Louise Brooks and Wanda Hawley

Louise Brooks is a magnet of meaning.... I just came across this short video clip, in which Emeritus Film Studies Professor Claudia Gorbman of the University of Washington discusses silent film actresses Louise Brooks and Wanda Hawley. I am not sure if this video clip comes from a larger film, or not, but it is worth a viewing. Give it a play.

Diary of a Lost Girl with Louise Brooks shows March 5th in New York State

The sensational 1929 Louise Brooks film, Diary of a Lost Girl, will be shown at 3 pm on March 5th at the Rosendale Theater in Rosendale, New York. This Sunday afternoon screening will feature live piano accompaniment by Marta Waterman. More information about the event can be found HERE.

The historic Rosendale Theatre is a three-story, 260-seat movie theater and performance venue in Rosendale Village, a hamlet and former village in the town of Rosendale in Ulster County, New York. The building was opened as a casino in 1905, and began showing films in the 1920s. By the 1930s, a stage had been installed for live vaudeville and burlesque acts. In 1949, the venue was converted back into a movie theater. Today, the theater is run by the Rosendale Theatre Collective.

If you are wondering about Brooksian triangulation... the closest she came to Rosendale back in the day was Poughkeepsie, when she danced there as a member of the Denishawn Dance Company. Later in life, of course, Brooks lived in Rochester, New York.

Diary of a Lost Girl may well be making its debut in Rosendale. The 1929 film, directed by Georg W. Pabst (not Joseph Pabst), was the second Brooks made in Germany, following Pandora's Box. Controversial in its day, and poorly regarded, the film was not shown in the United States until the 1950s. Those screenings took place in Rochester, at the George Eastman House, under the eye of James Card, the museum's film curator. Diary of a Lost Girl made its theatrical debut in the early 1980s. More about the film and its eventful history can be found HERE.

A bit of trivia: In 1961, acclaimed director John Huston was beginning work on a biopic about Sigmund Freud. In an archive of correspondence about the film, Huston’s longtime assistant Ernie Anderson wrote to the director that Freud had no direct involvement with the making of Diary of a Lost Girl.

Beggars of Life with music by The Dodge Brothers in Manchester (UK) in May

The outstanding 1928 Louise Brooks film, Beggars of Life, will be shown at Stoller Hall in Manchester, England on Saturday, May 13th. This screening will feature live music and will be accompanied by The Dodge Brothers and the fabulous Neil Brand. More information about this event can be found HERE.

The Stoller Hall web page reads:

25% discount when you book full price tickets for both Beggars of Life and the Dodge Brothers at 9pm. That means you can see the brilliant Dodge Brothers for just £5.50 each!

The classic silent film with live music from the Dodge Brothers and Neil Brand.

Film and cinematic landscapes come together when The Dodge Brothers – Mike Hammond, Mark Kermode, Aly Hirji and Alex Hammond – join forces with premiere Silent Film pianist Neil Brand to accompany rare Silent features. Their accompaniment to the Louise Brooks/Wallace Beery 1928 film Beggars of Life was greeted with great acclaim. Performing this at The British Silent Cinema Festival, The Barbican & The BFI Southbank has prompted glowing reviews and the band became the first ever to accompany a silent film at Glastonbury Festival in 2014.

David Shepard (1940 - 2017)

David Shepard, a friend to many in the silent film community and a longtime champion of film preservation, has died. He was 76 years old. His ceaseless work on behalf of silent film deserves our ever lasting appreciation.

I saw David just last December, and we exchanged a few words.... Below is a snapshot I took a five or six years back. David, second from the right in a white short, is surrounded by colleagues Kevin Brownlow, Diana Serra Cary (silent film star Baby Peggy), and Leonard Maltin.

I can only claim to have been acquainted with David Shepard (1940 - 2017), having chatted with him numerous times, and having exchanged emails and seen him about at local film festivals for well more than a decade. I will miss him congenial presence. I also enjoyed reading and treasure my autographed copies of his books on movie legends King Vidor and Henry King. It was an honor to have my picture taken with Shepard last summer.

David's involvement with silent film extends to Louise Brooks, who's now lost 1927 film, The City Gone Wild, he almost saved. In his 1990 book, Behind the Mask of Innocence, Kevin Brownlow wrote about an incident in the 1970s. “David Shepard, then with the American Film Institute’s archive program, had a list of 35mm nitrate prints held in a vault Paramount had forgotten it had. He asked me which title I would select, out of all of them, to look at right away. I said The City Gone Wild. He called Paramount to bring it out of the vaults for our collection that afternoon. The projectionist went to pick it up. ‘O, there was some powder on that,’ said the vault keeper ‘We threw it away.’ … He tried to rescue it, even from its watery grave, but a salvage company had carted it off by the time he got there.” A few years ago, I spoke with David about this incident, and he confirmed its details and expressed his frustration.
 
Back in November, Shepard was honored at a special event at Dartmouth College. At the time, Mike Mashon, Head, Moving Image Section, Motion Picture Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, Library of Congress, said “David is a giant in the field of film preservation, one of those rare talents who exemplifies the scholar’s rigorous research, the archivist’s attention to detail and the fan’s unabashed love and enthusiasm for movies.”


Born in 1940, David had a lifelong love of film, having devoted most of his life to film preservation. Through teaching and scholarship, through his company, Film Preservation Associates, through his ownership of the Blackhawk Films library, and through his film and video restoration efforts, David had long worked behind the scenes helping save early films. Just as importantly, David made these films available to the home video market, first through laserdisc and VHS formats, and more recently through high-quality DVD releases "where the clarity and beauty of these early motion pictures can really be fully appreciated."

Shepard has done as much as anyone to both preserve and promote our film heritage, especially the silent era. Shepard began restoring films when he joined the American Film Institute in 1968 as one of their first staff members. His company, Film Preservation Associates, is responsible for many high quality video versions of silent films. Some of these video releases came from the Blackhawk Films library (also owned by Shepard), and others from materials owned by private collectors and film archives around the world. David lovingly sheparded them into the world. Even this partial list of films restored by Shepard is astounding:

    20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1916)
    A Farewell to Arms (1932)
    The Birth of a Nation (1915)
    The Black Pirate (1926)
    The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
    Carmen (1915)
    The Cat and the Canary (1927)
    City Lights (1931)
    Don Q Son of Zorro (1925)
    Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1920)
    Faust (1926)
    Foolish Wives (1922)
    The Gaucho (1927)
    The General (1926)
    Go West (1925)
    The Gold Rush (1925)
    The Great Train Robbery (1903)
    The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)
    The Kid (1921)
    A King in New York (1957)
    The Last Laugh (1924)
    The Lost World (1925)
    The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927)
    Male and Female (1919)
    Man With a Movie Camera (1929)
    The Mark of Zorro (1920)
    Meet John Doe (1941)
    Modern Times (1936)
    Nanook of the North (1922)
    The Navigator (1924)
    Nosferatu (1922)
    Orphans of the Storm (1921)
    The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
    Robin Hood (1922)
    The Sheik (1921)
    Sherlock Jr. (1924)
    The Son of the Sheik (1926)
    Steamboat Bill (1928)
    Sunrise (1927)
    The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933)
    The Thief of Bagdad (1924)
    The Three Musketeers (1921)
    Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914)
    Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926)
    Les Vampires (1915)

There are others, of course. For this work and all that he had done, David was recognized by the San Francisco International Film Festival, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Denver Silent Film Festival, International Documentary Association, and the National Society of Film Critics, and others. For more about David Shepard and all that he has done, check out these interviews (and watch one of his silent films).

Northwest Chicago Film Society: A Conversation with David Shepard

Digitally Obsessed: A Conversation with David Shepard

Silents are Golden: Interview with David Shepard

Trump's effect on the Louise Brooks Society and silent film

On January 19th, 2017, the Trump administration said that it would cut funding for the National Endowment for the Arts as well as the National Endowment for the Humanities. Trump also said he would cut funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which oversees both PBS and NPR. All together, such funding represents a minuscule portion - a reported 0.004% - of 2016 federal spending.

The Louise Brooks Society stands against such actions. Each would disastrously impact the arts and American culture, as well as silent film preservation and exhibition -- including the films of Louise Brooks.

Over the years, the Public Broadcasting System has shown silent films on television, as well as documentaries about silent films. I remember seeing Kevin Brownlow's magnificent Hollywood series on PBS in the early 1980's. That was my first sustained exposure to silent film and film history. Looking back, it changed my life. What's more, having examined old television broadcast records, I have also been able to find that PBS screened Pandora's Box on television a handful of times in the 1980's. I wonder how many individuals saw a great actress like Louise Brooks for the first time, and it somehow impacted their life?

National Public Radio has, as well, covered many news stories related to silent film - stories likely not covered in the mainstream media. I myself, as the director of the Louise Brooks Society, have appeared on NPR stations across the country talking about the actress, most recently on WXXI in Rochester, New York. Without such attention to less popular art forms like silent film, American culture would be a much lesser thing.

Similarly, both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities grant funds to various film festivals, including silent film festivals, as well as the specialized musicians who perform at them. And what's more, eliminating such funds would eliminate funds that go towards silent film restoration and silent film preservation, DVD releases, as well as the researching and writing and publishing of articles and books (and the making of documentary films) on silent film.

I don't want to live in a world where the cultural standard is some crappy reality television show. The arts enrich our lives. All of our lives, whether we get a grant or not.


The most important thing individuals can do is to keep informed and to support arts organizations and the media that gives coverage to the arts. This article has a number of great suggestions. 

Another thing we can do is to sign petitions against cutting funding. Here is a link to a petition on the whitehouse.gov website asking that funding not be cut to the NEA and the NEH. I think others are going around as well. As we know, Louise Brooks was a Denishawn dancer, an actress, and a great reader of books. I, for one, feel she would be against eliminating funding of the arts.

Consider this: When the Nazi's came to power in Germany in the early 1930's, they too moved to control society by controlling culture. In fact, Margarete Bohme's sensational 1905 book, The Diary of a Lost Girl, which can be seen as a feminist social critique of German society and had remained in print since it was first published 25 years earlier, was driven out of print by right wing groups in the early1930's. Additionally, some of G.W. Pabst's films - like Diary of a Lost Girl and Pandora's Box - were suppressed. No one wants to see that happen again!

Louise Brooks found in La La Land

Speaking of La La Land, I was there last week researching two of Louise Brooks' films. I scored a lot of great material, nearly 200 pages worth of stuff, including many rare stills and publicity photos and lots of rare Paramount production records. The results of my research shall be revealed in the coming months..... Here is a snapshot of me outside the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science's Margaret Herrick Library. Over the years, I have visited the library nearly ten times, and am finally starting to feel I know my way around its way of doing things. While there, I also had the pleasure of running into author and film historian Mary Mallory while doing my research. Hello Mary!

Apparently, Los Angeles and Beverly Hills (where the Academy is located) is riddled with crime. Who da thunk? I spotted this WANTED poster tacked to a bulletin board.

Louise Brooks in La La Land

I have seen an image on social media which people are saying is from the acclaimed new film La La Land. This romantic musical comedy-drama film is regarded as one of the best films of 2016, having been nominated for a record-tying fourteen Oscars!

The image in question is a street scene depicting a mural which depicts Louise Brooks. I haven't yet scene the movie. Can anyone confirm this image is from La La Land? Additionally, I am wondering, is this an actual locale in Los Angeles?