"Louise Brooks," by Joe Franklin

Louise Brooks is all but forgotten in the United States, but not in Europe, where she made three of her greatest successes. Miss Brooks' films are frequently revived there by the film archives. In 1958, the huge Cinémateque filin museum in France held an "Hommage a Louise" festival, honoring the star and her work.

It is strange that some stars are forgotten so quickly in this country. While at her peak, Louise enjoyed a vogue almost unequalled by any other star, and her fans were so devoted that they almost constituted a cult.

Kansas-born Louise was initially a "Ziegfeld Follies" dancer, and also appeared in "George White's Scandais." Her truly incredible beauty—"classic" seems almost too cold a term to describe it, although it certainly was that—was undoubtedly responsible for her entry into ifims, and at Paramount, in silent, flapper-age comedies like The American Venus, Rolled Stockings, and A Social Celebrity, everything was done to exploit her face and figure. Even her remarkable acting in William Wellman's Beggars of Life, a powerful drama in which Louise dressed as a boy and tramped the road with fellow hoboes Richard Arlen and Wallace Beery, didn't spur her American employers to take advantage of her dramatic talents.

But in Germany it was a different story, and G. W. Pabst tailored two grim, psychological sex stories to her abilities: Pandora's Box (in which, as Lulu, she came to a tragic end at the hands of Jack the Ripper) and the much-censored and now quite notorious Diary of a Lost Girl. Another unusual film followed in France—Beauty Prize—and then she returned to the States to resume her career.

Alas, the career never did resume. Louise herself admits that she was partially to blame, feeling in an uncooperative mood at a time when producers, harassed by the change-over to sound, wanted stars who would work to orders, and not take their jobs too seriously!

One way or another, Louise Brooks' career was sabotaged, and after increasingly rare, and increasingly uninteresting roles, she left films for good. But, like Garbo, she left a legend behind. A legend of a girl with a cool Mona Lisa smile and a beauty that seemed completely unaware of itself; a legend that was strangely kept alive by, of all things, a comic strip— for the "Dixie Dugan" comic strip gave its heroine the unique Louise Brooks hair-style.

But even with only a handful of films to her credit, Louise didn't need a comic strip for that legend to live Today, in Europe at least the legend hves on via the films themselves, and Louise, far less of a recluse than Garbo, has recently made two trips (one to Denmark, one to France) to re-introduce her great films from the last days of the silents.