Adventures in Vintage Hair Styling-Happy Birthday to The Queen of The Bob-Louise Brooks

November 14 will mark the 131st anniversary of the birth of one of the most stylish women of all time, Louise Brooks.  The queen of the bob, Louise was known not just for her brilliant acting, but her rebellious flapper spirit and her gorgeous, shiny Bob.

Louise's hair was so striking that she was known as "the girl in the black helmet." Perhaps, her look was a little too iconic because she never transitioned out of her flapper image and her film career evaporated in the 1930s.

Louise appeared in just 12   films, yet nearly 100 years later she remains one of the most recognizable stars of the silent era, particularly for the 1929 German film Pandora's Box.

Louise will never be my favorite silent female star, my heart forever belongs to Clara Bow, but I do adore her and I think that in the flapper hair contest she passes the finish line before the others even get out of the opening.  No one has ever looked as fabulous in a Bob as Louise did.  I'm no Louise Brooks, and I'm constantly changing my hair, but for the past 15 years I keep returning to one particular style, the close cropped Brook's style Bob. 

 

 While I'm no Louise, I really think this is my all time favorite hair style and for now at least I've decided to keep it.  Do you have a favorite iconic hair style?

On another note if you read this blog you know we have had some pet health problems this month, though thankfully none too serious yet.   First Fry had a biopsy (benign yeah!), then our cat Ernie had a seizure or cardiac arythmia attack we don't really know which, and now 13 year old Ping has bronchitis.  She started honking and coughing on Election night, perhaps sickened as I was by the turn of events, and I was really afraid that she had pneumonia.  Thankfully, it's just bronchitis, but respiratory issues are always serious in pugs, particularly older pugs, and we are a little concerned.  Thankfully, so far she seems to be coughing a bit less and responding to the antibiotics, but any well wishes are appreciated.

Happy Birthday Buster Keaton-Cinema Spot Light on 1921's The Haunted House

Today marks the 130th anniversary of silent film star Buster Keaton

Keaton shaped the film industry like the few other stars have and his early films are cinematic landmarks filled with clever ideas and innovations.  Keaton wrote most of his own films and directed many of them.  
















Unsurprisingly many of the first films ever made where horror films, but Keaton's  The Haunted House is not a typical spook story, Keaton was too clever for anything typical.

Instead Keaton plays a hapless bank teller

 who get's tangled up with bank robbers, winds up on the wrong side of his crooked boss, 

and seeks refuge in a spooky old house

 where a theatre troupe is rehearsing a production of Faust.  

The film was directed by frequent Keaton collaborator Joseph M. Schenck  and costarred Virgina Fox, who appeared in several Keaton films.

The entire film runs only 21 minutes and is a delightful example of early horror comedy.  You can view it in its entirety in the you tube link below.

Silent Film Sunday: Bumping Into Broadway 1919

In the trifecta of male silent comedy stars (Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd) Lloyd typically gets the bronze, but he's my favorite.   




Lloyd's films are sweet, funny and charming and for silent comedies they hold up well.    His glasses character exemplified a be-spectaled go-getter embodied the can do attitude of the 1920s.   Lloyd first played the glasses character in a 1919 short comedy Bumping Into Broadway.

 

In the film Lloyd plays a character known simply as the boy a would be musical comedy writer in dire financial straits:

He lives in a Boarding house populated by theatrical types, including of course, the girl, a chorus dancer, played by Bebe Daniels.  

The boarding house is run by a stern land lady and her beefy tough guy   The guys job is to toss out any boarders who have gotten their third notice to to pay the rent.  Both the boy and the girl have just received theirs.

The heroes troubles continue.  The boy continues to fail to find a producer for his play

and the girl gets fired from her chorus dancing job.

After a number of adventures the boy and the girl north wind up at a club where the girl is on a date with a wealthy play boy and the boy is gambling in an attempt to win the money to produce his play.

a few more antics the boy wins big at gambling and love!

The entire film is less then a half hour long and can be seen on you tube (here is the link).  It's essential viewing for all Harold Lloyd fans.

Vintage Outfit Post-1940s Mexican Playsuit Set for A Trip to Coney Island

About once a year when the weather turns warm I like to make the girls in the silent film clip below (from 1905!) and visit Coney Island.

Coney Island is a bit of a trip from our home, about an hour and 45 minutes  with walking and train time, and there our closer beaches in NJ but even though it has sadly been updated Coney Island still has some vestiges of vintage charm that keep me coming back year after year.

This year we went on the Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend and it was the first time the weather was really warm enough for summer clothes, so I wore my  1940s Style Mexican Playsuit from Kim Clark.  I nabbed it when she put it up for sale in the 1930s and 40s clothing exchange facebook group and it is really fabulous, and way, way out there.  There is no fading into the back ground in this get up.  Plus I love  that it has a jacket.  I don't like to get too much sun or show too much skin so a play suit with a big jacket is right up my alley.

The fabric in both the jacket and the play suit is really light and very comfortable.

I paired the play suit set with a big 1940s Mexian tourist hat.  I actually had the hat first and when I saw the play suit I knew they where made for each other.

I carried the Mexican theme through the outfit by adding a Mrs. Polly's Lucite brooch of a little man in a sombrero.  Isn't he cute:

Sadly, as I said before most of Coney Island has been distressingly modernized and Hurricane Sandy certainly didn't help. 

 Still if you look close there are some remnants of the old Coney Island.   

Nathan's Hot Dogs has been there for a 100 years.  The day before we visited they where selling hots dogs for 5 cents, the price from when they openned in 1916.

We also saw a shooting gallery that had been there since 1940:

We always finish our Coney Island trips with lunch at L & B Spumoni Gardens a restaurant that has been open since 1939.  They serve the best Sicilian style pizza and Spumoni I've ever had.

Where do you like to go when the weather gets warm?

Outfit Details:

1940s style Play Suit and Jacket-Kim Clark 
1940s style sandals Remix vintage shoes
1940s Mexican sun hat Dixiefried
1940s style novelty brooch-Mrs Polly's Lucite

Silent Film Sunday-Alice in Wonderland from 1903

Silent Film Sunday-Alice Guy-Blache's The Consequences of Feminism

March is women's history month so its a good time to remember a largely forgotten hero of cinema history, Alice Guy-Blache

At a time when movie making was in its infancy and women where regulated to the home, Alice was making revolutionary films that pioneered ideas about fictional narrative and special effects.   She even ran her own studio with her husband, Solax, out of Fort Lee, New Jersey for a time.  Sadly bankruptcy and divorce cause Solax to close and Blache's promising career ended in the early 1920s.


The following film, The Consequences of Feminism,  from 1906 is a humorous story about a topsy turvy world in which men are the subservient sex; spending time grooming and performing house hold tasks, while women take the dominant role in relationships.   Blache was certainly a feminist so I imagine this film is meant to poke fun abut mens fears regarding the women's rights.

Cinema Spotlight-1926's Man Trap Starring Clara Bow

When it comes to 1920s silent film flappers there was triumvirate of stars:

Louise Brooks-The serious sophisticated flapper 

Colleen Moore-The good girl flapper

and Louise Brooks-The sexy flapper:

In fact Brook's is very prescient of another vintage star who came along decades later, Marilyn Monroe.  (Monroe even did a 1958 photo shoot where she dressed up as Bow).

Bow's seductive comic charms are on excellent display in the 1926 film Man Trap.

The film is basically a comic love triangle.   Ralph Prescott is a stressed out New York Lawyer with an office full of flappers suing for divorce. 



 After one blonde haired bobbed client plays footsie with him under the desk (in a pair of adorable diamante buckled heels)  He snaps.   

Desperate for a break from the modern women he decides to go on a vacation in outdoorsy "he man" country.  He settles on an isolated backs wood area known as, Man Trap.

Meanwhile, a trapper named Joe living in Man Trap is having the opposite problem.  

Tired of the woods and the lack of feminine companionship he decides to take a brief vacation in Minneapolis.  While there he meets Alverna, a charming manicurist played by Bow.

Opposites attract and soon Joe and Alverna are going on a dinner date.

A few weeks pass and the film returns to Ralph, the New York lawyer is not enjoying his out doorsy vacation as much as he had hoped.

Joe stumbles upon Ralph, miserable and wet in the woods and agrees to take him back to his cabin.  Ralph is thrilled to go, until he glimpses Joe's wife, Alverna.  It seems right after the dinner date Joe and Alverna headed to the preacher.   Alverna is clad in a charming gingham country frock, but her flapper spirit is shining through.

Soon Alverna is flirting shamelessly with Ralph who is simultaneously attracted and repelled.

Alverna throws a wild  back woods 1920s jazz party

and smolders in a checked wool dressing gown while Ralph keeps watch for hostile Indians.

Soon Ralph can take the temptation no more and not wanting to hurt Joe's feelings he decides to head back to the city. 

Alverna though, is sick of country life, and runs away following Ralph and planning on getting him to take her to the city. 

 At first Ralph refuses 

to let her come along, but fearing for her safety in the woods he soon relents.

The trip back to civilization doesn't go smoothly.   Ralph's guide absconds with their food and Alverna flirts with a helicopter patrolman.  By the time Joe catches up with them, the new couple are quarreling.

Joe and Ralph set to bickering over Alverna and complaining about her flirting.   Alverna quickly gets fed up with the conversation and laughing, heads off to Minneapolis in Joe's boat.

I truly wish the film had ended here.  Alverna is obviously not the marrying kind and would never be happy living isolated in the woods, but this is a 1926 film and films of this time didn't truly embrace liberated women.  So sadly the film does not end here.  

Ralph returns to New York, refreshed from his vacation and prepared to deal with flapper divorcees and Alverna, after a brief break in the city, goes back home to Joe.  Soon she's begging Joe for forgiveness and he's eagerly embracing her.   Alverna isn't so easily chastised though, over Joe's shoulder she glimpses a handsome park ranger and soon she's back to her flirting ways!

Man Trap is directed by Victor Fleming:

Who would go on to make The Wizard of Oz.  It has been fully restored and has excellent picture quality.  Man Trap isn't available for streaming but the DVD can be purchased on Amazon for $16.95.  It's essential viewing for any fan of Clara's charming silent comedy.