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Is anyone aware of any contemporary references to the famous `Lulu-joins-the-Salvation-Army' ending that was reportedly tacked on to `Pandora's Box' for its American release?

The only one I've ever been able to find is Mordaunt Hall's review for the New York Times. This also seems to be the only source Barry Paris used in his book, given that he directly quotes from Hall's review in describing the management's woe over the `added saccharine ending'.

The alternate ending is now an accepted part of the `Pandora's Box' mythology, but it still makes me curious - I don't recall Brooks ever making any reference to filming it - and surely it's something she'd have had an opinion on.

Paging Thomas Gladysz......

Hope this helps.....

The film made it’s world premier at the Gloria–Palast in Berlin on February 9, 1929. It made its way around the world and opened in December 1929 in New York City.

At the time, NYC had many newspapers and it was reviewed in each of them. I have the reviews from New York Herald Tribune, New York Post, New York American, New York Daily News, etc... as well as the city's non-English newspapers like the Novoye Russkoye Slovo (Russian), Jewish Daily Forward (Yiddish), and two-German language papers.

The film received generally poor reviews, though some reviews were mixed, a one or two even positive. Some gave Brooks herself poor reviews (for her acting), but some focused more on the disjointed nature of the film. (It was heavily censored.) Despite poor reviews, the film did well at its New York debut.

The New York Sun reported Pandora’s Box “ . . . has smashed the Fifty-fifth Street Playhouse’s box office records. It will therefore be held for another week.” Admittedly, the 55th Street playhouse was a smaller art house. This was it's only recorded American screening till 1931 when it was shown again with English titles and synchronized sound effects. The American screening was also reviewed in the trade publications and in the general interest press (like the New Yorker).

I also have copies of the NY state censorship records which indicate the cuts which were demanded before the film could be shown in NYC. There was a battle over the film - original run time was 131 minutes in Berlin, NYC run time was 85 minutes.

With all that said, Pabst had a tendency to soften his films to appease the German censors. He also did so with Diary of a Lost Girl. He knew he could only get away with so much. Perhaps that's why he shot the salvation army tacked on ending. It wasn't shot for American audiences. By the time Pandora's Box was shown in NYC, Pabst had already made The White Hell of Pitz Palu and Diary of a Lost Girl. (The censorship struggles over this latter film starring Louise Brooks are outlined in my new edition of "The Diary of a Lost Girl.")

It was cut to ribbons, certainly - but is there any specific mention of the Salvation Army ending in the other reviews, or the censorship records?

Currently, the only evidence of them seems to come from a single review, and in my experience, the accuracy of reviews from the era can't always be trusted (for example, the one cited by Paris that had an alleged eyewitness describe Louise as a `tall, weary-looking singer').

I'm not necessarily suggesting that the ending didn't exist - I'm just curious about the nature of it.

You would have to assume that the ending was formed from strategic cuts married with altered intertitles as opposed to a specially shot ending, which surely we would know about.

I'm not sure how detailed the censorship records from that era are compared to the fine-tooth-comb records that exist from the Breen era, or whether the altered ending could be extrapolated from them.

The context here is that I'm writing a piece comparing the endings of `Pandora's Box' and `Diary of a Lost Girl'.

Alas, I don't have the German censorship records for "Pandora's Box," nor can I remember seeing any reference to them, so they may not exist.

The screenplay/script/treatment for Pandora's Box was published as a book in the early 1970's.

According to the Deutsches Filminstitut, the film was submitted to the German censors at a length of 3265m (10709'), and passed on January 30, 1929 at a length of 3255m (10676'), with only 20 seconds cut.

Ah, the mystery goes on!

The reason I'm interested is that the piece I'm working on postulates `Lost Girl' as a kind of inverse `Pandora'. Lulu is a womanlike child, and Thymian is a childlike woman. One heads upward, one heads downward.

Therefore, the idea of their eventual fates being reversed - Thymian surrendering to the dark side (as in Pabst's original intention) and Lulu being lured to the good (as in the Salvation Army ending) - is an interesting concept to expore.