Beggars of Life, a terrific 1928 silent film starring Louise Brooks, screens tonight in Seattle, Washington. It will be shown as part of the "Trader Joe's Silent Movie Mondays" series at the Paramount Theatre.
This William Wellman-directed film has been screened more than a few times of late across the United States and England, and where ever it has shown, it has proven to be a hit with contemporary audiences.
Beggars of Life is a late silent starring Brooks as a girl who murders her abusive step father and ends up on the run dressed as a boy while she and another young tramp attempt an escape to Canada. The film, a look at the underside of American life, also stars Wallace Beery, Richard Arlen, and Edgar Blue Washington. The filmis based on a popular 1925 novelistic memoir of the same name by hobo author Jim Tully. The book was also turned into a stage play.
“The story which has been something of a screen sensation is said to be based upon the life and adventures of its author who before he took ‘his pen in hand’ saw most of America from ‘side door Pullmans’,” wrote Manly Wade Wellman, the not-related-to the director legendary science fiction & fantasy author, in the Wichita Beacon in December, 1928.
The film was made by William Wellman shortly after he made Wings, the first film to win an Oscar. Though shot as a silent, Beggars of Life is considered the first sound film from Paramount Studios. Sound effects and a couple of songs were added at the time of its initial release - these sound elements, however, have since been lost.
Beggars of Life was a popular film at the time of its release in the autumn of 1928. Many critics singled out Brooks for her outstanding performance. The critic for the New York Morning Telegraph wrote “Louise Brooks, in a complete departure from the pert flapper that it has been her wont to portray, here definitely places herself on the map as a fine actress. Her characterizations, drawn with the utmost simplicity, is genuinely affecting.”
Across town, the critic for the New York World noted, “Here we have Louise Brooks, that handsome brunette, playing the part of a fugitive from justice, and playing as if she meant it, and with a certain impressive authority and manner. This is the best acting this remarkable young woman has done.”
The New York Herald Tribune added, “Richard Arlen’s juvenile vagrant, so delightfully played on the stage by James Cagney, is an excellent piece of work, while Louise Brooks’s delineation of the girl fugitive is so good as to indicate that Miss Brooks is a real actress, as well as an alluring personality.”
Beggars of Life screens tonight at the Paramount Theatre (911 Pine Street) in Seattle, Washington. Showtime is 7 pm. The film will be accompanied byorganist Jim Riggs on the historic Mighty Wurlitzer Organ, one of the last three remaining organs of its kind to reside in its original environment.
For more info: A little more on Beggars of Life can be found on IMDb at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0018684/
Thomas Gladysz is a longtime fan of Louise Brooks, so much so that in 1995 he founded the Louise Brooks Society, an internet-based archive and fan club devoted to the silent film star. Gladysz has contributed to books on the actress, organized exhibits, appeared on television, and introduced her films around the country. Recently, he edited and wrote the introduction to the “Louise Brooks edition” of Margarete Bohme’s The Diary of a Lost Girl.
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