Beggars of Life is not wanting for a screening.
The acclaimed 1928 Louise Brooks film – directed by the Academy Award winner William Wellman – will be shown at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art on Saturday, October 23 at 7:30 pm. Live musical accompaniment will be provided by Vince Morton.
This special screening marks the second time in the last few months that this once-obscure film has been shown in Los Angeles. (It was also shown in Seattle last week.) The LACMA screening honors the institution, The Film Foundation, which helped fund the recent George Eastman House restoration of the film which in turn helped spur the current revival of Beggars of Life.
Beggars of Life is an unusual film. It 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 hobo (Richard Arlen) attempt an escape to Canada. The film, a gritty look at the underside of American life, also features Wallace Beery and Edgar Blue Washington (an African-American actor in a strong, non-stereotypical role).
The film is based on a popular 1925 novelistic memoir of the same name by “hobo author” Jim Tully. Beggars of Life was recently reissued in soft cover by the Kent State University Press.
The film was shot by Wellman in Jacumba, California not long 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.
Harrison Carroll, writing in the Los Angeles Evening Herald in 1928, stated, “Considered from a moral standpoint, Beggars of Life is questionable, for it throws the glamour of adventure over tramp life and is occupied with building sympathy for an escaping murderess. As entertainment, however, it has tenseness and rugged earthy humor. . . . It is a departure from the wishy-washy romance and the fervid triangle drama.”
Pastoral life gone wrong, girls dressed as boys, blacks and whites mingling, desperation among the glitz and glamour of the Twenties – there is a lot going on in Beggars of Life. It is an unusual film. It’s also a worthwhile film well worth watching. And, until a few years ago when the George Eastman House blew-up the sole surviving 16mm print to 35mm, Beggars of Life had been a seldom screened film.
Wellman made a lot of great movies – Wings (1927), The Public Enemy (1931), A Star is Born (1937), Beau Geste (1939), Roxie Hart (1942), and The Ox Bow Incident (1943) are all on the short list of his best work. Actor and author William Wellman Jr., who has nearly completed a biography of his father for a major publisher, has stated, “Beggars of Life was one of my Father’s favorite silent films. He loved it. He talked about it a great deal with appreciation and GUSTO.”
For more info: A little more on Beggars of Life can be found on IMDb at 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 international 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.Gladysz will speak about his new book at the San Francisco Public Library on November 14th (Louise Brooks’ birthday).
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