After the performance, Norma approaches Myra and Louise, and, to Alan’s confusion, offers to accompany Louise to New York. The young and beautiful Louise performs a graceful modern dance that clearly scandalizes some in the audience (one of whom just told Norma that she and her husband have joined the Ku Klux Klan), but Norma is mesmerized. Alan looks uncomfortable and Norma’s reaction is frosty. As Norma and Alan take their seats in the audience, a young man, Raymond, approaches them to say hello. But she can’t go without a chaperone, and nobody is available. As Norma eavesdrops, the “well-known Wichita pianist” Myra Brooks reveals to friends that her teenaged daughter Louise, performing that evening, has been accepted at Denishawn, a prestigious dance school in New York. As a four-piece band plays a jaunty tune and partygoers mingle, a much-younger Norma enters on the arm of her husband Alan. A dance recital to benefit the Wichita Children’s Home. “It’s Norma Carlisle.” The door opens, and before we can see who is inside, we instantly flash back to… Reaching the top, the woman knocks on a door. An attractive woman in her early sixties is climbing a staircase lined with 1920s-era movie stills and posters of a glamorous young woman sporting a black Dutch bob hairstyle. OK, maybe with one exception, which I’ll explain.Wichita, Kansas, 1942. Moreover, the costumes reflect the characters and in subtle ways that don’t hit you over the head. I’m not an expert in 1920s fashion, but in my cursory perusal of catalogs and photos, oh yeah, she nailed it here. How women look and their decorum was based on their clothes.” What was beautiful then is different from now. I found myself digging up and looking at old photographs. I love fabrics and trying to re-create the way they moved. In Times Square Chronicles, Donnelly said: She must have some mad shopping skillz! Plus, she knew what she was looking for and what she was trying to achieve. I also borrowed something from England.” This is stunning when you see how lovely the show looks and how well the clothes evoke the period. The whole process was about two months.”Īs a result, Donnelly “ended up buying a lot of vintage clothes on. We only had three weeks to shoot the movie and pre-production was three before that. Still, the book’s story makes for an entertaining frock flick.Īnd goshdarnit, this is a pretty little movie! Apparently, costume designer Candice Donnelly (who has mostly worked in theater) hardly built any full costumes specifically for this production, due to time and budget limitations. However, the school was in Los Angeles, not New York City (Denishawn later opened a branch in the Bronx, NY, in 1927, not that Brooks attended), so the central premise of this movie is false. She was a dancer and attended the Denishawn School of Dancing modern dance company in 1922, when she was 15. There are some elements of truth - Louise Brooks was from Kansas and was sexually molested as a girl. Speaking of accuracy, the story comes from a historical fiction novel by Laura Moriarty (Julian Fellowes adapted the screenplay). Set mostly in 1922, the period details are beautiful and fairly accurate, although some of the press indicates that the movie was made on a tight budget. The movie feels more like a TV movie than made for the big screen, so nothing is lost by watching it streaming. The Chaperone had a brief theatrical release in March 2019, then was made available on PBS Passport online, and finally aired on PBS Masterpiece in November 2019. While Brooks is later to become a silent-film star and we know her story, Norma’s complicated past and secret-filled present drive the action here. She’s a naive Kansas wife, Norma, who volunteers to accompany 16-year-old Louise Brooks to attend dance school in New York City. Elizabeth McGovern stretches out of her typecasting as Cora, Countess of Grantham, and returns to somewhat more complicated roles as the central character in The Chaperone (2019).
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