Artist Barbara Chase image of Louise Brooks

I rather like this new portrait (Painting - Acrylic On Canvas) of Louise Brooks by artist Barbara Chase, available through FineArtAmerica. Check it out.

New Louise Brooks soundtrack CD from Wurlitza

Wurlitza, a five piece band from South East Cornwall (in the UK), have released a CD featuring their new soundtrack to the 1929 Louise Brooks' film, Diary of a Lost Girl.  I just got my copy in the mail, and here are scans of the recording.

Recorded live at Goodmerry Farm Studios in Cornwall (UK), the CD features 20 tracks from Wurlitza's soundtrack. The recording will be on sale at upcoming performances (see list below), or  can be ordered by post by emailing wurlitza@wurlitza.co.uk. (£8+£2 p+p in the UK). The band accepts PayPal. I encourage Louise Brooks fans everywhere to order a copy.

Saturday 14th March 2015 - Diary of a Lost Girl. A Calstock Arts event at The Old Chapel, Calstock, Cornwall

Sunday 22nd March 2015 - Diary of a Lost Girl. Wadebridge Cinema, Cornwall. 7:30pm. 

You can learn more about the band and their music on their Facebook page, or listen to the soundtrack via Soundcloud. Band members are Dave Stroud - bass guitar; Lizzy Stroud - piano/keyboard, clarinet, vocals; Lil Lanyon - guitar, vocals; Claire Abbott - drums/percussion, vocals.

The Jesus And Mary Chain ♫ Just Like Honey (( Special Louise Brooks ))

The Jesus And Mary Chain sing "Just Like Honey" to imagery of Louise Brooks. I like this video, as I had seen the Jesus And Mary Chain perform in San Francisco in the late 1980s at the old I-Beam on Haight Street.

Today in Toronto, Louise Brooks in Beggars of Life

Tonight in Toronto, Canada, The Revue Cinema will screen the classic 1928 silent film, Beggars of Life, staring Louise Brooks, Wallace Beery and Richard Arlen. Start time is 4:15 pm, according to the Toronto poster case pictured at the left.

Visit the Revue Cinema website for more information.

And, be sure and check out the Revue Cinema Twitter account for a really cool graphic!

Louise Brooks on David Thomson book, Moments that Made the Movies

The great Tim Moore, Louise Brooks fan extraordinaire, spotted this book on the shelf at a local bookstore. Tim wrote:

Seen tonight at bn: "Moments That Made the Movies," David Thomson (2013). 120 years, 300 pages of images ... and who's that, glancing from the top of the spine? Louise Brooks in "Pandora's Box" (1928).

Louise Brooks Pendants

A Louise Brooks fan named Jann White has created a set of Louise Brooks pendants which she sells through her Etsy page, Relica Design. The pendants are 1" images of the actress under glass, set in silver on a silver chain. Pretty neat.

Jann White wrote to the Louise Brooks Society, "I am from Cherryvale, Kansas, having lived only a couple of blocks from where Miss Brooks lived, (and several years apart!), I have had an interest in her for quite some time." Check 'em out.

William Wellman's Beggars of Life with Louise Brooks screens in NYC

The terrific William Wellman directed film, Beggars of Life, starring Louise Brooks, Wallace Beery and Richard Arlen, will be shown at the Film Forum in New York City on Monday, May 4th.  And what's more, William Wellman, Jr (son of director) will introduce his father’s 1928 film. Copies of  Wellman’s new book Wild Bill Wellman: Hollywood Rebel will be on sale at the Film Forum concession, with a book signing to follow the screening. Start time is 7:50 pm.

Who knows the subtle link between Beggars of Life and the film depicted on the cover of William Wellman Jr.'s new book?


Here is the publisher description of Wellman's new book, coming from Pantheon on April 7, 2015: "The extraordinary life−the first—of the legendary, undercelebrated Hollywood director known in his day as "Wild Bill" (and he was!) Wellman, whose 82 movies—many of them iconic, many of them sharp, cold, brutal, others poetic, moving—all of them a lesson in close-up art—ranged from adventure and gangster pictures to comedies, aviation, romance, westerns, and searing social dramas: His pioneering, daring picture-making forever changed Hollywood and the way movies were made.

Now, William Wellman, Jr., drawing on his father's unpublished letters, diaries, notes, and unfinished memoir, gives us the first full portrait of the man—the son, the husband, the father, director, artist.

Wellman directed Hollywood's biggest stars during three decades, including Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck, John Wayne, Lauren Bacall, Clint Eastwood, Robert Mitchum. He made pictures with producers like Darryl Zanuck, Nunnally Johnson, David O. Selznick, Howard Hughes among them . . .

David O. Selznick called him, "One of the motion pictures' greatest craftsmen." Robert Redford described him as, "Feisty, independent, self-taught, and self-made.  He stood his ground and fought his battles for artistic integrity, never wavering, always clear in his film sense . . . He has left a great gift in the annals of film achievement."   

Among Wellman's iconic pictures: the pioneering WWI epic, Wings (winner of the first Academy Award for best picture); Public Enemy (the toughest gangster picture of them all); Nothing Sacred (the classic social screwball comedy satire); the original A Star is Born (Wellman co-wrote and directed it); Beggars of Life; The Call of the Wild; Beau Geste; The High and the Mighty . . . and many more of equal distinction and greatness."

Louise Brooks by Rick Geary

Comix great Rick Geary posted this drawing of Louise Brooks to my Facebook page, and I wanted to share it with everyone. (Geary is actually a distant relation of Brooks.) I for one can hardly wait for his new book, Louise Brooks, Detective (NBM Publishing - June 1, 2015) to be released in a few months.

Here is the publisher description of Louise Brooks, Detective: "A fictional story centered on actress Louise Brooks, this graphic novel by Rick Geary is spun around her actual brief meteoric career as a smoldering film actress who popularized bangs. Geary fantasizes about her coming back to her home town of Wichita where she becomes intrigued by a murder involving a friend, a famous reclusive writer and a shady beau. Not before she gets herself in great danger will she emerge with the solution the police fail to grasp."

Another of Rick Geary's earlier books is of related interest and also well worth checking out. Famous Players: The Mysterious Death of William Desmond Taylor (NBM Publishing) was published in 2009. Check it out.

Cineteca di Bologna announces a multi-year project to restore Buster Keaton works

Big news for fans of Buster Keaton....

After dedicating over a decade to Charlie Chaplin's films and archive, Cineteca di Bologna and l'Immagine Ritrovata have announced they will restore Buster Keaton's silent films. The first restorations will be presented next summer in Bologna during the XXIX edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato Film Festival.

The unforgettable works of another great master of silent cinema will be brought to life again thanks to Cineteca di Bologna and Cohen Film Collection at L'Immagine Ritrovata laboratory in Bologna: after devoting more than a decade to Charles Chaplin, now Buster Keaton's entire silent works will be the focus of a multi-year restoration project which will allow audiences from around the world to rediscover Buster Keaton's genius.

The first restorations of the Keaton Project, launched and promoted by Cineteca di Bologna and Cohen Film Collection, will be presented during next edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato festival (June 27th through July 4th): the 1920 short comedy One Week, which encapsulates perfectly the American collective imagination of prefabricated housing and Sherlock Jr. made in 1924 and listed in by the "Time" as one of the best 100 films ever.

Louise Brooks admired Buster Keaton (a fellow Kansas-native), and wrote about him.