Louise Brooks: A Classic of the Silver Screen

Louise Brooks: A Classic of the Silver Screen . . . .

Louise Brooks in Our News Reel in Rhyme

A poem mentioning Brooks from Photoplay magazine. And Brooks' co-stars W.C. Fields, Adolphe Menjou too....

Silent film stars celebrating the Holidays #2

Here are a couple of images of silent film stars celebrating the Holidays.... First Louise Brooks' one-time co-star Esther Ralston, and second the It Girl, Clara Bow.

Happy Holidays from the Louise Brooks Society #2

A vintage Japanese holiday greeting from Paramount. How many stars can you name? One at least!

Happy Holidays from the Louise Brooks Society #1

A vintage Japanese holiday greeting from Paramount. How many stars can you name? Check back tomorrow for another!

The shocking edition of Diary of a Lost Girl

Yesterday, I received something very, very special in the mail - my recent order of a scarce edition of Tagebuch einer Verlorenen / Diary of a Lost Girl. Wow, what a score! It came from Germany, and is in beautiful condition, near fine. I have been hunting for this edition for some time now, ever since I worked on the Louise Brooks edition of Diary of a Lost Girl, which was published in 2010.

This illustrated edition of Margarete Bohme's book contains dozens of illustrations, some of them strangle, and some surprisingly risque.

If I am decoding his bookplate correctly, the owner bought the book in 1917. Also laid in were 4 scarce postcards from the 1918 film version of Tagebuch einer Verlorenen. Each of the postcards depict Erna Morena, who played Thymain (the role played by Louise Brooks in 1929); two postcards also depict Conrad Veidt, who starred in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Casablanca.

I had read that the book in its original German was far more suggestive than the English language translation. The owner, a close reader, discretely penciled in notes, like the cost of prostitutes (notice the amounts penciled next to each portrait below).

He also penciled a comment to the right of the last image: "Morbus gallicus," which translates as "The French disease," or syphilis.  No wonder Walter Benjamin described this book as something like “a complete inventory of the sexual trade.”

Silent film stars celebrating the Holidays #1

Here are a couple of images of silent film stars celebrating the Holidays.... First Louise Brooks' one-time co-star Mary Brian, and second, the other bobbed wonder, Colleen Moore.