Focus on Louise Brooks [Blu-ray]

Focus on Louise Brooks, a Blu-ray Disc compilation of the iconic star's early performances, including her debut in Herbert Brenon's The Street of Forgotten Men. This 1925 melodrama has been fully restored and is being made available for the very first time, joined by extant materials from three additional early Brooks features: The American Venus (1926), Just Another Blonde (1926), and Now We're in the Air (1927). The Street of Forgotten Men stars Mary Brian as Mary Vanhern, a woman who successfully escapes her difficult upbringing on the streets of New York's Bowery district only to have her past return to threaten her future happiness. Although only onscreen for a brief, uncredited scene, one need only glimpse Brooks to be reminded of the charisma that immediately makes her a screen icon. Restored from a 35mm nitrate negative preserved at the Library of Congress, the film's missing second reel has been reconstructed using film stills as well as text and dialogue based on a copy of the original script, preserved by the New York Public Library. It features a musical score by Stephen Horne. Although most of Paramount Pictures' beauty contest comedy The American Venus no longer survives, all extant material (including trailers, test footage, and a Technicolor fragment) have been gathered. Brooks' first substantial role places her opposite Ford Sterling, Lawrence Gray, reel 1925 Miss America Fay Lanphier and, in one of his earlier performances, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Brooks plays against type in director Alfred Santell's Coney Island rom-com Just Another Blonde, starring as bookish Diana O'Sullivan opposite Dorothy Mackaill in the title role. The surviving footage includes segments from five of the original six reels as well as the film's original trailer. Finally, director Frank R. Strayer's high flying World War I comedy Now We're in the Air delivers a double dose of Lulu, setting her as twin sisters Griselle and Grisette opposite hapless aviators played by Wallace Beery and Raymond Hatton. Sadly, only Grisette's role still exists today in the film's surviving 22 minute sequence.