Louise Brooks
Actor
- Born
- November 14, 1906 · Cherryvale, Kansas, USA
- Died
- August 8, 1985 (age 78)
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).
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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]
Known for
Pandora's Box
January 30, 1929
Diary of a Lost Girl
September 27, 1929
Beggars of Life
September 22, 1928
The Canary Murder Case
February 16, 1929
A Girl in Every Port
February 26, 1928
Miss Europe
August 1, 1930
Overland Stage Raiders
September 20, 1938
It's the Old Army Game
July 10, 1926
Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu
May 5, 1998
When You're in Love
February 12, 1937
God's Gift to Women
April 13, 1931
It Pays to Advertise
February 18, 1931
Acting35
- 2026Away with Words as Louise Brooks
- 2012Clara Bow: Hollywood's Lost Screen Goddess
- 2011Fragments: Surviving Pieces of Lost Films as Herself (archive footage)
- 2010Flappers, Speakeasies, and the Birth of Modern Culture
- 2007Why Be Good?: Sexuality & Censorship in Early Cinema as Self (archive footage)
- 1999Clara Bow: Discovering the "It" Girl as Self (archive footage)
- 1998Louise Brooks: Looking for Lulu as Herself (archive footage)
- 1995The Casting Couch
- 19891001 Films as (archival)
- 1986Louise Brooks