While Clara Bow was first, and Harlow was undoubtedly the bigger star, Brooks was the uber-flapper. Her legend rests almost entirely on a single movie: Pabst’s Pandora’s Box (1929). Banned by Hitler, blacklisted and marginalised by Hollywood, she remains emblematic of sexual freedom and artistic integrity like no other star, before or since.
YouTube has a curious abundance of music videos which cut together scenes from the movie with this modern pop song or that, the best of which is probably this one, despite the Clan of Xymox soundtrack. The cleanest edit (in terms of picture quality) would be this one, using the Killers’ Mr Brightside, and the video for OMD’s Pandora’s Box, which I had not seen until today, also brought a tear to the eye.
Also notable, an arty edit by mtranquility…
Louise previously blogged here
(thanks to Ironic Sans for the heads up)
[url=http://www.silentmovietheatre.com/]The Silent Movie Theatre[/url] in LA used to run a Louise series every couple years. Besides getting to see the films, one of the great things about it was the reception they held for the audience because a bunch of really good Louise look-alikes would always attend.
Wow.
I’m not sure I should even try to imagine what an event attended by a number of really good Louise Brooks look-alikes might be like.
The acid test for the look-alike would have to be the wonderful asymmetrical (and ambiguous) smile. LB actually doesn’t look that special in the majority of the still pictures I’ve seen, but in motion, especially when she pulled that incredible smile… oh gosh…
I agree. Every time I watch her she makes me ache like she’s just dumped me.
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