Saturday, November 17, 2018

Louise Brooks tribute centerpiece of inaugural silent film festival in Bainbridge, WA

The Frank Buxton Silent Film Festival, a two-day celebration of silent film, will show two seldom exhibited Louise Brooks' films, It’s the Old Army Game (1926), starring W. C. Fields, and the surviving fragment of Now We’re in the Air (1927). For the latter film, this special event marks the film's first screening in the Pacific Northwest in nearly 90 years! And what's more, Louise Brooks adorns the festival poster.




The two-film Louise Brooks tribute, a kind of centerpiece to the two day festival, will take place on November 17 at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art in Bainbridge, Washington.

The Festival is a tribute to the late Frank Buxton (1930-2018), a local resident and longtime champion, advocate and appreciator of the arts. He was also a fan of Louise Brooks. Programming for the Festival was curated by Frank's friend and program collaborator John Ellis in partnership with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. More information HERE. The Bainbridge Island Review ran a piece on the event; read that piece HERE.

In celebration of the festival, the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art's Orientation Gallery will feature a three-week exhibition of rare and historical posters, photos and ephemera from the silent film era from Buxton’s own extensive private collection.

Thursday, November 15, 2018

CMBA Fall Blogathon featuring the 1927 Louise Brooks' film The City Gone Wild

The theme of the 2018 CMBA Fall Blogathon is Outlaws, which I am stretching to include gangsters and the criminal underworld (i.e. those outside the law). The focus of this blog is the 1927 Louise Brooks film The City Gone Wild.


Now considered a lost film, The City Gone Wild is a terse crime drama, with gangsters, gangs, and gunfights, in which a criminal lawyer turns prosecutor to avenge the death of a friend. As she did in The Street of Forgotten Men, Louise Brooks plays a moll, this time the deliciously named Snuggles Joy, the “gunman’s honey.”

The story, by Charles & Jules Furthman, goes like this: “With the outbreak of city gang wars between Gunner Gallagher and Lefty Schroeder, criminal lawyer John Phelan, feared in the underworld, brings temporary peace, while district attorney Franklin Ames investigates. Nada Winthrop, daughter of a powerful capitalist, is sought by both men. Though Nada loves John, she disapproves of his criminal practice; and when he frees Gunner Gallagher on bail, she announces her engagement to Ames. When Ames discovers that her father is the secret brain of the underworld activities and Winthrop has him killed, John takes the district attorneyship to avenge his friend. Snuggles, Gunner’s girl, threatens to inform on Winthrop unless John releases Gunner, and he concedes; John is about to resign when Snuggles, rejected by her man, confesses.” Screenplay credits went to Charles Furthman, and title credits to Herman J. Mankiewicz.

The “gangster film” (as we know it today) more-or-less began with Paramount’s Underworld (1927). Though there were earlier crime films, the Joseph von Sternberg directed Underworld set the tone for many of the genre films which followed, namely Little Caesar (1931), The Public Enemy (1931), and Scarface (1932).

With the surprising success of Underworld, Paramount quickly put another crime film into production, namely The City Gone Wild. The film, originally titled First Degree Murder, was meant as a vehicle for leading man Thomas Meighan, who in 1927 saw his star start to fade. To boost his career, Paramount paired Meighan with a topical story “ripped from the headlines,” a first rate director (James Cruze), and popular supporting actors (including Louise Brooks). Also assigned to The City Gone Wild were individuals who had worked on Underworld, namely writer Charles Furthman, cinematographer Bert Glennon, and tough-guy actor Fred Kohler.

The two films, not surprisingly, were sometimes compared. Intoning the slang of the time, Variety wrote, “The gang stuff is a la Underworld — machine guns and plenty tough. The two main yeggs each have a moll carrying their gat in the pocketbook. Very authentic in these little details ….” Many focused on the acting and actors. The noted critic Ward M. Marsh of the Cleveland Plain Dealer stated, ” . . . pitting her against crookdom’s love of Louise Brooks brings out the worst in all of us. On the credit side is Miss Brooks and also Fred Kohler in a role paralleling his Mulligan in Underworld. They do excellent work.” The San Antonio Express echoed Marsh, “Although Meighan is featured in the cast, he has his co-stars, Louise Brooks, one of Paramount’s niftiest, and Fred Kohler, remembered for his great crook work in Rough Riders and Underworld.”



Critics noticed Brooks’ hard-boiled character, and the edge she brought to an otherwise atypical role. Radie Harris of the New York Morning Telegraph wrote, “Louise Brooks is in the cast and that is something to grow ecstatic about. Christened with the preposterous name of Snuggles Joy, she is the most entrancing crook that ever pulled a Holt. No wonder the city went wild.”

Gordon Hillman of the Boston Daily Advertiser wrote “Another distinct ornament of the cast is Louise Brooks, who lends considerable vividness to her portrait of a lady of the underworld. In fact, she gives so good an interpretation of the part that Marietta Millner, supposedly the feminine lead, actually relapses into only secondary importance.”


Brooks was so good that she out shown Millner, who had appeared earlier in the year with Meighan in the Cruze directed film We’re All Gamblers. “Louise Brooks, who plays the crook’s girl, is better looking, more attractive and a better actress than Marietta Millner, the district attorney’s jeune fille, and in real life Tommy probably would have preferred her to Marietta,” wrote Stanley Orne in the Portland Oregonian. “Louise Brooks, the pert flapper, completely shadows the more important role allotted to Marietta Millner, and the ‘girl of Gunner Gallagher’ brief as her part is, is a far more intriguing character than the society girl of Miss Millner,” added Leona Pollack of the Omaha World Herald.

The City Gone Wild was officially released November 12, 1927, with a stated length of 6 reels (5,408 feet), or approximately 60 minutes. [Pre-release Paramount production records list the film length at 6 reels (5,601 feet) for the domestic release, and 6 reels (5,390 feet) for the foreign release.] The film opened across the United States on November 6, 1927, with screenings in Atlanta, Georgia, Boston, Massachusetts, San Francisco, California and elsewhere.


The City Gone Wild is considered lost. The film was shown in Fairbanks, Alaska as late as January, 1930, and was largely extant as recently as 1971. In his 1990 book, Behind the Mask of Innocence, Kevin Brownlow wrote, “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.’ The film had been unspooled into a tank of water (recommended procedure for decomposing nitrate). Shepard complained officially to Paramount, who promised it would not happen again. He tried to rescue it, even from its watery grave, but a salvage company had carted it off by the time he got there.” In June of 2016, I spoke with David Shepard about the demise of the film. He confirmed this account, and  recalled grimly that Paramount would, at the time, discard any film which showed any degree of decomposition.


Under its American title, documented screenings of the film took place in Australia (including Tasmania), Canada,* China, Dutch Guiana (Suriname), Ireland, Jamaica, New Zealand, South Africa, Sweden, and the United Kingdom (including England, Isle of Man, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales). The film was occasionally shown in the United States as City Gone Wild (and at least once in Scotland under the title A City Gone Wild).

In the United States, the film was advertised under the title A Cidade que Enlouqueceu (Portuguese-language press).

Elsewhere, The City Gone Wild was shown under the title The City Gone Mad and La ciudad del mal (Argentina); Der Verbrecherkönig von Chicago (Austria); La cité maudite (Belgium); A cidade bulicosa (Brazil); La ciudad del mal (Chile); Mesto uplynulý divoký (Czechoslovakia); Storstadens svøbe! (Denmark); Het Kwaad eener Wereldstad (Dutch East Indies – Indonesia); La cité maudite and La Ville Maudite (France);  狂乱街 (Japan); Die Gottin der Sunde (Latvia); La onda del crimen (Mexico); Boeven en Burgers and Het Kwaad Eener Wereldstad (The Netherlands); Piraci Wielkiego Miasta (Poland); A Cidade Ruidosa (Portugal); Gonosztevok kiralya (Romania); La ciudad del mal (Spain); and La cité maudite (Switzerland).

* Except in Quebec, where the film was banned due to “too much shooting.”


The cast of The City Gone Wild is certainly an interesting one: it includes Thomas Meighan as John Phelan, Marietta Millner as Nada Winthrop, Louise Brooks as Snuggles Joy (Gunner Gallagher’s girlfriend), Fred Kohler as Gunner Gallagher, Duke Martin as Lefty Schroeder, Nancy Phillips as Lefty’s Girl, Wyndham Standing as Franklin Ames, Charles Hill Mailes as Luther Winthrop, King Zany as Bondsman, (renown boxer) Gunboat Smith as a Policeman, and Shirley Dorman in an uncredited role.


Interestingly believe-it-or-not, Meighan was Louise Brooks’ “uncle-in-law.” Meighan was married to Frances Ring, a Broadway stage actress and the sister of the popular entertainer Blanche Ring. Director Eddie Sutherland — Brooks’ husband at the time, was the nephew of both Meighan, as Sutherland’s mother, Julie, was a sister of Blanche and Frances Ring.


In the mid-1920s, Meighan became interested in Florida real estate after talking with his brother, who was a realtor. In 1925, Meighan bought property in Ocala, Florida (where scenes for the Eddie Sutherland-directed It’s the Old Army Game were shot). In 1927, he built a home in New Port Richey, Florida. It was there that he spent his winters and helped support a local movie theater, the Meighan Theatre, which was named in his honor. The Meighan Theatre opened July 1, 1926, with a showing of the Meighan movie The New Klondike, a film set against the backdrop of the Florida land boom of the 1920s. Today, the renamed Richey Suncoast Theater is home to the annual Thomas Meighan film festival.

Notably, Meighan was involved in two of the more sensational happenings of the silent film era. In 1916, he was the sole witness to Jack Pickford and Olive Thomas’ secretive wedding. And in 1923, Meighan put up a large chunk of the bail money, and with the help of June Mathis and George Melford, and got Rudolph Valentino out of jail after he was charged with bigamy.

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Happy birthday to Louise Brooks - the magnetism of the cinema

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO LOUISE BROOKS,
who was born on this day in 1906 in Cherryvale,  Kansas

"Louise Brooks is the only woman who had the ability to transfigure no matter what film into a masterpiece. The poetry of Louise is the great poetry of rare loves, of magnetism, of tension, of feminine beauty as blinding as ten galaxial suns. She is much more than a myth, she is a magical presence, a real phantom, the magnetism of the cinema." 


So said Ado Kyrou (1923-1985), a Greek-born filmmaker, writer, critic and associate of the Surrealists long resident in France. Kyrou was a contributor to the French film journal Positif, and the author of Amour - érotisme & cinéma (1957) and Le Surréalisme Au Cinéma (1963).

Tuesday, November 13, 2018

A hopeless song of love for Louise Brooks

Here are two version of the Louise Brooks inspired song, "Hopeless." The first is a video by Stuart Pound to a recording by the UK band Evangelista. The song dates from the 1990's, and is a tribute to Louise Brooks. The song is about an impossible love for Brooks, an impossible love
because she died in 1984.


Hopeless from Stuart Pound on Vimeo.

The second version is a live recording by the Great Admirers of the "Evangelista cult classic."
The video was shot at the Seven Stars pub in Bristol, England on a Sunday afternoon, June 22, 2008.
Sound by Alfie Kingston. Long live Lulu!

Monday, November 12, 2018

Louise Brooks related text ? Need help translating from the Arabic !

Louise Brooks' films were  shown all around the world in the 1920s and 1930s, including the Middle East. In my search to document all things related the the actress and her legacy, I came across the following material, which I suspect contains a bit related to either the Canary Murder Case (1929) or the Greene Murder Case (1929) or the Benson Murder Case (1930), each of which starred William Powell as Philo Vance. Brooks was the co-star of the Canary Murder Case, the first film in the series of films based on S.S. van Dine's bestselling murder mysteries.

Can anyone tell me what these pages are about?

The are excerpted from a contemporary book, The Writings of El Sayyed Hassan Gomaa v. 2 1930-1934, compiled and edited by Farida Marei, with an introduction by Prof. Dr. Madkour Thabet. This book is part of a series, "The Legacy of Film Critics in Egypt," published by the Ministry of Culture / Egyptian Film Centre.

Do the reference Canary Murder Case? Or Louise Brooks? Or suggest when these films were shown in Cairo, presumably?



Friday, November 9, 2018

Louise Brooks' film Diary of a Lost Girl to screen at New York Public Library

The sensational 1929 Louise Brooks' film, The Diary of a Lost Girl, will be shown at the New York Public Library on Sunday, November 25th at 2:00 pm. This special event is part of a two-part series called "Silent Sirens on Sundays!" More information can be found HERE.

Silent Sirens: Olive Thomas and Louise Brooks
Writer and producer Michele Gouveia will introduce both films. 
Presented in the first floor Willa Cather Community Room, NYPL.
All events are free and open to the public.
 
The Flapper, Sunday, November 11 at 2:00 pm

The Flapper (1920), directed by Alan Crosland, tells the story of Ginger King (Olive Thomas), a bored schoolgirl who dreams of romantic adventures. In an attempt to become more sophisticated, she unwittingly gets mixed up with some crooks who entrust her with stolen jewels. When they come after her, she realizes that she must forget her childish dreams and save the day.

Olive Thomas (1894-1920) was a model and Follies girl who was named the most beautiful girl in New York City. She made her screen debut in 1916 in the serial Beatrix Fairfax and would go on to make 22 films before her untimely death at the age of 25. The Flapper, one of her biggest films, marked the first time the term “flapper” was used in an American film.


Diary of a Lost Girl , Sunday, November 25 at 2:00 pm

Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), directed by G.W. Pabst, tells the story of Thymian Henning (Louise Brooks), a naïve young girl who after getting pregnant by her father’s assistant, is sent by her family to a repressive reform school from which she eventually escapes. Penniless and homeless, she winds up in a brothel where she lives for the moment with physical abandon.

Louise Brooks (1906-1985), the girl with the black bob, was a dancer and actress who after making a string of films in Hollywood gave it all up to go to Germany and play the lead in G. W. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box (1928). After living in obscurity for years, film historians rediscovered Brooks’ films in the 1950s, and she was proclaimed a film icon.




Diary of a Lost Girl is based on a controversial and bestselling book first published in Germany in 1905. Though little known today, it was a literary sensation at the beginning of the 20th century. By the end of the 1920s, it had been translated into 14 languages and sold more than 1,200,000 copies - ranking it among the bestselling books of its time.

Was it - as many believed - the real-life diary of a young woman forced by circumstance into a life of prostitution? Or a sensational and clever fake, one of the first novels of its kind? This contested work - a work of unusual historical significance as well as literary sophistication - inspired a sequel, a play, a parody, a score of imitators, and two silent films. The best remembered of these is the G.W. Pabst film starring Louise Brooks.

In 2010, the Louise Brooks Society published a corrected and annotated edition of the original English language translation, bringing this important book back into print in the United States after more than 100 years. It includes an introduction by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society, detailing the book's remarkable history and relationship to the 1929 silent film. This special "Louise Brooks Edition" also includes more than three dozen vintage illustrations and is available through amazon.com


In 2015, Kino Lorber released the best available print of the film on DVD and Blu-ray. This recommended release features an audio commentary by Thomas Gladysz. Like the book, the film is also available through amazon.com

Wednesday, November 7, 2018

Frank Buxton Silent Film Festival to feature two Louise Brooks films on November 17

Thomas Gladysz and Frank Buxton
The Frank Buxton Silent Film Festival, a two-day celebration of silent film, is scheduled to show two seldom exhibited Louise Brooks' films, It’s the Old Army Game (1926), and the surviving fragment of Now We’re in the Air (1927). For the latter film, the event marks the film's first screening in the Pacific Northwest in nearly 90 years!

According to it's website, the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art in Bainbridge, Washington is proud to present the debut of the Frank Buxton Silent Film Festival, a two-day cinematic excursion exploring the pleasures, history and lost art of American silent film.

The Festival is a tribute to the late Frank Buxton (1930-2018), a local resident and longtime champion, advocate and appreciator of the arts. Programming for the Festival was curated by Frank's friend and program collaborator John Ellis in partnership with the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. More information HERE.

WEEKEND PROGRAM

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2018

- 6:30 pm - Opening Party
Visiting artists, guests and weekend pass holders enjoy a pre-screening reception with food and refreshment in the Museums First Floor Gallery

- 7:30 pm - Alfred Hitchcock's Blackmail (1929)Original score from Erin O'Hara

The Buxton Silent Film festival kicks off with a rare screening of Alfred Hitchcock's silent version of Blackmail, one of his earliest and most atmospheric films. The dark drama is orchestrated by Erin O'Hara, who created the entire score from the point of view of Alice, Anny Ondres character who murders her would be rapist with a bread knife. With an ensemble of electric and acoustic instruments and voices, O'Hara expresses the interior voice of heroine Alice, as she navigates her way through a journey of assault, survival and the murky search for justice. One reviewer said, Her soundtrack is both a signal contribution to Hitchcock's art and a bold rejoinder to it.

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2018

- 10 am - Classic Comedy ShortsMusical accompaniment by Miles and Karina (David Miles Keenan and Nova Karina Devonie)
Featured films:
  • One Week (1920) with Buster Keaton
  • The Immigrant (1917) with Charlie Chaplin
  • Battle of the Century (1927) from Laurel & Hardy
- 2:00 pm - Louise Brooks TributeMusical accompaniment by Miles and Karina (David Miles Keenan and Nova Karina Devonie)
Featured films:


- 7:30 pm - The Unknown starring Lon Chaney (1927)
Original Score composed and performed live by Jovino Santos Neto Quarteto
The Unknown is an American silent horror film directed by Tod Browning, a story of yearning, frustration, resentment and betrayal. Lon Chaney stars as carnival knife thrower Alonzo the Armless and Joan Crawford is the scantily clad carnival girl he hopes to marry. The film is brought to life by a live score composed and performed by Jovino Santos Neto Quinteto, a five-piece local jazz ensemble led by Brazilian jazz pianist Jovino Santos Neto. Neto offers a fresh take on the musical conventions of silent film accompaniment. Instead, he mines the deep, dark melancholy conveyed by the actors' facial expressions to create a 50-minute suite that blends sounds, textures and improv from vibraphone, bandoneon, bass, drums, percussion, piano, flute, melodica and electronics. Special thanks to Seattle Theater Group. Join film-goers for a short after-party.



I knew Frank Buxton, and know that he loved silent film, comedy, and Louise Brooks! He was a many of many accomplishments in a remarkable and eclectic career. Read the obits from Variety and the Hollywood Reporter and KitSap Sun. This event, the Frank Buxton Silent Film festival, is fitting tribute. Above is a picture of Frank on stage with Buster Keaton in 1949. Frank had autographed the page in my Keaton book where this picture appeared, and pointed himself out. (Buxton was also the co-author of a classic book on early radio, The Big Broadcast.)

Frank Buxton and I kept in touch over the years, chatting about film books and our favorite stars. Not long before he died, I was able to share with him a copy of my recent book, Now We're in the Air, a Companion to the Once "Lost" Film.

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