Transcribed by Nan
[2023-08-01—What Youth]
Bob 0:03
We all hear iON occasionally say, “There’s our Miss Brooks. That’s our Miss Brooks.” And most people thought, if they knew about it all, that it was referring to some TV show in the 50s, a school teacher, “Our Miss Brooks.” Well, I found out it was actually another Miss Brooks that iON was talking about, and that is someone called Louise Brooks who was the last great, silent screen star in the 20s. And here’s some descriptions of her. “An actress who needed no directing. An actress who needed no directing, but could move across the screen causing the work of art to be born by her mere presence.” Another person said, “Her youthful admirers see in her an actress of brilliance, a luminescent personality, and a beauty unparalleled in film history.” Another review, “One of the most mysterious and potent figures in the history of the cinema… she was one of the first performers to penetrate to the heart of screen acting.” Another person says, “Louise Brooks is the only woman who had the ability to transfigure no matter what film into a masterpiece…” I’ll read that again. “Louise Brooks is the only woman who had the ability to transfigure no matter what film into a masterpiece… Louise is the perfect apparition, the dream woman, the being without whom the cinema would be a poor thing. She is much more than a myth, she is a magical presence, a real phantom, the magnetism of the cinema.” Another reviewer, “Those who have seen her can never forget her. She is the modern actress par excellence… As soon as she takes the screen, fiction disappears along with art, and one has the impression of being present at a documentary. The camera seems to have caught her by surprise, without her knowledge. She is the intelligence of the cinematic process, the perfect incarnation of that which is photogenic; she embodies all that the cinema rediscovered in its last years of silence: complete naturalness and complete simplicity. Her art is so pure that it becomes invisible.” So those are some of the statements about Louise Brooks throughout the last 100 years, and definitely that is what is gonna be said about me when I have my press conference — during the press conference and after, or if not me, then they fit Carolyn, of course. Right? So that was a big discovery when iON says, “There’s our Miss Brooks. That’s our Miss Brooks.” Let’s think about Louise Brooks I recommend. I’ll post the “New Yorker” article on her. Quite an amazing story, and she suddenly quit in 1938, but I haven’t got to that part yet to see why she quit. But it was — disrupted a lot of stuff. So there it is, talking about me or Carolyn.
