Louise Brooks Part II: Jerry Vermilye

Louise as a bathing beauty in The American Venus

In 1928, the actress's professional life really moved into high gear. While advertising participation helped keep a fickle public aware of her (a Lux Soap ad carried her testimonial: "It gives my skin the lovely satin smoothness 'studio skin' must have"), her film roles grew steadily better. On loanout to Fox, Louise played Mlle. Godiva, the conniving Marseilles-based circus high-diver in Howard Hawks' A Girl in Every Port, opposite Victor McClagen and Robert Armstrong. Exemplifying the studio politics of that era, although she was now earning $500 a week at Paramount, the studio realized a healthy profit in the $1500 charged to Fox for her services. Her scenes were few, but made an impact by way of sexual insouciance Louise brought to the role. She also liked working with Hawks, then still a relative novice in the industry. Later describing him to interviewer John Kobal, she said: "He didn't do anything at all. He would sit, look very, very, beautiful, tall and graceful, leaning against anything he could lean against, and watch the scene; and the person who did all the directing was that big ham Victor McClagen." Of Hawks, she concluded, "He was just (like) someone who had wandered on the set and (was) being sympathetic, but I liked him very much as a man and a director."

A Girl in Every Port was even more popular in European countries than in the U.S. And to many a foreign critic, Louise Brooks was a revelation-especially for one, who wrote: "her cold-souled predator is a striking creation." At the time of the film's American release, Louise had managed another "vacation" from her husband, this time a Cuban rendezvous with George Marshall, where their Havana neighbors included several other celebrities enjoying an extramarital holiday. By now, Marshall was pressuring her to divorce Sutherland. Louise's unconventional marriage had also become the subject of gossip column speculation-especially in New York, where she returned following her Cuban sojourn. Finally, upon returning to Hollywood, she moved into the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and filed for divorce.