Wednesday, August 24, 2016

LULU: a live silver screen experience

I saw and loved the original production in 2006, and am thus curious and excited about this production....



Silent Theatre presents a re-imagination of its inaugural production "LULU: a black and white silent play". Step aboard this three prong adventure as a live taping of each production allows audiences to watch the show, participate in immersive components, and consequently, download the filmed version of the experience featuring the audience's participation. Based on Frank Wedekind's Lulu Cycle plays and accompanied by a live band, the story follows a young woman whose aspirations, sexual appetite and lust for intimacy leaves lethal affairs in her wake. Our original production was hailed by the New York Times as "bolder, faster and meaner than any others" with "crisply designed scenes that slip back and forth between erotic and macabre."




Also join them for "LULU: the remix" each Saturday night at 10:30p. Experience the production with a modern twist and Silent Theatre's very own Marvin Quijada as the live DJ. A fierce cast weaves a tale of seduction, unrequited desire and destructive longing.

Opening: Nov. 25th @8p LULU: a live silver screen experience
Run: Nov. 26th @8P LULU: a live silver screen experience
Opening: Nov. 26th @ 10:30p LULU: the remix
Run: Nov. 27th @5p LULU: a live silver screen experience
Run: Dec. 2nd @ 8p LULU: a live silver screen experience
Run: Dec. 3rd @ 8P LULU: a live silver screen experience
Run: Dec. 3rd @ 10:30p LULU: the remix
Run: Dec. 4th @ 5p LULU: a live silver screen experience
Industry Night: Dec. 5th @ 8p LULU: a live silver screen experience
Run: Dec. 9th: @ 8p LULU: a live silver screen experience
Run: Dec. 10th @ 8p LULU: a live silver screen experience
Run: Dec. 10th @ 10:30p LULU: the remix

$20 cabaret table seating
$10 SRO
$50 VIP intimate cocktail table seating with bubbly and giveaways

Vendors, goodies, boozies, live music, dance music, photo booth, flirty staff and all around one of a kind experience.

Saturday, August 20, 2016

Play about Louise Brooks at Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland

The Winter Gift, a play written by Tim Davies and directed by Nerys Rees about the life of Louise Brooks, is being staged at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in Scotland. The play runs August 22 through August 27. Tickets and a little more information HERE.


"Berlin, 1928 – a fun-loving young American actress and a straight-laced German film director come together to make a classic of the silent screen, Pandora’s Box. New York, 1955 – a solitary, alcoholic, penniless and forgotten idol of the silent screen languishes in a slum tenement. She expects visits only from the rent collector. One day, there is a knock at the door – someone has found Louise Brooks, and it isn't the rent collector. The Winter Gift uses original sources to tell the story of Louise Brooks, GW Pabst, Pandora’s Box... and what happened afterwards."

Sunday, August 14, 2016

Louise Brooks’ 1928 Trans-Atlantic Voyage to Europe

This guest post, by past guest blogger Philip Vorwald, offers new details about one of Louise Brooks trans-Atlantic journeys. Philip wrote, "I was investigating the White Star Line for a friend when I thought about her trip to Germany in 1928. On a lark, I plugged a few things in, and found out an interesting error regarding her trip.  She did not sail on the S.S. Majestic."


R.M.S. Majestic

Louise Brooks left New York harbor on October 6, 1928 at midnight, bound for Cherbourg, France. The ship she was sailing on would continue through to Southampton, England, but she would disembark in France for Paris, and then on to Berlin by train to film Pandora’s Box later in the fall of 1928.

Barry Paris’ biography of Louise Brooks states she sailed on the S.S. Majestic. My research into this voyage shows the name of the vessel to be incorrect. She actually sailed for France aboard the R.M.S. Majestic. This is not just a simple moniker name error. They were two completely different ships, operating at two different time periods.

There were two (2) White Star Liners with the name Majestic. The first, known as the S.S. Majestic, ran from 1889 to 1914. It was built by Harland and Wolff Shipyards in Belfast. She was de-commissioned and  scrapped in 1914, 14 years before Louise’s voyage. She couldn’t have been on it.

At the time, the S.S. Majestic was one of the largest and fastest trans-Atlantic liners. By the early 1900s, however, she was getting too old and too slow, so the White Star Line commissioned a new, larger vessel that was to replace the S.S. Majestic, and this vessel was also was built by Harland and Wolff Shipyards in Belfast. This ship was launched as the R.M.S. Titanic.

The second “Majestic” was the R.M.S. Majestic. This ship was originally built in Germany in 1914 and named the S.S. Bismarck. After WWI, the Germans handed the vessel over to the British, who renamed it the R.M.S. Majestic.

The R.M.S. Majestic served with the White Star Line from 1922 to 1934, running a common route from New York to Cherbourg / Southampton. Then she ran with the Cunard White Star Line company from 1934 to 1937. She sank on 1939, and was raised and scrapped in 1943.

Thus, Louise Brooks sailed on the R.M.S. Majestic, of the original White Star Line, in 1928. 


R.M.S. Majestic leaving New York harbor


Friday, August 12, 2016

Now We're in the Navy on DVD

Grapevine Video has released Now We're in the Navy (1926) on DVD, a silent film featuring Wallace Beery, Raymond Hatton, Lorraine Eason, Tom Kennedy, and Chester Conklin. The film is part of a popular series of "service comedies" starring Beery and Hatton. That series also included Behind the Front (1926) and Now We're in the Air (1927), the latter film, now lost, includes Louise Brooks.



Of note, Now We're in the Navy was directed by Brooks' husband of the time, Eddie Sutherland. And, it includes a nod the the director's wife. One of the small boats in the film is named "Louise."

But what's more, Brooks herself was on hand at a benefit pre-release midnight showing of the film at the Rialto Theater in New York City on November 5, 1926. Eddie Sutherland, was also on hand, as was Betty Bronson, Ricardo Cortez, Richard ‘Skeets’ Gallagher, William Powell, Evelyn Brent, and Philip Strange. Helen Morgan sang to the crowd.) The event was a benefit showing in aid of the New York American Christmas and Relief Fund. The film would prove to be a huge hit, and would enjoy extended runs in a other cities.

I haven't yet seen the Grapevine release, so I can't speak to its quality. More information on the Grapevine release can be found HERE.

Monday, August 8, 2016

Portrait of Francis Lederer

Here is a fun, early 1930's American magazine portrait of handsome Francis Lederer, who co-starred with Louise Brooks in the German-made Pandora's Box (1929). Curiously, the piece refers to the Czech born actor as "god's gift to women," the title of a 1931 Brooks' film starring Frank Fay in the title role.




Thursday, August 4, 2016

UPDATED: First Louise Brooks television broadcast

Yesterday, I wrote "Certainly, Overland Stage Raiders was the first film featuring Louise Brooks to be shown either on television or at a drive-in. The earliest television listing I came across for the film was from March 8, 1953 in Hazelton, Pennsylvania as part of "John Wayne Theater." The film then showed two days later in Los Angeles. As far as television goes, 1953 is pretty early."

I was wrong.

Yesterday, I couldn't imagine finding an earlier television broadcast of a film in which Louise Brooks appeared. Until today. . . , when I found that Windy Riley Goes Hollywood was broadcast on TV in 1948, five years before Overland Stage Raiders. Wow, as far as television goes, 1948 is very early. The film was shown under the title Windy Riley Goes to Hollywood on November 18, 1948 on WJZ (Channel 7) in Asbury Park, New Jersey.


I found the above listing while I was researching Windy Riley Goes to Hollywood, under which the 1931 Fatty Arbuckle-directed film was listed a few times in the early 1930s. Most times, exhibitors and advertisers got the title, Windy Riley Goes Hollywood, right. But sometimes they didn't. Here is a screen capture of the film's title. Following it is a 1931 advertisement from East Liverpool, Ohio for the Gloria Swanson film Indiscreet, with which the incorrectly named Windy Riley Goes to Hollywood was paired.




This mistake wasn't a one-off. The East Liverpool advertisement named Windy Riley incorrectly three times in three different advertisements over the course of three days. Others made the same mistake.  So did the Hamilton Evening Journal in Hamilton, Ohio in 1931, and the Rhinelander Daily News in Rhinelander, Wisconsin in 1932, and the Medford Mail Tribune in Medford, Oregon also in 1932. As did the Asbury Park Press television listings in Asbury Park, New Jersey in 1948.

Out of curiosity, I searched for television listings for Louise Brooks' other talkies. I found that God's Gift to Women was shown on TV in Cincinnati in September, 1958, and again in 1959 in Bennington, Vermont and Sandusky, Ohio and elsewhere. It was also shown in Tucson, Arizona in 1960. The earliest television listing I could find for Empty Saddles was in March 1957 in Long Beach, California, and then Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in November, 1957 and June, 1958, followed by St. Louis, Missouri in September, 1959. [Oh, King of Gamblers was shown in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in October 1960 and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Christmas Day in 1960.]

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Louise Brooks at a drive-in and other firsts from the 1950s

I come across a lot of unusual material while researching Louise Brooks. Here are the latest, each related to the 1938 film Overland Stage Raiders, a western from Republic Studios which featured  Brooks alongside John Wayne.

Would you believe that in 1954 Overland Stage Raiders was shown at a drive-in in Carbondale, Illinois? The film was part of a Friday-Saturday triple bill, along with another Wayne film, Lady from Louisiana (1941) and a crime drama called Million Dollar Pursuit (1951). Both films were from Republic. The following day, the drive-in was showing the more recent The Wild One (1953), starring Marlon Brando.

Pictured left is an advertisement for the Waring Auto drive-in near Carbondale. This venue opened in July, 1948 as the Waring Auto Theatre, with space for 500 cars. It was later renamed the Campus Drive-In, after its proximity to Southern Illinois University. During the 1970’s, it played mostly horror and adult movies, before closing towards the end of that decade. The drive-in has since been demolished and a hog farm s(h)its on the site today.

And that's not all....

Overland Stage Raiders was reissued in 1953, and that same year it was shown as part of a double bill alongside Zombies of the Stratosphere in Kokomo, Indiana! The film was also screened on various bills in small towns and large cities across the United States, from Paris, Texas to Detroit, Michigan, from Green Bay, Wisconsin to St. Louis, Missouri.

Zombies of the Stratosphere, for those not familiar, was a 1952 black-and-white Republic Studios serial that was the second to feature Commando Cody. Today, it is best remembered as one of the first screen appearances of a young Leonard Nimoy (Mr. Spock), who plays one of the three Martian invaders.

Overland Stage Raiders was also shown on television numerous times between 1953 and 1959. I found listings from across the United States. It was shown in Los Angeles, California and Phoenix, Arizona and Asbury Park, New Jersey and Rochester, New York (just before Brooks moved there) and elsewhere.

Certainly, Overland Stage Raiders was the first film featuring Louise Brooks to be shown either on television or at a drive-in. The earliest television listing I came across for the film was from March 8, 1953 in Hazelton, Pennslyvania as part of "John Wayne Theater." The film then showed two days later in Los Angeles. As far as television goes, 1953 is pretty early. Pictured below is a June, 1953 advertisement for "Sunday Televiewing" in Los Angeles. KTTV is now known as Fox 11 in Southern California.
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