In Memorium: Jean-Luc Godard, French cinema legend

The French-Swiss director Jean-Luc Godard -- a key figure in the Nouvelle Vague (New Wave), the film making movement that revolutionized cinema in the late 1950s and 60s -- has died aged 91. Tributes are pouring in from all around the world. HERE is the New York Times obituary

There is so much one can say about Godard, a truly great filmmaker. Let me add this. In his 1989 biography, Barry Paris wrote of the New Wave obsession with Louise Brooks, noting "Jean-Luc Godard paid tribute through his actress wife Anna Karina, whose impulsive character in Une Femme est une Femme (1961) and again in Vivre sa Vie the next year was modeled on Louise." Here is a bit of video which makes that very point.

Rest in Peace, Jean-Luc Godard (1930-1922). This blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society (www.pandorasbox.com). Original contents copyright © 2022. Further use prohibited. And for good measure.....

 

Louise Brooks, the still silent muse

Louise Brooks is having a moment.... Just recently, the New Yorker magazine reprinted Kenneth Tynan's 1979 profile of the actress, "Louise Brooks Tells All," in its August 29, 2022 issue. That recent issue celebrated great magazine profiles from the past. Tynan's rightly celebrated piece certainly fits the bill. (Also included in the August 29th  issue was a piece by Hilton Als, who profiled Missy Eliot. Als, I should note, wrote about Brooks in his 2013 book, White Girls.)

Louise Brooks is also included in the most recent issue of FICTION magazine, a literary journal issued by the City College of New York. Issue number 65 includes an excerpt from Jerome Charyn's new novel, Lulu in Love. I have read the entire work manuscript, and am looking forward to the day when it is published. In the meantime, Charyn's new piece is, as of now, only available in print.

Adjunct to Charyn's piece, I was asked to write a piece noting some of the other instances in which Louise Brooks shows up in fiction, the genre, not the journal. I contributed "Louise Brooks: Silent Muse," which can be read online. It explores how Charyn, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Willem Frederik Hermans, Ali Smith and other authors have employed the actress in their fiction. I hope everyone takes a few minutes to read my piece. And while you are at it, because I know you will want to, be sure and read Tynan's and Charyn's pieces, if you haven't already done so. Be included in the smart set.

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

A bit about Queen Elizabeth II and Louise Brooks

One might not think so, but there is a connection, albeit a small one, between the silent film star Louise Brooks and the late Queen Elizabeth II of England.

Brooks lived and worked in London, England in late 1924. (Brooks worked as a dancer at the Cafe de Paris in London, and lived nearby at 49 Pall Mall.) At the time, the reigning English monarch was King George V, the grandfather of the future Elizabeth II, who was born not long after in April 1926.

Flash forward 33 years. In 1957, the young Queen Elizabeth visited the United States. Her visit, which took place in October, was televised nationally and received a good deal of coverage. It was an event in which Louise Brooks, who was then living in Rochester, New York, took an interest. Enough so, she recorded the fact in her notebooks that she watched Elizabeth's arrival and visit on television. When Elizabeth visited the United States again in June 1959,  Brooks again took note of the occasion, and again recorded the fact that she watched coverage of the visit on TV.

Why was Louise Brooks interested in Queen Elizabeth? I can't say for sure, but I would suggest Brooks' interest was not political or royalist, but rather feminist in nature. The role of women in Western society has changing in the late 1950's, and Brooks likely wanted to see how Elizabeth carried herself, how she was treated by others, and how others spoke about her.

Having read many of Brooks' letters, notebooks, and her published and unpublished writings, I think Brooks' interest stemmed from her interest in the way prominent women - especially celebrities - existed in the world. Queen Elizabeth, then still in her twenties, was certainly prominent, and powerful. She was somebody people talked about, and had opinions about. She was like Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor, two other celebrities of the time, whom Brooks was also (and surprisingly?) interested in. How did they carry themselves? How were they treated?

Here is a bit of video, from a British source, of the late Queen's visit to the United States in 1957. It is, perhaps, similar to the coverage she would have seen on television, likely on local channel 10 (see newspaper advertisement below, where coverage of the Royal Ball preempted late night programming).

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

Overland Stage Raiders to be shown at the Cherryvale Historical Museum

Louise Brooks last film, Overland Stage Raiders (1938), will be shown on September 3 at the Cherryvale Historical Museum, 215 E. Fourth St., in Cherryvale, Kansas. The a 55-minute western, which stars John Wayne and the Three Mesquiteers, will be shown on the lawn outside the museum beginning at about 7:45 p.m. 

Update on The Street of Forgotten Men: From Story to Screen and Beyond

I have been hard at work on my new book about Louise Brooks' first film, The Street of Forgotten Man: From Story to Screen and Beyond. So far, I have 259 pages completed, which includes some 56,000 words and dozens of images, many rare. I figure the book will come in under 300 pages; the finish line is well in sight. I also have a draft of the cover, which I hope to share at a later date. It is pretty nifty.

I think this new book will be akin to two of my earlier books, Beggars of Life: A Companion to the 1928 Film, and Now We're in the Air: A Companion to the Once "Lost" Film -- though far more substantial. 

I am currently working on the chapter which surveys the film's critical reception in the United States. While doing so, I have run across a few rather unusual newspaper advertisements promoting a showing of The Street of Forgotten Men. Here they are.

The two-day run of The Street of Forgotten Men was extended a day when management of the Empress theater in Owensboro, Kentucky learned Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush wouldn’t arrive in time, having been mis-shipped from St. Louis. 

Imagine being able to attend a showing of The Street of Forgotten Men where two of the film's main stars, Mary Brian and Neil Hamilton (later Commissioner Gordon in the original Batman TV series) make a personal appearance before a screening of the film at the American theater in Oakland, California. Had I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1925, I would have been there in a heartbeat!

I would be willing to bet that this striking ad drew the attention of moviegoers, a few of whom might have wondered if the T-Rex was attacking London's street of forgotten men ! Or maybe not. 

Nevertheless, these are just a few of the many rather cool newspaper advertisements which are featured in The Street of Forgotten Man: From Story to Screen and Beyond. There are others, however, which are a bit more unusual. More on that later.... I will post a few more bits and pieces from the book in the coming months, including an intriguing new discovery regarding the film. Stay tuned.

Lastly, check out this 1926 page from the Rock Island Argus, from Illinois. The Street of Forgotten Men is showing at the Majestic (see the smaller advertisement to the lower left). And so is another Louise Brooks' film, The Show Off, at not one but two theaters!

 

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

Neil Gaiman and Louise Brooks, and Kathy Acker too

With Netflix's new production of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman receiving so much publicity of late, I thought I would write a post recounting just some of the many and various connections between Neil Gaiman and Louise Brooks. Here are a few.... 

As readers of this blog may know, Neil Gaiman is well aware of the actress and may be described as a bit of a fan. He has mentioned Brooks on his blog, in tweets, and in interviews, and she also receives shout-outs in his graphic novels and works of fiction. As a matter of fact, in a 1999 interview, Gaiman was asked which actors, specifically which dead actors, he might like to cast in film adaptions of his works. He answered, "Oh, that's fun. If I could cast it with all dead actors, I'd have Peter Sellars playing... an awful lot of the parts! [laughs] Hm... Oh, that's a nice one. I dunno, that really moves into dream casting. You could get the young Brigitte Bardot playing Door, and Alec Guiness playing anybody Peter Sellars isn't. The young Alec Guiness, not an Obi-Wan Kenobi. And maybe Louise Brooks playing Hunter. Or anything, really, I don't mind what Louise Brooks plays; if all she wanted to do was hang around the set and make tea, I'd be there!" 

In a 2003 interview, Gaiman was asked " If you could pick your neighbors (living, dead, real or fictional), who would live to your right, to your left, across from you and below you?" He answered, ".... Underneath ... just random, unpredictable dead people. It'd be fun to go down into the cellar and talk with them. Cleopatra and Dracula and Louise Brooks and the rest ...."

One well known character in The Sandman is named "Death." Originally, Gaiman considered having Death look like Louise Brooks "with a sort of short, black bob, and much more stylish," according to illustrator Mike Dringenberg. Because of her striking Lulu-like look, there has been speculation that she is in fact based on Brooks. But that is not quite true, almost. Regarding the character, Neil Gaiman once wrote, "Mike Dringenberg was at that time the inker of SANDMAN (Sam Keith was penciling). He read my description of Death in the original SANDMAN outline and decided that she should look less like a young Nico or Louise Brooks (as I had suggested) and more like his friend Cinnamon. Mike did a drawing of her - the same drawing that appeared as a pinup in SANDMAN, and later as a T-shirt and a watch face." (Spoiler alert, the character named Death no longer resembles LB.)

Brooks gets a shout out in Gaiman's Smoke and Mirrors ("She was, from the photographs, not a contemporary beauty. She lacked the transcendence of a Louise Brooks, the sex appeal of a Marilyn Monroe....") And, Brooks is referenced in Gaiman's most celebrated novel, American Gods, which was also turned into a popular TV series. In American Gods, the character named Czernobog, an ancient Slavic god, is visiting Cherryvale, Kansas - Brooks' birthplace, and that is where he refers to Louise Brooks as "the greatest movie star of all time. She was the greatest there ever was."

I have had the pleasure of meeting Neil Gaiman on a few occasions, and even  produced a couple of events with the author, where I had the honor of introducing him. He is a good guy.

Gaiman has great fans - and his events were some of my favorites of the many I put on. Below is a picture - from long ago and far away - of me and my wife and author Neil Gaiman. Some may recognize the t-shirt I am wearing.

On some of the occasions when I had the opportunity to speak with Gaiman, we chatted a bit about Louise Brooks. At that is when he autographed the cover of one of his graphic novels, The Books of Magic, which I believe contains a character inspired, at least in part, by Brooks.... Gaiman signed the cover, "For Thomas in memoriam Lulu..."

Back in 2010, when I was writing for examiner.com, I penned a piece titled “Louise Brooks’ private journals to be revealed.” It was about the unsealing of Brooks' notebooks 25 years after her passing. Remarkably, my piece was tweeted about by the Pulitzer Prize winning film critic Roger Ebert, and writer Neil Gaiman!

 That's not the only time Gaiman has tweeted about Brooks. In 2021, he stated....

There are other connections and cross-references between Neil Gaiman and Louise Brooks, but these were the one's that I could come-up with easily without digging too deeply through my files - both digital and paper. But one last connection.... Notably, Neil Gaiman's bestselling novel, American Gods, is dedicated to Kathy Acker (1947-1997), the novelist and literary provocateur. She also happened to be a customer at the bookstore where I worked. I produced a couple of events with her, as well, and once went out drinking with her. She was pretty cool, especially when she would pull up out front of the store on her motorcycle all clad in leather.

Sometime before her death, I had a chance to ask Acker about one of her least known texts, Lulu Unchained. Acker was well regarded as an experimental novelist, and some of her best known works like Great Expectations (1983) and Don Quixote: Which Was a Dream (1986), riff on earlier literary texts. That's the case with Lulu Unchained, which riffs off of Frank Wedekind's Lulu plays and Alban Berg's later opera. Acker told me Lulu Unchained was partly an homage to Louise Brooks and her role as Lulu in Pandora’s Box. I wonder if Neil Gaiman was at it staging at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in July 1985.

That was long ago and far away.

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