A cinephilac blog about an actress, silent film, and the Jazz Age, with occasional posts about related books, music, art, and history written by Thomas Gladysz. Visit the Louise Brooks Society™ at www.pandorasbox.com
This is the first in a series of odd, unusual, and entertaining Louise Brooks related videos from Vimeo. Here is "I’m a part of this movie, but it doesn’t move me" from Roxane Billamboz.
Louise Brooks' first film was an uncredited bit in The Street of Forgotten Men, directed by Herbert Brenon. Production took place during May, 1925. Brooks played a moll to Bridgeport Whitey. She appears in only one
scene, in a barroom where a fight breaks out, near the end of the movie.
The Street of Forgotten Men was shot at Paramount’s
Astoria Studios on Long Island (located at 3412 36th Street in the
Astoria neighborhood in Queens). Additional location shooting was done elsewhere on
Long Island, as well as on the streets of Manhattan, including on Fifth
Avenue and importantly at the landmark Little Church Around the Corner, where a key scene, a wedding between characters played by Neil Hamilton and Mary Brian, takes place.
The Little Church Around the Corner, properly known as the Church of the Transfiguration, is an Episcopal parish church located at 1 East 29th Street, between Madison and Fifth Avenues in the NoMad neighborhood of Manhattan.
From Wikipedia: "Actors were among the social outcasts whom Houghton befriended. In 1870, William T. Sabine, the rector of the nearby Church of the Atonement, which is no longer extant, refused to conduct funeral services for an actor named George Holland, suggesting, "I believe there is a little church around the corner where they do that sort of thing." Joseph Jefferson, a fellow actor who was trying to arrange Holland's burial, exclaimed, "If that be so, God bless the little church around the corner!" and the church began a longstanding association with the theater.
P. G. Wodehouse, when living in Greenwich Village as a young writer of novels and lyrics for musicals, married his wife Ethel at the Little Church in September 1914. Subsequently, Wodehouse would set most of his fictionalized weddings at the church; and the hit musical Sally that he wrote with Jerome Kern and Guy Bolton ended with the company singing, in tribute to the Bohemian congregation: "Dear little, dear little Church 'Round the Corner / Where so many lives have begun, / Where folks without money see nothing that's funny / In two living cheaper than one."
In 1923, the Episcopal Actors' Guild held its first meeting at Transfiguration. Such theatrical greats as Basil Rathbone, Tallulah Bankhead, Peggy Wood, Joan Fontaine, Rex Harrison, Barnard Hughes, and Charlton Heston have served as officers or council members of the guild. The Little Church's association with the theatre continued in the 1970s, when it hosted the Joseph Jefferson Theatre Company, which gave starts to actors such as Armand Assante, Tom Hulce, and Rhea Perlman.
As well as being a guild officer, Sir Rex Harrison was memorialized at the church upon his death in 1990. Maggie Smith, Brendan Gill, and Harrison's sons, Carey and Noel, spoke at the service."
The Louise Brooks Society is on Twitter @LB_Society. In fact, the LBS is followed
by more than 2,700 fans and other interested individuals. Are you one of them? Be sure and check out the
LBS Twitter profile, and check out the more than 4,700 LBS tweets so far!
As part of its special "From Caligari to Hitler" series, Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is set to air two Louise Brooks films later today. Pandora's Box (1929) is set for 8:00 pm, followed by Diary of a Lost Girl (1929) at 10:30 pm. Check your local listings for local times. More information can be found HERE.
Attention fans of Louise Brooks and fans of contemporary music: Here is an album taster from the Louise Rutkowski recording Diary of a Lost Girl (released February 21, 2014). The artist is an acknowledged fan of the actress.
Two years after Louise Brooks retired from film (and she was largely forgotten by the American public), her name was still evoked as an example of beauty. This two page article dates from 1940.
Celebrity newspaper columns devoted to recipes as well as celebrity cookbooks were commonplace during the silent film era. The Louise Brooks Society archive contains a few recipes and menus attributed to Louise Brooks. Here is part two of a two part series devoted to recipes from Louise Brooks' friends and colleagues.
First up is Chester Conklin, a bushy mustached silent era comedian who appeared i the 1926 Brooks film, A Social Celebrity. Here, he contributes his recipe for a Yorkshire Tart.
And here is another silent era comedian, the great Charlie Chaplin, with whom Brooks had an intimate friendship in the summer of 1925. Here's Chaplin's recipe for an apple roll.