New Find 3 - Trade Ads Mentioning Louise Brooks and Her Films

There is still a lot of interesting Louise Brooks & silent film material yet to discover. This post is the third in an ongoing series highlighting some of the newly found material I have just recently come across while stuck at home due to the coronavirus. With time on my hands, I have turned to picking through some of the many online databases and archives - some of which are newly accessible (due to the physical restrictions put on researchers because of the coronavirus), and some of which I am returning to in order to more thoroughly explore their holdings. As I am always finding out, it pays to not only have more than one set of key words to search under, but to look in the most unlikely places. You never know what you will find. Be sure and follow this blog for more discoveries in the coming weeks. 

In the movie biz, trade ads were advertisements taken out by a studio or some other corporate entity which typically promote not just one film or actor, but rather a group of films or stars. These ads might be aimed toward theater managers or the press, but sometimes as well the movie going public. Over the years, I have accumulated a number of examples of these sorts of ads. One chapter in my forthcoming book, Around the World with Louise Brooks, for example, will feature a selection of rare foreign ads, each of which promote Louise Brooks or one of her films.

In the meantime, here are a few American trade ads which I came across just a few days ago. Each were found in a general interest magazine, in particular Ladies Home Journal; each promote a batch of new releases and were aimed at the movie going public. To me, these ads are interesting in that they show which films and which stars Paramount was especially keen to promote. Which as it turns out, wasn't necessarily Louise Brooks. Nevertheless, these ads featured some rather delightful graphics.

This piece below suggests a world of adventure awaits those who go to see a Paramount Picture. It mentions The Show-Off  and its four stars, including Louise Brooks. We're in the Navy Now, which is mentioned in the right hand column, was directed by Brooks' husband at the time, Eddie Sutherland. He named one of the small boats in that nautical comedy "Louise."

This piece, with a humorous illustration, also features a prominent mention of The Show Off, as seen in the left hand column.

The delightful comic strip featured in this piece mentions Evening Clothes, which starred Adolphe Menjou (and which featured Louise Brooks in a supporting role). Apparently, older women and Mothers were keen on Menjou, who almost always played a sophisticate and was a heart-throb to some.

This piece, which merely lists Love Em and Leave Em among the "Best Motion Pictures", features a nifty Ralph Barton-like illustration - though this illustration is initialed "R.I." Among the films highlighted in the right-hand column is the German production, Metropolis, which Paramount distributed in the United States.

This trade ad features W.C. Fields first feature film for Paramount, It's the Old Army Game, which co-starred Brooks. The stylistic illustration at the top is again by "R.I." (Does anyone know the name of "R.I." ?)

New Find 2 - a Rare Paparazzi Picture of Louise Brooks

There is still a lot of interesting Louise Brooks & silent film material yet to discover. This post is the second in an ongoing series highlighting some of the newly found material I have just recently come across while stuck at home due to the coronavirus. With time on my hands, I have turned to picking through some of the many online databases and archives - some of which are newly accessible (due to the physical restrictions put on researchers because of the coronavirus), and some of which I am returning to in order to more thoroughly explore their holdings. As I am always finding out, it pays to not only have more than one set of key words to search under, but to look in the most unlikely places. You never know what you will find. Be sure and follow this blog for more discoveries in the coming weeks. 

I have seen a lot of images of Louise Brooks, in fact hundreds if not thousands. Thus, I am always a bit gobsmacked when I see a picture of Louise Brooks which I have never seen before. Here is one such image, which I uncovered just days ago. It dates from 1933.

In th picture, Louise Brooks is shown standing on an Atlantic Ocean beach while walking her dog, a terrier. The women she is talking with, also shown in profile to the left, is Lois Long (aka "Lipstick"), the well known New Yorker writer who was once married to the famous New Yorker cartoonist Peter Arno. (When this picture was taken, Long and Arno were divorced.) It is interesting to note that as late as 1933, Brooks was still wearing her hair in a bob and rather short.

This image, which has been cropped and had been captioned, was published in a society magazine, and in the days to come and as part of the "New Find" series, I will run another previously unknown image of Brooks from the same source from around the same time. Stay tuned.

New Find 1 - Mention of Louise Brooks in Charlie Chaplin's FBI file

There is still a lot of interesting Louise Brooks & silent film material yet to discover. This post is the first in an ongoing series highlighting some of the newly found material I have just recently come across while stuck at home due to the coronavirus. With time on my hands, I have turned to picking through some of the many online databases and archives - some of which are newly accessible (due to the physical restrictions put on researchers because of the coronavirus), and some of which I am returning to in order to more thoroughly explore their holdings. As I am always finding out, it pays to not only have more than one set of key words to search under, but to look in the most unlikely places. You never know what you will find. Be sure and follow this blog for more discoveries in the coming weeks. 

As is known, Louise Brooks and Charlie Chaplin had an affair in the summer of 1925. It took place around the time Chaplin was visiting New York City for the premiere of The Gold Rush. Chaplin was married at the time, and was twice Brooks' age. (He was 36 years old, and she was just 18.) The affair was brief, and lasted just a couple-three months. Nevertheless, newspapers of the time took notice, and tongues wagged, if only in an oblique manner. Below is four panel comic strip which alludes to the affair between the then little known showgirl and international film star. It appeared in a NYC newspaper in the Fall of 1925, around the time Brooks' own "draped nudes scandal" was unfolding after she posed in a semi-nude state for the photographer, John DiMirjian.

Gossip made the news. The feature photo shown below, which more directly references their affair, was syndicated across the country. (Despite Chaplin's denials, in later years he recalled his affair with Brooks, vividly describing Brooks' breasts as being like "little pears.")

As is also known, Chaplin liked younger women. His brief affair with Louise Brooks - which had taken place some 18 years earlier - wasn't forgotten when the Federal Bureau of Investigation was interviewing individuals in 1943 as word was beginning to break about his affair with aspiring actress Joan Berry. (Chaplin was 52 years old, and Berry was 22 years old at the time.) A three page section from a FBI file of the time includes a surprising mention of Brooks - with her name highlighted in green.

The passage from the above document which references Brooks reads: "With reference to the individual mentioned in VON ULM's book as 'MAISIE" xxxxxxxx advised he thought it was Louise Brooks. He said she was very young at the time and later married EDDIE SOUTHERLAND (sic), who is a Director in pictures at the present time." Does anyone have an informed guess as to whom the person "advising" the FBI might be? Whoever it is, they are likely wrong about conflating Maisie with Brooks.

I have a copy of Gerith von Ulm's 1940 book, Charlie Chaplin: The Birth of Tragedy, and read the passage which mention "Maisie." First of all, the book isn't very good, and I don't think Maisie is Brooks, but rather Marion Davies (if I were to guess). Von Ulm states in a footnote regarding Maisie, "This is not her name, but because this star has retired into private life, she enjoys a 'legal right to privacy' which is not the writer's wish to invade." For those wishing to check things out, the relevant passages about "Maisie" (which is a garbled almost-anagram of Marion Davies) begin at the bottom of page 203 of Von Ulm's book.

Back to the FBI document, and my shock at having come across Brooks' name in Chaplin's FBI file: I find it surprising that Louise Brooks was mentioned at all in 1943, as she was long forgotten and living in near obscurity at the time. Brooks had been out of films since 1938, and had returned home to Wichita, Kansas in 1940, where she lived in her parents house until January of 1943, when she relocated to New York City in the hopes of finding work in radio. Compared to her heyday in the late 1920's, Brooks was rarely ever mentioned in the press anymore. (I have come across only about a half-dozen mentions of Brooks in 1943, with most of those coming from columnist Dorothy Kilgallen.) The fact that she was mentioned in this FBI document leads me to believe that whoever it was that mentioned her must have known her and known of her affair with Chaplin. Does anyone have an informed guess as to whom the person "advising" the FBI might be? Inquiring minds want to know.

RadioLulu off the air, with a few recommended videos

After 18 years of streaming Louise Brooks and silent film related music, Radio Lulu has come to an end. The Louise Brooks Society online station was begun in 2002, and has reached countless listeners all over the globe. For more on this sad occasion, see the earlier LBS blog post, "Louise Brooks Society announcement regarding RadioLulu".

The station rotation began with "Louise," sung by Maurice Chevalier. In fact, it was my love of this song that led me to launch RadioLulu. In the early days of the Louise Brooks Society, a brief snippet of Chevalier's famed recording launched whenever someone clicked on the LBS website. I was not alone in my love for this particular recording. I recall once receiving an email from a fan who said they visited the LBS website everyday just to hear the snippet!

Because you likely want to hear it again, here is another video recordings of "Louise, a song which originally had nothing to do with our Louise. "Louise" was a show-stopping number from the 1929 film, The Innocents of Paris, Paramount's first musical. The song is sung by Maurice Chevalier, with the Leonard Joy Orchestra,  and it peaked at #3 on US Music Charts in 1929. Today, however, "Louise Brooks" has become associated with Brooks.

And finally, here is Chevalier performing the song in 1932. Chevalier recorded the song a few times over the years, but usually stuck to this original arrangement. Enjoy!

Book recommendations from the Louise Brooks Society

If you are stuck at home due to the coronavirus pandemic and are wanting to catching up on your reading... may we recommend the following books on Louise Brooks, silent film, and early Hollywood. Many, but not all, of these titles are available through local independent bookstores like Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon, national chain stores like Barnes & Noble, online stores like amazon.com, or specialty shops like Larry Edmunds in Hollywood. The latter was written up here in the previous post. Some of these titles, especially those published by larger publishers, might also be available as an e-book through your local library.

Before getting into books on the silent and early sound era, let's look toward the Louise Brooks bookshelf. Three essential books any fan will want to read are the biography by Barry Paris and Louise Brooks' own volume of memoirs, Lulu in Hollywood. Both are still available thanks to the efforts of the Louise Brooks Society, which helped bring them back into print. I would also recommend both Jan Wahl's wonderful Dear Stinkpot: Letters From Louise Brooks, and Pamela Hutchinson's recently reissued Pandora's Box (Die Büchse der Pandora), from BFI Film Classics. And, I might also put in a plug for a few of my recent books, Louise Brooks, the Persistent Star (a collection of essays), Beggars of Life: A Companion to the 1928 Film, and Now We're in the Air: A Companion to the Once "Lost" Film.

There are a few other titles available, like Peter Cowie's Louise Brooks: Lulu Forever and Roland Jaccard's Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star, but they are out of print and a bit harder to track down. Tom Graves' My Afternoon with Louise Brooks is also of interest, and I've written about it a number of times here on the Louise Brooks Society blog. Otherwise, be sure and check out the Books for Sale table here on the blog for even more related and recommended titles. On a final note, let me add that a title like Louise Brooks: Her men, affairs, scandals and persona is a pile of crap, and unless you like stepping in dog-shit, I would avoid it all together.

Among the new and recent releases realted to the silent and early sound era, I would recommend Rediscovering Roscoe: The Films of “Fatty” Arbuckle, by Steve Massa. I recently wrote it here on the LBS blog. It is an interesting read, and not only because Arbuckle directed Louise Brooks in a 1931 short, Windy Riley Goes Hollywood.

Also recently released and more than deserving of a read is Donna Hill's Rudolph Valentino: The Silent Idol, His Life in Photographs. As Kevin Brownlow remarked, "Besides being superbly researched, Silent Idol is filled with outstanding photographs, [and] given the standard of reproduction they deserve. I recommend it wholeheartedly."

If you find yourself drawn to the exoticism of early Hollywood, then you will likely find yourself drawn to the Agata Frymus' Damsels and Divas: European Stardom in Silent Hollywood (Rutgers University Press). Film scholar Michael Williams stated, "Written with engaging clarity and scholarly vigour and founded on first-class archival research, Damsels and Divas is a hugely welcome addition to scholarship on Hollywood stardom in the 1920s. The book shines much-needed light on the extraordinary careers of European female stars Pola Negri, Vilma Bánky and Jetta Goudal as well as the discourses of ethnicity, gender and class that shaped the firmament in which they, as Frymus puts it, ‘shone briefly, but very brightly’."

Two other recent titles worth noting are Dan van Neste's They Coulda Been Contenders: Twelve Actors Who Should Have Become Cinematic Superstars (Bear Manor), a highly enjoyable read, and Barbara Tepa Lupack's Silent Serial Sensations: The Wharton Brothers and the Magic of Early Cinema (Cornell University Press). Regarding the latter, Jack Garner (Louise Brooks' friend and former staff film critic at the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle) stated, "Silent Serial Sensations shines an overdue spotlight on a little-known but essential part of cinema history. Barbara Tepa Lupack tells the surprising and rich story of the creative Wharton brothers and their Ithaca studio in this well-researched and engaging history."

And finally, here are some links to some of my past book recommendations and where they were published.

Best Film Books of 2017: Silent Comedy Edition. Huffington Post

Best Film Books of 2017. Huffington Post

The BFI Re-Opens Silent Film Pandora’s Box. PopMatters

Pola Negri: Her films were silent. She wasn’t. Huffington Post

The Case for Marion Davies. Huffington Post

Two Film Historians and Their Lifelong Labor of Love. Huffington Post 

Son of Best Film Books of 2016. Huffington Post
 
Best Film Books of 2016. Huffington Post

Laurel & Hardy: The Magic Behind the Movies. Huffington Post

New Book Surveys Jules Verne on Film. Huffington Post

Spooky Film History Books for Halloween. Huffington Post

Best Films Books of 2015. Huffington Post

Best Film Books of 2014. Huffington Post

Best Film Books of 2013. Huffington Post 

Best Film Books of 2012. Huffington Post

The Movies: 10 Must-Read Books Coming This Fall. Huffington Post   

Best Film Books of 2011 Are Biographies. Huffington Post 

Director John Huston – the story of a story-teller revealed in new book. San Francisco Chronicle / SFGate

Walt Disney’s silent inspirations. San Francisco Chronicle / SFGate

Thomas Gladysz’s most treasured book. San Francisco Chronicle

Best Film Books for 2010. Huffington Post 

Dear Stinkpot: Letters from Louise Brooks by Jan Wahl. Huffington Post  

New Chaplin book by Kevin Brownlow. San Francisco Silent Film Festival blog

New book on Edison’s Frankenstein. San Francisco Silent Film Festival blog

Best film books of 2009. examiner.com

Support the Louise Brooks Society, support Larry Edmunds Bookshop

If you love movies, and if you love reading about the movies - then you will love Larry Edmunds bookshop in Hollywood. Opened in 1938, it is a longtime Mecca for film buffs, film historians, writers, collectors, celebrities and just about anyone with an interest in film. Louise Brooks was living in Los Angeles when the store first opened. I wonder if she visited it before she left town. Chances are....

Like other small businesses closed since the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic, Larry Edmunds is having a hard time generating business. They still have plenty of books to sell (as well as film stills, memorabilia, old magazines, etc....), and they are still accepting mail order. And what's more, they have autographed copies of three of my books for sale - Louise Brooks, the Persistent Star, Beggars of Life: A Companion to the 1928 Film, and Now We're in the Air: A Companion to the Once "Lost" Film. Why not place an order for those titles of some other film title you have been wanting to read.

Larry Edmunds bookshop if filled with all kinds of great stuff - and every-time I venture to Los Angeles, I make a point of dropping by to see what's new. This large store carries both new and old film books, so you will never know what they have without asking. It is time to dig out that list you have been keeping, and it is time to catch up on your Scott Eyman books and your Karie Bible books and even your Thomas Gladysz books.

Larry Edmunds bookshop hosts lots of events, not only with film historians but also with local authors otherwise known as celebrity actors and actresses! The store helped set up my recent booksigning at the Egyptian theater, and that's how they came to have some extra autographed books. So you never know what they might have under the heading of collectibles.... Their website is located HERE. And their Facebook page is located HERE. Contact them today!