Louise Brooks Part II: Jerry Vermilye

Do These Eyes Reflect Louise's Frustrations With Hollywood?

But no matter the form in which Pandora's Box was shown, critical reaction was disappointing. Though impressed with Louise Brooks' beauty and physical presence, few critics had much to say for her acting. The New York Times' Mordaunt Hall wrote: "Miss Brooks is attractive and she moves her head and eyes at the proper moment, but whether she is endeavoring to express joy, woe, anger, or satisfaction is often difficult to decide." Another wrote: "Louise Brooks cannot act. She does not suffer. She does nothing."

Undoubtedly, Brooks' failure to communicate emotions was that she failed to subscribe to the "indicating" techniques employed by so many of her silent-movie colleagues. That she was ahead of her time as an actress is reinforced by the enthusiastic discovery-and almost cultist acclaim for-her unique screen persona some 50 years later by film scholars and journalists. Perhaps most notable of these was Britain's Kenneth Tynan who, in his brilliant and celebrated 1979 New Yorker treatise on Louise Brooks, would credit G.W. Pabst with enabling her to "reinvent the art of screen acting."

As soon as Pandora's Box completed filming, Louise returned to New York, where she immediately found herself embattled with Paramount over The Canary Murder Case. Intent on turning it, along with others of their recently completed movies, into talkies, the studio sought her services for the requisite sound retakes. Ever mindful of her dismissive treatment by Schulberg, she now gave him the coldest of shoulders. And when he offered her more money-and still more-she took it as an insult and repeatedly refused to comply. Ultimately, she was admonished, "Come back, or you'll never work in Hollywood again!" Her contemptuous response: "Who wants to work in Hollywood?"

Finally, Paramount selected Maragret Livingston, who had played the seductive "Woman From The City" in Murnau's Sunrise, to stand in for Louise in retakes where she could be photographed from behind, as well as dubbing her voice. Unfortunately, Livingston's harsh, unsubtle line readings failed to match Brooks' more cooly seductive visual image, and the end result is as vulgar and unsatisfying as The Canary Murder Case is in its final release form.