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Jan Wahl through a lens darkly
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Jan Wahl's collection of essays - a kind of memoir, has just been published
by BearManor Media.
By Thomas Gladysz
SF Silent Film Examiner
Jan Wahl has led a charmed, almost storybook life. He has followed his interests and passions with zeal. He has gone places and done things most of us only dream of.
Part of his good fortune has to do with his talents as a writer, his artistic sensibility and appreciation for great and fine things. Some of it has to do with being in the right place at the right time. But then, chance favors the prepared mind.
Wahl is well regarded as a children’s book author, with more than 100 works to his credit. His very first book, Pleasant Fieldmouse (1964), featured illustrations by Maurice Sendak! In a long and distinguished career, Wahl has also worked with such well-known children’s book illustrators as Mercer Mayer, William Joyce, Erik Blegvad, and Garth Williams.
Wahl like the lady on local TV with the hats with whom he shares a name has also been a life-long film buff. His interest in and passion for the movies have brought him into contact with a number of greats – as fan and enthusiast, as a writer, and as a film collector. Those encounters, and more, are related in an enjoyable new book of essays, Through a Lens Darkly (BearManor Media).
The chapter titles tell the story: “Conrad Veidt Slept Under the Bed,” (about the author’s youthful adoration of the actor), “Gloria Swanson Wore a Funny Hat,” “The Day I Almost Killed Garbo” (a commonplace anecdote with mystical overtones), “Glamour Pusses Up Close: Mae West, Marlene Dietrich, Dolores Del Rio and Rita Hayworth,” and “Postcards from Leni.” The latter relates Wahl’s consideration of and correspondence with the German filmmaker, Leni Riefenstahl.
Of special interest are two chapters, “A Cup of Coffee for Carl Th. Dreyer” and “Quick Comet in the Sky: Louise Brooks.” The first tells the story of how Wahl came to work for and befriend Carl Th. Dreyer, the great Danish director whose few works include two masterpieces, The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) and Vampyr (1932). Wahl recounts his participation in the making of Dreyer’s second from last film, Ordet, in 1955.
Wahl enjoyed – and at times probably didn’t enjoy - a 20 year friendship with the legendary silent film star, Louise Brooks. Wahl writes, “I feel lucky to have known her. Yet she was not easy to know. Without a doubt, she was the most complex, most baffling, the brightest person I have known. She may have shared intelligent and sparkling insights, but she could be fiercely angry and sharp tongued. Then, just perhaps, apologetic. If I look at her movies, mostly Beggars of Life, Pandora’s Box, Diary of a Lost Girl or Prix de Beaute, I marvel at what she suggested onscreen – despite a disappointing life.”
In the book’s most interesting and sustained chapter, Wahl details how he came to know the actress while a student in Copenhagen in the 1950’s. A telling photograph shows Brooks, James Card and Wahl at the Danish Film Museum in 1957.
Over the next two decades, Wahl received more than 100 letters from “Brooksie” or “Loulou” – as well as the occasional “excellent homemade fudge.” Those letters (which would certainly make a great book) reveal Brooks' intense isolation, her coming to terms with her past, and her struggle to become a writer. It was an aspiration the older Brooks and the young Wahl shared.
Early on, Wahl helped Brooks with her own writing. And over the years, through their correspondence and meetings, the young author became the fallen star’s champion. Neverthless, in Through a Lens Darkly, Wahl tells sobering stories of Brooks’ later years.
Other film world folk with whom Wahl crosses paths include Myrna Loy, Jackie Coogan, the legendary European silent film star Asta Nielsen, and even Ernest Thesiger, Dr. Pretorious in James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein. And there is the widow of avant-garde filmmaker Oskar Fischinger’s, Elfriede. (Fischinger is a great favorite of Wahl’s.) And film archivists, preservationists and historians like David Shepard, James Card of the George Eastman House, and Berkeley’s own Russell Merritt.
Through a Lens Darkly also relates stories about other acquaintances and friends in the arts. There are encounters with the legendary dancers Paul Swan and Ruth St. Denis, crooner Bing Crosby (who sings the author “Happy Birthday” in a Mexican cafe), the poet and poetic filmmaker James Broughton, literati Ivy Compton Burnett, Katherine Anne Porter, Dylan Thomas, and Vladimir Nabokov (Wahl’s instructor at Cornell), as well as the great Danish writer Isak Dinesen (author of Seven Gothic Tales and Out of Africa, etc…), among others. It’s a mixed lot, and Wahl drops a lot of names, but it is oh so much fun.
“The Baroness Tossed Me Out” is devoted to Dinesen, for whom Wahl – then a graduate student – came to work for after receiving a summoning cablegram, “Am dying. Wish to dictate last tales. Please come. Karen Blixen.” He did just that – acting as recording secretary and companion to the then elderly writer.
The problem with Through a Lens Darkly is that there’s not enough of it. As a reader, I have a hundred questions. I want to know more. Were you surprised when the King of Denmark showed you the chrysanthemum tattoo on his back? And do you still have the antique silver piece actor Broderick Crawford bought for you as a thank you gift for showing him around Copenhagen? And do you regret not accompanying Dinesen to Russia after she was invited by the author of Doctor Zhivago, Boris Pasternak?
Nevertheless, Through a Lens Darkly is a good read. Wahl’s conversational style also makes it a fast read. In the words of Ray Bradbury, “If you love films, Jan Wahl’s book is the perfect book for you. Through a Lens Darkly is right-on. Get it!”
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