Hollywood v. Beauty and the Synchronicity of the Six

By Kirk Henderson

Hollywood v. Beauty and the Synchronicity of the Six presents the biographies of six movie actresses from the 1920s to the 1970s, with a single actress representing her decade of activity: Louise Brooks 1920s, Jean Harlow 1930s, Hedy Lamarr 1940s, Barbara Payton 1950s, Jean Seberg 1960s, and Sondra Locke 1970s. The synchronicity between the lives of these women is phenomenal, and their stories are as dramatic and exciting as any to come from that town, stretching all the way from complete ruination to thrilling triumph. Along the way, the story of movies in the Golden Age unfolds as six movie actresses try to survive in the most artificial place on Earth. The power elite of Hollywood could transform unknowns into movie stars or erase the famous into oblivion. Since beauty has its own innate power, it is inevitable these two entities would face off.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: May 4, 2020
• ISBN: 9781645367000

Kirk Henderson

Kirk Henderson is an author, screenwriter, art director, and filmmaker. He has written extensively about film and film music, with articles published in a variety of film magazines including Music from the Movies, Film Score Monthly, and Little Shoppe of Horrors. He has created concepts and/or art directed for Lucasfilm, Industrial Light & Magic, and San Francisco's once vanguard of animation, Colossal Pictures. Mr. Henderson has won awards for his short films, including The Visage, currently re-licensed by Shorts Intl. Hollywood v. Beauty and the Synchronicity of the Six is his first book.

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Endnotes

About The Author

Kirk Henderson is an author, screenwriter, art director, and filmmaker. He has written extensively about film and film music, with articles published in a variety of film magazines including Music from the Movies, Film Score Monthly, and Little Shoppe of Horrors. He has created concepts and/or art directed for Lucasfilm, Industrial Light & Magic, and San Francisco’s once vanguard of animation, Colossal Pictures. Mr. Henderson has won awards for his short films, including The Visage, currently re-licensed by Shorts Intl. Hollywood v. Beauty and the Synchronicity of the Six is his first book.

Dedication

For Sally Henderson, my mother, who taught me how to read and type.

Copyright Information©

Kirk Henderson (2020)

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Publisher’s Cataloguing-in-Publication data

Henderson, Kirk

Hollywood v. Beauty and the Synchronicity of the Six

ISBN 9781643781648 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781643781655 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781645367000 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2020901839

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published (2020)

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

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New York, NY 10005

USA

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Introduction:

From Heaven to Hell

Hollywood, both town and idea, is a tough place to find acceptance, even tougher to navigate once inside. The studio brass demand control and appreciate compliancy. Since the beginning these power players had the ability to transform unknowns into movie stars or erase the famous into oblivion. Beauty also has its own power, innately so, and it was only inevitable these two entities would face off.

This is the story of six women who happened to end up in the movie business and how they fought Hollywood to maintain their sense of self. It’s about their life endeavors, their loves, and their movies, but also about the social and political environments they faced from the 1920s to the 1970s and beyond. Moreover, it’s about how international social forces had a hand in shaping their destinies.

To build their empire, the men running the studios, viewed beauty as a commodity. Whether a beautiful actress or film stock, they were among the elements needed to make the product. Movie stars and starlets, imbued by their own sense of beauty’s natural power, often sought to be seen as more. They occasionally went toe to toe with the heads of an institutionalized motion picture industry. Sometimes their fight was on the political stage as well as the motion picture screen. Sometimes they won; sometimes they succumbed to the forces controlling them. Their beauty could elevate or sabotage their careers.

Studio heads also understood it took more than a pretty face and talent to create a legendary movie star. That which magnetized audiences to movie theaters couldn’t be created by formula, though nothing stopped many from trying. The ability to recognize the blend of visual poetry that materialized itself on screen in the form of an elusive goddess is as much accident as it is determination.

In the case of Louise Brooks, the combination of intangibles was the grace with which she moved in combination with an astonishing smile. Men knew they couldn’t have her but they wanted her just the same. Jean Harlow’s appeal was in how accessible she seemed to be. She could be a good girl or a bad girl, but she was just so enjoyable to spend time with. Although Hedy Lamarr gave some very good performances, it’s hard to say she ever gave a great one, but the way she photographed, particularly in black and white, caused an audience to gasp.

Sometimes beauty overshadows a darker side, as in the case of Barbara Payton. Part campy starlet, part screen seductress, it doesn’t matter her life seemed to be a complete disaster; her beauty has inspired a cult. In 1957, Jean Seberg’s film career was close to dead on arrival after her first role in Saint Joan. What critics failed to see was how remarkably she improved as the story unfolds, reaching an emotional crescendo by the climax. Her beauty got in the way; audiences had never seen such a charming religious figure.

Most people remember Sondra Locke as Clint Eastwood’s long-time girlfriend and the female lead in many of his earlier films. On her own, Locke delivered some wonderful performances and she also showed much promise as a director. She directed one of the finest crime thrillers of the 1990s, Impulse. Her legal stand against Eastwood and Warner Bros, who she claimed tried to destroy her directing career, became historic.

Although Payton and Locke haven’t the name recognition of the other four, they reveal aspects of the business and social events specific to their decade that is uniquely their own. The chronicle of all six is a puzzle completing a single American cultural image, so Payton and Locke are essential pieces.

Any analysis of the journeys of film stars and their battles within the movie business is irrevocably tied to the history of the U.S. and the world. These six women came to terms in one way or another with their own success or lack thereof, but it was often social and political forces of the day rather than their own grit that determined their fate.

For decades now, the past has not only been conveniently forgotten, but manipulated and altered so the original message has become lost or twisted. Encouraged through politics, our media alters facts so we can have the heroes we demand. West Virginian, Jessica Lynch, who served in the Iraq War as Private First Class, was captured by Iraqi forces but recovered by U.S. Special Operations about a week later. A report appeared in the Washington Post describing how Lynch had fought her captors bravely. The news media grabbed this story and ran with it. West Virginian Congressmen pushed the Pentagon to honor her heroism. She was awarded the Bronze Star, Prisoner of War, and Purple Heart medals. In no time, NBC rushed into production on a made-for-TV movie Saving Jessica Lynch, which portrayed her daring rescue and heroics as the media had described it. The only problem: In reality, Jessica Lynch was injured and did not fire a single shot.

PFC Lynch herself went public to dispute the story of her heroism. They used me to symbolize all this stuff. It’s wrong. I don’t know why they filmed [my rescue] or why they say these things, Lynch spoke, I did not shoot, not a round, nothing. I went down praying on my knees. And that’s the last I remember. She said the TV movie was so inaccurate she couldn’t even finish watching it.

After speaking publicly, along with letters of support, Lynch received a lot of hate mail by people accusing her of making up her acts of heroism. The truth clearly mattered to Lynch, and she went public to set the record straight. She did not want the legend printed even though the facts had been twisted into what amounted to her own heroic legacy. If Jessica Lynch has any true heroism, it is from speaking out against an out-of-control political contrivance that took the media hostage.

The six women in this book are, in varying degrees, versions of Jessica Lynch. Their experiences with the Hollywood dream machine, the media, and the politics of their day are essentially earlier case histories revealing how people in the limelight struggled to maintain their own sense of identity when there were forces trying to shape them into something they were not.

Any analysis of their work reveals more than plot; it can also characterize their psychology. Sometimes their films would mimic episodes of their life stories; sometimes the roles they played dominated their own reality.

These stories pay testament to the power of motion picture stardom working in tandem with an unchecked and ever-hungry media to become a powerful social and political force. Motion pictures, society, politics, they are all interconnected in ways too potent, even frightening to ignore.

Movies dramatically manufacture attitudes and beliefs, whether humane or intentionally destructive, and they can reach mass acceptance. Fantasy becomes fact. Lie becomes legend. Balance arises through historic perspective, when sense is made from seemingly unrelated incidents.

Hollywood v. Beauty is about synchronicity, and is what separates it from other books about these women. None of these six ever met each other or even crossed paths, but their journey is such a network of connections, similarities, and mirrored occurrences, it feels as if their destinies were predetermined. It’s almost as if they intentionally and substantially influenced each other. Whether this happened by design or not, their echoed lives have become an entity all its own.

Hollywood and beauty become tangible when at odds, defined by the parameters the film industry created for us since the 1920s. It’s a manifestation of two forms of sexual power, one psychological, another physical.

Maybe this is only a history of six movie stars, but in the greater scheme of things, a movie star may be no less important than our political or corporate leaders, or even the religious figureheads who many follow unquestioningly. Though basic and subversive, by engaging our emotions, movie stars shape our everlasting values. They take us for a ride and we enjoy every minute of it.

The ride within this book is historically fascinating, but also rip-roaring entertainment, an account of six lives that run the gamut from heaven to hell. Survival and death, altruism, and transgression, soaring highs and staggering lows, reclusiveness, and shameful exposure, screaming ruination and astonishing resurrection, it’s all here.

1920s

Louise Brooks: The Ubiquitous Black Helmet

1. Youthful Corruption

Even if people don’t know Louise Brooks by name, they still recognize her. She’s become a historic visual icon from the seemingly eternal usage of her pageboy hairstyle to suggest the bad girl, including everyone from Cyd Charisse in Singin’ in the Rain (1952) or Melanie Griffith in Something Wild (1986), to Britney Spears and her music video for Womanizer (2008) or Cate Blanchett as the villainess in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008). There are countless others. Writer Kenneth Tynan called her the girl in the black helmet because of that striking haircut.

Other stars from Brooks’ era like Colleen Moore used the pageboy hairstyle, but no one wore it as well as Brooks, its gleaming blackness a strong counterbalance to a radiant but impenetrable mask perched comfortably on a gloriously long and graceful neck. It is Louise Brooks who comes to mind when we think of that Japanese schoolgirl coiffure.

This black helmet also came to represent the appearance of a woman with a mind of her own, which is certainly what Louise Brooks had. It set her fate as surely as it did her legacy. As much as she is now adored for her beauty and screen presence, in her lifetime she was more apt to turn people against her. Her sharp tongue and free-spirited approach to life often got her into trouble, and her colleagues sometimes retaliated by embarrassing her publicly. Brooks’ childhood says everything about what she became and how she related to the world.

Only one actress of the six in this book had a normal childhood. Four of the six were impacted strongly by their mothers. Only one, really, had a great relationship with her father. All but Louise were in pursuits of father figures. The root of the different legacies left by these women can be attributed to their parenting. Jean Harlow’s mother dominated her. Hedy Lamarr’s father inspired her to wonder about how things worked. The lack of moral judgment of Barbara Payton’s mother became reflected in her daughter’s lack of sexual discipline. The small-town religious values Jean Seberg’s parents instilled in their daughter stood at odds with Jean’s liberal approach to life. Sondra Locke’s mother showed so little interest in her daughter that Sondra became an island unto herself, developing the inner resolve to become a survivor. Louise Brooks’ parenting on the other hand was a mixed bag.

****

Decades after she last appeared on screen, Louise wrote to director G. W. Pabst, telling him she’d found a diary she’d written at the age of fourteen. She was so revolted with what she read, she had to put it down every few pages, and in her letter to Pabst she said, This wasn’t I! This venomous hating hateful wildly sexual little bitch. Oh no! But it was…¹

Born November 14, 1906, in Cherryvale, Kansas, the second of four children, Louise got her sense of independence and appreciation of the arts from her mother, Myra Rude Brooks, a self-absorbed talent who didn’t want to waste time raising children. Even so, Myra’s love of literature and her piano playing instilled in Louise and her siblings, Martin, Theo and June, a love of the arts. With Louise, this love found its way to music and movement.

Louise’s father, Leonard Brooks, was a lawyer who had little time for his children. He left the child rearing to his wife, but Myra was very vocal about not wanting to look after her children since she grew up having to raise her siblings and didn’t want to repeat the experience. So neither mother nor father took on a focused role of raising their kids. Myra was quite skilled on the piano, but her push for perfection could drive people crazy. It was the pursuit of her own artistic career that limited her attention with her children.

When Louise was nine, she and some other children in Cherryvale would find popcorn left on the front porch by a Mr. Flowers (who in Brooks’ later writings is sometimes referred to as Mr. Feathers). The other kids would just take the popcorn and run, but Louise had a bold streak and one time, out of curiosity she knocked on his door to ask for more. Mr. Flowers invited her in and sexually molested her.²

Louise ran home crying to her mother, who just didn’t have time for her children’s problems. Ultimately, Myra blamed Louise for the incident, saying her daughter probably egged him on. The psychological damage inflicted by the incident remained with Louise the rest of her life. Even so, Brooks always spoke highly of Myra and had cherished memories of her mother introducing her to literature. She remembers sitting in her mother’s lap, listening to her read, Alice in Wonderland and other books.³ Both sides of Myra had their effect. There were fond memories, but being blamed for egging on a child molester had its effect as well. Brooks admitted many decades later she never really loved anyone.

Aside from the lack of parenting, some elements of her mother’s personality helped prepare Louise for her experience in Hollywood. Because Myra had a cold, detached attitude towards her children, it made Louise self-reliant, and years later her sense of independence fought against any film studio trying to make a slave of her. Louise’s fondest memory of her mother was seeing how much happiness Myra got from playing piano. Watching Louise spin around the room on her toes from dawn to dusk, Myra also hoped her daughter would become a serious dancer, something Leonard did not encourage. He called his daughter’s interest in dancing, silly.⁴

It was Myra who was responsible for taking Louise to the barber and asking him to cut her pigtails and give her a Dutch bob, beginning the legacy of the girl in the black helmet.⁵ Years later, Brooks herself would cut it even more sharply, a look that eventually became in part the iconography of sado-masochism, particularly as Cyd Charisse used the look to dominate Gene Kelly in Singin’ in the Rain.⁶ Silent actress Colleen Moore claimed Louise had copied her hairstyle, but since Louise had hers cut when she was ten, she got the jump on Moore by a decade. Moore may have been a big star in her day and she made a lot of money at her peak, $12,500 a week, but none of her films is recalled as a classic.⁷

Louise’s mother was a mixed bag of parenting, but somehow the inspiration she instilled in Louise blended with an early terrifying experience to transform Louise Brooks into a remarkably enigmatic and iconic personality.

Around 1920, the Brooks family ended up in Wichita. It was here the corruption of Louise’s youth reached its completion. In 1921, at the age of fourteen, she entered into a relationship with a Presbyterian Sunday school teacher, a Mr. Vincent. His exploits with her are confirmed, at least, by the tone of Louise’s diary entries at the time. They include: Mr. Vincent is crazy about my hair. Last night he mussed it all up, making me look like a -, lord how I like him. And, My dance was the hit of the evening. I received the most applause and everything. Sad, but true, I forgot one part. Mr. Vincent whispered a lovely compliment in my ear (how I love him!).⁸ As well as: Mr. V. is going to take some Kodaks and get some pictures of me in Grecian poses. He told Mother he was going to have a ‘heart to heart’ talk with me. He will surely romp all over me.⁹

Fifty years later, Louise called Mr. Vincent one of the corruptors of her youth, but Louise did have romances with boys her own age. She, in fact, prided herself in her ability to attract boys, and she particularly liked ones who treated her roughly. There was, however, one thing she liked more than boys. Dancing.

2. The Dancer

Louise didn’t intend on a career in the movies. She wanted to be a dancer. She either exhibited, or was pushed by her mother to exhibit her gift of movement. The young girl performed at theaters, dance halls, and clubs in southeastern Kansas.¹⁰ By the age of twelve, she had mounted her own entertainments and shows. In 1921, a young dance company, Denishawn, came to Wichita, and Louise and her mother went to see them. After the performance, they went backstage and Louise was introduced to Ted Shawn, who like most people was entranced by the allure of this impish beauty. He invited her to attend their dance school next summer. Louise was thrilled with this prospect; however, it took six months of pleading and conniving to convince Leonard Brooks to allow Louise to be enrolled.

Still, there was one consideration. Louise was only fifteen, and would need a chaperone. Myra found one she thought suitable: the thirty-six-year-old Alice Mills, who was Louise’s dance consultant. She would take Louise to New York, where they would live together. It would be Mills’ futile job to keep Louise out of trouble.¹¹ They took a room in New York at 80th near Riverside Drive. Mills soon found herself opposite an uncontrollable force of nature radiating in many different directions. She had to sleep in a double bed right next to Louise’s hot restless body.¹² There wasn’t much she could do about it either; there was just no reigning in the young Louise.

Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn had founded the Denishawn Dance Company in 1915. It was there Louise met a young Martha Graham, who had joined the company and would go on to be a major name in modern American dance and choreography, receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, becoming the first dancer to perform at the White House. Decades later, Graham recalled her first memory of Louise Brooks: She stood in the center of a group of girls in Denishawn. They all dressed in the same short dress, the hair the same, and yet Louise stood out in two ways, because she was so extraordinarily beautiful and because of a deep inner power that stood her all of her life.¹³

Brooks studied the way Graham moved, and this contemporary grace translated to Louise’s clean and elegant poise. Years later, Brooks would say she learned to act from watching Martha Graham dance, and she learned to dance from watching Charlie Chaplin act.¹⁴

Although chaperone Alice Mills viewed Brooks somewhat bratty behavior with distain, one thing they had in common was their love of theater, and they saw as many shows as they could afford. Louise particularly liked the Ziegfeld Follies, but was not impressed with the Follies girls. With the exception of one dancer, Anastasia Reilly, whom Louise felt had the faithfulness to nature that she also sought, Louise felt the other girls just wore fake smiles plastered on their faces. She decided right then she would only smile when she felt like it.

As for her experience in the school, Louise was familiar with much of the music they used in their studies, primarily because her mother had played the pieces on piano, and Louise even developed her own steps to some of them. She absorbed a lot of new material as well and made remarkable progress. Following just one summer session, she was asked to join the company. At the age of fifteen, Louise was part of the Denishawn 1922-23 tour, on her own and under their wing. They performed a remarkable 180 times¹⁵ in 202 days, across 130 U.S. and Canadian cities, quite a feat for a dance troop, let alone a 15-year-old girl. One reason for this stamina could have been her legs, described by biographer Peter Cowie as hefty yet impeccably poised.⁷ In her later films like A Girl in Every Port, where we see her climb a tall ladder in tights before plunging into a small pool, it’s clear Brooks had a somewhat delicate upper torso and a sturdy lower. Her grace likely came from that power of motion her strong legs provided.

One stop on the tour was at the same Wichita theatre Louise and her mother had first seen Denishawn. Another moment of triumph for both Myra and her daughter was when Shawn, St. Denis, Graham, and Charles Weidman (their experienced male dance prodigy), came to the Brooks’ home after the performance to celebrate Louise’s 16th birthday.

During the tour, Louise and Ruth St. Denis, who ran the Denishawn group, got very close. It was a grueling schedule and when Louise had problems, Miss Ruth would be by her side.

After the tour ended, Louise joined most of the company for a restful summer at the Mariarden Arts Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire. There she met Barbara Bennett, who years later would have a minor film career. Barbara’s older sister, Constance, had already achieved success as a film actress and would go on to become a major star.¹⁶ The youngest sister, Joan, would have an even more prolific career. In 1916, all three sisters had appeared as children in a film starring their actor parents, Richard Bennett and Adrienne Morrison. All this may have appealed to Louise. It seemed all three sisters were destined for the movies. After their summer together at the Mariarden, Louise and Barbara maintained their friendship back in New York.

By the second tour, the Mayer, 1923-24, Louise was a year older and her eyes had opened to all sorts of things as they became apparent on the road. When everyone was in New York, it was easy to hide activities from everyone, but on tour, un-chaperoned, with everyone in the same hotel, things were much more out in the open.

Louise began to go out with different men she met on the trip, asserting herself more than was comfortable with the rest of the group. She would not conform and courted rebellion. Louise was described as being very flirty in hotels, quite easy for men to have conversations with. One of the dancers said Louise had slept with an entire backstage crew, but there was no real evidence. Nevertheless, it was perception that mattered, and once talk like this got back to St. Denis and Shawn, Louise’s reputation developed.

Louise advanced to become Ted Shawn’s dance partner in The Feather of the Dawn, which was the first North American Indian ballet ever created for an American audience. Sometime later, she was a part of the innovative Sonata Tragica, a stark and modernist work that was the first modern American dance to be performed in complete silence.¹⁷

Because of Brooks’ success, trouble began between her and St. Denis. Louise was convinced Ruth now hated her, but actually, there was a general feeling Brooks was daring not only St. Denis, but also the whole world to cross her, and this did not rest well. On top of this, St. Denis appreciated girls who would sit at her feet with adoration, something Louise’s already developed petulance and growing snobbery would never permit. Brooks’ persecution complex, which would continue her entire life, only added to the volatile mix.

When Louise brought Barbara Bennett along to the group and accidentally interrupted the announcements of the new season, St. Denis stopped her speech and said, Well, Louise, to be brief and to the point – not to keep you from your pressing concerns – I am dismissing you from the company because you want life handed to you on a silver salver. Louise considered this the blackest humiliation of her life, but there would be others.

When she got back to the Bennett house, Louise asked Barbara, What’s a silver salver? Learning a salver was just a tray did little to cheer Louise up. She had been fired in the most embarrassing manner from one of America’s most prominent modern dance companies, and was now unemployed.

By 1924, Louise had become an unofficial member of the Bennett household. Unlike her two sisters, Barbara Bennett approached things with fear and trembling, but she took on helping Louise with relish. The Bennett family was cultured and highly educated, and this rubbed off on Louise, partly by being around them, but also by plan.

Through Barbara, Louise got picked up for George White’s Scandals, a competitor of Ziegfeld Follies. This show was not as spectacular, but it had one thing going for it. Unlike the Follies, which had many composers and less cohesion, Scandals’ songs were entrusted to a single songwriter or team. George Gershwin wrote the songs for all five Scandals from 1920 through 1924.

As usual, Louise’s skill as a dancer and her poise on stage elevated her in no time and, given her young age, resentments abounded. Continuing with Scandals, she could now afford better hotels. She moved into the Algonquin on the recommendation of Barbara, where she met director Edmund Goulding, who had discovered Joan Crawford, and would go on to direct Grand Hotel (1932). Louise turned him down when he offered her a screen test, because she’d heard it was just a come on. She may have never slept with Goulding, but she had her own terms when it came to sex, as particular as they may have been. At the Algonquin, she was active sexually, and not very discreet about it either. Her sexual peccadillos got her thrown out. She went to another hotel and was also thrown out of that one for, among other things, exercising on the roof in skimpy pajamas. Then the worst came. Barbara’s parents were shipping their daughter off to a private school in Paris. Losing her close friend panicked Louise. She was also bored with her routine in Scandals. Without giving any notice, Louise marched into the theater, quit the show, and set sail for Europe with Barbara.¹⁸

3. Europe, Fields, and Chaplin

Things didn’t turn out as planned in Europe, at least not for Barbara. She had a change of heart upon arriving at the hotel, cashed a letter of credit, and went back to New York. Louise decided to stay, but how she would manage in Paris, not knowing the language and without any money, was another question.

Archie Selwyn, a producer who had seen Louise in Scandals, was amazed to find her in the lobby of the Hotel Edouard VII. He convinced her to come to London with him and got her a job dancing in a place called, coincidentally, the Café de Paris.

The Café de Paris, in the West End’s Piccadilly Circus, attracted an interesting crowd, and included performers like Noel Coward and Beatrice Lillie. Louise was not the headliner, but she did something no one else had yet done: The Charleston.¹⁹ She was the first girl to bring this wild dance to London. The crowd loved her, and she loved the experience. At least she did at first.

At seventeen, Louise was living the high life, beyond her means, but despite all the excitement of being the rage of an entertainment capital of Europe, she became lonely. She no longer had Barbara Bennett to watch over her, and drifted into melancholia. Her response to this depressing state prompted a desire to return to New York. She used the rest of her money to cable Otto Kahn, an early backer of Paramount who she met at a party while employed with Scandals. He arranged to have her past due rent paid and got her return passage to the U.S. New York would be where she would always return following times of personal and artistic crisis.

Her friends in New York welcomed her back and mentioned her to Florenz Ziegfeld, who had been looking for her ever since she disappeared from Scandals. When he told her he was looking for a new chorus girl, Louise said, I’m not a chorus girl, I’m a dancer. Impressed with her daring, he gave her a specialty dance, not for the Follies, but in a two-act musical farce, Louie the 14th.²⁰

The show received raves, and as expected, Louise drew nothing but positive critical publicity. Also, as could be expected, problems were brewing behind the scenes. Brooks had a major personality conflict with Teddy Royce, the stage manager/director. Once again, when people got on her bad side, Louise would provoke the situation, only making things worse. Once angered, Louise could not be avoided.

Despite this petulance and tendency to infuriate those she came in contact with, Louise would warm to people others ignored or found unappealing. She got to know the comic actor W. C. Fields, who tended to keep most women at a distance. In her book Lulu in Hollywood, Brooks devotes a chapter to the time she spent with Fields at Ziegfeld Follies. This experience actually came about as a result of her conflict with Teddy Royce.

Around that time, Louise had begun appearing in films. Although many are lost, her very first film appearance has survived. In 1925’s The Street of Forgotten Men, Louise is seen in a saloon when a fight breaks out between two men. It wasn’t much, but it got her noticed. Soon film work began to interfere with her stage work.

While continuing with Louie the 14th, Louise would occasionally wire the theater when she would be unable to appear due to film auditions or work. Royce hated all of Ziegfeld’s spoiled girls, but he especially hated Louise. After a matinee performance, Royce called all the girls on stage for a meeting. Brooks took a low-profile position at the end of the line, but it didn’t matter. Royce looked directly at her and said, Some girls in this show are using this theater exclusively as a showcase. All the girls stared at Louise with satisfying grins. Louise was humiliated and insulted. She ran straight to Ziegfeld and told him about it. Without hesitation, the great Ziegfeld smiled and transferred Brooks directly to his Follies.²¹

Ziegfeld was a remarkable showman, whose main legacy is likely the glorification of beautiful women, however, many performers, both men and women, did well by hooking up with Ziegfeld productions. Among them were Fanny Brice, Eddie Cantor, Will Rogers and W. C. Fields. Another member of the follies, Peggy Fears, was the most popular girl of the show. She decided she would be the best friend of Louise, who as was her pattern, had become the most loathed. As a result, Peggy and Louise were an unusual duo whose social graces apparently extended the full spectrum of conviviality. They ended up rooming together.

Peggy would send flower bouquets to W. C. Fields’ dressing room before matinees, and through this, Brooks met him. He was quite touched by this bouquet offering and so he often invited both girls to visit him in his dressing room where he would entertain them with his polished stage skills. Fields suffered from eczema, which inflamed his nose and spread over his hands. It had gotten so bad, he had to learn to juggle wearing gloves.

He adored beautiful girls, but had some devastating experiences in his younger days. According to Louise, he had stretched out his hand to beauty and love and they thrust it away.²² As a result, Fields withdrew, limiting his romantic interests to less attractive women. He poured alcohol into himself as much as he poured himself into his work. For Louise and Peggy, however, Fields would open his wardrobe trunk bar and his dwarf valet would mix drinks while the girls danced around the room. Fields would graciously listen to their nonsense while putting on his make-up.

Someone else besides Fields had noticed Brooks, someone who in 1925 was likely the most famous man in the entire world. Charlie Chaplin was in New York to promote The Gold Rush, which would have its opening right around the corner from the Follies showplace. When Louise and Charlie met, there was an immediate chemical attraction. He was thirty-six and she was eighteen, but he’d always liked young women, and Brooks found his physical presence revealed an exquisiteness the screen could not reflect.²³ To Louise he was small, perfectly made, meticulously dressed, with his fine grey hair and ivory skin and white teeth, […] clean as a pearl and glowed all over.²⁴ She was apparently more effusive about him than he was of her. She admitted she had small firm breasts, but Chaplin compared them to pears.²⁵ An enjoyable love affair developed and lasted two months. Louise recalled him to be as creative in bed as he was on screen. He was also fond of practical jokes, and one literal off color story has survived.

One time, Louise and Charlie, along with film financier A. C. Blumenthal, and Louise’s Follies friend Peggy Fears, double dated. All four of them spent an amorous day at Blumenthal’s penthouse suite at the Ambassador. At the time, hotel bathrooms were equipped with plenty of iodine to control the spread of venereal disease. At one point, Charlie went into the bathroom and found the iodine. He proceeded to use the liquid to stain his entire male member. When he came back into the room, there he was, standing at attention, bright red. He then proceeded to chase a screaming Louise and Peggy around the room.²⁶

After two entertaining and amorous months, the love affair ended and Charlie went back to Hollywood. Louise received a farewell note and somewhere between $2500 and $5000 as a going away present from him.²⁷ They never saw each other again. Years later, she kicked herself for not ever sending him a thank you note. In spite of this lack of decorum on Louise’s part, for the rest of their lives, Brooks and Chaplin spoke highly of each other, however, she was disappointed she did not receive even a mention in his autobiography, and the two months he’d spent in New York in 1925 had been reduced to less than a week.²⁸

4. The Bad Girl on Screen

Within one year, Brooks was getting larger film roles, all comedies, shot in the Eastern U.S., before she migrated to Hollywood. In 1926 alone, she made six films. Half of them are lost. Her first of the year, The American Venus, is famous for being the first film to cast Miss America, the winner of the Atlantic City beauty contest in the lead role. The winner, Fay Lanphier, only made two films and quickly faded into obscurity, but although The American Venus is considered lost, two trailers survived and Lanphier as seen in them, is indeed a beauty. Another actress, Esther Ralston, as described in one trailer as an aspirant, was just as beautiful, more modern, but she had actually been around for years. Ralston in fact, enjoyed a long career, including appearing as Mrs. Darling in the first filmed version of Peter Pan (1924). Her career lasted from 1915 to 1962 and beyond by some accounts.

One trailer for The American Venus is curious in that it uses a beauty contest to promote the film and considers a selling point the latest, loveliest creations from Paris, which the American Venus winner apparently wears on screen. It also has some 2-Strip Technicolor footage and a single but amusing shot of Louise Brooks interacting with Ford Sterling. With the exception of the shot of Brooks, the trailer is primarily hyperbole. Brooks and Sterling’s bit is the only sign of spunk as he nervously tries to usher a determined Louise out of a room. As one suspicious woman enters, Sterling thrusts Brooks behind the same door with his leg. It’s a nice display of comic timing. Brooks’ role in The American Venus is small, but she got more notice than Lanphier.

In quick succession, Brooks made five more films. All these were shot on the East Coast and their locations make them distinct from the Hollywood product.

One reason Louise had no idea how good she was on screen, particularly in the ones she made later in Europe, resulted from her early curiosity to see herself on film. While making her third comedy, A Social Celebrity, she strolled into a projection room where it was being run. Unaware at how easily Louise’s feelings could be hurt, even in jest, producer, Walter Wanger and director, Malcolm St. Clair, laughed and teased her about her acting. She swore she would never see another picture she was in.²⁹ She didn’t until decades later.

In Love ’Em and Leave ’Em, her earliest film still extant, she has her first role as the bad girl. She’s the younger of two sisters, looked after by the elder. Louise’s character isn’t so much bad as she’s just the prototypical flapper who throws responsibility to the wind. Though her screen time is smaller than Evelyn Brant, who plays the older sister, Brooks steals every scene she is in.

Since it was Brooks, the quintessential flapper who first danced the Charleston in the U.K., it’s surprising there isn’t more footage of her doing it on film, but in Love ’Em and Leave ’Em, we do see her throw responsibility to the wind and kick up her heels. The way she tosses her head back in abandon, flaunting mad joy with gesturing arms is pure Brooks, the sort of thing audiences loved then and continue to enjoy over three quarter of a century later.

Aside from the fact Brooks was stunningly beautiful, had grace of movement, and brought a modern sense of acting to silent film, she could also be very funny, possessing highly honed comic timing. This is what her American films have preserved better than those she later made in Europe. It is sad we will likely never know the level she reached in comedy because most of her comic films were for Paramount, a studio that made little effort preserving her early work, or the work of many other talents.

The now lost Paramount film A Social Celebrity (1926), was really a vehicle for Adolphe Menjou, and Brooks’ role was originally a bit part as a manicurist, an It girl cashing in on the success of Clara Bow. The female star, Greta Nissen, suddenly quit the production, which was good luck for Louise; her role was rewritten to be the lead. Unaware Brooks had a distinct quality of her own, Paramount had her character, Kitty Laverne, become a mere copy of Bow’s manicurist in Mantrap of the year before.³⁰

In the film, Max (Menjou) works in a barbershop owned by his father (Chester Conklin) who wants his son to take over the shop. Max sees bigger things for himself. Kitty works alongside Max and they fall in love, but she desires to be a dancer. After they fight, she heads to Broadway, hoping he will follow in pursuit of a better life. A society matron convinces Max to go to New York, where she sets him up in a salon of his own. When he intercepts a call that a French count, the guest of honor at a posh dinner party, will be unable to attend, Max fixes himself up and attends the dinner masquerading as the count. There he runs into Kitty, who is now a showgirl and who he still has feelings for. When his true identity is revealed, his social friends desert him, so at the request of his father, he heads home. Kitty now realizes she needs Max, so she follows him back.

Menjou was a major star at the time and being featured opposite him was an achievement for Brooks. The film received favorable reviews and critics took notice of Louise. A New York World critic said, There is a girl in this picture by the name of Louise Brooks. Perhaps you’ve heard of her. If not, don’t worry. You will.

As was usual with Brooks, everyone loved her but herself. She complained the movie was poorly directed and said Menjou was a tyrant. The actor had his face lit brightly to hide his bags, but Louise was lit the same way and it revealed her freckles, which she detested.³¹ Years later, in studying society dramas and the aristocracy of wealth, the subject of A Social Celebrity intrigued her. In 1957, she viewed it at the Eastman House in Rochester but found it pointless and dull. Historian Lotte Eisner saw it in Paris a year later and found it delightful. This opened Brooks’ eyes and she understood Eisner had a historical view of our naïve new world she had lacked. It’s hard to make any further judgment about the film because the last known print of A Social Celebrity burned up in a fire at the Cinémathèque Français.

****

She almost didn’t hook up with her old Follies friend W. C. Fields in her next film It’s the Old Army Game. She was quoted in Photoplay magazine as saying she would not do the film. Never able to make up her mind about her career, Louise turned around and did it anyway. It’s a good thing. They had good rapport and her scenes with Fields are delightful. Though it’s a trademark Fields film, Louise’s presence doesn’t get swept away in his wake and her comic timing is aptly displayed.

The director of Army Game was Edward Sutherland, who had been around a while and had experience as assistant director on Charlie Chaplin’s dramatic film A Woman of Paris (1923). In 1929, he would direct Clara Bow in The Saturday Night Kid, a remake of Love ’Em and Leave ’Em. Jean Arthur would play the Brooks role of the bad sister. The remake was also the first film in which Jean Harlow, in a small role, received screen credit.

When directing Army Game, Sutherland proceeded as he thought Chaplin would have, using multiple takes to get what he wanted and by improvising on the set. Unfortunately, Fields didn’t work that way, and even if he did, Sutherland would have been at a loss. Chaplin always knew what he wanted, even if what he did seemed like improvisation. In spite of all this, Eddie became Fields’ drinking pal. Eddie also fell madly in love with Louise, who wasn’t shy about criticizing his directing ability. This didn’t seem to bother him, and his directing skills didn’t seem to bother Louise either, because Eddie was also a fun guy. She and Eddie had a goodtime romance together. Before the film had completed shooting, he was already talking marriage. Louise would just laugh it off.³²

It’s the Old Army Game is not one of Fields’ best, but it had nothing to do with Fields himself. Louise said he was far funnier on stage than in anything he did on film. Most directors didn’t know where to put the camera to capture what Fields was doing, and Fields, who knew nothing about film, performed as if he were on stage. Changing camera angles in the middle of a routine didn’t help. He had perfected his timing through years of trial and error and his sense was impeccable. Sometimes the camera was pointed in the wrong direction and would miss a bit of action helping to build the humor.³³ There was also the process of editing. On stage, Fields’ timing was all his own, but on film it became the construction of the editor, who had little knowledge of what it took for Fields to arrive at the proper way to perform a routine.

Nevertheless, Army Game does have something unique to all Fields’ films. In every film he made, Fields was never in love with his leading lady. In Army Game, he breaks that rule. Although it’s subtle, for this single instance Fields allowed his defenses to drop so his true feelings could show through. In all the films Fields made, only Brooks maintained that special connection.

Some of the visual gags and ideas from It’s The Old Army Game reappear in one of Fields’ funniest sound films It’s a Gift (1934), including his miserable attempts to get some sleep on his back porch while constantly being disturbed by one annoyance after another, and his family trashing the lawn of a wealthy estate thinking it’s a picnic area. The gags work much better with sound, but there is nothing in It’s a Gift to match the charm Brooks and Fields shared in the silent film.

By the time Army Game was released, Eddie Sutherland was calling Louise constantly. She’d made one more film since her time with him, the entertaining The Show Off (1926), a comedy about loudmouth Aubrey, an annoying braggart who works his way into a family by pretending to be a big shot. The character was played by Ford Sterling, who has since fallen into relative obscurity, but was a big star in his day, and was one of the original members of the Keystone Cops.

In The Show Off, Aubrey marries Amy (Lois Wilson), the daughter of the upstanding Fisher family, but soon his compulsive lying gets him deeper and deeper into trouble. Although Aubrey has no difficulty pulling the wool over the Fishers’ eyes, Amy’s brother’s girlfriend, Clara (Brooks), sees right through him.

The film was based on a successful play, but director Malcolm St. Clair added a great car chase through the streets of Philadelphia, successfully adding action to what would have been a staid film comedy. Since the play had relied so strongly on dialogue, Louise’s grace and visual appeal offset the lack of words. Director St. Clair was also impressed with Brooks’ ability to take direction. The suggestion of a certain glance he wanted from her would be produced exactly.³⁴ In a scene showing the Fishers bowing their heads in prayer before dinner, Brooks’ character Clara, who doesn’t trust Aubrey, keeps an eye on him. When he looks up from prayer and tries to sneak a piece of chicken, Clara’s stern glare of disapproval stops him in his tracks. The strength of her glare is effective in many ways. Not only does it show Clara’s ability to harness Aubrey’s selfishness, something the family has been unable to do, but it also establishes Clara as the family’s self-appointed guardian. On top of that, Louise is very funny. In the film’s climax, when Clara finally wises the family up to Aubrey’s shenanigans, her pent-up anger bursts forth and she reads him the riot act. He finally backs down, a tamed pussycat, as anyone would be when confronted by Brooks’ rage.

Although Louise has only a supporting role, she eclipses the screen whenever she appears. Years before Greta Garbo and Katherine Hepburn made it vogue for women to wear hats and pants, Brooks was doing it here.³⁵

Brooks went on to Just Another Blonde, a name change from Gerald Beaumont’s short story Even Stev’en, to cash in on the 1925 success of Anita Loos’ bestseller Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Two years later, Loos’ novel made it to the screen for the first time, a production now considered lost. In 1953, Howard Hawks shot Gentlemen Prefer Blondes as a musical, casting Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe as the leads.

The relationship of the two men in Just Another Blonde is similar to one in a film Hawks would make two years later. Male bonding was a thing with Hawks. Director Alfred Santell was no Hawks, but his Just Another Blonde does have a story about two guys who don’t want women interfering with their friendship. The film Hawks made two years later, A Girl in Every Port, ends with two sailors placing their friendship over Marie, a French high-dive performer they had fought over. Brooks was cast as Marie, perhaps because Hawks had seen her in Santell’s Just Another Blonde.

The two men in Santell’s film are Jimmy and Scotty, gamblers who don’t want women getting in the way. They meet Jeanne and Diana who work at Coney Island. As soon as Scotty gets a look at Diana (Brooks), he changes his mind about this whole male bonding business. So as not to be considered a hypocrite by his best pal, Scotty and Diana try to hook up Jimmy with Jeanne, no easy task. According to biographer Barry Paris, the film has some spectacular roller coaster footage taken in Luna Park, and a sensational aerial sequence, culminating in an exciting plane crash just as Jimmy tells Jeanne he loves her.³⁶

Although Just Another Blonde was thought to be lost, much of it has been preserved to an archival negative in the UCLA Film and Television Archive. Of the six reels, only reel five is missing, and they are not available for viewing. The archive intends to complete the restoration, perhaps with still images to fill in the missing reel, but there is no ETA at this time.

Years after making the film, Louise said, "I don’t recall a damned thing about Just Another Blonde except some scenes we shot at Coney Island. What she did remember is the actor who played Scotty, William Buster" Collier Jr., and according to Brooks, he was the only actor she ever cared for. Although he was in love with Constance Talmadge, the sister of Natalie Talmadge (who was unhappily married to Buster Keaton), and Brooks was now engaged to be married to Eddie Sutherland, she and Collier Jr. carried on a torrid love affair during production.³⁷ It seems director Alfred Santell was hot for Louise as well, making for a wild shoot.

Dorothy Mackaill, in the lead role of Jeanne, was annoyed by all the attention given to Louise by Santell and Collier Jr. She also didn’t think much of Brooks’ talent as an actress. Brooks likely stole every scene she was in and it probably had something to do with Mackaill’s attitude. Since she no longer wished to see herself on screen, Brooks never came to dailies, but Mackaill always showed up and could see what she was up against.

Although all turns out fine in the plane crash sequence and Jeanne survives to marry her lover, Mackaill was actually nearly killed during production. She sat in an open cockpit with the camera mounted, facing her. During a test flight, the plane actually did crash and the pilot, who was strapped in, was killed. Mackaill, who was not strapped in, was thrown from the plane, and miraculously survived with little injury. The production company hushed up the death, which may have been easy to do because it occurred the same day Rudolph Valentino died.³⁸

As for Eddie Sutherland, he’d only recently gotten divorced after a short marriage to Marjorie Daw, so stability didn’t seem high on his list of virtues. Neither was it one of Brooks’ virtues, but she held him off for quite some time anyway, at least long enough to have her fling with Buster Collier Jr. Finally succumbing to Eddie’s playboy charms, Louise had a press agent get a message to director Santell: Mr. Santell, I’d like a little time off today. I want to get married.³⁹ This put the production of Just Another Blonde on hold. Short and not so sweet, but right to the point – typical Louise Brooks.

She was running her career like it was an afterthought. Her personal life outdid everything. Louise had rearranged her priorities and career didn’t seem to be high on the list, but she wasn’t alone in this attitude towards her work. The same could be said of all six women discussed in this book, but the difference with Louise was her uncanny sense of timing. On Just Another Blonde with both Collier Jr. and the director hot for her, Mackaill totally annoyed by her, and the production frantic over a fatal plane crash, Louise’s marriage plans holding up production couldn’t have come at a worse time. Yet Louise was oblivious to it all. She just went about her plans as if the entire world could wait.

Considering this cavalier attitude, it could be expected Brooks’ performance would suffer, but the exceptional thing about Louise was her desire to be the best she could be in whatever she did, and she would not allow herself to coast through a performance. Brooks would drink and party at all hours, get no sleep, but somehow, the next morning would manage to appear awake and clear-headed when the cameras rolled.

5. Hollywood, Marriage,

and Paramount

Louise responded to genuine honesty, but if she felt a person was making fun of her, she could snap. Her sense of persecution didn’t help and occasionally she would read people’s compliments as veiled put-downs, shocking them by responding with a biting harangue instead of a gracious thank you. Sometimes she could also be deeply hurt, as she was when Charlie Chaplin, who everyone knows was an amazing pantomime, playfully mimicked her walking style. Embarrassed, she exclaimed she would never walk that way again.⁴⁰

For some time, Louise’s personal sense of style had caught the attention of producer Walter Wanger (rhymes with danger). He led a turbulent, but fascinating life, going on to produce some of the finest films made in Hollywood during the 1930s and 40s, including Rouben Mamoulian’s Queen Christina, John Ford’s Stagecoach, Alfred Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent, and Fritz Lang’s Scarlet Street. In 1951, he shot talent agent Jennings Lang (no relation to Fritz) in the groin for having an affair with his actress wife Joan Bennett (younger sister of Louise’s friend, Barbara).⁴¹ Wanger spent time