“Ein Wenig Louise Brooks” or “A Little of Louise Brooks” is one of the very first pieces attributed to the actress… However, it was actually authored by Lothar Wolff. (Brooks own copy is annotated “Woofie — translation of his article”.) Though Brooks did not write this piece, she more than likely had a hand in its composition. This “autobiographical sketch” was written sometime during Brooks’ second stay in Germany, while she was filming Tagebuch einer Verlorenen (The Diary of a Lost Girl) with director G. W. Pabst. It was in all likelihood composed in English and translated into German by Wolff, the publicist who was friendly with Brooks, and published in Film Photos Wie Noch Nie by Giessen: Kindt & Bucher Verlag, in 1929. (This title was reprinted in 1979 by Walther Konig, a Cologne publisher.)
The original edition of Film Photos Wie Noch Nie is a softcover, German-language book which features stories and photographs of European and American film stars. The bulk of the book is given over to images of various actors and actresses including Garbo, Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Swanson, and Fairbanks; each are additionally highlighted with a feature article. Notably, Brooks is also featured on the books’ illustrated endpapers, which show Brooks in scenes from the then recently released Pandora’s Box. [ A copy of Film Photos Wie Noch Nie is housed online on the Internet Archive, and may be read or browsed online. ] The English version of “Ein Wenig Louise Brooks” on yellow paper was sent to Brooks by Wolff. On the envelope in which it was sent, Brooks noted “Sept. 1975 Woofie _ translation of his article 1928”.
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Lothar Wolff, who translated Brooks’ autobiographical sketch from English to German, is a significant figure in the story of Louise Brooks. The two had met in Berlin in 1928, when “Woofie” was just nineteen. Though young and inexperienced, he handled publicity for Pabst on Pandora’s Box (and later Diary of a Lost Girl), and succeeded in placing stories and pictures of the actress in publications all across Europe. According to “Reminiscences of an Itinerant Filmmaker,” a 1972 article by Wolff published in the Journal of the University Film Association, Wolff was at least partly responsible for helping Brooks land the role of Lulu in Pandora’s Box. Still just a teen, Wolff had a fan’s crush on Brooks, who he described as “extremely beautiful.” At the time, Wolff was junior employee at Parufamet – the European distributor for Paramount, UFA, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer – who handled publicity materials for the three studios. As he admitted, his job amounted to little more than stamping the backs of images “Please credit …”. One day in 1928, according to Wolff’s account, Pabst visited Parufamet while searching for an actress to play Lulu. When he met the director, Wolff put forward the little-known Brooks. “My boss asked me – since I handled hundreds of stills of American actresses – for suggestions when Pabst came to see him one day. I presented him with stills of my favorite actress. She was an ex-Ziegfeld girl, a Paramount star: Louise Brooks. The search was over. She got the part and I got the job, moonlighting, doing the production publicity.” Wolff and Brooks remained friends, and the two renewed their friendship in the early 1940s when Wolff relocated to New York City, where Brooks was then living.
As mentioned, both the front and rear end papers of Film Photos Wie Noch Nie show scenes from Pandora’s Box. They are reproduced below. Aren’t they cool?
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| Front end paper of Film Photos Wie Noch Nie | Rear end paper of Film Photos Wie Noch Nie |