Silent film actress's tormented life to be Subject of upcoming independent short film.
Louise Brooks made her film debut in 1925, soon appearing in such Hollywood films as A Girl in Every Port and Beggars of Life. Her most memorable role was that of the amoral, self-destructive temptress Lulu in Pandora's Box. Her innocent eroticism, along with her pale, beautiful features and bobbed jet-black hair made her both a film icon and a symbol of the definitive 1920s flapper. Her stardom flamed out early, however, and by the age of 23 she was all but forgotten until the 1960s when film historians and younger fans rediscovered her and catapulted her to cult status.
Independent filmmaker, Scott Howe, hopes to shed light on the events that lead up to Brook's "disappearance" from Hollywood. Moreover, he intends to reveal what may have lead the iconic silent actress to play, so convincingly, the character of Lulu, a self-destructive sexual temptress, conceived by German playwright Franklin Wedekind.
Howe's screenplay is a work of fiction, based on historical facts. His story traces the story of Louise Brooks through the writings of a life-long friend and one-time lover, from her humble beginnings as a young girl in Kansas, to her meteoric rise as a dancer in the Ziegfeld follies, as the silent film temptress, Lulu, in the silent film, Pandora's Box, and finally her later years as a recluse.
The "Lulu" plays Erdgeist (Earth Spirit, 1895) and Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora's Box, 1904) are probably Wedekind's best known works. Originally conceived as a single play, the two pieces tell a continuous story of a sexually-enticing young dancer who rises in German society through her relationships with wealthy men, but who later falls into poverty and prostitution.
"To say that life was imitating art, here, is an understatement," says Howe. "When you really stop and examine what lead up to Louise Brooks playing the part of Lulu, you can see how eerily similar her real life was to that of the fictional character that Wedekind originally created."
Howe was drawn to Louise Brooks in his twenties. Since then, twenty more years have passed, yet his passion for the silent film actress hasn't waned. Howe recalls what peeked his interest in telling this story.
"This German director goes out of his way to cast the perfect Lulu for his film, auditioning and dismissing over a thousand different women," Howe explains, "and then he more or less just stumbles upon this American girl to play the role." Ads Howe, "it was as if he had been compelled to pluck Louise Brooks, like some cosmic needle from a hey stack."
Howe explains that the German director, Pabst, had no idea he was unearthing the sole person who had been so personally damaged by her own real-life traumas that she was the literal embodiment of the character, Lulu."
Additional information about this film can be found at: www.ScottHoweFilms.com/LULU/
