapshot of me at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, CA next to a painting by Stanton MacDonald Wright, a modern American artist and co-founder of Synchromism, an early abstract, color-based mode of painting which was the first American avant-garde art movement to receive international attention. 

Wright was the younger brother of Willard Huntington Wright, a writer and critic who gained international fame in the 1920s by authoring the Philo Vance detective novels under the pseudonym S.S. Van Dine. One of his novels, The Canary Murder Case, was filmed in 1929 and starred Louise Brooks. Of whom we are all enamored.

Happy New Year from the Louise Brooks Society

Happy New Year from the Louise Brooks Society.

Silent era classical music

I recently picked up a copy of Aubert: Orchestral Works, a collection of five shorter works by Louis Aubert (1887 - 1968). I had not heard of this French composer, but I stumbled upon this CD and was drawn to the cover (which depicts Charlie Chaplin) as well as the interestingly titled second work on the disc, "Cinema, six tableaux symphoniques." According to the liner notes, this symphonic suite is taken from a ballet first staged in 1953, and each movement or episode in the work depicts a moment in the history of film. The movements are titled "Cinéma, six tableaux symphoniques Douglas Fairbanks et Mary Pickford," "Cinéma, six tableaux symphoniques Rudolph Valentino," "Cinéma, six tableaux symphoniques Chaplin et les Nymphes Hollywoodiennes," "Cinéma, six tableaux symphoniques Walt Disney," etc.... This music is charming and easy to listen to, and will appeal to those who may like Debussy or Ravel.



The liner notes refer to another French composer with whom I was not familiar, Charles Koechlin (1867 - 1950), and his "Seven Stars Symphony." According to the Wikipedia entry on Koechlin, the "Seven Stars Symphony" (1933) was "inspired by Hollywood" and "He was fascinated by the movies and wrote many 'imaginary' film scores and works dedicated to the Hollywood actress Lillian Harvey, on whom he had a crush. He also composed an "Epitaph for Jean Harlow." This webpage contains additional information on Koechlin. And this English-language Russian webpage has some really interesting material.

One doesn't often come across classical music inspired by the early cinema, especially that dating from the time. Is anyone familiar with this composer or their filmic compositions? I would like to track down some of Koechlin's work.

Louise Brooks Society is on Twitter @LB_Society

The Louise Brooks Society is on Twitter @LB_Society.

 As of today, the LBS is followed by more than 3000 individuals. Are you one of them? Why not join the conversation? Be sure and visit the official LBS Twitter profile, and check out the more than 3,800 LBS tweets! For those who like to follow the flow, the LBS twitter stream can also be found in the right hand column of this blog.

And that's not all. 

RadioLulu ♪♫♬♪

also has a Twitter account at @Radio_Lulu. 

           As of now, RadioLulu is followed by more than 3000 individuals, and has posted more than 175 tweets!This recently established account tweets about Louise Brooks and music as well as additions to

RadioLulu - the long running online radio station of the Louise Brooks Society
at live365.com/stations/298896 Check them both out! 

And for those who want to, check out the Twitter account of Thomas Gladysz, founding director of the Louise Brooks Society, at @thomas_gladysz 

A poem from Cuba about Louise Brooks

Since Cuba is in the news of late, I thought to rerun this post from the past: A webpage from Cuba once featured a handful of poems "about" eary film stars, including one "about" Louise Brooks! There were also poems "about" Theda Bara, Buster Keaton, Mary Pickford, Mae Murray, Charlie Chaplin and others. The poems are by Carlos Esquivel, a contemporary Cuban writer. Here is the Brooks' piece (whose title translates as "A Love Letter to Louise Brooks").

                                                      UNA CARTA DE AMOR PARA LOUISE BROOKS

Nada me une a ti sino lo que está más lejos:

el padre que no pude decir abrácense hijos,

esta sequía que ya aburre

 y junta las hebras de dormir con las de estar muertos,

ese perro recién nacido por los golpes y la fragilidad

de los apostadores,

y el trueno que no nos deja un águila viva.

Nada une como secar la pólvora en que hemos estado a salvo

mientras guardan en los sepulcros las hachas húmedas por la sangre

de otras muchachas.

Condenado a ser un hombre triste,

como un mensajero que se acoda

en la tribu enemiga, viviendo fuera de los muertos que le pertenecen,

doloroso y elegido en esta religión de olvidarte,

en la tierra que huele a abalorios, a coz,

advenedizo ante el oráculo y el agua áspera de las consignas.

Pero no soy quien cae de rodillas

y echa fuera de la armadura su presagio de vejez.

Sólo soy quien declara su amor como el prisionero

apostado a soñar con lo imposible.

Ya la madre no pensará en nosotros,

y en las misas los tambores llamarán a la fornicación,

heridos por el ácido de las absoluciones

y por los peñascos de quienes vaticinan

una zona blanca para los esqueletos amados.

Bienvenidos, dirán los niños,

y rezaremos ardiendo los sepulcros,

vueltos a callar en la carne y en la madera,

derribados por el coraje y la orina con que el hijo nos condenaba.

La sangre debe unir todo lo que en mí se hunde.

Debajo de esta barba de príncipe, mi corazón intacto

a las arrugas y a los zarcillos,

derramándose por las moras y los herbolarios,

húmedo de las concubinas que  habrán cobrado mi locura.

El corazón cercado,  como el tonto pájaro de Atamelipa.

Nada me une a ti sino lo que ruedea devolviéndose.

Augurar también que nos pregunten,

que en el vientre y los muslos un hijo nos pertenezca.

Nada me une más a ti que lo que no existe,

una espalda que imagino como única mentira,

y una muchacha con su cuerno de caza terminando la historia.

Quién sabe con qué esperanza tendremos el alcohol,

y la garganta hará un incendio para hacernos olvidar,

para sentarnos ante el poema

e inventar un grito.