Pandora's Box

"Pandora's Box", subtitled "It's a Long, Long, Way" for the US release, was the second single released by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark from the album "Sugar Tax". The song was inspired by silent film actress Louise Brooks and is named after one of the films she starred in.

Filmed in Germany she starred in "Pandora's Box", directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst in his New Objectivity period. The film is based on two plays by Frank Wedekind (Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora) and Brooks plays the central figure Lulu. This film is notorious for its frank treatment of modern sexual mores, including the first screen portrayal of a lesbian. Brooks then starred in the controversial social dramas "Diary Of A Lost Girl" (1929), also directed by Pabst, and "Prix de Beauté" (1930), the latter being filmed in France, and having a famous surprise ending. All these films were heavily censored, as they were very "adult" and considered shocking in their time for their portrayals of sexuality, as well as their social satire. Once returning to Hollywood she would be "blacklisted" and future roles became almost non-existent playing bit-parts in "B Movies". Sometimes uncredited.

Brooks had retired from the screen in 1938 (only 13 years after it began), completing one last film, the John Wayne western "Overland Stage Raiders".

She had lived alone by choice for many years, and Louise Brooks died from a heart attack in 1985, after suffering from arthritis and emphysema for many years.