San Francisco Silent Film Festival Day of Silents Announced

The San Francisco Silent Film Festival has announced its annual A Day of Silents event for Saturday, December 3 at San Francisco's Castro Theatre. True to its live-cinema tradition, the SFSFF is presenting six programs all with live musical accompaniment! Tickets and Passes are on sale now. More information, including a full rundown of films, may be found HERE.

 

"Comedy wins the day starting in the morning with KEATON'S MECHANIZED MAYHEM—three brilliant shorts by Buster Keaton—accompanied by pianist Wayne Barker. Following Buster is Ernst Lubitsch's effervescent FORBIDDEN PARADISE with Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra accompanying. The centerpiece show of the evening is King Vidor's Hollywood satire SHOW PEOPLE starring Marion Davies with cameos by Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, and John Gilbert—also accompanied by Mont Alto. But the serious doesn't take a back seat, three riveting dramas fill out the bill. SFSFF's restoration of Musidora's POUR DON CARLOS portrays the civil war in late 19th-century Spain. The Sascha Jacobsen Ensemble will accompany. Cecil B. DeMille's incendiary THE CHEAT—the film that made Sessue Hayakawa a star—will be accompanied by Wayne Barker. And the last show of the evening, THE TOLL OF THE SEA, is a restoration of this earliest-surviving two-color Technicolor film. Anna May Wong in beautiful color! The Sascha Jacobsen Ensemble will accompany."

 

 

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.