splash  A Social Celebrity is a romantic comedy about a small town barber who follows his heart and heads to the big city where he hopes to join high society. Louise Brooks plays the barber’s love interest, a small town manicurist who also heads to the big city to become a dancer. The film is the third in which Brooks appeared, the second for which she received a screen credit, and the first in which she had a starring role.

The film was originally set to star Greta Nissen, a Norwegian-born dancer. When she quit the film early in its production, Brooks’ part was rewritten and she took on the role of the female lead. It was a huge break for the 19 year old Brooks and a turning point in her career, as the barber, played by Adolphe Menjou, was one of the biggest stars of the time. In reviewing the film, many critics took special note of Brooks, and thereafter she was regarded as a rising star and someone to watch.

The critic for Exhibitor’s Herald noticed the actress. “Louise Brooks is the third person in the cast. This odd young person who worked with Ford Sterling in that screaming interlude of The American Venus is a positive quantity. She may become a sensational success or a sensational flop, but she is not the kind of player who simply goes along. She’s a manicure girl in this one, later a night club dancer, and she’s unfailingly colorful. I have a personal wager with another member of the staff that she goes up instead of down, both of us agreeing that she’s a moving personality but differing as to direction.” Mae Tinee of the Chicago Tribune also noticed the actress, “Louise Brooks, who plays the small town sweetheart who want to make a peacock out of her razor-bill, is a delightful young person with a lovely, direct gaze, an engaging seriousness, and a sudden, flashing smile that is disarming and winsome. A slim and lissome child, with personality and talent.”

The critic for the Boston Evening Transcript echoed those comments. “In this instance the manicure is no less provocative a morsel than Miss Louise Brooks, remembered for her bit in that specious puff-pastry, The American Venus. Miss Brooks has anything but a rewarding task in A Social Celebrity. Yet it would be ungracious not to comment on the fetching qualities of her screen presence. She affects a straight-line bang across the forehead with distressingly piquant cow-licks over either ear. Her eyes are quick, dark, lustrous. Her nose and mouth share a suspicion of gaminerie. Her gestures are deft and alert — perhaps still a shade self-conscious. In body she is more supple than facial play and her genuflectory exertions in the Charleston might well repay the careful study of amateurs in that delicate exercise.”

A Social Celebrity received many positive reviews, though a few critics thought it too similar to Menjou’s earlier efforts. At it’s New York City premiere, the film proved popular at the 2000 seat Rivoli theater, where it brought it nearly $30,000 during its one week run. (This was at a time when most tickets would have been priced at less than a dollar.) The film critic for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle reported the line for tickets “began at the ticket office and extended to a spot somewhere in the middle of 7th Ave. and 49th St.”

STORY SYNOPSIS:
“Max Haber, a small town barber, is the pride of his father, Johann, who owns an antiquated barbershop. Max adores Kitty Laverne, the manicurist, who loves him but aspires to be a dancer and leaves for New York, hoping that he will follow in pursuit of better things. Mrs. Jackson-Greer, a New York society matron, has occasion to note Max fashioning the hair of a town girl and induces him to come to New York and pose as a French count. There he meets April, Mrs. King’s niece, and loses his heart to her, as well as to Kitty, now a showgirl. At the theater where Kitty is appearing Max is the best-dressed man in April’s party, but later at a nightclub Kitty exposes him, and he is deserted by his society friends. Disillusioned, Max returns home at the request of his father. Kitty follows, realizing that he needs her.”

RELATED MATERIAL:    

  • Promotional Material
  • Posters & Lobby Cards
  • Scene Stills

DATABASE LINKS:

PREVIOUS Louise Brooks Film

NEXT Louise Brooks Film

PRODUCTION HISTORY:
Filming began on December 21, 1925 and continued through the third week of January, 1926. The film was shot at Paramount’s Astoria Studios on Long Island (located at 3412 36th Street in the Astoria neighborhood in Queens). Location shooting was done elsewhere on Long Island (in the village of Huntington) as well as in Manhattan, including in Central Park, at the Plaza Hotel on 5th Avenue, and at the Park Lane Hotel on Park Avenue.

CAST
Adolphe Menjou
 Max Haber (aka Count Havare de Maxin)
Louise Brooks
 Kitty Laverne
Eleanor Lawson
 April King
Roger Davis
 Tenny (Ten Eyck Stuyvesant)
Hugh Huntley
 Forrest Abbott
Chester Conklin
 Johann Haber (Max’s father)
Freeman Wood
 Gifford Jones
Josephine Drake
 Mrs. Jackson-Greer
Ida Waterman
 Mrs. Winifred King
Fred Graff
 A barber (uncredited)
Agnes Griffith
 Part of group at supper club (uncredited)
Background dancers
 Sixteen girls culled from the chorus of Captain Jinks
CREDITS
Studio:
 Famous Players-Lasky Corporation
Presenter:
 Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky
Producer:
 William LeBaron
Editor-in-Chief:
 E. Lloyd Sheldon
Director:
 Malcolm St. Clair
Assistant Director:
 Fred Fleck
Cutter & Script Clerk:
 Eddie Adams
Other Contributors:
 Luther Reed & Ralph Block
Writing Credits:
 Monte M. Katterjohn (screen story), Pierre Collings (scenario), Robert Benchley (titles)
Format:
 Silent – black & white
Cinematography:
 Lee Garmes
Running Time:
 6 reels (6,025 feet), reported as 70 to 86 minutes – elsewhere, Austria: 2010 meters, or 6594 feet, in 6 acts. Italy: 1841 meters, or 6040 feet. Spain: 1836 meters. United Kingdom: 5,926 feet.
Copyright:
 March 31, 1926 by Famous Players-Lasky Corporation (LP22559)
Release Date:
 March 29, 1926
NYC Premiere:
 April 18, 1926 (Rivoli theater, NYC); prior screenings took place in Hartford, Connecticut and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Country of Origin:
 United States


ALTERNATE TITLES:
Under its American title, documented screenings of the film took place in Australia (including Tasmania), Bermuda, British Malaysia (Singapore), Canada, China, Hong Kong, Ireland, Jamaica, Japan, New Zealand, Panama, Papua New Guinea, South Africa, Trinidad, and the United Kingdom (England, Isle of Man, Northern Ireland,  Scotland, and Wales). The film was also promoted under the title The Social Celebrity (China & India), and A Sociál Celebrity (Czechoslovakia). In the United States, the film was reviewed as Una Celebridad Social (Spanish-language press).

Elsewhere, A Social Celebrity was shown under the title Au suivant de ces messieurs (Algeria); Figaro en sociedad (Argentina); Der Bubikopfkünstler (Austria); Au suivant de ces Messieurs (Belgium, French) and Aan de Volgende Dezer Heeren (Belgium, Dutch); Desfrutando a alta sociedade (Brazil); Figaro en sociedad (Chile); Un Figaro de Sociedad (Cuba); Sociální osobnost (Czechoslovakia); I laante fjer and Storfyrstinden og hendes kammertjener (Denmark); Au suivant de ces messieurs (Egypt); Parturi frakissa and Frakkipukuinen parturi and Barberaren i frack  (Finland); Au suivant de ces messieurs (France); A Szalon Figáró (Hungary); Un barbiere di qualità (Italy); 三日伯爵 (Japan); Der Liebling der Gesellschaft (Latvia); Der Schaum-Cavalier (Luxembourg); Figaro en sociedad (Mexico); De Dameskapper (Netherlands); Shingle-eksperten (Norway); Disfrutando a Alta Societade (Portugal); Figaro en sociedad (Spain); En Sparv i tranedans (Sweden); Au suivant de ces messieurs (Switzerland); and Au suivant de ces messieurs (French Indochina / present day Vietnam).

STATUS:
The film is lost. According to the Barry Paris biography, Brooks reported seeing the film at the Eastman House in 1957. Lotte Eisner also stated she saw the film, in Paris in 1958, at the Cinémathèque Française. The latter copy was destroyed in a disastrous vault fire in 1959. The Eastman House copy has since deteriorated. [An individual named F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre, whose claims could not be verified and were often thought suspect by film historians, stated he had seen a deteriorated nitrate print of A Social Celebrity (owned by a private European collector) in the 1990s. MacIntyre died in 2010, and so have claims that the film has survived.]

RELATED DOCUMENTS, PROGRAM NOTES, etc…:
— Press Sheet (Paramount, 1926)

TRIVIA: about the film

— A Social Celebrity was director Malcom St. Clair’s third teaming with Adolphe Menjou. Their previous two films, Are Parents People? (1925) and The Grand Duchess and the Waiter (1926), were similarly well-received light comedies.

–The film’s working title, promoted in trade journals, was I’ll See You Tonight.

— Early on, Paramount promised the up-and-coming Nissen equal billing with Menjou in A Social Celebrity. However, “The temperamental Greta insisted on arriving at the studio one hour late every day,” according to the Brooklyn Norgesposten. Menjou, a major star, was forced to wait for the young actress and complained to director St. Clair. Soon enough, Nissen quit and returned to Broadway to resume her career as a dancer. (The friction caused by Nissen’s departure didn’t seem to spoil a budding romance between the dancer and director — at least not in the short-term. The Brooklyn Norgesposten reported that the couple were frequenting New York’s artists’ clubs. And in early May a Broadway gossip columnist hinted that Nissen might wed the Paramount director.)

— In later years, legendary cameraman Lee Garmes worked with directors Howard Hawks, Max Ophüls, Josef von Sternberg, King Vidor, Alfred Hitchcock, and Nicholas Ray. Under George Cukor’s direction, he shot the first half of Gone with the Wind. Many consider the famous railroad yard sequence among his finest cinematic efforts.

— Early scenes set in Delphi, Indiana were actually shot on Long Island in the village of Huntington. The exterior of Spontowiz’s Barber Shop on Main Street, the local trolley line — the Huntington Traction Company, and other aspects of the historic Long Island community were featured in the film. (According to press reports from the time, the film’s director and star spent the better part of two weeks touring Long Island looking for a stand-in for Delphi.)

— To lend verisimilitude, Fred Graff, hairdresser and barber-in-chief at the Paramount Long Island studios, was cast in the film. He can be seen “manipulating the sheers” in scenes shot at the Terminal Barber Shop (located at Broadway and Forty-second Street) in Manhattan.

— Also appearing in a bit part was Agnes Griffith, who won a contest sponsored by Famous Players Lasky and the New York Daily News. This was the first film role for Griffith, a diminutive brunette with a short bob. She later appeared in New York (1927).

— Among the other programs on the bill with A Social Celebrity at the Rivoli in New York City was a DeForest Phonofilm featuring the act Eva Puck and Sammy White (click to watch). This sound short had premiered at the Rivoli three years earlier.

— While A Social Celebrity was playing at the Rivoli, Menjou appeared on WGBS, the Gimbel Brothers radio station in NYC. According to newspaper reports, Menjou spoke about the film and the scenes shot locally on Long Island. (If he were to have mentioned his co-star, this broadcast would likely mark the first time Brooks name was mentioned on the radio.)