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In 1957 Ado Kyrou wrote in "Amour-Eroticisme et Cinema" that Louise Brooks was "the only woman who had the ability to transfigure - no matter what the film - into a master-piece... Her vivid beauty, her a
bsolutely unique acting (I do not know of a greater tragedienne on the screen) predisposed her to the top rank. Not one woman exerted more magic, not one had her genius of interpretation. Nevertheless she disappeared in 1931 in a manner altogether inexp
licable, at the age of 24..."
When she disappeared, hardly anyone noticed. She is revered today, but in the 20s neither she nor anyone else thought her a good actress, let alone a goddess. That is what is inexplicable. She was born in Cherryvale, Kansas, in 1906. From 1921 to 1924 she danced with Ruth St Denis and Ted Shawn and their company; she transferred to George White's 'scandals" and thence to the "Ziegfeld Follies" (25). Ziegfeld promised to star her, but her looks had attracted Paramount, who signed her and gave her a bit part in The Street of Forgotten Men (25). She preferred to be a star in movies, and was a beauty-contest winner in The American Venus (26), starring Esther Ralston. Most of the time she wa s a shopgirl, in bangs and a beret: A Social Celebrity (26), starring Adolphe Menjou; It's the Old Army Game, a W. C. Fields vehicle, directed by Eddie Sutherland (to whom she was married, 1926-8); the film of George Kelly's Broadway hit, Tbe Show-Off, st arring Ford Sterling; and Just Anotber Blonde with William Collier Jr. Around this time Picturegoer noted her subtle vamping: 'she is extraordinarily vital and alive. The sheer, sharp grace of face and figure, the very chic of her bob, combine to draw s truggling heroes into her net." There followed: Love 'em and Leave 'em; Evening Clothes (27) with Virginia Valli; Rolled Stockings, a collegiate story with Richard Arlen; The City Gone Wild, directed by James Cruze, an underworld story with Thomas Meigha n; and Now We"re in tbe Air, a Beery-Hatton comedy, in a dual role. She was loaned to Fox to play a circus high diver in Hawks's A Girl in Every Port (28), being fought over by Victor McLaglen and Robert Armstrong, and is magical - as she is in William A. Wellman's moving Beggars of Life, dressed as a boy and riding the f reight trains with Arlen. G. W. Pabst, at any rate, saw the magic. After he had seen the Hawks film he wanted her at once for his long-planned Die Buchse van [sic] Pandora/Pandora's Box (28), adapted from Wedekind's "Lulu". Paramount refused. Later there arose the question of t heir option on Brooks, and because of the arrival of Sound, they gave her the chance of sticking at her old salary or quitting. She quit, and immediately advised Pabst that she was free-just as he was about to take the then little-known Dietrich (who sai d later: "Imagine Pabst choosing Louise Brooks when he could have had me"). Thus Brooks became the most entrancing nymphomaniac in film history. Said Paul Rotha: ". . . the performance he (Pabst) extracts from Brooks is one of the phenomena of the cinem a". She stayed on in Germany to make, for Pabst, Das Tagebucb einer Verlorenen/Diary of a Lost Girl, and, against his advice, returned to her homeland. Her incredible, incandescent performances were somewhat overlooked outside Germany and certainly in the US, where Silent films were demode. Paramount asked her to dub Tbe Canary Murder Case (William Powell as Philo Vance), which she had made before her G erman trip, so they could release a synchronized version, but she refused (Margaret Livingstone substituted). She also turned down Bad Girl, which Paramount offered her, and returned to Europe where she was idolized. For Augusto Genina, in France, she m ade her first Talkie (from an idea by Pabst), Prix de Beaute (30), a lush, exquisite melodrama about a shopgirl who found tragedy when she won a beauty contest. She returned to Hollywood with the offer of a $500 a week contract from Columbia: it was never signed, partly because she refused to test for a Buck Jones Western. She got a part in a two-reel comedy, Windy Riley Goes to (sic) Hollywood, directed by Fatt y Arbuckle under his pseudonym; and had supporting parts in It Pays to Advertise (31) at Paramount and, at Warners, God's Gift to Women. At Wellman's request, Warners wanted to keep her for Public Enemy, but she turned it down (Jean Harlow played it) bec ause she wanted to go to New York. As she said later, the collapse of her film career was mostly her own fault. She also claimed that she had never behaved like a movie star, but nevertheless or therefore she was declared a bankrupt in 1932. In 1933 she went back to dancing, mostly in night-clubs, but in 1936 was back in Hollywood, broke again, and desperate to wo rk. She did a minor part in a Western, Empty Saddles, and then Columbia offered her a test for a star part if she would appear in the chorus of Grace Moore's When You're in Love (37). She did, and stills were issued with captions thus: "Louise Brooks, f ormer star, who deserted Hollywood at the height of her career, has come back to resume her work in pictures. But seven years is too long for the public to remember, and Louise courageously begins again at the bottom." The only results from this were a bit part in King of Gamblers and the lead in a B Western with John Wayne, Overland Stage Raiders (38). In I943 she returned to New York and worked intermittently in radio, in publicity offices and finally as a salesgirl, until in 1948 she became a recluse. In 1955, two years before Kyrou's tribute was written, James Card, the Curator of Motion Pictures at Eastman House in Rochester, NY, sought her out and found her oblivious to the fact that she had been re-discovered by filmbuffs: after 25 years in limbo she found, like Buster Keaton, that she was not forgotten. Remembrance was limited to film societies , but it was intense. The Paris Cinematheque had this programme note: "those who have seen her can never forget her. She is the modern actress par excellence because, like the statues of antiquity, she is outside time... It is sufficient to see her to b elieve in beauty, in life, in the reality of human beings..." Brooks herself began taking an interest in films, and has written superbly on screen acting and other subjects. James Card wrote in 1958: "...from the day the preservation of great films began , the petty plotting of small and selfish men to wipe out the record of beauty and truth that has sometimes been achieved in spite of them, was forever frustrated. The return of Louise Brooks to the screens of the world is a portent: the art of the film has its own immortality." |