Louise Brooks

Known for ActingBorn 1906-11-14Died 1985-08-08Cherryvale, Kansas, USA

Mary Louise Brooks (November 14, 1906 – August 8, 1985) was an American film actress and dancer during the 1920s and 1930s. She is regarded today as an icon of the Jazz Age and flapper culture, in part due to the bob hairstyle that she helped popularize during the prime of her career. Brooks began her career as a dancer. While dancing in the Ziegfeld Follies in New York City, she came to the attention of Walter Wanger, a producer at Paramount Pictures, and was signed to a five-year contract with the studio. She appeared in supporting roles in various Paramount films before taking the heroine's role in Beggars of Life (1928). 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 (1930); the first two were directed by G. W. Pabst. By 1938, she had starred in seventeen silent films and eight sound films. After retiring from acting, she fell upon financial hardship and became a paid escort. For the next two decades, she struggled with alcoholism and suicidal tendencies. 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. She published her memoir, Lulu in Hollywood, in 1982. Three years later, she died of a heart attack at age 78. [preceding biography, edited, from Wikipedia]Read more

Movies & web series

Empty Saddles

The City Gone Wild

Fragments: Surviving Pieces of Lost Films

The Casting Couch

Clara Bow: Discovering the "It" Girl

Hollywood

Lulu in Berlin

Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu

Rolled Stockings

Evening Clothes

The American Venus

A Social Celebrity

Now We're in the Air

Pandora's Box

Diary of a Lost Girl

Love 'Em and Leave 'Em

The Street of Forgotten Men

The Show Off

Beggars of Life

When You're in Love

1001 Films

Just Another Blonde

Miss Europe

A Girl in Every Port

Windy Riley Goes Hollywood

The Canary Murder Case

Mysteries and Scandals

It Pays to Advertise

Overland Stage Raiders

Why Be Good?: Sexuality & Censorship in Early Cinema

It's the Old Army Game

God's Gift to Women

Away with Words

Clara Bow: Hollywood's Lost Screen Goddess

Flappers, Speakeasies, and the Birth of Modern Culture

Louise Brooks

Memories of Berlin: The Twilight of Weimar Culture