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Stars of the Twenties
Ned
Louise Brooks 1906-1985
�Most beautiful, but dumb, girls think they are smart and get away with it, because other people, on the whole, aren't much smarter.�
Louise Brooks and her trademark hair have now come to be symbols of the spirit of the 20s. As a talented actress, dancer and writer she appeared in 24 films in the 20s and 30s, but most remember her as Lulu in the silent German film Pandora�s Box, a nickname which stayed with her for the rest of her life. . She was born in a small Kansas town to a lawyer father and well read and artistically talented mother. She was forced to take dancing lessons, and by the age of 10 was choreographing local kids and making sets and costumes. She appeared at local fairs and at 15 moved to New York to dance professionally with some of the best dance companies at the time, but got sacked at 17 for for having a �superior attitude�. She toured |
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Europe, becoming the 1st person to dance theCharleston in London, before signing a contract with Paramount in 1925. She made 21 silent movies before walking out after a row over not giving her more money for speaking because her voice was �unproven�. In 1929 she appeared in Pandora�s Box and Diary of a Lost Girl which made her the icon for cinema in the 20s with her shockingly sharp bob haircut. She went back to Hollywood but her independence and feisty nature brought more rows with studio bosses. She appeared in some B grade movies then left Hollywood for good in 1938 after 2 short marriages, and went back to Wichita, where her family now lived. She later wrote: �The citizens of Wichita either resented me having been a success or despised me for being a failure. And I wasn't exactly enchanted with them. I must confess to a lifelong curse; My own failure as a social creature. She spent the 1950s-70s being a film critic, Hollywood historian and memoirist, and in the 80s a collection of her articles was published before her death in 1985 |
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Tallulah Bankhead 1902-1968
�Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it.�
Her wit and wild lifestyle made her a star amongst her generation. Born in 1902 in Alabama her father was a politician, and her mother died a few weeks after Tallulah�s birth. She and her sister were sent to various convent schools as their father moved from job to job. When she was 15 she entered her picture into a magazine competition and won a small part in a film She decided to be an actress and her father�s influence got her parts in plays in New York, where she met her lifelong partner, Estelle Winwood,playwrights and actresses. One of her friends wrote a character based on Tallulah, a role which would later earn Katherine Hepburn her 1st Oscar. She amazed people with her witty conversation and enjoyed the city�s parties. She went to London in the early 20s to act on the stage for 8 years, where she gained fans called �Gallery Girls�, young working class women who imitated her and never missed a performanc. They kept many of her flops open, and Tallulah never neglected her |
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fans, some became her personal staff. She went back to American after Paramount offered her a contract in 1931 for $50,000 a film. Other studios like MGM were importing foreign stars such as Greta Garbo. Paramount�s answer was to get in Marlene Dietrich and Tallulah. She found movie making boring and said the only reason she went to Hollywood was �to fuck that divine Gary Cooper�. After 6 films (one with Gary Cooper) which weren�t successful she returned to the New York and London theatres. By the 1940s she had been divorced, starred in Alfred Hitchcock�s Lifeboat and bought a house called Windows (because it had so many of them) were she could hold big parties and walk around nude as she was famous for doing. In the 50s she hosted a popular radio variety show, using her humour to liven it up. She had an autobiography ghostwritten, a boob job and appeared on a TV special with Lucille Ball. In the 60s she mostly became a recluse, but made brief appearances in horror movies and chat shows as a washed up celebrity. She died in 1968 of pneumonia worth about $2 million and having appearance on every entertainment medium. In 2000 a file from MI5 was made public that when she was in her 30s the Home Office requested she be investigated after rumours that she�d seduced up to 6 Eton boys. The school covered the scandal up, and there was never enough evidence to have Tallulah deported. Her bisexually promiscuous behaviour was just one thing Tallulah's famed for, she said �darling� every sentence and couldn�t give up drugs or drinking. Her doctor told her to eat an apple whenever she wanted a drink, to which she replied, �But really darling, sixty apples a day?� |
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