Did Pabst Cast Louise Brooks After Seeing A Girl in Every Port?

The Origin of the Louise Brooks Casting Myth

For nearly a century, film history texts have repeated a specific origin story for the 1929 silent masterpiece Pandora’s Box. The narrative claims that director G.W. Pabst selected American actress Louise Brooks to play the role of Lulu immediately after watching her performance as a gold-digging high-diver in Howard Hawks’ 1928 film A Girl in Every Port. This assertion has been treated as established fact despite a complete lack of supporting documentation from the era.

Thomas Gladysz, who has researched Louise Brooks for more than 30 years, notes that Pabst never once claimed to have viewed the Hawks film prior to casting. A thorough review of studio archives, personal letters, and director notebooks reveals zero paper trails linking the two productions. The two movies were released barely a year apart, and both characters—Mam’selle Godiva in the Hawks picture and Lulu in Pabst’s film—shared a similar edge. That resemblance helped cement the myth, but historical evidence supporting the connection remains nonexistent.

James Card and the 1956 George Eastman House Article

The claim first surfaced decades after the cameras stopped rolling. In the September 1956 issue of Image, a publication of the George Eastman House, museum film curator James Card published an article titled “Out of Pandora’s Box: New Light on G.W. Pabst from his Lost Star, Louise Brooks.” Card had recently located Brooks living in obscurity in Rochester, New York, effectively introducing her back into cinema conversations.

Writing about Pabst’s search for the right actress to embody Lulu’s blend of childlike innocence and destructive instinct, Card penned the sentence: “He saw her first in an American movie. It was probably A Girl in Every Port with Victor McLaglen, released early in 1928.” Card relied on speculation rather than direct quotes or verified studio memos, utilizing the word “probably” to bridge a 27-year gap. Subsequent film historians dropped the tentative qualifier, turning Card’s educated guess into established industry dogma.

Brooks disputes Paramount contract claims

In the exact same September 1956 issue of Image, Louise Brooks published a companion piece titled “Mr. Pabst” that offered a very different perspective on her journey to Berlin. Brooks explained that her departure from Hollywood stemmed directly from industry panic over the sudden transition to talking pictures, rather than a director spotting her in a rival studio’s feature.

Brooks wrote that she was under contract at Paramount when studio executive B.P. Schulberg attempted to cut salaries and break existing talent agreements under the guise of questioning actors’ transition capabilities. When Schulberg offered her a choice between staying without a contractual raise or quitting, she chose to leave. As a parting postscript, Schulberg mentioned that Pabst wanted to borrow her for Pandora’s Box. Brooks accepted the offer and departed Hollywood for Berlin as soon as she finished filming the silent version of The Canary Murder Case. Her own recollections make no mention of Howard Hawks or A Girl in Every Port.

When Louise Brooks arrived in Berlin

When did Louise Brooks arrive in Berlin to film Pandora’s Box?

Louise Brooks arrived in Berlin in 1928 to begin her work with G.W. Pabst, shortly after finishing her commitments to Paramount in Hollywood.

Who first printed the claim that Pabst saw Brooks in A Girl in Every Port?

James Card, the film curator at the George Eastman House, first suggested the connection in a September 1956 article published in the museum’s journal, Image.

What studio held Louise Brooks’ contract when she was cast by Pabst?

Paramount held her contract, where studio executive B.P. Schulberg was managing the financial and operational pressures of the early sound era.