The Unlikely Louise Brooks, number 1 in an occasional series

This post is the first in an occasional series focusing on unusual finds, unusual material, and unusual connections all related to Louise Brooks - even if only tangentially. I run across these sorts of things regularly... and this a way to share them with my few readers.

Motion Picture Reviews was one of a handful of small-time publications which reviewed films back in the day. It was issued by the Motion Picture Committee of the Women's University Club, which was the Los Angeles Branch of the American Association of University Women. (Did other branch's around the country issue printed reviews? I don't know.) Well anyways, this slight, unillustrated and rather plain monthly publication was aimed at parents who wanted to know which films were "best" for children. Here is their statement of purpose from their first issue, which is dated January 1930. 

And here is a statement from their third issue, which states that the films they reviewed were shown to them by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences courtesy of the Association of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. All of which suggests that as a group, they had some credibility. 

I read a number of scattered reviews, and must admit that they contain little of interest -- EXCEPT WHEN THEY THREW SOME SHADE,which they occasionally did, as in the write up for The King of Gamblers, shown below. Sounds like a real recommendation to me. Below is a page of reviews from 1930. The review of the Lon Chaney reissue, The Phantom of the Opera, caught my eye. As did the write-up for Playing Around (1930), an Alice White film. It sounds fun. I wonder what they said about Dracula (1931), or Frankenstein (1931). Check out the run of the magazine HERE.

As far as I can tell, the publication ran from 1930 to 1944, which puts it somewhat out of range as far as Louise Brooks' primary career is concerned. But still, I found a few things of interest. Brooks three films from 1931, It Pays to Advertise, God's Gift to Women, and Windy Riley Goes Hollywood, were all covered. It is interesting to me that Brooks was not mention in the piece on Windy Riley; certainly, she was a bigger name than Jack Shutta, who played the title role?

Motion Picture Reviews did not review Brooks' sole 1936 film, Empty Saddles, but they did cover the the two films from 1937 which are part of her filmography, When You're in Love, and The King of Gamblers. The latter is a doozy. BTW, this publication also didn't bother writing up the other Louise Brooks' western, Overland Stage Raiders (1938). Who knows? Perhaps they didn't care for cowboy flicks, or westerns, or serials? Which is odd, because kids sure did.

This blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society (www.pandorasbox.com). Original contents copyright © 2022. Further use prohibited.

The Loves of Lulu - the First American Lulu (not Louise Brooks) part 3

This post is a brief follow-up to the two previous posts about Margot Kelly, the first American actress to play Lulu. Kelly played Wedekind's famed character in The Loves of Lulu in New York in May, 1925 at the time Louise Brooks, who would play Lulu in the 1929 film, Pandora's Box, was performing in the Ziegfeld Follies and taking on a bit part in her first film, The Street of Forgotten Men. 

Margot Kelly in 1913

Camille Scaysbrook, a longtime member of the Louise Brooks Society noted on Facebook, she searched in vain for a positive review of the provocative play. "I tried in vain to find a positive review, given that everyone from Alexander Woolcott down seems to have considered it the stinker of the year. Amazingly, the only one who liked it was the great George Jean Nathan. His might have been the sole positive review, as it's quoted in advertisements. He also wrote positively (and insightfully) of it in Arts and Decoration. https://books.google.com/books?id=lNJL3qnLa1gC&pg=RA2-PA40"

Inspired by Camille, I went looking for more commentary on the play, and can confirm her findings - everyone hated The Loves of Lulu. Not only did Alexander Woolcott dislike the play, so did another famous critic of the time, Edmund Wilson. And so did John Mason Brown, who, writing in Theater Arts Monthly, called it an "unpardonably bad production." Critic Philip Hale stated, " The audience on the first night of The Loves of Lulu (Wedekind's Erdgeist) laughed ironically and coarsely, guying the whole performance." The New Yorker said it was "played for farce value, perhaps unintentionally."

Writing in The New Republic, Wilson said the play "failed so completely." In Vanity Fair, Woolcott said it lacked "perversion." Ouch! Even Picture Play magazine, which generally focused on films, got in on the massacre. Before noting The Loves of Lulu "played about a week to all but empty houses," Picture Play stated, "It was adapted from a German play called Erdgeist, by Wedekind, which in the original is a morbidly interesting work of real force and coherence. But the translation was so garbled and the acting so bad that it landed in the same heap with its almost illiterate neighbors."

In fact, many of the bad reviews the play received criticized the translation, which was by Samuel Eliot. His translation was the only translation into English at the time. And, according to Peter Bauland's 1968 book, The Hooded Eagle: Modern German Drama on the New York Stage, Margot Kelly's The Loves of Lulu was something rare -- the only professional production of a Wedekind play in New York for many years. Bauland writes, "Between the closing of The Awakening of Spring in 1917 and the off-Broadway performance of Erdgeist as Earth Spirit in 1950, the only professional production in New York of a play by Frank Wedekind came on May 11, 1925. This was Samuel A. Eliot, Jr.’s translation of Erdgeist known as The Loves of Lulu. The German play, written in 1894, was first produced in Leipzig in 1898; its first successful staging was Max Reinhardts 1902 presentation in Berlin. It was Erdgeist and its sequel, Die Biichse der Pandora (Pandora s Box), not granted a permit to be performed in Germany until 1919, that earned for Wedekind his notorious reputation: that of being nothing more than the prophet of a cult which maintained that all human action was the product of tyrannical sex drives, and that in the face of this pressure, man cannot have both happiness and dignity. The reputation was undeserved, for despite Wedekind’s insistence on the power of glandular forces, this is certainly an oversimplification of his motives, and he seldom dealt with sex naturalistically."

All of this got me to wondering, how familiar with Wedekind's original German play could all of these critical critics have been? About the only middling review the play received was in The New Leader, a socialist weekly newspaper. Here is their review.

As I mentioned in the last blog, all this is interesting to me as background on the way Louise Brooks role as Lulu was received in the United States just four years later.

This blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society (www.pandorasbox.com). Original contents copyright © 2022. Further use prohibited.

The Loves of Lulu - the First American Lulu (not Louise Brooks) part 2

A follow-up to yesterday's post about Margot Kelly, the first American actress to play Lulu. Kelly played Wedekind's famed character in The Loves of Lulu in New York in May, 1925. Despite its groundbreaking, provocative nature, the play received poor reviews. Burns Mantle, one of the most famous drama critics of the time, called it ugly... "an ugly story of ugly people, with a nasty suggestiveness common to one type of German drama." Mantle suggests he doesn't understand the play, but from his description, I think he does - even alluding to Countess Gerschwitz, a "mannish woman."

 

Despite the play receiving poor reviews, actress Margot Kelly was evidently enthusiastic about the Frank Wedekind's drama, so much so she bought the rights to it.

The lovely Margot Kelly, pictured in the 1920s

A month after The Loves of Lulu opened, Kelly sailed for England, and before departing, announced that Pandora's Box would be staged in the Fall. I don't believe it ever was. Perhaps the critical drubbing was too much.

And lastly, another bad review of The Loves of Lulu. This one appeared in Percy Hammond's column, though was not written by the famed critic. Instead, it was penned by Charles Belmont Davis.

As I mentioned in the last blog, all this is interesting to me as background on the way Louise Brooks role as Lulu was received in the United States just four years later.

This blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society (www.pandorasbox.com). Original contents copyright © 2022. Further use prohibited.

The Loves of Lulu - the First American Lulu (not Louise Brooks) part 1

Recently, while doing some research on Louise Brooks' first film, The Street of Forgotten Men, I came across a 1925 magazine clipping mentioning the The Loves of Lulu, which reportedly was the first American stage presentation of Frank Wedekind's Lulu plays. Notably, the play opened in New York City in May of 1925 - at the same time as Brooks was dancing in the Ziegfeld Follies and The Street of Forgotten Men was in production just across town. How's that for historical overlap?

I was intrigued to find out more, and to learn more about Margot Kelly, the actress who first played Lulu in America. She has a few film credits, but seems primarily to have been a stage actress. Below, is a rather striking photo of Kelly as Lulu. Notably, this photo was taken by Edward Thayer Monroe, who also photographed Brooks. How's that for coincidence?

Interestingly, I also came across a 1924 letter from the Nobel Prize winning playwright Eugene O'Neill to Kenneth Macgowan in which O'Neill mentions Margot Kelly and his interest in the Lulu plays. O'Neill writes, "I've been going over, with the English translations of the separate plays as a trot, the combination made by Wedekind himself of Erdgeist & Pandora's Box which he called Lulu. Margot Kelly dug up a copy of it in Library of Congress. It looks good. I'm strong for it, provided we can get a good translator. I'll even promise to help on the dialogue. This Erd-Pandora work of Wedekind's ought to be done somehow. It's the best thing of its kind ever written and we ought to do it at the P.P." [Provincetown Playhouse] Ah, what might have been.

Kenneth Macgowan, to whom the letter was addressed, ran the Provincetown Playhouse as its producer, and with Eugene O'Neill as a business partners. In the 1930s, Macgowan went into film as a producer, and even won an Academy Award. Later, he authored a notably early history of film titled Behind the Screen (1965). While it briefly discusses G. W. Pabst, it does not mention Louise Brooks. 

Well, anyways, here is another striking portrait of Margot Kelly. While looking her up online, I came across another portrait, which looks like it was taken ship-board. Kelly, it seems, had been to England, where she played Lulu. The caption on the back of the photo reads, "American actress too daring for London stage Margot Kelly returns from London where she received the "cold shoulder" in the play Loves of Lulu which was a big hit in this country but too risky for Englishmen." She seems like quite a personality.

I have dug up some more on Margot Kelly and her role as Lulu which I will post in the next blog. All this is interesting to me as background on the way Louise Brooks role as Lulu was received just four years later.

This blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society (www.pandorasbox.com). Original contents copyright © 2022. Further use prohibited.

Louise Brooks in the summertime on Instagram

I hadn't realized how many pictures I have of "Louise Brooks in the summertime" when I started a recent  series of posts on the Louise Brooks Society account on Instagram. (That account, by the way, can be found at @louisebrookssociety.) If you haven't check out Instagram or the relatively new LBS account there, please do so. As of today, it has gathered 978 followers. 

A few weeks ago, back in June, the weather was warm and I thought to post a pic or two of Louise Brooks hanging around outdoors. Something summertime.... That was followed by some pictures of the actress at the beach, playing tennis, modelling summer fashions, and going for a swim.  More will follow.

My approach to Instagram is to get an idea about something, an announcement, or a theme, or whatever, and post pics on that topic until I don't. What follows are just a couple of the pics I have posted so far. If you want to see more, be sure and "follow" the LBS insta at https://www.instagram.com/louisebrookssociety/

 

This blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society (www.pandorasbox.com). Original contents copyright © 2022. Further use prohibited.

Back at it, with a new Louise Brooks treasure in hand

I haven't blogged in a month, taking a bit of time off in order to work on my current book project, The Street of Forgotten Men: From Story to Screen. It is coming along splendidly, and I have approximately 122 pages and more than 21,000 words done. The finish line is still a ways off, but is now beginning to come into sight.

This project arose and interjected itself into my life while I was contributing to the restoration of The Street of Forgotten Men (1925), which debuted at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival in May. That was a splendid, even historic event. I wish everyone could have been there to see Louise Brooks in her first film. I have been told that screenings of the restored film will likely take place elsewhere in the Fall. And as for a DVD release, who knows?

While I was at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival, I had a chance to meet the esteemed film historians Richard and Diane Kosarski. That was a thrill, not only because they signed a stack of books for me - so cool, but because Richard had met, interviewed and corresponded with Louise Brooks.

I have been in touch with Richard Kosarski since then, and just recently, he sent me a small treasure from his archive which I received today. It is a flyer for a 1982 Louise Brooks retrospective, "Career of a Comet: Louise Brooks." I have scanned it and reproduced it below. The retrospective took place at the Astoria Motion Picture and Television Foundation, which is housed at the old Astoria Studios in Queens, New York, where Louise Brooks filmed The Street of Forgotten Men. Kosarski has long been associated with the foundation.

The retrospective featured a number of Brooks' films, divided into four parts over four days: "Brooks in Astoria" (The Show Off and Love Em and Leave Em), "Brooks in Hollywood" (A Girl in Every Port and Beggars of Life), "Brooks in Berlin" (Pandora's Box and Interview with Louise Brooks - a NYC premiere), and "Brooks Exotica" (Interview with Louise Brooks - reprise showing, Windy Riley in Hollywood, and Overland Stage Raiders). Unfortunately, The Street of Forgotten Men was not shown, as it NOT in circulation then.

Richard also sent a short note, which I will also share with everyone. I hope Richard won't mind. He wrote, "Found this in my archive from 1982. When I sent this to Louise she wrote me to send any info on Windy Riley ASAP, to her editor, because she didn't remember a thing about the picture."

 

 

 This blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society (www.pandorasbox.com). Original contents copyright © 2022. Further use prohibited, especially by shithead blog aggregators who have ripped off this blog in the past. How pathetic.