Tribute to Louise Brooks: Whitney Houston Sings

Hollywood Collection: Louise Brooks, Lulu. The beautiful and wonderful Whitney Houston sings the song, One Moment in Time. Thank you for your beautiful music, Whitney.

Mary Louise Brooks (November 14, 1906 -- August 8, 1985), generally known by her stage name Louise Brooks, was an American dancer, model, showgirl and silent film actress, noted for popularizing the bobbed haircut. Brooks is best known for her three feature roles including two G. W. Pabst films: in Pandora's Box (1929), Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), and Prix de Beauté (Miss Europe) (1930). She starred in 17 silent films and, late in life, authored a memoir, Lulu in Hollywood.

Brooks made her screen debut in the silent The Street of Forgotten Men, in an uncredited role in 1925. Soon, however, she was playing the female lead in a number of silent light comedies and flapper films over the next few years, starring with Adolphe Menjou and W. C. Fields, among others.
She was noticed in Europe for her pivotal vamp role in the Howard Hawks directed silent "buddy film", A Girl in Every Port in 1928.
It has been said that her best American role was in one of the early sound film dramas, Beggars of Life (1928), as an abused country girl on the run with Richard Arlen and Wallace Beery playing hoboes she meets while riding the rails. Much of this film was shot on location, and the boom microphone was invented for this film by the director William Wellman, who needed it for one of the first experimental talking scenes in the movies. By this time in her life, she was mixing with the rich and famous, and was a regular guest of William Randolph Hearst and his mistress, Marion Davies, at San Simeon, being close friends with Davies' niece, Pepi Lederer. Her distinctive bob haircut, which became eponymous, and is still recognised to this day, helped start a trend; many women styled their hair in imitation of her and fellow film star Colleen Moore. Soon after the film Beggars Of Life was made, Brooks, who loathed the Hollywood "scene", refused to stay on at Paramount after being denied a promised raise, and left for Europe to make films for G. W. Pabst, the prominent German Expressionist director.
Paramount attempted to use the coming of sound films to pressure the actress, but she called the studio's bluff. It was not until 30 years later that this rebellious move would come to be seen as arguably the most savvy of her career, securing her immortality as a silent film legend and independent spirit. Unfortunately, while her initial snubbing of Paramount alone would not have finished her in Hollywood altogether, her refusal after returning from Germany to come back to Paramount for sound retakes of The Canary Murder Case (1929) irrevocably placed her on an unofficial blacklist.

Once in Germany, she starred in the 1929 film Pandora's Box, directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst in his New Objectivity period. The film is based on two plays by Frank Wedekind (Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora) and Brooks plays the central figure, Lulu. This film is notorious for its frank treatment of modern sexual mores, including one of the first screen portrayals of a lesbian. Brooks then starred in the controversial social drama Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), based on the book by Margarete Böhme and also directed by Pabst, and Prix de Beauté (1930) by Italian author Augusto Genina, the latter being filmed in France, and having a famous surprise ending. All these films were heavily censored[where?], as they were very "adult" and considered shocking in their time for their portrayals of sexuality, as well as their social satire.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Louise
• Brooks
• Whitney
• Houston
• One
• Moment
• in
• Time

[grofuss88]

A beautiful video, very well made and an excellent choice of music. Outstanding, thank you very much for this.

[Shabannie]

@grofuss88 Thank you so much for your nice comments. I like the lyrics of the song and I love Whitney Houston.

-------Ellen

[MsMousefeathers]

Once again...just fantastic!

[Shabannie]

Thank you very much. I am going to make a few more about other silent movie stars later.

---------Ellen

[ginnykaren]

Ellen, thank you for posting this beautiful video as a response to my Helen Kane! It means a lot to me!

[Shabannie]

Yes, you wrote a note about video responses on your other channel. I am surprised that people do not do this more. When I first started my channel, people use to turn me down, so I do not send that many video responses. Anyhow, I just tried to select one of my more vintage videos for the video response. You can always send me something later. It does not even have to have a similar theme, because I like all of yours.

--------Ellen

[Shabannie]

Thank you so much for your nice comment!

--------Ellen

[tukilala]

Fantastico Video !!!!!!!

[Shabannie]

I had somewhat forgotten Louise Brooks myself. I decided to do a video about her when I was collecting pictures of the actress Clara Bow when I saw the picture of both of them together.

---------Ellen

[letufi]

Is interesting your work of bringing back things other people have forgotten