A GIRL IN EVERY PORT "A Centennary Tribute to Louise Brooks" Series October 20, 2006

$9
1928 b&w 62min Eng intertitles
live accompaniment
Scr Seton I. Miller, adapted from an original story by Howard Hawks & James K. McGuinness
dir Howard Hawks
Victor McLaglen, Robert Armstrong, Louise Brooks
Special guest: Claudine Kaufmann, former Director of Collections, Cinémathèque Française

Sailor Spike Madden (McLaglen) discovers that he has competition for his girlfriends in various ports of call. He finally overtakes his rival, Salami (Armstrong), another sailor, & after a fight they become fast friends. When Madden falls in love with a circus performer—gold-digging vamp Marie (Brooks)—Salami must decide whether to tell his friend the truth about her.

A GIRL IN EVERY PORT is Brooks’s 12th film appearance. She had the good fortune of appearing in this comedy, a seminal film that introduces the theme of male friendship through rivalry. Brooks dominates the film & in her naturalistic way, fulfills what Hawks was aiming for. "I wanted a different type of girl," he said in his laconic style, "I hired [her] because she's very sure of herself...She's very feminine, but she's damn good & sure she's going to do what she wants to do." In her book, Lulu in Hollywood, Brooks writes that it was this performance that prompted German director G. W. Pabst to cast her in PANDORA'S BOX. This was not surprising, since in the words of critic David Boxwell, “A GIRL IN EVERY PORT sets in motion Brooks’s naissance as Lulu, the recognizably modern girlish destroyer of men who are more obsessed with her than she is with them, an indissoluble mixture of innocence & corruption.”

Official Website: http://www.lacma.org/programs/FilmListing.aspx#lb