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Louise Brooks

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Mary Louise Brooks (November 14, 1906 – August 8, 1985) was an American film actress during the 1920s and 1930s. She is regarded today as an icon of the flapper culture, in part due to the bob hairstyle that she helped popularize during the prime of her career.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn

At the age of 15, Brooks began her career as a dancer and toured with the Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts where she performed opposite Ted Shawn.Template:Sfn After being fired, she found employment as a chorus girl in George White's Scandals and as a semi-nudeTemplate:Sfn dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies in New York City.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn While dancing in the Follies, Brooks came to the attention of Walter Wanger, a producer at Paramount Pictures, and signed a five-year contract with the studio.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn She appeared in supporting roles in various Paramount films before taking the heroine's role in Beggars of Life (1928).Template:Sfn During this time, she became an intimate friend of actress Marion Davies and joined the elite social circle of press baron William Randolph Hearst at Hearst Castle in San Simeon.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Dissatisfied with her mediocre roles in Hollywood films, Brooks went to Germany in 1929 and starred in three feature films that launched her to international stardom: Pandora's Box (1929), Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), and Miss Europe (Prix de Beauté) (1930); the first two were directed by G. W. Pabst. By 1938, she had starred in 17 silent films and eight sound films. After retiring from acting, she fell upon financial hardship and became what she termed "a kept woman" by three wealthy men.Template:Sfn For the next two decades, she struggled with alcoholism and suicidal tendencies.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Following the rediscovery of her films by cinephiles in the 1950s, a reclusive Brooks began writing articles about her film career; her insightful essays drew considerable acclaim.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn She published her memoir, Lulu in Hollywood, in 1982.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Three years later, she died of a heart attack at age 78.Template:Sfn

Early lifeEdit

File:Louise-Brooks-HS.jpg
Brooks as a sophomore in high school, 1922.Template:Sfn She had worn bobbed hair since childhood.Template:Sfn

Brooks was born in Cherryvale, Kansas,Template:Sfn the daughter of Leonard Porter Brooks,Template:Sfn a lawyer, who was usually preoccupied with his legal practice,Template:Sfn and Myra Rude,Template:Sfn an artistic mother who said that any "squalling brats she produced could take care of themselves".Template:Sfn Rude was a talented pianist who played the latest Debussy and Ravel for her children, inspiring them with a love of books and music.Template:Sfn

Brooks described the hometown of her childhood as a typical Midwestern community where the inhabitants "prayed in the parlor and practiced incest in the barn."Template:Sfn When Louise was nine years old, a neighborhood man sexually abused her.Template:Sfn Beyond the physical trauma at the time, the event continued to have damaging psychological effects on her personal life as an adult and on her career. That early abuse caused her later to acknowledge that she was incapable of real love, explaining that this man: "must have had a great deal to do with forming my attitude toward sexual pleasure ... For me, nice, soft, easy men were never enough — there had to be an element of domination."Template:Sfn When Brooks at last told her mother of the incident, many years later, her mother suggested that it must have been Louise's fault for "leading him on".Template:Sfn In 1919, Brooks and her family moved to Independence, Kansas, before relocating to Wichita in 1920.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Brooks began her entertainment career as a dancer, joining the Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts modern dance company in Los Angeles at the age of 15 in 1922.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn The company included founders Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, as well as a young Martha Graham.Template:Sfn As a member of the globe-trotting troupe, Brooks spent a season abroad in London and in Paris.Template:Sfn In her second season with the Denishawn company, she advanced to a starring role in one work opposite Shawn. But one day, a long-simmering personal conflict between Brooks and St. Denis boiled over, and St. Denis abruptly fired Brooks from the troupe in the spring of 1924, telling her in front of the other members: "I am dismissing you from the company because you want life handed to you on a silver salver."Template:Sfn These words made a strong impression on Brooks; when she drew up an outline for a planned autobiographical novel in 1949, "The Silver Salver" was the title she gave the tenth and final chapter.Template:Sfn Brooks was 17 years old at the time of her dismissal.Template:Sfn Thanks to her friend Barbara Bennett, the sister of Constance and Joan Bennett, Brooks almost immediately found employment as a chorus girl in George White's Scandals,Template:Sfn followed by an appearance as a semi-nudeTemplate:Sfn dancer in the 1925 edition of the Ziegfeld Follies at the Amsterdam Theater on 42nd Street.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn

As a result of her work in the Follies, Brooks came to the attention of Walter Wanger, a producer at Paramount Pictures.Template:Sfn An infatuated Wanger signed her to a five-year contract with the studio in 1925.Template:Sfn Soon after, Brooks met movie star Charlie Chaplin at a cocktail party given by Wanger.Template:Sfn Chaplin was in town for the premiere of his film The Gold Rush (1925) at the Strand Theatre on Broadway.Template:Sfn Chaplin and Brooks had a two-month affairTemplate:Efn that summer while Chaplin was married to Lita Grey.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn When their affair ended, Chaplin sent her a check; she declined to write him a thank-you note.Template:Sfn

File:American Venus Brooks test.webm
Test footage from The American Venus, 1926

CareerEdit

Paramount filmsEdit

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Brooks made her screen debut in the silent The Street of Forgotten Men, in an uncredited role in 1925.Template:Sfn Soon she was playing the female lead in a number of silent light comedies and flapper films over the next few years, starring with Adolphe Menjou and W. C. Fields,Template:Sfn among others.Template:Sfn

After her small roles in 1925, both Paramount and MGM offered her contracts.Template:Sfn At the time, Brooks had an on-and-off affair with Walter Wanger, head of Paramount Pictures and husband of actress Justine Johnstone.Template:Sfn Wanger tried to persuade her to take the MGM contract to avoid rumors that she only obtained the Paramount contract because of her intimate relationship with him.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Despite his advice, she accepted Paramount's offer.Template:Sfn During this time, Brooks gained a cult following in Europe for her pivotal vamp role in the 1928 Howard Hawks silent buddy film A Girl in Every Port.Template:Sfn Her distinctive bob haircut helped start a trend, and many women styled their hair in imitation of both her and fellow film star Colleen Moore.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

In the early sound film drama Beggars of Life (1928), Brooks plays an abused country girl who kills her foster father when he "attempts, one sunny morning, to rape her."Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn A hobo (Richard Arlen) happens on the murder scene and convinces Brooks to disguise herself as a young boy and escape the law by "riding the rails" with him.Template:Sfn In a hobo encampment, or "jungle," they meet another hobo (Wallace Beery).Template:Sfn Brooks's disguise is soon uncovered and she finds herself the only female in a world of brutal, sex-hungry men.Template:Sfn Much of this film was shot on location in the Jacumba Mountains near the Mexican border,Template:Sfn and the boom microphone was invented for this film by the director William Wellman, who needed it for one of the first experimental talking scenes in the movies.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

The filming of Beggars of Life proved to be an ordeal for Brooks.Template:Sfn During the production, she had a one-night stand with a stuntman who, the next day, spread a false rumor on the set that Brooks had contracted syphilis during a previous weekend stay with a producer,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn ostensibly Jack Pickford.Template:Efn Concurrently, Brooks's interactions with her co-star Richard Arlen deteriorated, as Arlen was a close friend of Brooks's then-husband Eddie Sutherland and, according to Brooks, Arlen took a dim view of her casual liaisons with crew members.Template:Sfn Amid these tensions, Brooks repeatedly clashed with Wellman, whose risk-takingTemplate:Sfn directing style nearly killed her in a scene where she recklesslyTemplate:Efn climbs aboard a moving train.Template:Sfn

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Soon after the production of Beggars of Life was completed, Brooks began filming the pre-Code crime-mystery film The Canary Murder Case (1929).Template:Sfn By this time she was socializing with wealthy and famous persons. She was a frequent house guest of media magnate William Randolph Hearst and his mistress Marion Davies at Hearst Castle in San Simeon,Template:Sfn being intimate friends with Davies's lesbian niece, Pepi Lederer.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn While partying with Lederer, Brooks had a brief sexual liaison with her.Template:Sfn At some point in their friendship, Hearst and Davies were made aware of Lederer's lesbianism. Hearst arranged for Lederer to be committed to a mental institution for drug addiction.Template:Sfn Several days after her arrival at the institution, Lederer — Brooks's closest friend and companion — committed suicide by jumping to her death from a hospital window.Template:Sfn This event traumatized Brooks and likely led to her further dissatisfaction with Hollywood and the West Coast.Template:Sfn

Brooks, who now loathed the Hollywood "scene", refused to stay on at Paramount after being denied a promised raise.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn Learning of her refusal, her friend and lover George Preston Marshall counseledTemplate:Efn her to sail with him to Europe in order to make films with director G. W. Pabst, the prominent Austrian director.Template:Sfn On the last day of filming The Canary Murder CaseTemplate:Sfn Brooks departed Paramount Pictures to leave Hollywood for Berlin to work for Pabst.Template:Sfn It was not until thirty years later that this rebellious decision would come to be seen as arguably the most beneficial to her career, securing her immortality as a silent film legend and independent spirit.Template:Sfn

While her snubbing of Paramount alone would not have finished her altogether in Hollywood, her subsequent refusal, after returning from Germany, to come back to Paramount for sound retakes of The Canary Murder Case (1929) irrevocably placed her on an unofficial blacklist.Template:Sfn Angered by her refusal, the studio allegedly claimed that Brooks's voice was unsuitable for sound picturesTemplate:Efn and another actress, Margaret Livingston,Template:Efn was hired to dub Brooks's voice for the film.Template:Sfn

European filmsEdit

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File:Louise Brooks in Pandora's Box.jpg
Brooks in her famous role as Lulu in the German film Pandora's Box (1929), directed by G. W. Pabst.

Brooks traveled to Europe accompanied by Marshall and his English valet.Template:Sfn The German film industry was Hollywood's only major rival at the time, and the film industry based in Berlin was known as the Filmwelt ("film world"), reflecting its self-image as a highly glamorous "exclusive club".Template:Sfn After their arrival in Weimar Germany, she starred in the 1929 silent film Pandora's Box, directed by Pabst in his New Objectivity period.Template:Sfn Pabst was one of the leading directors of the filmwelt, known for his refined, elegant films that represented the filmwelt "at the height of its creative powers".Template:Sfn The film Pandora's Box is based on two plays by Frank Wedekind (Erdgeist and Die Büchse der Pandora),Template:Sfn and Brooks plays the central figure, Lulu.Template:Sfn This film is notable for its frank treatment of modern sexual mores, including one of the first overt on-screen portrayals of a lesbian.Template:Sfn

Brooks's performance in Pandora's Box made her a star. In looking for the right actress to play Lulu, Pabst had rejected Marlene Dietrich as "too old and too obvious".Template:Sfn In choosing Brooks, a relative unknown who had only appeared — not to very great effect — in secondary roles, Pabst was going against the advice of those around him.Template:Sfn Brooks recalled that "when we made Pandora's Box, Mr. Pabst was a man of 43 who astonished me with his knowledge on practically any subject. I, who astonished him because I knew practically nothing on every subject, celebrated my twenty-second birthday with a beer party on a London street."Template:Sfn Brooks claimed her experience shooting Pandora's Box in Germany was a pleasant one:

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In Hollywood, I was a pretty flibbertigibbet whose charm for the executive department decreased with every increase in my fan mail. In Berlin I stepped to the station platform to meet Mr. Pabst and became an actress. And his attitude was the pattern for all. Nobody offered me humorous or instructive comments on my acting. Everywhere I was treated with a kind of decency and respect unknown to me in Hollywood. It was just as if Mr. Pabst had sat in on my whole life and career and knew exactly where I needed assurance and protection.Template:Sfn{{#if:|{{#if:|}}

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After the filming of Pandora's Box concluded, Brooks had a one-night standTemplate:Efn with Pabst,Template:Sfn and the director cast Brooks again in his controversial social drama Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), based on the book by Margarete Böhme.Template:Sfn In performing Diary of a Lost Girl, Brooks drew upon her memories of being molested as a 9-year-old and then being blamed by her mother for her own molestation, later recalling on that day she became one of the "lost".Template:Sfn On the final day of shooting Diary of a Lost Girl, Pabst counseled Brooks not to return to Hollywood and instead to stay in Germany and to continue her career as a serious actress.Template:Sfn Pabst expressed concern that Brooks's carefree approach towards her career would end in dire poverty "exactly like Lulu's".Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn He further cautioned Brooks that Marshall and her "rich American friends" would likely shun her when her career stalled.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

File:Louise Brooks Stars of the Photoplay.jpg
Brooks in a 1930 publicity still

When audiences and critics first viewed Brooks's German films, they were bewildered by her naturalistic acting style.Template:Sfn Viewers purportedly exited the theatre vocally complaining, "She doesn't act! She does nothing!"Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn In the late 1920s, cinemagoers were habituated to stage-style acting with exaggerated body language and facial expressions. Brooks's acting style was subtle because she understood that the close-up images of the actors' bodies and faces made such exaggerations unnecessary.Template:Sfn Explaining her method, Brooks said that acting "does not consist of descriptive movement of face and body but in the movements of thought and soul transmitted in a kind of intense isolation."Template:Sfn This innovative style continues to be used by contemporary film actors but, at the time, it was surprising to viewers who assumed she wasn't acting at all.Template:Sfn Film critic Roger Ebert later wrote that, by employing this method, "Brooks became one of the most modern and effective of actors, projecting a presence that could be startling."Template:Sfn

Her appearances in Pabst's two films made Brooks an international star. According to film critic and historian Molly Haskell, the films "expos[ed] her animal sensuality and turn[ed] her into one of the most erotic figures on the screen — the bold, black-helmeted young girl who, with only a shy grin to acknowledge her 'fall,' became a prostitute in Diary of a Lost Girl and who, with no more sense of sin than a baby, drives men out of their minds in Pandora's Box."Template:Snf

Near the end of 1929, English film critic and journalist Cedric Belfrage interviewed Pabst for an article about Brooks's film work in Europe that was published in the February 1930 issue of the American monthly Motion Picture.Template:Sfn According to Belfrage, Pabst attributed Brooks's acting success outside the U.S. to her seemingly inherent or instinctive "European" sensibilities:

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the eminent Herr Pabst described it to me over a cocktail in the Bristol Bar, Berlin. "Louise,'" said Herr Pabst, "has a European soul. You can't get away from it. When she described Hollywood to me — I have never been there — I cry out against the absurd fate that ever put her there at all. She belongs to Europe and to Europeans. She has been a sensational hit in her German pictures. I do not have her play silly little cuties. She plays real women, and plays them marvelously."Template:Sfn{{#if:|{{#if:|}}

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Belfarge elaborated on Brooks's opinion of Hollywood, and referred to Pabst's firsthand knowledge of that opinion. "The very mention of the place," he stated, "gives her a sensation of nausea."Template:Sfn He continued, "The pettiness of it, the dullness, the monotony, the stupidity — no, no, that is no place for Louise Brooks."Template:Sfn

After the success of her German films, Brooks appeared in one more European film, Miss Europe (1930), a French film by Italian director Augusto Genina.Template:Sfn

Return to AmericaEdit

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Dissatisfied with Europe, Brooks returned to New York in December 1929.Template:Sfn When she returned to Hollywood in 1931, she was cast in two mainstream films, God's Gift to Women (1931) and It Pays to Advertise (1931), but her performances were largely ignored by critics, and few other job offers were forthcoming due to her informal "blacklisting".Template:Efn As the sole member of the cast who had refused to return to make the talkie version of The Canary Murder Case, Brooks became convinced that "no major studio would hire [her] to make a film."Template:Sfn

Purportedly, Wellman — despite their previous acrimonious relationship on Beggars of LifeTemplate:Sfn — offered Brooks the female lead in his new picture The Public Enemy, starring James Cagney.Template:Sfn Brooks turned down Wellman's offer in order to visit Marshall in New York City,Template:Sfn and the coveted role instead went to Jean Harlow,Template:Sfn who then began her own rise to stardom. Brooks later claimed she declined the role because she "hated Hollywood,"Template:Sfn but film historian James Card, who came to know Brooks intimately later in her life, said that Brooks "just wasn't interested ... She was more interested in Marshall".Template:Sfn In the opinion of biographer Barry Paris, "turning down Public Enemy marked the real end of Louise Brooks's film career".Template:Sfn

She returned to Hollywood after being offered of a $500 weekly salary from Columbia Pictures but, after refusing to do a screen test for a Buck Jones Western film, the contract offer was withdrawn.Template:Sfn She made one more film at that time, a two-reel comedy short, Windy Riley Goes Hollywood (1931), directed by disgraced Hollywood outcast Fatty Arbuckle,Template:Sfn who worked under the pseudonym "William Goodrich".Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

File:Louise Brooks in Overland Stage Raiders.jpg
Brooks in Overland Stage Raiders (1938), her final film. Note her long hairstyle, drastically different from her trademark bob haircut

Brooks declared bankruptcy in 1932,Template:Sfn and began dancing in nightclubs to earn a living. She attempted a film comeback in 1936 and did a bit part in Empty Saddles,Template:Sfn a Western that led Columbia to offer her a screen test, contingent on appearing in the 1937 musical When You're in Love, uncredited, as a specialty ballerina in the chorus.Template:Sfn In 1937, Brooks obtained a bit part in the film King of Gamblers after a private interview on a Paramount set with director Robert Florey, who "specialised in giving jobs to destitute and sufficiently grateful actresses."Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Unfortunately, after filming, Brooks's scenes were deleted.

Brooks made two more films after that, including the 1938 Western Overland Stage Raiders in which she played the romantic lead opposite John Wayne,Template:Sfn with a long hairstyle that rendered her all but unrecognizable from her Lulu days.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn In contemporary reviews of the film in newspapers and trade publications, Brooks received little attention from critics. The review by The Film Daily in September 1938 provides one example, barely mentioning her, saying only, "Louise Brooks makes an appearance as a female attraction."Template:Sfn Variety, the nation's leading entertainment publication, also devoted very little ink to her in its review. "Louise Brooks is the femme appeal with nothing much to do", it reports, "except look glamorous in a shoulder-length straight-bang coiffure."Template:Sfn

Life after filmEdit

Economic hardshipEdit

Brooks's career prospects as a film actress had significantly declined by 1940.Template:Sfn According to the federal census in May that year, she was living in a $55-a-month apartment at 1317 North Fairfax Avenue in West Hollywood and was working as a copywriter for a magazine.Template:Sfn Soon, however, Brooks found herself unemployed and increasingly desperate for a steady income. She also realized during this time that "the only people who wanted to see me were men who wanted to sleep with me."Template:Sfn That realization was underscored by Brooks's longtime friend, Paramount executive Walter Wanger, who warned her that she would likely "become a call girl" if she remained in Hollywood.Template:Sfn Upon hearing Wanger's warning, Brooks purportedly also remembered Pabst's earlier predictions about the dire circumstances to which she would be driven if her career stalled in Hollywood: "I heard his [Pabst's] words again — hissing back to me. And listening this time, I packed my trunks and went home to Kansas."Template:Sfn

Brooks briefly returned to Wichita, where she was raised,Template:Sfn but this undesired return "turned out to be another kind of hell".Template:Sfn "I retired first to my father's home in Wichita," she later recalled, "but there I found that the citizens could not decide whether they despised me for having once been a success away from home or for now being a failure in their midst".Template:Sfn For her part, Brooks admitted that "I wasn't exactly enchanted with them," and "I must confess to a lifelong curse: My own failure as a social creature."Template:Sfn

After an unsuccessful attempt at operating a dance studio, she returned to New York City. Following brief stints there as a radio actor in soap operas and a gossip columnist,Template:Sfn she worked as a salesgirl in a Saks Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan.Template:Sfn Between 1948 and 1953, Brooks embarked upon a career as a courtesan with a few select wealthy men as clients.Template:Sfn As her finances eroded, an impoverished Brooks began working regularly for an escort agency in New York.Template:Sfn Recalling this difficult period in her memoirs, Brooks wrote that she frequently pondered suicide:

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I found that the only well-paying career open to me, as an unsuccessful actress of thirty-six, was that of a call girl ... and (I) began to flirt with the fancies related to little bottles filled with yellow sleeping pills.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn{{#if:|{{#if:|}}

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Brooks spent subsequent years "drinking and escorting" while subsisting in obscurity and poverty in a small New York apartment.Template:Sfn By this time, "all of her rich and famous friends had forgotten her."Template:Sfn Angered by this ostracism, she attempted to write a tell-all memoir titled Naked on My Goat, a title drawn from Goethe's epic play, Faust.Template:Sfn After working on that autobiography for years, Brooks destroyed the entire manuscript by throwing it into an incinerator.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn As time passed, she increasingly drank more and continued to suffer from suicidal tendencies.Template:Sfn

RediscoveryEdit

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In 1955,Template:Sfn French film historians such as Henri Langlois rediscoveredTemplate:Sfn Brooks's films, proclaiming her an unparalleled actress who surpassed even Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo as a film icon,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn much to her purported amusement.Template:Efn This rediscovery led to a Louise Brooks film festival in 1957 and rehabilitated her reputation in her home country.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

During this time, James Card, the film curator for the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York,Template:Sfn discovered Brooks "living as a recluse" in New York City.Template:Sfn He persuaded her in 1956 to move to be near the George Eastman House film collection where she could study cinema and write about her past career.Template:Sfn With Card's assistance, she became a noted film writer.Template:Sfn Although Brooks had been a heavy drinker since the age of 14,Template:Sfn she remained relatively sober to begin writing perceptive essays on cinema in film magazines, which became her second career.Template:Sfn A collection of her writings, titled Lulu in Hollywood,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn published in 1982 and still in print, was heralded by film critic Roger Ebert as "one of the few film books that can be called indispensable."Template:Sfn

In her later years, Brooks rarely granted interviews, yet had special relationships with film historians John Kobal and Kevin Brownlow.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn In the 1970s, she was interviewed extensively on film for the documentaries Memories of Berlin: The Twilight of Weimar Culture (1976), produced and directed by Gary Conklin, and Hollywood (1980), by Brownlow and David Gill. Lulu in Berlin (1984) is another rare filmed interview, produced by Richard Leacock and Susan Woll, released a year before her death but filmed a decade earlier.Template:Sfn In 1979, she was profiled by the film writer Kenneth Tynan in his essay "The Girl in the Black Helmet", the title an allusion to her bobbed hair, worn since childhood.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn In 1982, writer Tom Graves was allowed into Brooks's small apartment for an interview, and later wrote about the often awkward and tense conversation in his article "My Afternoon with Louise Brooks".Template:Sfn

Personal lifeEdit

Marriages and relationshipsEdit

File:WmSPaley1939.jpg
In her later years, Brooks's friend and one-time youthful lover, William Paley, later founder of CBS,Template:Sfn gave her a check every month until her death.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

In the summer of 1926, Brooks married Eddie Sutherland,Template:Sfn the director of the film she made with W. C. Fields,Template:Sfn but by 1927 had become infatuatedTemplate:Sfn with George Preston Marshall, owner of a chain of laundries and future owner of the Washington Redskins football team,Template:Sfn following a chance meeting with him that she later referred to as "the most fateful encounter of my life".Template:Sfn She divorced Sutherland, mainly due to her budding relationship with Marshall, in June 1928.Template:Sfn Sutherland was purportedly extremely distraught when Brooks divorced him and, on the first night after their separation, he attempted to take his life with an overdose of sleeping pills.Template:Sfn

Throughout the late 1920s and early 1930s, Brooks continued her on-again, off-again relationship with George Preston Marshall, which she later described as abusive.Template:Sfn Marshall was purportedly "her frequent bedfellow and constant adviserTemplate:Efn between 1927 and 1933."Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Marshall repeatedly asked her to marry him but, after learning that she had had many affairs while they were together and believing her to be incapable of fidelity, he married film actress Corinne Griffith instead.Template:Sfn

File:Louise Brooks by John de Mirjian.png
Brooks sued the glamour photographer John de Mirjian to prevent him from distributing his nude portraits of her.Template:Sfn

In 1925, Brooks sued the New York glamour photographer John de Mirjian to prevent publication of his risqué studio portraits of her; the lawsuit made him notorious.Template:Sfn

In 1933, she married Chicago millionaire Deering Davis, a son of Nathan Smith Davis Jr., but abruptly left him in March 1934 after only five months of marriage, "without a good-bye ... and leaving only a note of her intentions" behind her.Template:Sfn According to Card, Davis was just "another elegant, well-heeled admirer", nothing more.Template:Sfn The couple officially divorced in 1938.

In her later years, Brooks insisted that both her previous marriages were loveless and that she had never loved anyone in her lifetime: "As a matter of fact, I've never been in love. And if I had loved a man, could I have been faithful to him? Could he have trusted me beyond a closed door? I doubt it."Template:Sfn Despite her two marriages, she never had children, referring to herself as "Barren Brooks."Template:Sfn Her many paramours from years before had included a young William S. Paley, the founder of CBS.Template:Sfn Paley provided a small monthly stipend to Brooks for the remainder of her life, and this stipend kept her from committing suicide at one point.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Sometime in September 1953, Brooks converted to Roman Catholicism,Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn but she left the church in 1964.Template:Sfn

SexualityEdit

File:Louise Brooks Ball.jpg
Studio portrait by Russell Ball, 1920s

By her own admission, Brooks was a sexually liberated woman, unafraid to experiment, even posing nude for art photography.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Brooks enjoyed fostering speculation about her sexuality,Template:Sfn cultivating friendships with lesbian and bisexual women including Pepi Lederer and Peggy Fears, but eschewing relationships. She admitted to some lesbian dalliances,Template:Sfn including a one-night stand with Greta Garbo.Template:Sfn She later described Garbo as masculine but a "charming and tender lover".Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Despite all this, she considered herself neither lesbian nor bisexual:

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I had a lot of fun writing “Marion Davies' Niece” [an article about Pepi Lederer], leaving the lesbian theme in question marks. All my life it has been fun for me. ... When I am dead, I believe that film writers will fasten on the story that I am a lesbian ... I have done lots to make it believable ... All my women friends have been lesbians. But that is one point upon which I agree positively with Christopher Isherwood: There is no such thing as bisexuality. Ordinary people, although they may accommodate themselves, for reasons of whoring or marriage, are one-sexed. Out of curiosity, I had two affairs with girls — they did nothing for me.Template:Sfn{{#if:|{{#if:|}}

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According to biographer Barry Paris, Brooks had a "clear preference for men", but she did not discourage the rumors that she was a lesbian, both because she relished their shock value, which enhanced her aura, and because she personally valued feminine beauty. Paris claims that Brooks "loved women as a homosexual man, rather than as a lesbian, would love them. ... The operative rule with Louise was neither heterosexuality, homosexuality, or bisexuality. It was just sexuality ..."Template:Sfn

DeathEdit

On August 8, 1985, after suffering from degenerative osteoarthritis of the hipTemplate:Sfn and emphysema<ref name="nytimes-at-the-movies">Template:Cite news</ref> for many years, Brooks died of a heart attack in her apartment in Rochester, New York.Template:Sfn

LegacyEdit

Since her death in 1985, significant allusions to Brooks have appeared in novels, comics, music, and film.

FilmEdit

Template:Quote box Brooks has inspired cinematic characters such as Sally Bowles in Bob Fosse's 1972 film Cabaret.Template:Sfn For her portrayal of Bowles, Liza Minnelli reinvented the character with "Lulu makeup and helmet-like coiffure" based on Brooks's 1920s persona.Template:Sfn Similarly, films such as Jonathan Demme's Something Wild features a reckless femme fatale (Melanie Griffith) who calls herself "Lulu" and wears a bob, and in the 1992 film Death Becomes Her, Isabella Rossellini plays Lisle von Rhoman, a character inspired by Brooks. In Nora Ephron's 1994 film Mixed Nuts, Liev Schreiber portrays a character with a strong resemblance to Ms. Brooks for the cut of her hair, her mannerisms and facial expressions. More recently, in 2018, the PBS film The Chaperone was released, which depicts Brooks's initial arrival in New York and alludes to her career decline as an actress.Template:Sfn The film stars Haley Lu Richardson and Elizabeth McGovern.Template:Sfn

NovelsEdit

Brooks's film persona served as the literary inspiration for Adolfo Bioy Casares when he wrote his science fiction novel The Invention of Morel (1940) about a man attracted to Faustine, a woman who is only a projected 3-D image.Template:Sfn In a 1995 interview, Casares explained that Faustine is directly based on his love for Louise Brooks who "vanished too early from the movies". Elements of The Invention of Morel, minus the science fiction elements, served as a basis for Alain Resnais's 1961 film Last Year at Marienbad.Template:Sfn

In Neil Gaiman's novel American Gods, the character Czernobog refers to Brooks as the greatest movie star of all time.Template:Sfn In Ali Smith's 2011 novel There But For The, the character Brooke Bayoude is revealed at a dinner party to have been named after Louise Brooks, though in a play on Brooks's name the dinner guests apparently mistake Brooks for Debbie Flood or Louise Woodward.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In her 2011 novel of supernatural horror, Houdini Heart, Ki Longfellow uses Brooks as an actual character in the leading character's visions. Brooks appears as a central character in the 2012 novel The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty.Template:Sfn In Gayle Forman's novels Just One Day and Just One Year, the protagonist is called "Lulu" because her bobbed hair resembles Brooks'.

In 1987, the Dutch author Willem Frederik Hermans published a book, The Saint of the Clockmakers, in which Louise Brooks plays a role.

ComicsEdit

File:Dixie Dugan Show Girl in Hollywood Comic Panel September 1929 Retouched.jpg
A panel of the September 14, 1929, comic strip Dixie Dugan. Dugan's appearance and escapades were based on Louise Brooks.

Brooks also had a significant influence in the graphics world. She inspired the long-running Dixie Dugan newspaper strip by John H. Striebel.Template:Sfn The strip began in the late 1920s and ran until 1966. It grew out of the serialized novel and later stage musical, Show Girl, that writer J. P. McEvoy had loosely based on Brooks's days as a Follies girl on Broadway.Template:Sfn

Brooks also inspired the erotic comic books of Valentina, by the late Guido Crepax, which began publication in 1965 and continued for many years.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Crepax became a friend and regular correspondent of Brooks late in her life. Hugo Pratt, another comics artist, also used her as inspiration for characters, and even named them after her.

Other comics have drawn upon Brooks's distinctive hair-style. Brooks was the visual model for the character of Ivy Pepper in Tracy Butler's Lackadaisy comic series.Template:Sfn More recently, illustrator Rick Geary published a 2015 graphic novel entitled Louise Brooks: Detective in which Brooks, "her movie career having sputtered to a stop," returns to her native Kansas in 1940 and becomes a private investigator who solves murders.Template:Sfn

MusicEdit

Brooks has been referenced in a number of songs. In 1991, British new wave group Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark released "Pandora's Box" as a tribute to Brooks's film. Similarly, Soul Coughing's 1998 song "St. Louise Is Listening" contains several references to Brooks, and the song "Interior Lulu" released the next year by Marillion is a reference to Brooks and mentions her in its first lines.

In 2011, American metal group Metallica and singer-songwriter Lou Reed released the double album Lulu with a Brooks-like mannequin on the cover. In Natalie Merchant's self-titled 2014 album, the song "Lulu" is a biographical portrait of Brooks.Template:Sfn

FilmographyEdit

File:Louise Brooks ACJ.jpg
Portrait of Brooks by Alfred Cheney Johnston

As is the case with many of her contemporaries, a number of Brooks's films are considered to be lost.Template:Sfn Her key films survive, however, particularly Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl, which have been released on DVD in North America by the Criterion Collection and Kino Video, respectively.

As of 2007, Miss Europe and The Show Off have also seen limited North American DVD release. Her short film (and one of her only talkies) Windy Riley Goes Hollywood was included on the DVD release of Diary of a Lost Girl. Her final film, Overland Stage Raiders, was released on VHS and then in 2012 on DVD.

Year Title Role Director Notes
1925 The Street of Forgotten Men A Moll Herbert Brenon Incomplete (missing reel 2)<ref>The Street of Forgotten Men (filmography page) at Louise Brooks Society</ref>
1926 Template:SortnameTemplate:Sfn Miss Bayport Frank Tuttle Lost film. In the late 1990s some fragments in both black & white and color were found in Australia.Template:Sfn In 2018 a three-second-long technicolor screen test featuring Brooks was discovered by archivist Jane Fernandes, the only color film footage of the actress during her prime known to exist.Template:SfnTemplate:SfnTemplate:Sfn Another lost scene was found in 2018 in a YouTube video that had been uploaded to the site in 2007.Template:Sfn
1926 Template:Sortname Kitty Laverne Malcolm St. Clair Lost film
1926 It's the Old Army Game Mildred Marshall A. Edward Sutherland
1926 Template:Sortname Clara Malcolm St. Clair
1926 Just Another Blonde Diana O'Sullivan Alfred Santell Fragments survive
1926 Love 'Em and Leave 'Em Janie Walsh Frank Tuttle
1927 Evening Clothes Fox Trot Luther Reed Lost film
1927 Rolled Stockings Carol Fleming Richard Rosson Lost film
1927 Now We're in the Air Griselle/Grisette Frank R. Strayer In 2016, a 23-minute fragment was found at the Czech national film archive in Prague. The surviving material was preserved and shown for the first time at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival on June 2, 2017.Template:Sfn
1927 The City Gone Wild Snuggles Joy James Cruze Lost film
1928 Template:Sortname Marie, Girl in France Howard Hawks
1928 Beggars of Life The Girl (Nancy) William A. Wellman Sound version is considered lost; only silent version survives
1929 Template:Sortname Margaret Odell Malcolm St. Clair Silent and sound versions survive
1929 Pandora's Box Lulu G. W. Pabst
1929 Diary of a Lost Girl Thymian G. W. Pabst
1930 Miss Europe Lucienne Garnier Augusto Genina Alternate title: Prix de Beauté [Beauty Prize]. Brooks's first sound film.Template:Sfn Silent and sound versions survive
1931 It Pays to Advertise Thelma Temple Frank Tuttle
1931 God's Gift to Women Florine Michael Curtiz
1931 Windy Riley Goes Hollywood Betty Grey Roscoe Arbuckle
1936 Empty Saddles "Boots" Boone Lesley Selander
1937 When You're in Love Chorus Girl Robert Riskin Uncredited role
1937 King of Gamblers Joyce Beaton Robert Florey Scenes deletedTemplate:Sfn
1938 Overland Stage Raiders Beth Hoyt George Sherman

NotesEdit

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ReferencesEdit

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BibliographyEdit

Print sourcesEdit

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Further readingEdit

External linksEdit

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