Historic lost issues of actors directory are found with help from The Observer

You might not know the name of the actor Carl Brisson, but the director he once worked with, Alfred Hitchcock, will likely ring a bell.

Brisson, who was Danish and died in 1958, starred in some of the great British director’s early films – and The Observer can now reveal that he was also the inaugural star of Spotlight, the directory of showbusiness talent, in 1927.

Earlier this year, The Observer put out a call on behalf of Spotlight asking for those who had relatives in the entertainment industry to look for the two first editions. The company, based near London’s Covent Garden, is to mark its centenary next year by holding open days and setting up a travelling “roadshow” destined for regional theatre foyers. Just one thing stood in its way: Spotlight did not have its first two copies, both published just as “talkies” began to take over from silent film.

Now Martin Humphries, director of The Cinema Museum in Kennington, south London, has come forward to say he has both missing editions, from August and December 1927, safely bound together with the following four. The museum is to take the rediscovered volumes to Spotlight in the next few days.

“The editions, which are in good condition, were bought by my fellow founder of the museum, Ronald Grant, in a Greenwich Sunday market many years ago,” Humphries said. “On querying the vendor he was told they had come from the man who started Spotlight.”

The directory, which became digital-only in 2017 and is still used by casting directors and production companies to find talent, was created by a stage manager called Keith Moss. Other copies of his first two missing editions are held by the British Library, but are water-damaged and illegible.

In 1927, the year he was featured in the first edition of Spotlight, Brisson made his British screen debut as a professional boxer in Hitchcock’s silent film The Ring. He went on to play a fisherman in The Manxman, made by the director in 1929.

Brisson was perhaps most notable for introducing a song that celebrated the end of the prohibition era in New York. Titled “Cocktails for Two” it first appeared sung by the actor in the 1934 film Murder at the Vanities. He was also the secret crush of another, younger Scandi actor, the renowned film star Greta Garbo. She reportedly put lots of pictures of Brisson up in her locker at the shop where she worked when she was still a lowly Greta Gustafsson.

Photographs by Studiocanal Films Ltd/Alamy, RGR Collection/Alamy