A follow up to Louise Brooks and Los Angeles: Getting the facts straight about London and Paris

In the previous post, Louise Brooks and Los Angeles: Getting the facts straight, I pointed out one of a few  factual errors found on the Louise Brooks Wikipedia page.

As I note, the Wikipedia page on the actress states, "Brooks began her entertainment career as a dancer, joining the Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts modern dance company in Los Angeles at the age of 15 in 1922." I pointed out that this statement is INCORRECT. In my post, I point out that Brooks went to New York City (not Los Angeles) to study at and then join Denishawn. History records as much, and Brooks herself said so in Lulu in Hollywood, one the sources incorrectly cited to support the incorrect Wiki statement. 

I am writing this post to point out yet another incorrect statement on the Louise Brooks Wikipedia page. The two sentences which follow the incorrect statement reads: "The company included founders Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, as well as a young Martha Graham. As a member of the globe-trotting troupe, Brooks spent a season abroad in London and in Paris." The first sentence, regarding who else were in the company, is correct. However, the second sentence is NOT. This sentence is supported by a reference to the same piece cited by the previous incorrect sentence, "Just a Prairie Flower," a 1926 Picture-Play article by Malcolm H. Oettinger.

The paragraph in "Just a Prairie Flower" which, apparently, is being cited reads, "One learned that the Brooks career had been given over generously to glob trotting. There had been a season in London at the Kit-Kat, and in Paris at the Casino, as a member of the Ruth St. Denis troupe." All I can say is ... don't believe everything you read, especially in a fan magazine. 

During Brooks' two seasons with Denishawn, the only globe trotting the troupe did was to perform in a few of the bigger cities in Canada, like Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa, Hamilton, Kingston, and London, Ontario. (The Louise Brooks Society website features a short history of Louise Brooks and Denishawn, as well as the complete itineraries of her two seasons with the company.) While Brooks was in Denishawn, the dance company never went to Europe. And there was never a season in London and Paris.

After Brooks left Denishawn, she joined the George White Scandals, a Ziegfeld Follies like review in New York City. She was with them for just a few months when Brooks and her then best friend, Barbara Bennett, decided to take off for Europe. Brooks would spend about three weeks in Paris before heading for London, where a job for her was waiting not at the Kit-Kat club, but at the Cafe de Paris. A detailed account of this European adventure (mostly spent on her own, as Bennett soon returned home) can be found on the Louise Brooks Society website on the page titled, Louise Brooks at the Cafe de Paris in London. It contains some never before seen material, including the only known clipping from a London newspaper mentioning Brooks' appearance at the Cafe de Paris.

(In my research into Brooks' time in Europe at the end of 1924, I have never found that she was employed or worked while in Paris -- likely she had little money and was hanging out in hotel lobbies hoping someone might come along and help her -- which is what happened.)

Why did Malcolm H. Oettinger (a furniture salesman and sometime free-lance writer) state in 1926 that Brooks had spent "a season in London at the Kit-Kat, and in Paris at the Casino, as a member of the Ruth St. Denis troupe." He likely got his facts mixed up, or thought it sounded a bit more glamorous then Brooks' actual account. 

THE LEGAL STUFF: The Louise Brooks Society™ blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society  (www.pandorasbox.com). Original contents copyright © 2024. Further unauthorized use prohibited. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

A French Street Named after Louise Brooks

Is there a resident of Paris or the surrounding area that might be able to take a picture of a local street sign? I would like to get a clear straight on photograph of Impasse Louise Brooks, which is located in Bois-d'Arcy, a commune in the Yvelines department in north-central France. (Bois-d'Arcy is located about an hour, or some 37 kilometers outside Paris.)

Other streets in this subdivision are named after Greta Garbo, Erich von Stroheim, Charlie Chaplin, Orson Welles, Jean Vigo, Joan Crawford, Georges Méliès, Jacques Tati, Fritz Lang and others. Notably, Impasse Louise Brooks intersects with Allèe Marlene Dietrich, and Rue Voltaire.

From what I can tell, Impasse Louise Brooks is actually two dead end streets which meet-up (but don't actually connect, or pass through). And consequently, there are two street different signs at the entrance to each dead end. The images shown here are from Google street view. Unfortunately, part of one street sign is blurred. That is the kind of image I would like to get. 

If anyone can take a few nice photo of the Impasse Louise Brooks street sign, on its pole, and close-up, that would be swunderfull!

The Louise Brooks Society blog is authored by Thomas Gladysz, Director of the Louise Brooks Society. (www.pandorasbox.com). Original contents copyright © 2022. Further unauthorized use prohibited.

Roland Jaccard (1941-2021), French author of Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star

Only recently I became aware of the passing of the French writer and critic Roland Jaccard (1941-2021), who is best known to fans of Louise Brooks as the author / editor of the first ever book about the actress, Louise Brooks : portrait d'une anti-star (1977). That heavily illustrated work, which included pieces by and about the silent film star, was translated into English and published in the United States as Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star (1986). It helped advance the Brooks' revival in the 1980s.

Jaccard was the author of a number of other books, most notably Portrait d’une flapper (2007), which depicts Brooks on the cover, and another, Lou (1982), a fictional autobiography of Lou Andreas Salomé, the German-Russian woman of letters and pioneering psychoanalyst known for her relationships with Friedrich Nietzsche, Rainer Maria Rilke, Sigmund Freud and significantly Frank Wedekind. (There are some, including Jaccard, who have speculated that Wedekind based his Lulu character on Lou Andreas-Salome.)

Besides his writings on film (he also authored a book on John Wayne in 2019), Jaccard was also involved in the making of a few films. Here is his IMDb page. Jaccard was also a novelist, essayist, journalist, publisher and a specialist in psychoanalysis, having published several essays on Freud. Despite his many activities, he was little known in the United States, excepting for Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star, which received a small number of reviews in America in the 1980s.

According to his French Wikipedia page, Jaccard believed in assisted suicide. In 1992, he wrote Manifeste pour une mort douce (Manifesto for a Gentle Death) with Michel Thévoz, the director of the Collection de l'art brut in Lausanne, Switzerland. In Jaccard's last autobiographical book, One never recovers from a happy childhood, released in 2021 a few weeks before his death, he announced that he would commit suicide “after the summer,” declaring old age horrified him. Jaccard died, apparently by his own hand, on September 20, 2021, two days before what would have been his 80th birthday. Notably, both his grandfather and father had also committed suicide around the same time in their lives.

I met Roland Jaccard in Paris back in January 2011. I was in the French capital to give a talk at the Village Voice bookshop (the now defunct English-language bookshop) and to introduce a screening of a Brooks' film at the Action Cinema. Both events were meant to promote my 2010 publication, the "Louise Brooks edition" of Margarete Böhme's The Diary of a Lost Girl. Some 50 plus people turned-out for the bookstore event (a good turn-out considering I am an unknown in Paris), including a few noted devotees of Brooks. Among them was Roland Jaccard. Pictured below is a snapshot from the event. On the left holding my "Louise Brooks edition" of The Diary of a Lost Girl is the French translator of the Barry Paris biography, Aline Weill - I am in the middle, and on the right is Jaccard holding a copy of his Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star.

Not only did Jaccard attend my event, he also agreed to meet for dinner a couple of days later. Jaccard was well known for his love of Japanese food, and we met at one of his favorite Japanese restaurants, where he answered my questions about Brooks. (They were correspondents in the 1970s.) Jaccard also gifted me with a cache of rare Louise Brooks documents - including a vintage postcard, photographs, six handwritten letters, and other material. Eleven years later, I still can't believe his generosity.

During our dinner, the French actress Marie-Josee Croze arrived, and we were introduced. We spoke with her a bit (she knew of Brooks), and I gifted her with one of my mini-Lulu pins, which she immediately put on. It was a lovely evening, the kind that could only happen in Paris. Below is a snapshot of Jaccard chatting with Croze, who can be seen wearing my Lulu pin-back button.

Jaccard also generously autographed three different copies of  Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star which I had carried with me on the airplane in hopes of meeting the author. (Being a completest, I own both the English and French editions of the book.) I also signed a book for Jaccard, which he had bought at the Village Voice bookstore before my event!

For those interested in learning more about Jaccard, here is a link to an article, "Death of essayist and columnist Roland Jaccard" in The Canadian. And here is another piece, “The elegance of Roland Jaccard”, by Frédéric Schiffter, a friend of the writer.

Jaccard's French Wikipedia page has a number of links to other recent articles, including this one by the noted novelist Tahar Ben Jelloun, who was also a contributor to Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star. A small number of videos featuring Jaccard can be found on YouTube, including this, episode #4 of Cinephiles.

Louise Brooks and the Surrealists

"Louise Brooks is the only woman who had the ability to transfigure no matter what film into a masterpiece. The poetry of Louise is the great poetry of rare loves, of magnetism, of tension, of feminine beauty as blinding as ten galaxial suns. She is much more than a myth, she is a magical presence, a real phantom, the magnetism of the cinema." -- Ado Kyrou, author of  Le Surréalisme Au Cinéma (1963)

 It is known that the Surrealists took notice of Louise Brooks. She had the look - a bit transgressive (though they didn't use that word back then), and strikingly beautiful, but in an iconic, modern sense. It's known that Philipe Soupault, the French Surrealist poet, mentioned the actress in his journalism and even reviewed Diary of a Lost Girl. (A couple of images of the actress adorn the poet's collected writings on the cinema, Ecrits de cinema 1918-1931.) 

Kiki of Montparnasse

It's also known that Man Ray was smitten by the actress. His paramour in the 1920s, Kiki of Montparnasse, resembled Brooks. Man Ray first noticed Brooks in Paris in 1929 and 1930, when she was all the rage and her films, Prix de Beaute, Loulou, Diary of a Lost Girl, and Beggars of Life dominated Parisian screens. The photographer and the film star met in Paris in late 1958, when Brooks was being celebrated at the Cinematheque Francaise; at the time, Man Ray recounted how he had seen her image in Paris years before. The artist was fond enough of Brooks that he sent her a small painting in memory of their meeting and in memory of his memory.

The Louise Brooks film that might well have introduced the actress to the Surrealist was likely A Girl in Every Port, which writer Blaise Cendrars called "the first appearance of contemporary cinema". The film debuted in Paris at the Ursulines. The Ursulines theatre opened in 1926 with films by André Breton, Man Ray, Fernand Léger, René Clair and Robert Desnos, and over the years, showed both mainstream and experimental cinema. At one point, the theatre also showed G.W. Pabst's Diary of a Lost Girl, which starred Brooks and also enjoyed a successful run in Paris.

Perhaps Man Ray also saw A Girl in Every Port at the Ursulines when it shared the bill with a short Man Ray film, L'Etoile de Mer, during the months of October, November, and December of 1928. L'Etoile de Mer (The Starfish) was scripted by the surrealist poet Robert Desnos and stars Desnos and Alice Prin. Better known as Kiki de Montparnasse, Prin famously sported Louise Brooks-like bobbed hair and bangs.  

The pairing in Paris of A Girl in Every Port with a Surrealist film was not a one-time thing. Something similar also took place in Barcelona, Spain -- as seen in the advertisement below when A Girl in Every Port (under the Catalonian title Una xicota a cada port) was paired with the Salvador Dali - Luis Bunuel film, Le Chein Ansalou (An Andalusian Dog). Notably, A Girl in Every Port is described as an avant-garde film.

I have written about the Surrealists and Brooks before, but mention it again because I have just today come across another connection - this time to Salvador Dali. If I understand it correctly, the Spanish book, Por qué se ataca a la gioconda? (Ediciones Siruela, 1994), collects Salvador Dali's miscellaneous writings. (The book was reissued by Ediciones Siruela in 2003.) According to the publisher: "From the early years, and especially in the moments of greatest creativity - between 1924 and 1945 -, Dalí worked in parallel in the fields of literature and painting, which together contribute to the creation of a universe of shapes and symbols that he will not leave until the end of his days. The texts collected in this anthology correspond to different times that go from 1927 to 1978; they were published in the French magazine Oui and this edition rescues them in their entirety. The chronological order of the articles makes it easier to follow the evolution of the artist's ideas. His obsessions are his main thematic source: eroticism, death and rot, which articulate a very peculiar universe appearing recurrently throughout his life. . . . In his writings he mixes philosophical ideas with seemingly irrelevant anecdotes and is also concerned with surrealism and some of its problems, such as object, automatism or dream, without neglecting other topics such as photography and cinema." 

Por qué se ataca a la gioconda? contains a piece written in Paris in 1929. It is a surreal piece, touching on factual and the dreamlike. Dali's piece reads in part, "Transcurren dos minutos de intervalo. Sobre la hoja cae un granito de arena que permanece inmovil en el centro di la hoja. Los cinco minutos expiran sin otra modificacion. Rene Clair, el realizador del popular film de vanguardia Entr'acte, ha comenzado a filmar Prix de beaute, con Louise Brooks. Sera una peli cula documental sobre el desnudo de Louise Brooks. Rene Magrite acaba de terminnar un lienzo donde "hay" un personaje que se encuentra a punto de perder la memoria, un grito de pajaro, un armario y un paisaje."

In translation, it reads, "Two minutes apart. A grain of sand falls on the leaf and remains motionless in the center of the leaf. The five minutes expire without further modification. Rene Clair, the director of the popular avant-garde film Entr'acte, has begun filming Prix de beaute, starring Louise Brooks. It will be a documentary film about Louise Brooks' nude. Rene Magrite has just finished a canvas where "there is" a character who is about to lose his memory, a bird's cry, a closet and a landscape."

I will end this post with a chance discovery from a while back of an article about Beggars of Life (as Captaires de Vida) which by chance rests next to an article about Dali (pictured center of page). It comes from a Catalonian newspaper.

I wonder if any of the Surrealists wrote any poems about Louise Brooks? Does anyone know? I know they wrote about Charlie Chaplin.

The Rise & Fall of Max Linder, and a couple of tenuous connections to Louise Brooks

A few months ago I received a copy of The Rise & Fall of Max Linder: The First Cinema Celebrity, a remarkable new biography by Lisa Stein Haven. The book, the first English language study of the life and art of the comedic great, is published by Bear Manor Media. I have been slowly making my way through it, not because it is slow going, but because I am relishing reading it. The Rise & Fall of Max Linder is an immersive biography. Reading it, absorbing its rich detail, learning about the life of someone I admittedly knew only little about made me feel like I was displaced back in time to the beginning of the 20th century. 

Before reading Haven's book, I was only a bit familiar with Linder. I knew that he was French. I had seen a few of his short films, and also knew that he was a comedic actor and had influenced Charlie Chaplin. That's about it - except for a tenuous connection to Louise Brooks, which I mention later. What is remarkable about Haven's book is that it pulls back the curtain on a time and place long ago and reveals a distant world from which this comedic genius sprang. That is revelatory.

Max Linder was born Gabriel Leuvielle in St. Loubes, France in 1883; he started in films with the Pathe Brothers in 1905, making him one of the first film comedians to achieve world-wide renown. In fact, according to Haven, there is evidence that Linder was the first screen celebrity to see his name in print. His comedy timing and gags -- Linder started writing his own scenarios early on -- have been copied and imitated by many of his followers, including Charlie Chaplin. (Upon receiving the news of Linder's death, Chaplin is reported to have closed his studio for a day out of respect.)

Notably as well, his high society characterizations as the dapper "Max" also influenced such actors as Adolphe Menjou and Raymond Griffith. (Louise Brooks played in two films opposite Menjou, A Social Celebrity and Evening Clothes, and appeared in another, God's Gift to Women, which was co-authored by Griffith.)

Just how big was Linder? The universality of silent films brought Linder fame and fortune throughout Europe, making him the highest paid entertainer of the day. By 1910, he had become the most popular film actor in the world, and is thought to be the very first movie star with a significant international following. In Russia, he was voted the most popular film actor, ahead of Asta Nielsen. He also had a Russian impersonator, Zozlov, and a devoted fan in Czar Nicholas II. Another professed fan was British playwright George Bernard Shaw. The first feature film ever made in Bulgaria was a remake of one of Linder's earlier movies. He was offered $12,000 to spend a month in Berlin making public appearances with his film screenings, but declined for health reasons. Later, in 1911 and 1912, he began touring Europe with his films, including Spain, where he entertained thousands of fans, as well as Austria and then Russia, where he was accompanied on piano by a young Dimitri Tiomkin. 

via Lisa Stein Haven

Spoiler alert: Of course, nothing lasts forever, and Linder's story is both a comedy and a tragedy. His meteoric rise to fame beginning in 1907/1908 hit a roadblock in 1914 with the onset of World War I, and was dealt a death blow by his attempts to revive his career in America and Austria (and in a changing world). His marriage to a young wife was ill-fated and ill-timed, leading Linder to take the life of his wife and himself on the night of October 31, 1925. Linder himself died on November 1, 1925 - 76 years ago today, leaving behind a 16-month-old daughter named Maud who would devote her life to restoring his film legacy. 

I mentioned a tenuous connection to Louise Brooks. Actually, there are two. The first is the famed singing Frenchman, Maurice Chevalier, who is best known to devotees of Brooks as the singer who popularized "Louise" (a song not about Brooks, though long associated with her). Along with director Abel Gance, Chevalier was once one in the company of actors employed by Linder.

In his native France, Linder was a superstar, hugely popular to the degree that a movie theater was opened in Paris which bore his name. Of course, it showed more than just Linder films. In fact, it was at the Max Linder Pathe (located at 24 boulevard Poissonnière in Paris) that Brooks' sole French film, Prix de beauté, debuted on May 9, 1930. To open at the 1,200 seat Max Linder Pathe was considered an honor, and Brooks' film rose to the challenge and proved popular. At the time, most films played a few days or a week before moving on. However, as this ad shows, Prix de beauté was a hit, and ran more than "2eme mois" or two months at the Max Linder Pathe.

The Max Linder theater is still open to this day, helping keep the memory of this comedic actor alive. I would encourage anyone interested in early film to check out The Rise & Fall of Max Linder: The First Cinema Celebrity. It is a good read.

 

Lisa Stein Haven is an Professor of English at Ohio University Zanesville, specializing in British and American modernist literature, the Beat poets and silent film comedy, especially the work of Charlie and Syd Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Max Linder. In 2010, she organized and hosted "Charlie in the Heartland: An International Charlie Chaplin Conference" at Zanesville, which was attended by participants from 11 countries outside of the United States.

In summer 2014, Haven was the keynote speaker at Charlot 100, a celebration of the 100th anniversary of Chaplin's Little Tramp persona, held in Bologna, Italy and sponsored by Roy Export S.A.S and the Cineteca di Bologna. She is also a member of the executive board for the Buster Keaton Celebration, held every year in Iola, Kansas. 

Stein's earlier books, which I have read and written about in the past, include another first ever study, Syd Chaplin: A Biography (McFarland, 2010), a book about Chaplin, A Comedian Sees the World (University of Missouri, 2014), and Charlie Chaplin’s Little Tramp in America, 1947–77 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

via Cinema Treasures at http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/16578

A follow-up to Louise Brooks and the mystery of missing time

In my last post, I wrote about two little documented periods in the life of Louise Brooks. One of them was the couple three weeks Brooks spent in Paris, France in the Fall of 1924. She had gone there with Barbara Bennett, and not long after their arrival, Bennett decided to return to the United States. Suddenly on her own, and with little money, the 18 year old Brooks was at loose ends.

According to Brooks, she was sitting in the lobby of the Hotel Edouard VII (39 Av. de l'Opéra) in Paris when Archie Selwyn encountered her. The well connected American producer persuaded her to go with him to London, where he got her a job dancing at the Cafe de Paris in London. According to the International Herald Tribune, Selwyn was reported to be in Paris as of October 14; he was in Paris with his wife and staying at the Hotel Claridge (37 Rue François), working to secure a contract with the Spanish singing star Raquel Meller, who is performing in Paris to great acclaim at the Palace.

So, now we know how Brooks got to London (where she lived at 49A Pall Mall) and how she got a job at the Cafe de Paris (3-4 Coventry St.), at which she began dancing on October 20. On October 21, 1924, Variety reports that Brooks was "cordially received upon opening last night at the Cafe de Paris cabaret," and that Layton & Johnstone have returned to the establishment for an extended engagement.

From January 1925, the first depiction of Louise Brooks in a European publication. As this early portrait doesn't show up in American publications, I am going to assume it was taken in London.

News sometimes travels slow, especially in small-town Kansas. On November 6th, the Burden Times from Burden, Kansas reported that the Cherryvale Republican reports that the Wichita press reports that Brooks was in Paris, France. The Burden paper notes, "Her departure from France was sudden and her parents have not received a letter from her since her arrival in Paris." Unfortunately, the Cherryvale Republican is not available for 1924, and I am not sure it is even extant. Thus, I cannot trace the lineage of the reportage mentioned in the article pictured here.

Louise Brooks and the mystery of missing time

In researching the life and career of Louise Brooks, there are two brief intervals which remain something of a mystery. The first was Brooks' first visit to Paris in 1924. The second were the months following Brooks' marriage to Deering Davis when the couple was traveling and living in the American Southwest. I have wondered where she was exactly, and/or what might she have been doing? 

In compiling a chronology of her day-by-day activities, which can be found at Louise Brooks: Day by Day 1906-1939 and Louise Brooks: Day by Day 1940-1985, I have been frustrated in my attempts to locate any online records (i.e. newspapers articles, etc....) which might shed even a little light on Brooks' activities during these time periods. Until now....

1924 passport photo

On September 18, 1924, Brooks applied for and was given an emergency passport. On September 20, she left the United States aboard the RMS Homeric bound for Europe. The trip took a week. Brooks was traveling with friend Barbara Bennett (of the famous Bennett family), and we know they went to Paris. But we know little else, except that the boat landed in Cherbourg, France on the 27th. 

the RMS Homeric

Here is the clipping from the International Herald Tribune (the European edition of The Chicago Tribune and the New York Daily News), an English-language newspaper located in Paris, which mentions Brooks' arrival. This is the earliest mention of Brooks in an European publication.

Just recently, I came across a brief mention of the trip in the Wichita Eagle. On October 12, 1924, the newspaper reported Brooks is in Paris, France, noting, "Her departure was sudden and her parents have not received a letter from her since her arrival in Paris. She went abroad as a member of a company expecting to appear in the French capital." 

A comment and an observation. First, how did the Wichita Eagle know Brooks was traveling to Europe? My guess is that one of her parents likely told the paper - this being a time when locals traveling abroad or even just visiting the next town over made the news. And if her parents did alert the paper, they likely did so because they were worried about Brooks and had not heard from her; this might have been their way to find out something, anything, via the newspapers of the day. Secondly, Brooks did not travel to Europe with a company of performers, as the Wichita Eagle says. She went on a "vacation" with a wealthy friend. The Wichita paper was likely misinformed, or told something that wasn't exactly true. Perhaps Louise herself told or suggested to her parents that she was traveling to Europe to work, when in fact that wasn't her intention. I wonder what Brooks did in Paris for the couple three week she was there. I have searched the Parisian newspaper of the time, but have never found any mention of the budding performer.

By October 19, 1924, Brooks was in London, England living at 49A Pall Mall. And on October 20, she began dancing at the famous Cafe de Paris nightclub in the heart of the English capital.

= = =  = 

Here is another mystery. Why did Louise Brooks marry Deering Davis, a decidedly unglamorous looking Chicago playboy?

The other brief period of time that is something of a mystery is interval following her more-or-less sudden marriage Davis in October 1933. As Barry Paris writes in his thoroughly researched biography, "The Associated Press reported that, for a honeymoon, the Davies would go by car to a ranch in Tucson, via Colorado Springs. Davis liked the Southwest and wanted to settle there, but it was too close to Kansas for Louise's comfort. Nothing is known of their three months traveling, except that Davis and Louise - with the aid of a Victrola and the odd nightclub here and there - had plenty of time of time to work up their dance act." The underline is mine for emphasis.

What we know is this: on October 10, 1933, Brooks (age 26) married wealthy Chicago playboy Deering Davis (age 36) at City Hall in Chicago, Illinois. The ceremony was read by Judge Francis J. Wilson, and witnessed by Davis' brother and sister-in-law, Dr. and Mrs. Nathan S. Davis III. After a few days, the couple left for a three month honeymoon in Tucson, Arizona, where they were expected to "live on a ranch." The marriage made news across the country. On October 11, the two newspapers in Tucson carry stories reporting Brooks would soon come to reside on a ranch near the Arizona town. I recently came across those two Tuscon clippings. Here is one of them - they are both very similar.

News of the Deering Davis - Louise Brooks wedding ran in newspapers across the country for the next few days. All of these stories, which were mostly captioned photos on the picture page, said pretty much the same thing.

And then that's it until February of 1934, when the couple reemerges in Chicago and perform as dancers on a few occasions. I know they were on their honeymoon, but I have wondered why they otherwise dropped off the radar. Too me, it doesn't make sense. Certainly, a celebrity couple driving around the Southwest would have made the news in local papers in Colorado or Arizona. Did they pass through Kansas? Did they in fact live on a ranch in Tucson, Arizona? I wonder if something else was going on.

If they did live on a ranch, which ranch was it? What kind of ranch was it? Was it a "dude ranch"? Or was the ranch the kind individuals with a drinking problem spent time at in order to dry out or pull themselves together? I think we know Brooks was unhappy at this time in her life. In 1932, she declared bankruptcy, and couldn't get work in films. And the United States was in the grips of the Depression. This stretch of three to four months was about the longest I have found (for the 1920s and 1930s) for Brooks not to have had her name in the papers. There was always something, a mention in a gossip column, an appearance at a restaurant or nightclub or theater. But for three or four months, they was nothing. Who knows? Perhaps Brooks and Davis were just practicing their dance routine.

G. W. Pabst gripes about censorship of his two Louise Brooks films

While looking through Parisian newspapers while working on Around the World with Louise Brooks (my forthcoming two volume transnational look at Brooks' career), I came across a couple of noteworthy interviews with director G. W. Pabst. In one of them (the second piece, shown below), he complained about French censorship of his films, including the two films he made with Louise Brooks. 

The occasion for Pabst's complaint was his visit to Paris in January 1931, which prompted a few Parisian newspapers to profile and interview the Austrian-born director.  The article pictured to the right was published in Comœdia on January 30, 1931.

Why were French journalists interested in Pabst? At this point in his career, there were few directors as esteemed by French critics than Pabst. His silent and early sound films were highly regarded, especially Joyless Street (1925), The Love of Jeanne Ney (1927), Loulou / Pandora's Box (1929), Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), and Westfront 1918 (1930). Despite the high regard in which they were held, French censors still excised so much of Pabst's two Brooks' films that it annoyed both the director and French critics, who complained time and again about the sorry state of each film. (I have run across a number of articles about the two Brooks' films in which newspaper and magazine writers said they were aware each film had been cut.)

In France, Pandora's Box went under the titles Le Boite de Pandore, or Loulou, while The Diary of a Lost Girl went under the title Le Journal d'une Fille perdue and Trois pages d’un journal. The latter was a huge success, showing continuously for more than a month after debuting in Paris. (This was at a time when most films showed for only a week.)

I won't translate the entire article pictured left; it appeared in Le Quotidien on February 6, 1931 and takes the form of a profile, within which are interspersed Pabst's answers to various questions asked by "L.D.", the author of the piece.

The article begins by stating that everyone was pleased that the acclaimed director was in Paris, where he was considering taking on the direction of a French film.

The second to last paragraph is of special interest. In translation, it reads: "I have never been lucky in France with my films. None escaped the censor's chisel. Two of my films: The Diary of a Lost Girl and Pandora's Box (Loulou) have been altered in their fundamental meaning. Even in Germany I was not immune from such severity; thus The Diary of a Lost Girl was cut by nearly three hundred meters, all in small pieces. But at least the meaning of the film remained the same."

The article concludes, "There is no bitterness in Pabst's voice. He is no longer fixed on the past. He stretches his strength and his heart towards the next work which will be a great humane film. Ten minutes later he jumps on the train which brings him back to Berlin."

To me, Pabst's comments are revealing. It had been well more than a year that both of his Brooks's had shown in Paris, and even longer since their German debut. Yet, they were still on his mind, or on the mind of French journalists.

Does anyone know if French censorship records still exist, or or accessible?

 

 

A little more about Erskine Gwynne and the Eskimo

While writing my previous post about Erskine Gwynne, Louise Brooks, and the Eskimo, I was intrigued to learn more about Gwynne, a somewhat obscure figure in history. Despite his accomplishments as an American writer and publisher in early 20th century Paris, there is no Wikipedia page devoted to him. His sister Kiki Preston, née Alice Gwynne, has her own Wikipedia page, but Erskine does not.

Last night, I continued to dig around through various newspaper archives in search of  anything more about Erskine Gwynne. I found a couple of profiles of Gwyyne (shown below), articles about his publication The Boulevadier, including one about the time it was banned as being too "naughty," as well as a 1928 clipping which explicitly states that it was Gwyyne who gave "the Eskimo" (Carl Wijk) his "cold" nickname.

Here, is lieu of a biography of Erskine Gwynne, are a couple of Parisian newspaper articles which sketch his life till then. The first dates from May, 1927 and comes from the Paris edition of the Chicago Tribune. The second dates to February, 1928 and comes from the Paris Times, one of the English-language newspapers in French capitol serving the many Americans and English speaking expats then living there. (When Gwynne died in 1948, the New York Times published a short obitiuary. It can be found HERE.)

Louise Brooks, a Berlin caricature and an historical nexus

Late last year, I ran a short series of blogs highlighting some of the new and unusual material I have come across while researching Louise Brooks' life and career. This was research conducted over the internet during the stay-at-home doldrums of the 2020 pandemic lock-down. My research has continued into 2021, as have stay-at-home orders. Thanks to longtime Louise Brooks Society supporter Tim Moore, I have recently come across a handful of new and unusual items which I wish to share. This second post continues a short series of blogs highlighting such material.

In the early 1930s, a well-connected American (related to the Vanderbilt family) named Erskine Gwynne wrote a column called "The Cavalcade" for the Paris-based European edition of the New York Herald (later known as the International Herald Tribune). It covered things of interest to Americans not only on the continent, but also back in the States. The Paris-born Gwynne, no doubt a man about town, was also the publisher of a monthly magazine titled The Boulevadier, as well as the creator of a famed Jazz Age cocktail also called "The Boulevadier." He was also the author of self-published novel, Paris Pandemonium, a 1936 title whose pre-publication blurbs vowed that the city’s “loosely moraled married women and their gigolos will be faithfully etched,” but was panned for delivering “only rudimentary devilishness.”

Erskine Gwynne

 
What brought Gwynne to my attention was his New York Herald column from September 2, 1933. It mentions Louise Brooks, and "the Eskimo." Gwynne's column begins this way: "BERLIN --- This city certainly has changed. It is difficult for anyone who has been here scores of times, but always on a flying visit, to judge. But every German I see, and invisible ones around me too, whisper "'Don't you think Berlin has changed?' The Nazi uniforms, of course, are there. . . . "

Gwynne's look-around-Berlin column continues. "What I like about the Eden Hotel is that facing it is the aquarium. On its walls are sculpted various kinds of unpleasant monsters, dinosaur, etc., and they are the first thing I see in the morning on getting up. I fear more and more that the day will come when I'll wake up to find them crawling around all over my bed. Then it'll be 'Quick, Watson, the needle'.  There are also funny things on the wall inside the hotel bar. Jimmy, the barman, has a gallery of important customers caricatured. Several years ago one Carl Wijk, better known as the Eskimo, was in Berlin. His face figured prominently in Jimmy's collection with Noel Coward and Louise Brooks. The last two mentioned are still there. The Eskimo has been thawed out."

Of course, the Eden Hotel is known in Louise Brooks lore as the place where the twenty-year old actress stayed for five weeks while filming Pandora's Box in late 1928. Brooks even mentioned the famed hotel in Lulu in Hollywood, writing "Sex was the business of the town. At the Eden Hotel, where I lived, the cafe bar was lined with higher priced trollops. The economy girls walked the street outside...." But wow, I hadn't known there was a caricature of Brooks hanging in the Eden, not to mention still hanging four years after she had made her last film in Germany. I WONDER WHAT THAT CARICATURE LOOKED LIKE, AND WHERE IT IS TODAY?

Brooks arriving at the Eden Hotel in 1928, greeted by a bell-hop wearing a Eden Hotel cap.

What also surprised me was mention of "the Eskimo." In Louise Brooks lore, he is a somewhat mysterious figure, a hanger-on who Brooks met in Paris after making Pandora's Box. He also hung around Brooks while she was making Diary of a Lost Girl, and later, was with her when she returned to Paris between films. In his biography of Brooks, Barry Paris tentatively identifies him thus, "He was half-Swedish and half-English.... His real name appears to have been Karl von Bieck, and he was supposedly an impoverished baron." I wonder, could the Eskimo referenced in Gwynne's column be the same mentioned in the Paris book? They are both associated with the Eden Hotel and Brooks, and their first names are similarly Carl / Karl, though spelled differently.

I haven't been able to learn much about Carl Wijk, except that there was a Baron named Carl Wijk who in July 1931 married Catherine (or "Kitty") Kresge, daughter of S. S. Kresge and heiress to the 5 and 10 cent store fortune. In articles from the time, Carl Wijk is described as both a "naturalized British subject" and as the "eldest son of Lady Reginald Barnes of Devonshire, England." Reportage from the time also suggests that Carl Wijk and Kitty Kresge met through her sister Ruth, who was friends with the famed Jazz Age illustrator Ralph Barton, who killed himself in May of 1931.

Is Carl Wijk the same person as Karl von Bieck? Might their identities have been conflated? I don't know. (In Richard Leacock's filmed interview with Brooks, she identifies the Eskimo simply as Baron Beek, never spelling out the name). Here is a picture of Brooks at Joe Zelli's famous Parisian nightclub. The person sitting close to the right of her might be the Eskimo, as he is a young man and blonde. The man sitting on the far right is Joe Zelli. The man to the far left is unknown.

Brooks at Joe Zelli's in Paris, October 1929

Back to Erskine Gwynne. I don't know that Gwynne and Brooks ever met, but it is possible as both were likely in Paris at the same time. Brooks was a popular figure in Paris in 1929 and 1930 -- both as a personality and a film star; and Gwynne was certainly aware of her in the years before he penned the above mentioned column. (Gwynne seems to have known just about "everybody." His wife was fashionable, and was once photographed by  Hoyningen-Huene for Vogue. Gwynne himself shows up in pictures from the time with likes of Jack Pickford and Marilyn Miller, among others, each of whom also knew Brooks. He also seems to have known Leon Erroll, Brooks' Louie the 14th co-star. And too, Gwynne was the brother of Alice "Kiki" Gwynne, a rich, charismatic beauty and famed American socialite and the alleged mother of a child born out of wedlock to Prince George, Duke of Kent, fourth son of King George V. She also reportedly had affairs with the likes of film star Rudolph Valentino and writer Evelyn Waugh.)

As mentioned earlier, Gwynne was the publisher of a monthly Paris-based magazine titled The Boulevadier, which ran from 1927 to 1932. It is described as a Parisian New Yorker type magazine. In its day, it had a small reputation, and was read on occasion by the likes of Janet Flanner and other American expatriates. According to the New Yorker article referenced below, it "did not leave much of a legacy, other than commissioning a few illustrations by Alexander Calder and—par for the course for vanity magazines run by Americans in Europe—once or twice publishing Hemingway." Nevertheless, I hope to track down copies to see if Louise Brooks was ever mentioned. This vintage advertisement for Gwynne's magazine certainly has the air of liquor about it.

As also mentioned, Gwynne was the creator of a still popular Jazz Age cocktail called "The Boulevadier." If you look it up on the internet, you'll come across a surprising number of references, articles, blogs, and webpages about the drink. In 2019, the New Yorker named it the perfect Thanksgiving cocktail. Did Louise Brooks ever drink one? Who knows. She preferred gin, later in life, and the picture of her celebrating at Zelli's shows her table stocked with champagne. 

The Boulevardier’s origins trace back, at least on paper, to the 1927 book Barflies and Cocktails by Harry McElhone, the raconteur proprietor of Harry’s New York Bar in Paris. Harry's was a celebrated drinking establishment, one favored by socialites and expats including Ernest Hemingway. Here is the way the recipe for the drink as it is given in McElhone's book (which is pictured below). 

The Boulevardier that has come down to us today has remained pretty much the same. It still uses Bourbon, and features an equal parts combination of the whiskey alongside Campari and sweet vermouth. (An alternate recipe can be found at the bottom of the New Yorker article referenced above.)

30ml Bourbon
30ml Campari
30ml sweet vermouth
Orange or lemon twist garnish

Stir the ingredients together over ice, then strain into a coupe glass. Garnish with your choice of an orange or lemon twist, expressing the peel over the glass.

Louise Brooks, Modernism, the Surrealists, and the Paris of 1930

Louise Brooks has long been popular in France, and in Paris in 1930, she must have seemed to have been everywhere. The actress was widely written about and pictured in the French capital's many  newspapers and magazines. I have collected dozens of clippings. Her image, as well, was also seemingly everywhere. There is even a picture, shown below, of Brooks' portrait on display in the window of a Paris photographer's studio. If anyone has a time machine handy, I would like to travel back to Paris and purchase a few prints.

Indeed, Brooks was the toast of Paris while she was in France making Prix de beauté. The press recorded her arrival, and profiled her in numerous pieces.

Prix de beauté was in production between August 29 through September 27, 1929, and debuted at the famous Max-Linder Pathe on May 9, 1930. A major American film star in an important French production was BIG NEWS, not at least due to the fact that Prix de beauté was also one of the earliest French talkies. (Sound and music are important visual motifs in the film, which was shot as both a silent and sound film.)

Prix de beauté was a huge success, and it went on to enjoy three month run in various theaters. After two months at the Max-Linder (and for part of that time also at the historic Lutetia-Pathe to accommodate the crowds), the film moved to the Folies Dramatiques, where it was advertised as an "immense success" and played nearly a month. This extended run was at a time when most films played only a few days or a week before moving on.

Remarkably, the successful run of Prix de beauté took place at a time when another of Brooks' films, the German production Diary of a Lost Girl (Trois Pages D'un Journal), was also playing in the French capital, at the Au Colisee. (It also was shown at the Rialto and Splendide theatres in Paris in 1930.) As was Beggars of Life (Les mendiants de la vie), at the Clichy-Palace in March of the same year. Like today, films being shown were advertised in the newspaper, and on one occasion, the two film's respective  advertisements sat side-by-side.

Diary of a Lost Girl continued to be shown on and off in Paris in 1930. It was even shown at the famous Ursulines theater in November as part of a trippple bill. As shown below, the evening's program begins with G.W. Pabst's Joyless Street, followed by Howard Hawk's A Girl in Every Port, starring Brooks, followed by G.W. Pabst's Diary of a Lost Girl, also starring Brooks.

A Girl in Every Port (which Blaise Cendrars called "the first appearance of contemporary cinema") debuted in France at the Ursulines, "one of the oldest cinemas in Paris to have kept its facade and founder's vision" as a "venue for art and experimental cinema." The Ursulines opened in 1926 with films by André Breton, Man Ray, Fernand Léger, René Clair and Robert Desnos. And in 1928, it premiered the first film of Germaine Dulac, The Seashell and the Clergyman, from a story by Antonin Artaud. The latter film was heckled by the surrealists, leading to a fight that stopped the screening.

Between 1926 and 1957, a number of now-classic films premiered at the theater, such as René Clair's Le Voyage Imaginaire and Erich Von Stroheim’s Greed. According to the wonderful Cinema Treasures website, "This little theatre with a balcony has a very charming facade looking like a romantic country house. At the beginning of talking movies, the premiere of Sternberg’s Blue Angel with Marlene Dietrich took place here, and ran 14 months." In December 1930, Diary of a Lost Girl and Blue Angel even shared the bill.

The Ursulines theatre was a kind of cinematic home to the Surrealists.... Which got me thinking about the affection some of the surrealists had for Brooks. It's known that Philipe Soupault, the great French Surrealist poet, mentioned the actress in his journalism and reviewed Diary of a Lost Girl. (A couple of images of the actress adorn the poet's collected writings on the cinema, Ecrits de cinema 1918-1931.) And it's also known that Man Ray was smitten by the actress. The great photographer and the film star met in Paris in late 1958, and Man Ray recounted how he had seen her image in Paris years before. Man Ray was fond enough of Brooks that he sent her a small painting in memory of their meeting and in memory of his memory.

Perhaps Man Ray also saw one or two of her films. Earlier, in 1928, A Girl in Every Port shared the bill with a short Man Ray film, L'Etoile de Mer, at the Ursulines during the months of October, November, and December. L'Etoile de Mer (The Starfish) was scripted by the surrealist poet Robert Desnos and "stars" Desnos and Alice Prin. Better known as Kiki de Montparnasse, Prin (Man Ray's one-time paramour) famously sported Louise Brooks-like bobbed hair and bangs.

Prix de beauté proved especially popular, and even influential. (A novelization of Prix de beauté was published in 1932. And in 1933, a short story by the French writer Leon Bopp was published which describes a character in love with Louise Brooks.) Similarly, A Girl in Every Port (which was one of the few American films to retain its American title in France) proved popular and was revived time and again in Paris in the 1920's and 1930's. [I wonder which of those showings was the one Jean-Paul Sartre took Simone de Beauvoir to on one of their first dates.] 

Of course, one could also Lee Miller to this piece. Miller, a sometime Surrealist photographer and one-time paramour of Man Ray, is known to have seen Louise Brooks dance on stage in Poughkeepsie, New York long before Brooks became a film star and Miller a Surrealist.... If any scholars of Surrealism can add to the information found on this page, please contact me.

I will close this blog with two collages from 1929, both of which include Brooks. The first is Herbert Bayer's "Facing Profiles." Bayer was associated with the Bauhaus. The second is Edward Burra's "Composition Collage." Burra was a English modernist. Obviously, something was in the air circa 1930.