One of the least understood and least documentable periods in the life of Louise Brooks are the few months she spent in Europe in late 1924. Why exactly did she go? What did she do? And significantly, how did she make ends meet while living abroad? Despite it being something of a mystery, we know at least a few facts upon which to hang a short narrative, as well as this webpage. Let’s start at the beginning.
Sometime in the late Summer or early Fall of 1924, the parents of Barbara Bennett — the younger of the soon-to-be famous Bennett sisters and Brooks’ best friend in New York City, decided to send their daughter to a private school in Paris. Brooks, not satisfied with her life as a dancer in the George White Scandals and feeling at loose ends, decided to join her. Brooks applied for a passport on September 18th, 1924 — which was quite nearly at the last minute. The ocean liner on which they would make the journey was scheduled to depart New York just two days later, on September 20th. On Brooks’ application, for which Barbara Bennett acted as a witness, Brooks stated that the two had known one another for 10 years (which was not true). Brooks also wrote that her occupation was “actress” (also not true), and that her residence was the Wentworth Hotel, in NYC. Brooks initially stated that she was going to England and France to “Study and travel”. However, on the application, Study and travel was later crossed out, and replaced by “visit relative & travel.” As a chorus dancer in the Scandals, Brooks likely didn’t make, let alone save, enough money to afford a trip to Europe, which begs the question, who paid for it?
At the time, both Brooks and Bennett were only 17 years old. The last minute nature of their application, as well as Brooks’ youth, likely explains why a series of Western Union Telegrams (preserved along with her passport application) flew back and forth on September 19 between New York City and the Department of State (the agency granting passports) and Wichita, Kansas and Brooks’ mother, who hastily gave her daughter permission to travel overseas. According to the four telegrams, Brooks’ mother was handling this matter because her father was “absent from the state”. In another telegram, Brooks’ mother stated Louise was traveling “in order to be in Paris with her grandmother who is ill” … which is not true. The hurry-up nature of it all may have been why a Wichita notary public, a Fred Hinkle, was asked to issue a sworn affidavit that Brooks’ father had also authorized her travel out of the country.) According to her application, Brooks’ passport was granted over the telephone by one Miss Baukhages.
On September 20, Brooks and Bennett departed the United States aboard the RMS Homeric, an ocean liner. The trip was scheduled to take one week. On September 27th, their boat landed in Cherbourg, France, and the two made their way to Paris. Shown here is a clipping from the International Herald Tribune (the European edition of the combined Chicago Tribune and the New York Daily News), a prominent English-language newspaper located in Paris. It mentions Bennett’s and Brooks’ arrival; as such, this humble newspaper clipping represents the earliest mention of Brooks in any European publication.
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| Louise Brooks 1924 passport photo, stamped in New York City |
The RMS Homeric, one of the finest ships of its day, and the boat on which Brooks traveled to and from Europe. |
International Herald Tribune September 28, 1924 |
In the few pages given over to the trip in the Barry Paris biography of Brooks, Paris quotes from an unpublished Brooks’ manuscript. “‘On our arrival at the Edouard VII Hotel in Paris,’ Louise recalled, ‘Barbara had eaten a ham sandwich with German mustard, over which she decided not to go to the convent school as her mother had intended; she cashed her letter of credit and went back to New York on the return trip of the Homeric. I wanted to stay’.” Brooks did just that; she stayed in Paris, but without a plan and without money. The next day, according to Brooks’ manuscript, she was sitting in the lobby of Edouard VII Hotel (39 Av. de l’Opéra) when “Archie Selwyn, the producer, came across me, friendless, Frenchless, jobless and penniless, but perfectly calm. He was amazed to find me there when he thought me hopping around in the Scandals. After painting a grim picture of what happens to 17-year-old Kansas girls in Paris, he persuaded me to go with him to London where he got me a job dancing the Charleston in the Café de Paris.” According to the International Herald Tribune, Archie Selwyn, a well connected American producer of plays, was indeed in Paris staying at the Hotel Claridge (37 Rue François). Selwyn was there (with his wife) working to secure a Ziegfeld contract with the Spanish singing star Raquel Meller, who was then performing in Paris to great acclaim.
A few years back, I came across a brief mention of Brooks’ Paris sojourn in the Wichita Eagle. On October 12, 1924, Brooks’ hometown newspaper reported Brooks was in France, noting, “Her departure was sudden and her parents have not received a letter from her since her arrival in Paris. She went abroad as a member of a company expecting to appear in the French capital. Miss Brooks is young and beautiful and has made steady advancement in her chosen art. Wichita may well be proud of her accomplishments.” I wonder, how might the Wichita Eagle have known Brooks was traveling to Europe? My guess is that one of her parents likely told one of the paper’s writers, Flora M. Parson’s, who ran a small bit near the end of her column — remember, this was a time when locals traveling abroad, or even across the country, was reported in the press. If her parents did alert the paper, they may have done so because they were worried about their daughter and had not heard from her, and this might have been their way to find out something, anything, via the newspapers of the day. Brooks, it should be noted, did not travel to Europe with a company of performers, as the Wichita Eagle said. She went on a trip on a whim with a well-off friend. Regarding her travel to Europe in order to work, the Wichita paper was likely misinformed, or was told something that wasn’t exactly true in order to save face or smooth over the appearance of something questionable. Perhaps Louise herself suggested it to her parents, when in fact that wasn’t her actually intention. Whatever the truth, I wonder what Brooks did in Paris for the nearly three week she was there, and how did she get by. I have searched the many Parisian newspapers of the time, but have never found any mention of the budding performer.
News sometimes travels slow, especially in small-town Kansas in the mid 1920s. On November 6th, the Burden Times from Burden, Kansas reported that the Cherryvale Republican reported that the Wichita press reported (on October 12) that Brooks was in Paris. The Burden paper even repeated the worrisome line from the Wichita Eagle, “Her departure from France was sudden and her parents have not received a letter from her since her arrival in Paris.” Unfortunately, the Cherryvale Republican is not available for 1924, and I am not sure if it is even extant. Thus, the full lineage of this reportage can’t be traced.
By October 19, 1924, Brooks was in London, England and living at 49A Pall Mall. One day later, on October 20, she began dancing at the Café de Paris nightclub (3 Coventry Street). The distance between her Pall Mall apartment and her new place of employ was a short, 15 minute walk through the heart of the English capital. Though we don’t know how exactly Brooks got from Paris to London (and who paid for it), we do know where she lived and how she got a job dancing at the Café de Paris. Notably, she wasn’t a featured act, but rather just one of a small number of added attractions. Nevertheless, and quite remarkably, Brooks portrait was included on the picture page of the London Daily Chronicle. Below her picture was a brief caption announcing her debut at Café de Paris. This October 20, 1924 image marks her very first appearance in any European publication. The news moved fast. The very next day and across the ocean, Variety reported on October 21 that Brooks was “cordially received upon opening last night at the Café de Paris cabaret.” Variety also reported Layton & Johnstone (a popular African-American vocal and piano duo) had returned to the establishment for an extended engagement. A similar bit, announcing Brooks’ was dancing at the London nightclub, ran in the Wichita Eagle on November 9.
Besides Layton & Johnson, whose songs “It Had to Be You” and “Hard-hearted Hannah” proved especially popular, the other acts I have been able to trace to the Café de Paris around the time Brooks’ was there is another dance act, Andor and Denise, who hailed from Vienna, Austria. They gave exhibition dances at the Café in mid-October, 1924. Another dance act was comprised of Frank Leveson and Doreen Read, who may have performed there in November. Joseph C. Smith’s dance band, who had a hit with “The Vamp,” played a six-week engagement which ran through November. And lastly, the other act I came across was a musical group called The Rougemont Band. They were, apparently, based out of the Rougemont Hotel in Exeter. Their classified advertisement, which noted they had a few vacant dates, described them as “First-class London Players” who were “Direct from the Café de Paris, London.” When exactly, I don’t know.
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| Reportage on Brooks’ Parisian trip from the Burden Times. |
These two pieces appeared in Variety on different pages on October 21, 1924. |
Brooks’ handwritten note about her onetime London residence (pictured) at 49 A Pall Mall. |
Brooks’ second ever depiction in a European publication. This German magazine clipping dates to January 1925. |
Located in the West End’s Piccadilly Circus, the Café de Paris was where fashionable Londoners went for entertainment and a glimpse of the Fast Set or Bright Young Things — the British equivalent of America’s Jazz Age youth. The Café de Paris opened earlier in 1924, on Coventry Street just off Piccadilly Circus. The subterranean club featured a glamorous staircase that led down to a basement-level dance floor and restaurant. A theatrical agency headed by George Foster had taken a lease on what used to be the Elysée restaurant in order to try out cabaret acts and dance bands. And soon, it became one of the leading theatre clubs in London. Along with Captain Robin Humphreys, Foster bought the lease and took on Martin Poulsen, a well connected Danish maître d‘ from the Embassy Club. Much of the venue’s early success was due to Poulsen, who was acquainted with the then Prince of Wales, and future King of England, Edward VIII. Poulsen encouraged the Prince to visit, and soon, the playboy royal became a regular who brought with him his socially prominent circle of friends. The Prince of Wales was also reported to be a fan of Layton & Johnstone, the same act headlining at the club when Brooks began her engagement. (The African-American duo, who were very popular in London, were also credited with the success enjoyed by the Café de Paris.) Among their fans was the Prince, who was reported to have seen Layton & Johnstone perform at other venues around London, and on at least a few occasions, he invited them to entertain at his residence, St. James’s Palace. [Want to hear what Layton & Johnstone sounded like? A piano medley of their vintage recordings, dating from just a few years after they and Brooks appeared at the Café de Paris, can be heard on YouTube. Click HERE to hear “My Blue Heaven”, “Ramona”, “Jeanine, I Dream Of Lilac Time” and others.]
By all accounts, the Café de Paris was a place of fun and frivolity. The Sphere, an English magazine, ran a story in October, 1924 titled “Cabaret Nights in London.” It began, “The cabaret has now become a fixed and popular feature of London social life, and the half-dozen or more good night cabaret’s are regularly crowded by hundreds of pleasure-seekers. Of these, there are two in particular which come in for attention in the article below — Chez Fysher, at Oddenino’s, and the Café de Paris.” The author, one A. B., later added “the place continues to be fashionable and popular because of its first-rate programme,” which they noted, was not really French as its name might suggest but rather “American in derivation.” Two months later, The Sketch called it “one of the most popular Society gathering places of the moment.”
One who witnessed the fun and frivolity was Baroness Orczy (author of The Scarlett Pimpernel), whose November 19, 1924 column in The Bystander described the high spirits taking place at the club. “There is something indefinable in the air that makes life seem worth living to the young, that puts vitality and joy into the middle aged. Just watch the dancing at the Café de Paris…. There are no old men, no middle aged women; there are men with grey hair or no hair at all, there are women whose figures have lost their svelte contour, but they are not old. There is elasticity in their movements, joy of living in their sparkling eyes. They laugh, they shout, they blow tin whistles and throw confetti about.”
What was Brooks’ role in all this? As mentioned, she wasn’t a featured act or headliner, just a supporting act. As with her time in Paris, I searched every publication I could get my hands on – including a number of London newspapers, as well as magazines from the time, looking for any sort of mention of Brooks. I came up short. All that I could find were the brief mentions in Variety, an American publication, and one photo published in a German magazine (shown above, right) which ran in January 1925. (Since this picture hasn’t, to my knowledge, shown up in American publications, I am going to assume that it was taken in London, and likely at the bequest of the Café de Paris, who in turn sent it out for publicity purposes.) And that’s it, a couple of mentions and one alluring portrait. I also came up short when it came to finding just about anything else…. The one exception was a December 20 advertisement in the Folkestone, Hythe, Sandgate & Cheriton Herald newspaper. Folkestone is a port town on the English Channel, in Kent, south-east England, some 120 kilometers or 75 miles from London. The ad promoted Christmas and Boxing day programs at the Folkestone Grand Hotel, which included a late afternoon Xmas day “Special Cabaret Show by Artistes from the Café de Paris, London.” Might Brooks have been among the artistes hoping to earn a little extra money? We don’t know, and likely never will. Otherwise, all that I managed to find were a few advertisements for the Café de Paris for the time Brooks was dancing at the club. Here is what I came across.
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| This ad ran in The Tattler in October, 1924. |
A view of Pall Mall around the time 17 year old Louise Brooks was living there. |
This ad ran in the Daily Mail a few times in November and December, 1924. |
Besides the fact that she danced at the Café de Paris, the little we know about Brooks’ working there comes from Brooks herself. In a statement from later in her life, Brooks said she worked as a dancer, and that she danced the Charleston. In his 1989 biography of the future actress, Barry Paris states that “Brooks was the first girl to dance the Charleston in London.” However, Paris offers no evidence to support this claim…. But, that doesn’t mean it isn’t true, or more-or-less true. In late 1924, the Charleston was a very new dance. Its rhythm had been popularized in mainstream American music through the 1923 James P. Johnson penned tune called “The Charleston”, which was made popular by its addition to the Broadway show, Runnin’ Wild. That hit show ran from October 28, 1923 through June 28, 1924. “The Charleston” went on to become one of the most popular hits of the decade; according to an unsourced claim on Wikipedia, the peak year for the Charleston as a dance was mid-1926 to 1927. (Josephine Baker, for example, danced the Charleston at the Folies Bergère in Paris in 1926.)
Was Louise Brooks the first person to dance the Charleston in London? We will never know, but considering how early on Brooks might have been dancing it in London, it is quite possible. Paris’ claim, while likely true, might be better put along these lines: Louise Brooks introduced the Charleston to London, or, Louise Brooks helped introduce the Charleston to London. The YouTube video embedded below is an appropriate and rather swell contemporary example of the Charleston, as performed by the Gatsby Girls in 2014 at, of all places, the Café de Paris in London.
There is little else known regarding Brooks’ brief stay in London, except for one telling anecdote. Following the actress’ death in August, 1985, the American film historian William K. Everson, who was Brooks’ friend later in her life, penned a tribute titled “Remembering Louise Brooks”. In this November 1985 piece in Films in Review, Everson quoted from a letter Brooks had written. “In London in December 1924, when I was dancing the Charleston in the Café de Paris, I was living beyond my means — who doesn’t at seventeen? — in a flat at 49A Pall Mall. Quite alone, my chief confidant was Nellie, the rosy-cheeked maid with surprised blue eyes and her poor, swollen red paws. One morning, cleaning out the coal basket, with a black smudge on her nose, she sat entranced on the floor with me looking at a picture of Betty [Bronson] descending a staircase while I read to her the Photoplay fairytale story of Betty’s rise to fame. And then we saw Peter Pan and fell in love with her unique beauty and grace and strange impish mind.” To the author of this webpage, it is not certain which version Louise and Nellie might have seen. Was Brooks speaking about the stage play of Peter Pan, which was then playing with great success in London at the Aldephi theater (with Gladys Cooper at Peter), or was she speaking about Herbert Brenon’s celebrated film, which opened at the London Pavilion, in Piccadilly Circus, on Wednesday, January 14, 1925, and proved to be a big hit. More on this question in a bit….
According to various accounts, the winter of 1924 was colder and drearier than usual in London. For Brooks, life in the English capital proved to be not all that fun, not all as glamorous and fun as it had been in New York. In an insightful essay, “Pandora’s Box with the lid off!’: Lulu’s misadventures in London,” U.K. film historian Pamela Hutchinson makes interesting points regarding Brooks’ precarious financial situation. Hutchinson writes, “According to a frustratingly date-phobic history of the club, Champagne and Chandeliers: the Story of the Café de Paris, the cabaret budget was tight, especially in the early years. Brooks, who had been performing on Broadway in George White’s Scandals, is not named among the notable performers there and she would have been a featured dancer in a lineup of small acts, rather than a headliner. So when she recalls ‘I was living beyond my means – who doesn’t at seventeen? – in a flat at 49A Pall Mall’ we must remember that her means were rather slight, despite that swanky address.” A bit further on in her piece, Hutchinson notes, “… after Brooks’s engagement at the Café de Paris had ended, the owner ‘charitably continued to pay her’, a titbit that suggests that while she was popular with him, she was neither the toast of Piccadilly, nor very well-paid. Either way, that was clearly not sustainable.”
In an unsustainable financial situation, Brooks finally took matters into her own hands, or rather, put matters into the hands of others. In Lulu in Hollywood, Brooks writes, “When I was eighteen, I cabled Otto Kahn, the New York banker, begging him to rescue me from London, where I was dancing the Charleston at the Cafe de Paris. He cabled Edmund Goulding, the future film director, who was visiting his family in London, telling Goulding to pay my rent at 49A Pall Mall and deposit me on the S.S. Homeric sailing for New York on February 14.” However, according to an alien passenger list (a record of foreign nationals leaving England and heading to the United States), Brooks embarked at the port of Southampton on January 14th, 1925 (not February 14, as stated in Lulu in Hollywood). Once again, she traveled aboard the Homeric, an Olympic Class liner which was part of the White Star Steamship Line. Her age is incorrectly recorded as 19, as she was only 18 years old at the time. Her occupation is listed as “dancer,” and her previous London residence given as 49 Pall Mall.
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| That’s me, at 50 Pall Mall, standing at what likely was Brooks’ entrance. |
There was construction the day I visited. This is a Google street view image.. |
That’s me, standing outside the Café de Paris on a rainy day in London. |
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| A view from the second floor. | That’s me, inside the Café de Paris. | A view from what was the dance floor. |