When she was a girl, my mother used to be mistaken for Louise Brooks and so I have always felt a sort of investment in her, but I was unprepared for this heartbreaking tale of what-might-have-been.”Īs might be expected of an historical drama from PBS, this production gets a lot of the details right. I have seldom read so lyrical a tale of self-destruction. “I suspect the book that has haunted me the most this year was the life of that queen of the silent screen, Louise Brooks: A Biography (University of Minnesota £17), by Barry Paris. The answer given by Fellowes caused a bit of a stir, as the book he mentioned was published in 1989. In 2012, a handful of English writers were asked by the Guardian newspaper which books had most impressed them during the course of the year. Fellowes considers the silent star an interesting personality and more than just a Hollywood cutie. However, his long simmering interest in Brooks drew him to the project. Busy with the hit television show at the time, Fellowes was resistant. Soon after, she sent the book to Downton Abbey creator and writer Julian Fellowes, and asked that he consider writing a screenplay. On the lookout for interesting parts for and about women of her age, McGovern snapped-up the film rights to Moriarty’s popular novel. In interviews, the celebrated actress recounted how she had been hired to read the audio version of The Chaperone, and fell in love with its story. Her search becomes a journey of discovery.Īlong with starring in The Chaperone, McGovern is also one of the film’s mostly female producers. As a child, she wound up in Kansas after being sent out west on an orphan-train. (In real life, Brooks’ tenure with Denishawn overlapped with that of another legend-in-the-making, Martha Graham, who receives a shout-out in the film.) Besides chaperoning Brooks, McGovern’s character is in search of information about her birth mother. This artistically precocious teen is to study dance at Denishawn, then lead a modern dance troupe in America. The Downton Abbey star plays a corseted middle-age woman named Norma who accompanies Brooks to New York City in the summer of 1922. Richardson garnered strong reviews for her role in the 2017 drama Columbus.īased on Laura Moriarty’s 2012 novel of the same name, which in turn is based on real incidents in Brooks’ life, The Chaperone centers on its title character, dryly though deftly played by Elizabeth McGovern. This young actress plays the future silent film star, and nearly steals the show through her vivacious charm. As was once said about Brooks, all eyes turn toward Richardson when she is on screen. Though The Chaperone isn’t intended as a Brooks bio-pic, it quite nearly becomes one through the stellar performance of newcomer Richardson. So did Shirley MacLaine, a devotee of Brooks who wished to portray the actress as an older woman. She hoped to play the legendary star, who like her, hailed from Kansas. For a time, Julia Roberts owned the screen rights to the acclaimed 1989 biography of Brooks. A number of actresses have expressed interest in playing the bobbed star who famously played Lulu in Pandora’s Box – among them Natalie Portman, Winona Ryder, Neve Campbell, and Dana Delaney. Scripts have been written, cast suggested, and directors mentioned, but no project has ever gotten off the ground.
#Cast pbs the chaperone masterpiece movie
In fact, interest in filming the story of the iconic silent movie star goes back as far as the 1980s. There has been talk of a Louise Brooks bio-pic for some time. As a film, The Chaperone leans heavily on Brooks’ legend in unraveling the story of her travelling companion. Accompanying her is a respectable, though unhappily married woman on her own quest to learn about her own beginnings. Its plot revolves around the summer the 16-year-old Louise Brooks (Haley Lu Richardson) – four years before she found fame as a film star – left her Wichita, Kansas home to study dance on the East Coast. The Chaperone, the first theatrical release from PBS Masterpiece, is a story of beginnings as well as a kind of origin story.
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