As with other Hollywood and non-Hollywood stars, Louise Brooks’ image could be found on a number of commercial products. In the 1920s and 1930s, these products included printed items such as postcards, trading cards, and what are colloquially known as cigarette cards. The most familiar, of course, are postcards. They require a postage stamp to be sent through the mail, typically had an image on the front and space for a message on the back, and measure approximately 4 x 6 inches (or 10.2 x 15.2 cm). Trading cards or product cards were, as a rule, smaller in size, and were usually inserted into the packaging of a variety of items such as bread, cookies, candy (chocolate and gum), sugar, flour, soap or tobacco. The cards known as cigarette cards are considered a subset of trading cards, but differ in that they were inserted into just one type of product, namely packs of cigarettes. Essentially, trading cards were novelty items inserted into product packaging as an inducement to purchase… as in buy our product and “collect them all”. Though such cards were considered disposable and sometimes poorly printed, others were finely printed, attractive, and collected by film buffs or fans of the actor or actress they depicted. Some card publishers, whose series ran into the dozens or hundreds, even issued albums as a further inducement to collectors. Along with cards, albums also survive.
This page on the Louise Brooks Society website gathers a selection of vintage cards from England. Shown here are postcards and cigarette cards. Other examples of these same cards which shows variances in tinting and toning are held in the Louise Brooks Society archive. Three of the Picturegoer cards shown here are part of their series of sepia-toned glossy postcards, while one, Picturegoer #33, is one of their colourgraph cards, which apparently were hand coloroured. (Images of a small number of variant colorized cards are also held in the LBS archive.) For more about the Picturegoer postcards, see the magazine advertisement at the bottom of the page. Notably, Carreras #21 mentions some of Brooks’ early American silents, including her uncredited bit part in The Street of Forgotten Men. Something of an oddity is card #27 in the Cinema Stars series from Godfrey Phillips. Though an English card promoting an English brand of cigarettes, the card itself states that it was printed in France. Also odd are the films mentioned, the mistakenly titled and mistakenly credited “The Beggars school, with Thomas Meighan,” and Next Man Please. The latter corresponds to no film associated with Brooks’ career, but may refer to the title or working title of a film for which Brooks was once considered.
The details behind some of these cards is lacking. If you know additional information about any of these cards, or possess other cards and would like to share a scan of your vintage treasure, please CONTACT the Louise Brooks Society. Thanks so much for your interest.
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| postcard, England Picturegoer #33 |
postcard, England Picturegoer #301 |
postcard, England Picturegoer #301a |
postcard, England Picturegoer #301b |
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| cigarette card, England (front) Abdulla & Co. #9 |
cigarette card, England (back) Abdulla & Co. #9 |
cigarette card, England (front) Cinema Stars #192 |
cigarette card, England (back) Cinema Stars #192 |
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| cigarette card, England (front) Godfrey Phillips #27 |
cigarette card, England (back) Godfrey Phillips #27 |
cigarette card, England (front) Godfrey Phillips #9 |
cigarette card, England (back) Godfrey Phillips #9 |
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| cigarette card, England (front) Carreras #21 |
cigarette card, England (back) Carreras #21 |
If you were a film buff in Great Britain in the silent and early sound era you may have noticed postcard advertisements in Picturegoer, a popular British film magazine. It issued its own series of movie star postcards. The ad shown below lists the many actors and actress whose image was available on a postcard. Ads like these, which listed Louise Brooks, ran in 1929 and 1931. This example dates to February 1931, which is notable as Brooks’ career was beginning to fade by that time. The magazine offered two kinds of postcards, sepia-toned glossy postcards, or colourgraph cards. Brooks is listed in each category.
