What I'm Reading: Cinematic Memoirs
Periodical Reading Recommendations
Obviously I have not posted a full reading recommendations post since last December, although I did do a post about the John Gilbert biography Dark Star during Summer Under the Stars in August. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been doing any reading though! I actually finished the books for this memoir-centric post before New York Film Festival in September but just have not had the time to write about them until this week. I also plan to do another post in December around a handful of books that I read in preparation for a few movie-related interviews and writing projects I did this year. Once the final project drops in December, I will write a bit about that process. But for now, this post starts out with three silent film memoirs, and ends with one fantastic new memoir from one of my favorite directors.
The first book I read was James Card’s Seductive Cinema: The Art of Silent Film. The copy I own is an ex-library edition from Durango High School which appears to have only been checked out twice — in January and March of 1997. I guess the kids of Durango High were not into Card’s boisterous accounts of how he turned his passion for collecting silent film prints to becoming the founder of the George Eastman film archive, and all the film history he preserved in between. Bless the librarian who tried to get them into it though.
I really love Card’s candid first person account of preserving this history — which included everything from rescuing prints to celebrating the pioneers of early Hollywood who were still alive as he became active in the industry. The book’s intro ends with this bold statement:
An index is provided, but you will look in vain for a section of notes of the sort that try to validate every statement the author makes throughout the text. Have faith. This writer was there.
Indeed, this book is so chock full of interesting anecdotes, apocryphal or not, that I used dozens of sticky notes to mark passages I found interesting or wanted to return to. Of his childhood in Ohio and the movie-going habits of its denizens, Card wrote that “Patrons of these gorgeous establishments did not come to attend the program in casual clothes, eating and drinking during the show was unthinkable. Audiences dressed to watch Pola Negri, Gloria Swanson and Greta Garbo as they would attend a concert of the Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of Nikolai Sokoloff or Arthur Rodzinski.” He went on to share that in the mid-20s he went to see five movies a week in theaters. That sounds like heaven to me.
Along with his own narrative of history, Card also shares the words of some silent film pioneers, like Carl Theodor Dryer, which he quotes as having said:
Nothing in the world can be compared to the human face. It is a land one can never tire of exploring. There is no greater experience in a studio than to witness the expression of a sensitive face under the mysterious power of inspiration. To see it animated from the inside and turning into poetry.
He also shares his opinions on early filmmakers, often criticizing some of those who were the most valued by the established thinking at the time. There is a whole section in the first chapter where he deconstructs the myth that D. W. Griffith represents the best of the era, examines the filmmakers, critics, and academics at the time who perpetuated the idea, and gives examples of filmmakers whose pioneering work in the medium, in his opinion, was far more impressive and innovative. You simply love to see it.
One of my favorite chapters outlines the discovery of nitrate prints at George Eastman House and the journey towards their preservation. Card does not shy away from sharing his disapproval of how MoMA, which was the main East Coast film archive at the time, chose what to preserve in their archive and how the Eastman House collection was looked at as a “reproof of their taste.” It was run by a woman named Iris Barry, and according to Card her assistant at the time called the Eastman House collection an “archive of trivia” and dismissively said Card and Henri Langlois were “not really film historians, but merely film buffs.” Card then writes, “Perhaps he was right, but hundreds of great films that exist today would not be available but for our buffdom.” Among the films Card selected for preservation at Eastman House that was not selected by MoMa were King Vidor’s The Crowd, Josef Von Sternberg’s The Docks of New York, and Cecille B. DeMille’s The Cheat. All three of these filmmakers are then the subjects of their own chapters, along with director Monta Bell.
In his chapter on DeMille, Card gives a detailed account of presenting of The Cheat to the Pacific Film Archive, reprinting then-curator Tom Luddy’s passionate introduction to the screening, which championed its importance in the canon. In his chapter about Josef Von Sternberg, Card shares that the filmmaker became his friend. In the intro of that chapter he writes, “As we become more aware of a friend’s foibles and prejudices, it seems more and more mysterious to see a work of great power or sensitivity or beauty emerge from that mass of contradictions that inevitably make up the multiple layers of a creator’s personality.” In the King Vidor chapter, Card begins by stating, “All the major features directed by D.W. Griffith and all but one from Stroheim are available for viewing and study. Of the silent films made by directors of arguably comparable, perhaps greater stature, too many have been allowed to slop into the limbo of missing films.” In his chapter on Monta Bell, Card discusses the filmmaker as one of the great directors of actresses in the 1920s, molding the persona of actresses like Jeanne Eagels, Greta Garbo, and Norma Shearer early in their Hollywood careers. Since this book was published in 1994, all these filmmakers, except perhaps Bell, have had a resurgence in their popularity, with many more of their silent films becoming available (although it’s shocking how The Crowd still doesn’t have a Blu-ray release). I like Card’s point about the gaps that occur when curation and archival work stems from a bias. If only he had noticed his own bias in terms of female-directed films maybe we’d have gotten further faster with those reassessments, but that’s a topic for another day.
I love the chapters where Card writes extensively about the stars that he loved from the silent era. He devotes many pages to the mystique of Gloria Swanson, the intelligence of Louise Brooks, the tragedy of John Barrymore, and the early career of Norma Shearer. There’s also an entire chapter about the great movie vamps of the silent era like Theda Bera and Pola Negri, and actresses who carried their legacy on into the late era like Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. Card also writes about the films and filmmakers and stars he discovered while curating programs for the Dryden Theatre, including the great Viola Dana. There is also a chapter about the Festival of Film Artists, which was first held at Eastman House in 1955 with the goal of celebrating those pioneers who were still with us, which includes some amazing photographs of the stars who attended. The final chapter of the book begins, “Today the silent film exists surrounded by love — old loves like mine— but best of all, by the fresh loves of people who have chosen silent cinema.” Obviously, I feel that deeply. I don’t know how much of the history in this book should be taken with a grain of salt, but the passion is sincere and it gave me so many more films to either mourn the loss of or add to my never-ending list of extant silent films I need to seek out.
The next book I read was Louise Brooks’ excellent Lulu in Hollywood. Part memoir, part film analysis, the book consists of seven autobiographical essays about her time in Hollywood. The edition I own was published in 1982 and includes an introduction by William Shawn. While the intro sometimes gets a little queasy (I don’t think I ever needed to read the phrase “eloquently erotic,” but since I did you have to as well.), I do like the quote he pulled from French critic Ado Kryou, who wrote:
Louise Brooks is the only woman who had the ability to transfigure no matter what film into a masterpiece. . .Louise is the perfect apparition, the dream woman, the being without whom the cinema would be a poor thing.
While both men are not able to write about Brooks without sounding a bit like hound dogs, Louise’s own writing has the last laugh. Through her essays she dismantles this very kind of objectifying writing about her, reclaiming her own legacy, her own agency, and her own fierce intelligence. The essays outline her life before Hollywood in Kansas and then New York City, offer hidden histories of Hollywood and those within its periphery, and elucidate her own feelings about her screen persona and “Lulu.”
In the chapter about her childhood I love this description of her in relationship to her mother:
As for my own failure as a social creature, my mother did attempt to make me less openly critical of people’s false faces. “Now dear, try to be more popular,” she told me. “Try not to make people so mad!” I would watch my mother, pretty and charming, as she laughed and made people feel clever and pleased with themselves, but I could not act that way. And so I have remained, in cruel pursuit of truth and excellence, an inhuman executioner of the bogus, an abomination to all but those few who have overcome their aversion to truth in order to free whatever is good in them.”
What we learn about Brooks from this chapter forward is of a woman who refused to be “nice,” who refused to dumb herself down, who called out bullshit when she saw it, who, in short, refused to play the game by the rules set out for her. It’s a wonder — and testament to her immense talent — that she was allowed to make any films under a system so deeply afraid of powerful women. After describing her early life in Kansas and how she fell in love with the joy of creativity, she describes her early days in New York City, as well as her friendships with the Bennett sisters: Barbara, Joan, and Constance. These stories will be of interest to anyone who is a fan of that acting clan, and offers an insider’s look into what it was to be a woman and an artist in a field that is often strictly about business.
Another chapter outlines her work with William “Wild Bill” Wellman, whom she calls Billy. Early in the chapter she discusses how between films she would travel, rather than woo producers and directors and writers between gigs, which led to a belief by many that she had a coldness towards the work. Years later, the last time they saw each other, Wellman asked her “Why did you always hate making pictures, Louise?.” To that she writes, “Bewitched by his own success in Hollywood, he could not imagine my hating the place.” She then discusses how for Beggars of Life she had to do a screen test — her first, despite having made several films already — because writer and film supervisor Benjamin Glazer was convinced her forehead was too high to photograph well without bangs, and would thus ruin her disguise as a boy. The rest of the chapter outlines her adventures filming on location, and it’s not hard to see why she wasn’t a big fan of the process.
There is a whole chapter dedicated to her dear friend Pepi Lederer, Marion Davies’ niece, whose life ended tragically in suicide. Like Brooks, Lederer was very clearly cut from a different cloth, and struggled against the path that was laid out for her. It’s a loving tribute to a friend, and shines a light on a dark side street of Hollywood history. In this chapter she also discusses how James Card convinced her to move to Rochester, where she could write about films and have access to study the Eastman House archive. Of this process she writes, “There I found my recovery from the Hollywood disease had been whole imaginary. I still judged all the films I had made while I was a movie actress not on their merits but by their success or failure in the eyes of Hollywood. I immediately set about correcting my vision.” It was at this time that she realized she ought to write about Pepi, not because she was ever a success in Hollywood, but because she was someone whose life mattered regardless.
Another chapter outlines her friendship with Humphrey Bogart, who she had known since 1924. Of him, she writes, “Humphrey Bogart spent the last twenty-one years of his life laboriously converting the established character of a middle-age man from that of a conventional, well-bred theatre actor named Humphrey to one that complimented his film roles — a rebellious tough known as Bogey.” Brooks then sets out to craft an more accurate biography of the actor and examine his dual sides. Her analysis is fascinating to read. Writing about The Roaring Twenties, she says co-star James Cagney “threw him into confusion, splitting him between Bogey and Humphrey. Cagney’s swift dialogue and his swift movements, which had glitter and precision of a meat slicer, were impossible to anticipate or counterattack. Humphrey was at his best working with less inspired and more technical actors, such as Walter Huston.” Throughout this chapter she offers a really intriguing lens with which one can view (or re-view) the ebbs and flows of Bogart’s career.
I’m not the biggest fan of W.C. Fields, but I do love one thing she wrote in her essay about him:
The tragedy of film history is that it is fabricated, falsified, by the very people who make film history. It is understandable that in the early years of film production, when nobody believed there was going to be any film history, most film magazines and book printed trash, aimed only at fulfilling the public’s wish to share a fairy-tale existence with its movie idols. But since about 1950 film has been established as an art, and its history recognized as a serious matter. Yet film celebrities continue to cast themselves as stock types — nice or naughty girls, good or bad boys — whom their chroniclers spray with a shower of anecdotes.
She shares a similarly insightful nugget in her chapter about Garbo and Gish, writing, “Old pictures were bad pictures. Pictures were better than ever. An actor is only as good as his last picture. These three articles of faith were laid down by the producers, and business was conducted in a manner to prove them. As for the public, it was taught to sneer at old pictures.” I think we still see a lot of this same attitude today, unfortunately. It’s the foundation of this business, at least in Hollywood. Today, for the most part, it’s not even about artistic innovation. It’s just newer is better for profit’s sake. Also, even though there will always people who love older things, I’m still not convinced the general public will ever think that way.
The longest chapter in the book is on her professional relationship with G.W. Pabst, who transformed her into the cinematic creature we know as “Lulu.” One piece of her writing here has stuck with me in the months since I read this book and I’ve thought of it while watching several films this year. She writes:
But a truly great director such as G.W. Pabst holds the camera directly on the actors’ eyes in every vital scene. He said, “The audience most see it in the actors’ eyes.” In his 1926 film Secrets of the Soul he sent the actor playing a psychiatrist to take a course in psychoanalysis so he could see it in his eyes. Pabst’s genius lay in getting to the heart of a person, banishing fear, and releasing the clean impact of personality which jolts an audience to life.
We all know about the darker aspects of Hollywood, but it’s something else to read them so clearly from someone who went through the meat-grinder and came back out the other side in one piece. I have always been a fan of Brooks, but in reading her own words, I am in awe of her own sense of self-worth and her ability to expose the rot at the center of the dream. Towards the end of the book she writes “In Hollywood, I was a pretty flibbertigibbet whose charm for the executive department decreased with every increase in her fan mail. In Berlin, I stepped onto the station platform to meet Pabst and became an actress. I would be treated by him with a kind of decency and respect unknown to me in Hollywood.” Imagine what we could have had if Hollywood — and the world, really — didn’t hate women so much?
I followed Brooks’ memoir up with that of Colleen Moore, the original film flapper. Published in 1968, her book is entitled Silent Star: Colleen Moore Talks About Her Time In Hollywood. From the book’s dedication page — to journalist and screenwriter Adela Rogers St. Johns — it was clear Moore’s take on Hollywood was gonna be filled with a lot less spice. Her book begins with a survey of Hollywood in the 1910s. She writes about attending movies in her hometown, crafting scrapbooks of her favorite stars, and thinking, “There was, in fact, from my point of view, only one thing wrong with Hollywood in 1915. I wasn’t there.” Moore was determined to be a star and recalls her journey toward becoming one of 1920s Hollywood’s brightest.
We learn how Moore used family connections to get her first big break, because as the phrase goes it’s not what you know, it’s who know. She writes in a style that really projects the ambitious, creatively hungry young girl she was when she first started in the business. The contrast between her take on the Hollywood machine and Brooks’ is stark, but not surprising given how different their temperaments were as young people and what their goals were as artists. Reading the two books back to back was truly a fascinating experience, because both offer golden nuggets of film history and filmic anecdotes, but are told in such vastly different styles.
Moore was only fifteen when she signed her first Hollywood contract, and writes of her experience, “Hollywood—and for that matter, the moviegoing public, whose wants Hollywood always found it profitable to satisfy—was not overly interested in those days in what real-life fifteen-year-old thought and did.” She then outlines the nuts and bolts, from the perspective of an actors, of the moviemaking business, from make-up and wardrobe, to being on set with directors. As part of the first generation of people who had grown up with the movies, Moore already knew that if she got lucky she could be a star by 18 or 19, but could also very easily be a has-been by twenty-two. Going into the business with such a clear-eyed view allowed Moore less heartache than Brooks, but also, again, her desire was to be a star, not necessarily that intangible excellence that was the aim of Brooks.
I love this quote, which I think still speaks to the power of movies and our semi-unhealthy relationship with them to this day:
People wanted to believe that life as it was shown in the movie was life as it could be for them if only they were pretty enough or brave enough or lucky enough; that they, too, would have adventure, find romance, pursue wealth; that no matter how scary or painful or sad any situation might become for them, it would all come out right in the end just as it did in the movies — the kidnaped girl rescued in the nick of time, the train wreck miraculously avoided, the young lovers walking hand-in-hand into the sunset to live happily ever after.”
Other aspects of Moore’s book have not aged very well. There is some unfortunate moralizing of certain people, and one paragraph about the late Virginia Rappe that very much slut-shames her and victim blames her for her death. She gets pretty gossipy about Valentino, and has some less than nice words about Garbo, especially in her later years. I did enjoy an anecdote she shared about Clara Bow, which was very clearly a reference for a scene in Damien Chazelle’s Babylon:
Lastly, I diverged a bit from my silent film syllabus to read Susan Seidelman’s excellent memoir Desperately Seeking Something: A Memoir about Movies, Mothers, and Material Girls. Having watched all of Seidelman’s films while prepping to interview her for my own book Cinema Her Way: Visionary Female Directors in Their Own Words, which you can pre-order here *wink nudge nudge,* I found her book to be so much fun. In our converstation we mainly focused on her creative process as we talked through her filmography. Along with anecdotes about her career, Seidelman’s book gives fans a peek into her life growing up in suburban Philadelphia, her years in college — and an enviable trip to Europe that lasted a lot longer than it was supposed to, but was clearly absolutely worth it, — and her early days in New York City before breaking it big with her debut feature film Smithereens.
I love the format of Seidelman’s book, which punctuates each chapter with a song title that sets the mood. You could use them to make a reading playlist and the vibes would be immaculate. Along with her humor about life and wonderful stories about meeting stars like Jack Nicholson at the Student Academy Awards, couch surfing in L.A., and her absolutely wild first meeting with Madonna, the book also is filled with insight into the unique hurdles that women directors face — including pregnancy and motherhood. She is frank and candid about the various choices she had to make in order for her career to move forward, and I cannot laud enough the bravery it takes to share this aspect of a life dedicated to making movies. Because everyone wants to believe its all a dream, but there is so much hurt and pain that goes into making it work in this business.
I have had the pleasure of knowing Susan now for a decade, and I am always in awe of how warm and giving she is, how funny and knowledgeable, and just how downright cool she is. Like Brooks and Moore, Seidelman spent her life navigating a business that doesn’t always trust women, or even like them that much. And she did so as a director at a time when Hollywood in particular was just beginning to embrace a larger number of women doing that job. She crafted some of my favorite films of the decade and captured an era of New York City that has since disappeared into the vapor. I’m grateful for her work and grateful for her friendship. And I know you’ll all love reading her adventures as much as I did. Once you’ve finished reading her book, you can watch Smithereens on Criterion Channel, along with two of her short films and a bevy of wonderful video interviews.
i’ve been yearning for more cinematic/film literature, so this could not have better timing. you’re amazing, marya!
Everything I learn about the silent era makes it seem so cool. I added Seductive Cinema to my tbr because of your excellent write-up! Thanks!