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Filmography
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A Girl in Every Port (1952)
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Three Mesquiteers, The - Overland Stage Raiders (1938)
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Prix De Beaute (1930)
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Das Tagebuch einer Verlorenen (1929)
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Beggars of Life (1928)
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Pandora s Box (1928)
- Lulu
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It's the Old Army Game (1926)
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The Show-Off (1926)
Biography
The daughter of a Kansas attorney, Louise Brooks was 15 when she
accompanied her mother to New York. A talented if not inspired dancer,
Brooks performed with the Denishawn dance troupe, then worked in such
annual revues as George White's Scandals and The Ziegfeld Follies.
Signed to a Paramount film contract in 1925, she was largely confined to
nondescript leading lady roles in such films as W.C. Fields'
It's
the Old Army Game (1926), directed by her then-husband Eddie
Sutherland. Better roles came her way in Howard
Hawks' A Girl in
Every Port (1927) and William
Wellman's Beggars of
Life (1928). With her darkly exotic good looks and distinctively
bobbed-and-banged haircut, Brooks gained popularity with filmgoers, but
neither critics nor studio executives were particularly impressed with
her acting ability. All this changed when she was invited to work in
Berlin by director G.W. Pabst.
Her haunting, provocative performances in Pabst's
Pandora's
Box (1928) and Diary of a
Lost Girl (1929) not only established her as a screen personality
of the first rank, but also fostered a Louise Brooks "cult" which
continued to flourish.
Alas, when the temperamental Brooks refused to return to Hollywood
to film sound retakes for her silent picture The
Canary Murder Case (1929), she was effectively blacklisted in
Hollywood. Despite another brilliant performance in René
Clair's Prix de
Beaute (1930), Brooks found herself consigned to thankless
supporting roles when she returned to America. Soon she was scrounging
for work in two-reel comedies and bit roles; her last screen appearance
was a demeaning leading lady assignment in the 1938 Three
Mesquiteers Western, Overland
Stage Raiders, which she accepted because she needed 300 dollars in
a hurry. She spent the next two decades in virtual obscurity,
occasionally obtaining radio work, but generally limited to clerical and
salesgirl jobs. She was rescued in the mid-'50s by a millionaire media
executive with whom she'd allegedly had an affair, and who provided her
with a modest monthly annuity for the rest of her life. She moved to
Rochester where she formed a lasting friendship with film buff/curator
James Card of the George
Eastman House. It was Card who drew the reclusive Brooks out of her
shell with a series of well-received Louise Brooks retrospectives. In
her last two decades, she began a whole new career as a writer,
producing well-researched and well-balanced articles on movie history.
Still, she remained a mercurial personality to the end, alternately
attracting and repelling her admirers with her unpredictable behavior.
In 1982, Louise Brooks collaborated with Hollis Alpert on her witty,
extremely candid autobiography, Lulu in Hollywood. ~ Hal Erickson, All
Movie Guide
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