RL Did he know that you were a dancer?

LB Yes, I say we knew each other. He found out during the picture. In the very first sequence I do a dance, old Shigoisch is playing the violin or something and Pabst said "...just make up some silly little dance..." and so of course, I went into an old Denis Shawn routine and when the scene was finished he grabbed me and said "Ah! But you are a dancer!", Not a very good one! but, but what I'm getting at is, that he treated everyone completely different. Now Kortner, the great actor from the theater! He would take him aside and he'd rehearse very carefully, they would talk over everything, but that didn't really mean anything because Pabst never wanted a set performance! He wanted it to be new and... so he would fool Kortner, for instance in the murder scene, to go back to that. I told you,

Kortner had it all worked out and Pabst agreed, yes, so we started, mostly in a two shot, the gun going off, so Pabst kept changing the set up. Or he would take the gun out of Kortner's hand at a different time, so that in the end you see, Kortner wasn't giving a set performance at all. Of course any director can keep an actor fresh but he always treated Kortner as if he was going to do exactly the way that they had talked about. Kortner began to bellyache about his back, this marvelous back being humped over so many scenes, and he said "but you're only showing Miss Brooks..." and this started the thing that he was spoiling me ... This was a difficult picture because we were all difficult, the old man, was difficult, he was always getting drunk...

RL Shigolsch, but he should be..

LB He was a marvelous actor.

RL But he was right!

LB Yes he...

RL ... a dirty old man, maybe your father! And maybe your lover!

LB He was marvelous, he was perfect. He stunk! But the one he had real trouble with was Alice Roberts, her husband had put some money into the picture, she was a Belgium, is it Belgium? Yes?

RL Belgian, yes.

LB Belgium ... Alice Robear (phonetically)

RL I always thought it was Roberts (as in English)

LB You're just a lousy American!

RL That's right!

LB But she spoke just enough English to insult me! She was very tall and precise...

RL But did she have any idea that she was to play a lesbian?

LB No! That's the joke!

RL She was the Countess Geschwitz

LB Yes, and the scene she played, this was the very first scene she played in this picture, the wedding night when Kortner finds me dancing the tango with her, we are having a love affair on the side, .... I've forgotten her name, the Countess something, you just said it...

RL- The Countess Geschwitz

LB Well I'll call her Alice Roberts... she rehearsed the scene (singing) Adios muchachos... and she absolutely froze! and walked off the set , and Pabst, he was always very calm, and I thought, gee this is pretty funny because I'd known lesbians all my life...

RL I think you said that your best friend was a lesbian...

LB I was just reliving Lulu but I thought; now, what the hell is he going to do? Well, pretty soon he went off and I saw them talking, she in her black satin dress, and he was talking to her in French... and pretty soon they came back and she was smiling, and this is what he did. He let her look like as cross as possible in a two-shot because it was marvelous, she looked like a very repressed lesbian who was hiding...that glare! ... Then when he did close-ups with her, he would stand off and play the scene with her so that she could do a true love scene with him! (laughs) And she turned out to be marvelous. He was a director like... almost every director follows a pattern, pretty much treats everyone the same, but he didn't.

RL This scene had repercussions later on didn't it? One of the scenes, if I remember rightly, was completely cut out in England; in America it survived.

LB Oh no, they showed it in the States. What really killed the picture for us was the talkies (which) came in just at that time. I remember it ran on 55th street and they asked me to kind of make a personal appearance. I'd never seen it. I never saw it until I came-here in '56 and Jimmy Carr showed it to me. And I wouldn't go.

RL You mean you'd never seen it?

LB No.

RL There is another question I want to ask in relation to Pabst. During the making of the film did you see the rushes?

LB No! He ... That's where he was very good, I said I didn't care to see the rushes any more than I care to hear this (interview). but when we made DIARY one day he said "you did that scene very well, come on in..." well, where ever he ran the rushes, "come into the studio" and I went in and I was just horrified and I heard him say to Faulkenberg "great mistake! Never do that again, never!" and that was it, he never did that again so I never knew at all, and never want to.

RL What horrified you about it?

LB About it?

RL I mean, because you looked gorgeous...

LB Well you know... don’t you see, that's why I was never an actress. I never was in love with myself. I would go to a party and I'd see Dolores Del Rio and Constance Talmedge and Constance Bennett... all these beautiful women and I'd say, you're the ugliest one here, you're black and furry, you've got freckles, your dress is not as attractive... in the end ... so, unless ... you can't be a great actress unless you think you're beautiful and you... it's of the essence.

RL I'm wondering in what sense you mean a great actress, because you're a contradiction of this...

LB No! To be a great actress you must know what you are doing. When I write my little pieces I know exactly what I am doing. When I acted I hadn't the slightest idea of what I was doing; I was simply playing myself, which is the hardest thing in the world to do. You can give most actors any part in the world and they can play it but you say "be yourself" and they get terribly self-conscious. This is why I never learned to act. I never had any trouble playing myself.

RL Was Pabst involved in choosing your costumes, in your taste and-the way you used your body?

LB He went to every fitting with me, he chose all my costumes. And for instance the wedding dress, we got into a fight about that because I said "why have you got my train tied all around my waist for God's sake? It looks silly!" He said "you've got the train tied on because when you get in a fight in the bedroom scene you mustn't have that train and you've got to sit down and untie it ... and will you shut up!" Everything, the material ... the costume in the nightclub was just two strips over my bosom; he would test all these things out. But what was I getting at? Something about Pabst and clothes.

Oh! then, I'll never forget, he went to my trunk in the hotel Eden and he said "now look, lets go through your clothes, you have to pick out something for the last scene when you are down and out in London and whoring." And he went through everything ... dozens and Josephine pulled out all these things and finally he picked out my favorite suit, it was blue... that's what makes it work... In America, the United States, most directors have no idea what a girl should wear in a picture. The dress designer would come down on the set with a lot of designs, the director would look at them, okay them and that was all, he was not connected in any way really, with the picture except in the direction.

The same about the set, Pabst himself, some days, would go around if he wanted shadows for instance going up into the attic in London where they lived. These marvelous stairs and Pabst himself would supervise the spraying of what you make it smoky with. Everything was integrated with him. So back to the suit, I said "well that’s my favorite suit and it's damned expensive!" and he said "no no, that's all right..." So he took it away and the morning came to shoot the scene and Josephine disappeared and came back with my suit...

Avec Wallace Berry

Les Mendiants de la vie (Beggars of Life) de William A. Wellman (1928)

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RL It was your own suit? Right?
                                                                                          
LB He often used my clothes.. half the clothes would be mine because he changed thescene and I.. he'd say "bring me a dressing gown..." bring anything and so on.. so she came back with my costume and I looked at it. My God! The skirt had been torn and ripped and dipped in oil, the lovely blouse was a mess, the coat he threw away.. I only wore the blouse and I began to weep.. I said, but that's my suit.. oh, it's the way he did things that was so amusing, because anybody else would have gotten some rag tag.. bought something to do that.. but he wanted something that was mine, that I loved, so that I would feel terrible in it and I did.. you know.. my beautiful suit and it was ruined so it made me feel like this.. and that's how I was in the end of the picture..

RL This, compounded with the fact that the man who played Jack the Ripper was someone that you found enormously attractive..

LB Yes.. he was very clever about knowing whom I found attractive, that's why I couldn't go out with this one or that one you see, "but you can go out with him!". He knew that I detested Franz Lederer, who later became Francis Lederer here in America, he... he felt that I was important since Pabst was so fond of me that he should pretend to be in love with me, that's a great actor's trick, so he would bring me his photograph and give it to Josephine; he didn't speak English, so he would bring a bouquet of flowers and of course I would be very annoyed. Alva loved this because he's a very weak man in the film as Dr. Schon's son and I don't really like him in the picture, when I kissed him and made love to him I was just doing it to pass the time.

But the moment that Diesel came on the set for something or other, I don't think he (Pabst) had given him the part yet, they were very close friends, Diesel worked in practically every picture that Pabst made until he (Diesel) died.. and he (Pabst) saw that we just adored each other and I think that was the happiest scene of the whole picture, the final scene which he did.. he (Pabst) shot as much as possible in sequence, he could do that because it was almost all interior, in the studio and he had all the sets built and ready to go when we started. And this was very intimate, there was only Diesel ...and I and the cameraman and they didn't have a huge staff the way they have now, and we had a lovely time between scenes.

Here he is with a knife which he's going to stick up into my interior, thrown on the table and we'd be singing and I'd be doing the Charleston, you know most actors and directors, between scenes in a tragic thing like this... they're all getting into the mood of the nude, as we say in Kansas, and concentrating perhaps on the dialogue... Pabst said I needed music because it was the fashion in America ... he had an old piano player ...  I really didn't want it... and it was very useful between scenes. So as I said, we had a wonderful time, Diesel and I and Pabst, laughing and talking we'd do this whole tragic ending, you would never know, you'd think we were ... it was a Christmas party!

BEGGARS OF LIFE

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RL I'm tempted to ... I was very impressed reading last night in your article on this whole thing ... to me it’s... it sort of gave me goosepimples, can you read it without glasses?

LB No..

RL because I can..

LB No, you read it..

RL I'm not sure that I can... I’m getting old.. "it is in the worn and filthy garments of the street walker that she feels passion for the first time; comes to life so that she may die; when she picks up Jack the Ripper on the foggy London street, he tells her he has no money to pay her, she says 'never mind, I like you'. It is Christmas Eve and she is about to receive the gift that has been her dream since childhood, death by a sexual maniac." I think you wrote that... not Wedekind...

LB (indifferently) Yes.. Yes..

RL To me it is very moving... Now, what haven't we talked about?

LB Well, let me go on chronologically ... oh you want to talk about Lulu?

RL I'd sort of like to ... What intrigues me is the Lulu in real life. To what extent... having made the film not knowing really what Lulu was about... to what extent has your life been, in a sense, a life of Lulu...and I'm wondering about other people...

LB Well, let me go on with the story and I'll get to that. We finished the picture at the end of November and I returned to New York and George Marshall met me. Now mind you, he loved beautiful women and he loved famous women and my being a famous actress was part of his affection for me. So I got back to New York and he said now, we've opened up a new company, RKO-1 Joseph Kennedy has formed the company and they want you to sign a contract. And I said no, I said I hate California and I'm not going back! Now George was a man who never said anything, he never complained to me about anything, he always went into action ... So I went over and they said "we'll give you five hundred a week to do.." I think they wanted to do a well known book called "Bad Girl", I think they finally did it at Universal.

And I said "Well... No" I said flatly "I don't want to do it". So George didn't say anything ... We went back to the Lombardy, he had a couple of drinks and he gave me one shove and knocked me against the bed and I split my head wide open ... I'd been wearing my hair up ... so I put my bangs back. Then he said well... what do you want to do and I said I don't know ... so he went back to Washington and left me there in a huge suite at the Lombardy and as usual I was running out of money; although I made an awful lot of money it seemed to disappear all the time and of course he would spend a lot of money on me too and he didn't like that a terrible lot and so...we got into a fight and I ... disappeared ... with another man ... and, about that time, in April, I got a cable from Mr. Pabst and he said that Rene Clair was making a picture "Prix De Beauté" in Paris and he wants you to play the part ... so come at once! He always gave me orders, so I.. although I wouldn't go to Hollywood, I would go to Mr. Pabst. So I got on a boat and I got there in May and I went to get photographed, still, publicity pictures made with Rene Claire, who spoke very little English. He was a very small, demure, rather fragile man...

RL I never met him, I've always admired him enormously.

LB and he took me back to the hotel in a cab afterwards. We finished the photographs and were riding down the Champs Elysée and he said "Look, you know I'm not going to make this picture" he said "Dr. Pinet says they haven't any money even to start the picture, it'll be months before they get it together ... I'm backing out and if you're wise you will too" I said "Well, I have a contract and it's all signed and sealed in New York and George Marshall made it so that I can't get out of it, I'll have to do it. Well, exit Rene Clair. So there I was, holed up in the Royal Monceaux with nothing to do. I didn't know anybody and all of a sudden Mr. Pabst appeared. He was on his way to London and he asked me out, and this is a rather strange happening. I went with him and Dr. Pinez and somebody else and they said "where do you want to go?" and I said Chez Laurent, it was a place with a colored band, I went there every night.

So we went there and we sat down and Pabst wasn't pleased with me, I was drinking. His idea of a drink for me was a fruit salad in a pitcher surrounded by a little Champagne, a Kaiser Cup or some such thing, but I was drinking a brandy or something ... and over across the way I saw Townsend Martin, he was one of the aristocrats in New York who'd gone into movies and wrote the script, incidentally, for "Love 'Em and Leave 'Em" but he quit then, he didn't care, he was rich; and there he was, sitting with this great English lady, the Honorable Mrs. Daisy Fellows, did you ever hear of her?...

RL No.

LB ... well she had a yacht and Townsend loved money, like all rich people. So I was very bored with the people I was with... and sent the waiter over to tell Mr Martin to come to my table.. he was in love with me, we'd come over on the llle De France together. He didn't come.. and Mr. Pabst, in the usual German fashion, had given me a bouquet of roses, a cluster of roses.. well, finally Townsend came over, and he was a tall blond man and he bent over to me and he said "I'm terribly sorry Louise but I couldn't leave Daisy alone.." Whereupon I took this bouquet and sliced him across the face, leaving a trickle from the thorns..

RL Of blood?!

LB Of blood of course..

RL Oh marvelous..

LB And he was a gentleman and he laughed.. but Mr. Pabst.. I thought he was going to kill me right there, and all the men sitting at the table.. and Mr. Pabst said "Oh! I'm terribly sorry.." He knew Carlton.. Carlton said "that's all right.." he said, so Mr. Pabst grabbed me and took me back to the Royal Monceaux. The next morning he said he had to go on to London, so we said good-bye and I thought nothing more about it. So I went down to Cannes, my rich friends had paid my fare, I was getting a thousand a week but they paid my fare to Cannes and set me up in a hotel... no, we went to Antibes and I stayed there for a week and came back and they still didn't have a director for "Prix De-Beauté". Then the phone rang one morning and said "Louise? Mr. Pabst!" I said yes he said "I'm going to make a picture with you in it and you're to come to Berlin." I said "all right" and he said "Now of course it's my company and I can't pay you a thousand a week, I'll give you $500 and you get on the train and come"

So I got on the train and I went and that is how we came to make "Diary" but then again, this time I had in tow the Eskimo. He was half Swedish and half English, a darling boy! They had sent him to Lon... to Paris to work in a bank there but he would turn up in the morning in tails so he got fired! He was living on a small allowance and I met him at a party and he came to live with me and so naturally when I went to... they called him the Eskimo because his hair was perfectly blonde so it looked like a fur cap, so he was called the Eskimo. So when I got off the train and I had a... my finger was broken because I had shut the door and I had to be taken at once to have my fingernail taken off, and there was the Eskimo and he (Mr. Pabst) said " and who is this?", and I said "the Eskimo! The Baron Biek!" he was really a Baron but that didn't impress Pabst... so all the time we made Diary I had Eskie in tow...

RL Wait... you had Eskie, who else was in your entourage, who sort of traveled with you?

LB That's all..

RL Just the two of you... huh? I'm beginning to have visions of your maid..

LB No, no! Oh the maid, only the maid..

RL Only your maid..

LB Yes, so... er... but Mr. Pabst was very firm about the Eskimo. The Eskimo would come to the studio every day, he would get up at about eleven, he'd go to the Eden bar and bring out a lot of cold meats and Mr. Pabst and he and I would have lunch. When we went to do the location shots at the end of the picture, Mr Pabst took me aside and said "you are not to bring that boy with you, do you understand?" and so I did not bring him along.. and an amusing thing about how clever Mr. Pabst was with me; our cameraman on that picture was Seff Algier(?), he's the one that made six pictures with Leni Riefenstahl including Pitzpaloo with Pabst and he also shot "Triumph of the Will" for Leni.. do you know, she had 18 cameramen on that picture and forty-four on Olympia! Can you imagine?

Oh, so I liked Seff very much, he was the only cameraman I was always really attracted to. He was a beautiful Austrian blonde, marvelous muscles, a champion skier, and one day he even came on the set in his shorts, and Mr. Pabst said "what are you doing coming out here? Well he's showing his muscles ... go out and put your pants on,". One night in a hotel there was practically no one there except us, every one had gone to bed except Seff and I and we were sitting at the bar. He was drinking beer and I was having something, we were having a lovely time, the whole place to ourselves when suddenly the bar door opened and Pabst stuck his head in and said "Louise! Go to bed!".. how he knew we were there I don't know, and he gave Seff a dirty look and so we disappeared. What else do you want to know about "Diary"?

RL You did mention that you were drinking...

LB Oh, I didn't drink much then, no, no.

RL No?

LB Well, drinking was part of life, I grew up in that prohibition and everyone drank.