Louise Brooks Society blog

A new group of pages on the Louise Brooks Society website, Lulu by the Bay, has just been been completed. This new section on the LBS runs 26 pages. As is mentioned on the website, these pages are part of an experiment in local film history. Some years ago, I started work on a book about the films of Louise Brooks which was to be called Lulu by the Bay. It took a different approach. Instead of the usual look at Brooks films and their reception by national magazines and newspapers like Photoplay and the New York Times, I thought to focus my history through the lens of the local. Since then, […]

As a follow-up to yesterday's blog post, I wanted to excerpt and add to something I posted back in 2019 regarding Jonas Mekas, one of the founder's of Anthology Film Archives. For those who may not be aware, Anthology Film Archives is an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video, with a particular focus on independent, experimental, and avant-garde cinema."Opened in 1970 by Jonas Mekas, Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, and Stan Brakhage, Anthology in its original conception was a showcase for the Essential Cinema Repertory collection. An […]

The Anthology Film Archives in New York City is hosting a major retrospective of films by G.W. Pabst which includes not only two masterpieces featuring Louise Brooks, PANDORA'S BOX and DIARY OF A LOST GIRL, but also such classics as WESTFRONT 1918, KAMERADSCHAFT and other works. Anchoring the series is PANDORA'S LEGACY, a 2024 documentary about Pabst by Angela Christlieb, which is making its New York premiere. The series, which is presented in collaboration with the German Film Office, an initiative of the Goethe-Institut and German Films, runs November 22 through December 3. More […]

It's the Old Army Game, with W.C. Fields and Louise Brooks, will be shown at the wonderful Kennington Bioscope in London on Sunday, November 23. More information about this event can be found HERE.Here is what the Kennington Bioscope says about the film: "Though posterity remembers him as a talking comedian, the great W.C. Fields – enemy of small dogs and children everywhere – made some wonderful silent comedies. This 1926 feature follows the trials and tribulations of small-town druggist Elmer Prettywillie (Fields) and boasts some terrific comic set pieces, from his encounters with […]

Pandora's Box, starring Louise Brooks, will be screened November 29th in Northern Ireland as part of the Foyle Film Festival in Derry - Londonderry. This special screening at the Nerve Centre will feature a live musical score by People that Listen to the Sky. More about this event can be found HERE. The Foyle Film Festival is Northern Ireland's longest running film festival. Here is what they say about this event:"One of the masters of early German cinema, G. W. Pabst had an innate talent for discovering actresses (including Greta Garbo). And perhaps none of his female stars shone brighter […]

Happy birthday to Louise Brooks, who was born on this day, November 14th, in Cherryvale, Kansas in 1906.Though I am not sure when, Louise was seemingly born in the very early hours of  November 14th -- which was a Wednesday. I say that because her birth made news on the very day she was born. Small articles about the birth appeared in both of her hometown newspapers on November 14. The first image shown below comes from the Cherryvale Daily Republican. It is followed by another clipping, from the Cherryvale Daily News, which appeared that same day on the newspaper's front page. As most […]

American radio broadcaster and author Richard Lamparski, whose popular series of books, Whatever Happened to ...?, included profiles and interviews with dozens of film personalities, has died. He was 93 years old.Lamparski started an interview radio show on WBAI in March 1965, for which he interviewed old time entertainers including vaudeville performers and silent movie stars. Over the course of his career, Lamparski conducted more than 1,000 interviews. His long-running series of books, Whatever Happened to ...?, devoted to "famous personalities of yesteryear", ran 11 volumes. […]

The City Gone Wild, featuring Louise Brooks, was released on this day in 1927. The film is a terse crime drama -- with gangsters, gangs, and gunfights, in which a criminal lawyer turns prosecutor to avenge the death of a friend. As she did in The Street of Forgotten Men, Louise Brooks plays a moll, this time the deliciously named Snuggles Joy, the “gunman’s honey.” More about the film can be found on the Louise Brooks Society website filmography page.The “gangster film” (as we know it today) more-or-less began with Paramount’s Underworld (1927). Though there were earlier crime […]

Two of Louise Brooks' best films, Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl, will be shown at the Nickel in London on November 11. The Nickel -- a "fully licensed grindhouse cinema, bar and video shop" -- is located in London at 117-119 Clerkenwell Road. More information about this double bill can be found HERE.The two films are being presented by Women and Cocaine. The event descriptions read this way:Diary of a Lost Girl: "Thymian Henning, an innocent young girl, is raped by the clerk of her father’s pharmacy. She becomes pregnant, is rejected by her family, and must fend for herself in a […]