"Louise Brooks," by Kalton C. Lahue

In recent years, the brief screen career of Louise Brooks has taken I on all the trappings of a full-blown cult, especially in Europe. In some respects, Miss Brooks has contributed knowingly or otherwise to its growth. With a candor that's refreshing in a world apparently hell-bent toward hypocrisy, her brilliant articles written for film periodicals in recent years spur on her fans (most of whom are too young to remember her on the screen), who have raised Miss Brooks to the status of a minor legend—an idolatry based almost entirely upon revivals of her pictures at film societies and archives around the world. At the same time, this former star leads the life of a near-recluse in Rochester, New York, rarely seen in public and seldom entertaining visitors.

Beginning professionally at age fifteen under the tutelage of Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn, this Cherryvale, Kansas, girl was first and foremost a dancer, moving into George White's Scandals and Cafe de Paris in 1924, and then on to Ziegfeld's 1925 Follies. A bit role in The Street of Forgotten Men that same year brought her to the attention of movmovie fans, and with a kind of luminescent beauty which defies definition she proved an utterly captivating creature on the giant screen. Her early pictures at Paramount were collegiate types in frothy flapper comedies like Rolled Stocking and The American Venus, and Paramount, with its usual lack of perception, concentrated almost entirely on presenting her face and figure—commodities much more easily exploited than her talent. This attitude kept Louise tightly reined, preventing her from doing much serious work. By the time A Girl in Every Port came along in 1928, trade reviewers could only report that the star was "solidwith the jelly bean trade" and Variety commented that "little has been said to date about Miss Brooks' acting. It's one of those things you don't mention."

The dramatic ability and talent beneath the bobbed hairhairdo was overlooked by the power structure again in her outstanding performance with Wallace Beery and Richard Arlen in Beggers of Life later that year. An intelligent, perceptive and sensitive actress, Louise was understandably upset about the material with which she was given to work and the restrictive attitudes of the producers and directors who had succumbed to the blandishments of the system, grinding out "safe" pictures in ever-increasing numbers.

But if Louise Brooks's screen career in American films was mismanaged, neglected and sabotaged by the ignorance of the inbred system, she proved her contention in two German films for G. W. Pabst. The mid-twenties had seen the high tide of foreign talent arrive in America, most of whom eventually returned home, disillusioned after tasting the creative inhibitions imposed upon them. But just before the decade ended, the situation reversed itself, with several American stars going abroad to make pictures they wanted to do—pictures with themes that Hollywood would not touch.

As Lulu in Pandora's Box, Louise played the mistress who had persuaded her lover to marry, then discovered her attraction for his son was stronger. When her husband found them together, she struck back in anger, killing him. Eventually joining her new and younger lover in poverty, Lulu was forced to take to the streets as a prostitute, falling prey in the end to Jack the Ripper. Ghastly stuff today, it must have been equally as powerful in 1929 (if not more so) and provided Miss Brooks with the opportunity to display those abilities upon which Hollywood would never have gambled.

This picture and Diary of a Lost Girl were stark silent drama—psychological sex stories that have contributed heavily to her reputation over the years, especially abroad. Before returning to this country, she made Beauty Prize in France, another unusual film which must be counted with the Pabst films among her top performances. Louise never really resumed her career in American films upon her return to this country, partly because of the change-over to sound, but to a great degree her undeniable reluctance to submerge herself in the system once again asserted itself, and after a few uninteresting parts she simply turned her back and walked out, ending her screen career while still in her twenties.

Louise Brooks never fitted into the intellectual and social vacuum that enveloped Hollywood in the twenties; she had too much honesty and self-respect to pay the price success demanded of her, and unlike her husband Eddie Sutherland (a comedy director who had learned his trade with Mack Sennett), she was unwilling to practice the deception of self-proclaimed artistry on a day-to-day basis. As a result, Louise was a prominent but never an important star of the silent screen and her reputation today as a serious actress rests mainly upon the work with Pabst.

At this point, an interesting question presents itself—if Louise Brooks had been able to continue with serious dramatic roles in an atmosphere more conducive to creativity, and had she appeared in more than a handful of pictures, would her work have lived up to the legend which surrounds her and her career today? I don't pretend to know the answer and I strongly suspect that Miss Brooks would dismiss the entire topic as being irrelevant and presumptuous, but you must admit, it's a fascinating point for conjecture, especially if you belong to her growing band of admirers.