A scene from Beggar's of Life
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Back at paramount, she was assigned to play a runaway masquerading as a boy in Beggars of life, to be filmed by the studio's hot young Wings director, William Wellman. The script was loosely based on a 1924 novel about life on the road by the "hobo writer" Jim Tully, who collaborated with Benjamin Glazer on its adaptation. Louise played a frightened farm girl named Nancy, who has shot and killed adoptive father when he tried to rape her. Teaming up with Jim (richard Arlen), a young gentleman hobo who stops at the farmhouse for breakfast, she dons male attire and hops a freight train with him. Later, finding temporary refuge in a "hobo jungle", they are forced to flee when detectives looking for Nancy disrupt the encampment. Their escape is aided by blustery Oklahoma Red (Wallace Beery), who commandeers a stolen car for them. Having fallen in love with Jim during their road adventures, Nancy is last seen with him as they ride atop a Canada-bound freight, while the self-sacrificing Red dies.
Wellman was in top form directly this grimly naturalistic material, and drew exceptional performances from Arlen, Beery, and Brooks, whose natural beauty was scarcely enhanced by her Beggars of Life costuming. But the location shooting, in an all-male company, wasn't easy for her, and only her camaraderie with Beery appears to have been a saving factor. Years later, she termed her own work here "an embarrassment," while praising Beery's performance as "a little masterpiece." As for her director, Louise found herself actually risking her life in the interests of realism. The New York Times' Mordaunt Hall declared: "Miss Brooks really acts well, better than she has in most of her other pictures." |
Copyright: McKenna W. Rowe, 1997-2006