As with other Hollywood and non-Hollywood stars, Louise Brooks’ image could be found on a number of commercial products. In the 1920s and 1930s, these products included printed items such as postcards, trading cards, and what are colloquially known as cigarette cards. The most familiar, of course, are postcards. They require a postage stamp to be sent through the mail, typically had an image on the front and space for a message on the back, and measure approximately 4 x 6 inches (or 10.2 x 15.2 cm). Trading or product cards were, as a rule, smaller in size, and were usually inserted into the packaging of a variety of items such as bread, cookies, candy (chocolate and gum), sugar, flour, and tobacco. The cards known as cigarette cards are considered a subset of trading cards, but differ in that they were inserted into just one type of product, namely packs of cigarettes.
Essentially, trading cards were novelty items inserted into product packaging as an inducement to purchase… as in buy our product and “collect them all”. Though such cards were considered disposable and sometimes poorly printed, others were finely printed, attractive, and collected by film buffs or fans of the actor or actress they depicted. Some card publishers, whose series ran into the dozens or hundreds, even issued albums as a further inducement to collectors. Along with cards, albums also survive.
This page on the Louise Brooks Society archive brings together a representative selection of vintage cards from Austria. All but one of these cards was issue by Iris Verlag, a publisher of high quality postcards. Most all of the Iris film star cards were photographic images printed in sepia monotone, though a small number were issued with color tinting which was applied by hand after the monotone cards were printed. (Colored cards are so indicated.) Additionally, most all of the cards state a four digit series number on the front, as well as “Iris”-Verlag in the lower right corner and the card number in the lower left corner of the image or the card. Most of the Brooks’ cards carried either the Paramount Film studio name or the Paramount studio logo in the lower right of the photograph.
The first card shown is an Austrian product card, series III, number 237, distributed with Samum cigarettes. It dates from 1932. The card depicts Louise Brooks dressed as Thymian, the character she played three years earlier in the 1929 German film, Diary of a Lost Girl. The phrase “Die Schönheit im Wandel der Zeiten” notes Brooks’ beauty through the ages. If you know additional information about any of these cards, or possess other cards and would like to share a scan of your vintage treasure, please CONTACT the Louise Brooks Society. Thanks so much for your interest.
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| trading card, Austria Samum Serie III #237 |
postcard back, Austria Iris Verlag |
postcard, Austria Iris Verlag #471 |
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| postcard, Austria Iris Verlag #5132 |
postcard, Austria Iris Verlag #5132 (color) |
postcard, Austria Iris Verlag #5456 |
postcard, Austria Iris Verlag #5456 (color) |
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| postcard, Austria Iris Verlag #5132 |
postcard, Austria Iris Verlag #5756 |
postcard, Austria Iris Verlag #5838 |
postcard, Austria Iris Verlag #5948 |