A Girl Like I: An Autobiography

by Anita Loos

The author wickedly remembers and delectably recounts the scandals, gossip and glorious intimacies of the golden age of Hollywood.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Biography, Film, History, Biography Memoir, Autobiography

275 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

About the author

People best know American writer Anita Loos for her novels, especially Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925), which she later adapted for film; her many screenplays include The Girl from Missouri (1934).

She authored plays and her blockbuster comic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Loos

Reviews

[Laurel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read from August 03 to 27, 2011
When I go to get the book from the library it isn't on the shelves, but in the basement stacks. It's a first edition, '66, and there's 40 years of book glue cracked and peeling off the spine.

A man rosy with gin blossoms is at the desk giving shit to the reference sexagenarian. She knows her milky eyes are always popped out, but the man tells her to go to her eye doctor immediately. She doesn't even look up and says, I go every year. Not rude but not inviting either, perfectly stoic and unyielding, the iconoclast of the crumbling facilities.

I aks her to get the book from the basement, she coos over its cover, both on the OPAC screen and when she appears from the library bowels. She says, I am glad you are exploring this part of our history. She says our history like even though she's a million years old and my tits are falling out of this shredded Sonic Youth shirt we are both a part of the same bombshell milieu.

& we are.

[Luke Devenish · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've made two great author discoveries this year; authors I'd long heard of and occasionally even fondled, but never actually read; authors I'll now have as friends for years. The first is Iain M Banks, about whom I have raved elsewhere. And the second, in an almost complete contrast to to all that sci-fi insanity, is Anita Loos. The sum total of my Loos experience up until now was my enthusiasm for the Monroe/Russell pairing in the 50s movie version of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. More fool me. Many a gem has flowed from her pen, as I'm now discovering. This memoir was a total and utter joy. Hilarious. Sheer escapism. All day I kept looking forward to picking it up again. Better than television! I've gone straight onto her other one without pause.

[Kit Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anita Loos: gifted storyteller, natural raconteur, first-hand participant in the birth of Hollywood, cool as cool gets. She drops names with reckless abandon, from Houdini to (her much-venerated) D.W. Griffith and H.L. Mencken, dishes dirt, and gives several glimpses into the people—and circumstances—that gave rise to Dorothy and Lorelei Lee. And yeah, her socio-political views are taken with mad grains of salt, but either way, she seems like one of the awesomest scribes to ever pen picture shows for LaLa Land—a point of view I don't doubt she'd share. Will get to her second volume in a couple of months or so.

[Robinvk · Rating 5 out of 5]

I tracked down a hardcover, 1966 Viking first edition of this book, which is loaded with photos (don't know about the paperback). Utterly fascinating... a must-read for anyone interested in the 1920s, fashion, Hollywood history, Broadway, Gertrude Stein, H.L. Mencken, D.W. Griffith, Sherwood Anderson, Douglas Fairbanks or any number of other famous players in this Zelig-like life story. She was at the right place at the right time, all the time. Loos is an irresistible narrator -- funny, iconoclastic, thorough, and generous with historical details.

[Beth Cato · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read Loos's later autobiography a few months ago, and I had hopes that this book on the earlier portion of her life would be more relevant to my research needs. Not really; she tends to dwell on old Hollywood gossip rather than discuss the day to day work as a scenario writer in the early silent film industry, but that doesn't make this a bad read.

One thing that has become clear to me in reading Anita Loos's words on her own life is that she is an interesting person, though not a particularly likeable one. She's arrogant and selfish, and rather proud of that. Her taste in men is appalling, and she's fully aware of that in hindsight. However, she's a fantastic, breezy storyteller. The way she explains the backgrounds of her parents and family is especially fun. Less fun: how she flows back and forth across time (either for experience's sake for the blur of memory forty years later) is exasperating for me, as a researcher wanting info on a specific era, but probably would be no issue at all for a regular reader.

[H.J. Moat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to admit, I didn't enjoy this as much as Loos's second memoir Kiss Hollywood Goodbye. That's probably a bit odd, since the popularity of A Girl Like I got Hollywood commissioned in the first place and you'd expect this to be the weaker, money-grabbing rush job of the two but I just found the latter to be a much more fascinating read.
It's not just because the people in Hollywood are better known and therefore it's more salacious, for me it's because by the time she got to her second memoir she had really perfected the art of the anecdote - the stories felt snappier and wittier whereas this is more standard autobiography.
However she led a most remarkable life and just because I personally thought the second half of it was more interesting than the first doesn't mean I didn't enjoy seeing how Anita Loos became Anita Loos, iconic Hollywood screenwriter.

[Madeline · Rating 3 out of 5]

A really nice thing about Loos's memoir is how frankly she treats the relationship between money and writing. She does the writing because it's fun - but mostly because she gets paid for it. (Paid a lot!) The book has a breezy tone which you might expect, and it seems to lose interest in its project as it goes along - pretty much also as you might expect. If you're looking for insights into the movie business, they're here, but Loos is doing her best to skate over them. She's frank about money, but she's slippery about work.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Would give it 2.5 stars. Her first autobiography. Covers her life up to about 1926, when Gentlemen Prefer Blondes came out. But also includes commentary on the world from perspective of the 1960s. She was self-absorbed, but has interesting comments on the silent movie era and its stars. Good if you already know something about what she's talking about.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightful, diverting memoir about a fascinating life. Loos was born under a lucky star, everything she touched seemed to turn to gold. From winning the first writing contest she ever entered at age thirteen to at twenty one selling the first screenplay she ever wrote to having a book deal basically fall in her lap, Anita Loos lived a charmed life. This memoir covers from her birth in 1888 to the publication in 1925 of her book Gentleman Prefer Blondes. There is a second memoir covering her MGM years that I just ordered.

There was a contest for humorous anecdotes about life in New York. Undeterred by the fact that I had never been there, I wrote a paragraph, sent it off, and won. Thus continued a pattern which had begun when I won that contest in St. Nicholas. No doubt it was beginner's luck, but I usually succeeded with a first effort. It might be followed by failures, but I was able to say I did it once and can do it again, perhaps.After winning, I continued to send short paragraphs to The Morning Telegraph, which accepted the majority of them and paid me two and a half cents a word. So that at thirteen years of age I became a journalist on a New York daily.

I still have an account book with a record of those early scripts; between the years of 1912 and 1915 there were 105 of them, of which only four were never sold. I first submitted them to the Biograph Company and when, rather infrequently, one was rejected it went on to the Vitagraph, Kalem, or Selig Studios and found a ready market.

This memoir was published in 1966 when she was 78 years old and I loved getting her perspective on life in the 1960s on top of her memories of her childhood and youth. She died of a heart attack when she was 93 and up to the end of her life she was still active and busy, living in NYC. I bet she was a lot of fun to talk to. Reading her chatty memoir is at least something we can all still experience even though she is gone.

I find the beginning of the film industry fascinating. I’m not much of a fan of silent movies - all that over emoting! The weird frame speed! - but I am a fan of learning about the behind the scenes development of a brand new industry that ended up being so powerful. The early years were a real free-for-all. There were no preconceived notions about anything. The people involved were poor immigrants and working class people, not the upper class. It wasn’t until the 1930s that the movie studios started trying to gloss over the film industry participants.

By this time the stars were moving out of the Hollywood Hotel and beginning to live in their own private houses with servants, most of whom were their peers in everything but sex appeal-which pinpoints the reason for the film capital's mass misbehavior.To place in the limelight a great number of people who ordinarily would be chambermaids and chauffeurs, give them unlimited power and instant wealth, is bound to produce a lively and diverting result.

We led lives as they had never before been lived in show business, and our jobs were so colored by fun, success, and the discovery of exciting new techniques that we worked in a constant state of euphoria.

The 1920s is when the public started realizing the extent of the shenanigans going on - the Fatty Arbuckle rape/murder trial, the unsolved murder of William Desmond Taylor, Olive Thomas’s accidental death from drinking her husband’s syphilis medicine, Wallace Reid’s heroin addiction, Mabel Normand’s cocaine addiction, the mysterious death of director William Ince on Hearst’s yacht, on and on the list goes. I find the movies made take a backseat to how they were made. And that is one reason I love Loos’s memoir so much. She was a writer, not an actress(yes, she did act a little at the beginning) and so her stories give a much broader glimpse than someone who only acted back then could ever do.

Diana walked out at dawn, carrying one small piece of baggage, having left the remainder in the room of some accommodating lover. But scarcely an hour later she reappeared at the reception desk, where, assuming the cultured accent of a Boston schoolma'am and introducing herself under a pseudonym, she asked Miss Hershey for a room. Miss Hershey, unable to focus through her thick glasses, obliged and summoned one of the bellhops, all of whom were more than fans of the little star. And, crossing the lobby in triumph, Diana whispered to occupants of chairs along her line of march, "I'm in again!" Out on the veranda word passed from one rocking chair to another. "Did you hear the good news? Diana just put it over on Miss Hershey!” It was the first time in their lives that they had ever participated in scandal or had something more intimate to talk about than the California weather. All of which might indicate that censure is based on envy and that the prudish can be mollified by being allowed to share in the fun.Hahaha, I loved this bit about an actress who, after being kicked out of the hotel for being caught in a man’s room, managed to check back in.

There were two young ladies who were of great comfort to Miss Hershey because of morals so lofty that they wouldn't even dance with men; they danced only with each other.Miss Hershey thought it sweet when they snuggled together and, if forced to reprimand a couple of neckers, she'd tap the gentleman on the shoulder and say, "Why can't you two dance respectably like Gertrude and Isabel?"; for innocent Miss Hershey had never heard of the Isle of Lesbos.Oh Miss Hershey! I am wondering if there has been a book written about this, the Hollywood Hotel where all the film people lived. It would make for an entertaining book, that’s for sure.

That night I sat alone in the projection room with D. W, the first viewer ever to see Intolerance. I must be honest and say I thought D. W. had lost his mind. It is difficult to realize in thes days of non-sequitur film technique what a shock Intolerance provided. In that era of the simple, straightforward technique for telling picture plots, Griffith had crashed slam-bang into a method for which neither I nor, as was subsequently proved, his audiences had been prepared.She had an unrequited crush on Griffin, who strikes me as unpleasant and creepy, no matter how much she praises him.

Do I believe she is being 100% honest? Do I believe she has told the whole story? No, and no. And that’s fine. Even if she is exaggerating or omitting certain things, Loos still spins an excellent story. She was like Zelig, constantly meeting famous people. That trip to Europe in the 1920s! Hanging out at Gertrude Stein’s saloon in Paris, going to cabarets in Weimar Berlin, hanging out with cafe society in Vienna…she hung out with the Algonquin round table folks, she knew all the movers and shakers on Broadway…one of the Zeigfield Follies girls she hung out with ended up quitting show business, going back to school and then was one of the inventors of the modern IV bag used in hospitals. Engaging story followed by engaging story.

Elinor Glyn moved in on Hollywood. She was among the first of the novelists to discover that the end of the rainbow was in the film capital, and in her case the pot of gold rested on the Paramount lot. In those days Elinor's books were considered extremely "broad." Her best-seller, Three Weeks, was based on adultery, but she handled the subject in so dainty a manner as to make D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, with its identical plot, a sewer of clinical realism.

in addition to a professional crew, Doug Fairbanks acquired a group of stooges, for he was the innovator of the Hollywood institution of the 'yes man," without which no movie mogul to this day ever functions.

The one ambitious member of the group was Peg. It was she who had prodded Norma into stardom, using the same energy she was now exerting on Dutch. Then in her early forties, Peg looked older; years of poverty as a young woman had left her with a placid acceptance of graying hair and matronly heft, but along with them went a ribald sense of humor that ultimately worked its way into the character of Dorothy, the girl friend of Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Several of Dorothy's cracks are direct quotes from Peg Talmadge.

Refusing to accept the offer of gangster friends to rub out his rival, Joe arranged for Norma to get a divorce, after which he practically oversaw her romantic fling with Roland. Joe then resumed his bachelor ways, but he never married again; he had learned a lesson about which he was touchingly realistic. I was present once when Joe was advising a pal who was bent on purchasing a flashy Long Island estate.'Why do you need it?" asked Joe. "To entertain friends?" "Look.» said Joe, "roughnecks like you and me have to buy our friends, and that kind ain't worth the money."

I remember a birthday party we gave Peg in their luxurious five-room suite at the Ambassador Hotel. That day we barged into Peg's bedroom to surprise her with gifts, of which those from Norma and Dutch were very expensive. While contemplating her loot, Peg began to laugh. "What's the joke, Peg?" "It's a joke on me," she said. "I just remembered how I used to go to Coney Island before you were born and ride that bumpy roller coaster, trying to get rid of you rich little bastards."

It was at Bob Chaler's that I had a first brush with the English portrait painter Augustus John. On the night we were introduced he used the crude tactics of a traveling salesman and enticed me up to the attic to "look at Bob's sculptures." With the naiveté of a farmer's daughter, I walked into the standard old situation. I screamed for help to no avail, for the whole house was vibrating with the revels going on downstairs. John was a colossus of a man with a Michelangelo beard in which I was about to be smothered, when good old Tommy Smith discovered that the two of us had disappeared and, knowing John, dashed upstairs and rescued me just as Augustus was pressing the lighted end of a cigarette into the palm of my hand, not in revenge over my resistance but with the assurance that the pain was going to be delightful.Tommy told Augustus to find himself a more willing victim and I had one more rude experience to laugh off. YIKES. Not surprised, based on what I have read of Augustus John.

When I encountered Isadora Duncan at Bob's, my flip little mind put her down as a figure of fun. Several years later I went, in that same spirit, to see a recital she gave at the Théâtre des Champs Elyses in Paris.When Isadora danced she became a goddess; she was one of the few authentic geniuses I ever met. I left her performance in a spirit of humble apology. (On the way out of the theater that night I had a less elevating experience. In the lobby I was introduced to a sleazy-looking old Englishman with a flabby face and motheaten beard. My brain reeled when I heard his name, for in his youth that creature's beauty and poetic gifts had placed him, too, among the gods. He was Lord Alfred Douglas, for love of whom Oscar Wilde had gone to prison in disgrace.) A reminder of just how long ago this all was.

I enjoyed learning about how she got her inspirations for writing Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. What a cash cow that story turned out to be!!

It was in my brother's office that I had my first encounter with ladies of the evening and decided that the real truth about them was not that they possessed the "hearts of gold" described in fiction but that they had heads of bone. Their traditional generosity came from stupid wastefulness, and they were, almost without exception, morons.

En route to Chicago on the Twentieth Century for the first lap of our trip, that blonde, although she was considerable less fragile than I, was waited on, catered to, and cajoled by every male we encountered. In the club car, if she happened to drop the magazine she was reading, several men jumped to retrieve it, whereas I was allowed to lug heavy suitcases from their racks while men, most particularly my husband, failed to note my efforts. I watched her disorganize the behavior of every male passenger on board. I tried to puzzle out the reasons why. Obviously there was some radical difference between that girl and me, but what was it? We were both in the pristine years of youth. She was not outstanding as a beauty; we were, in fact, of about the same degree of comeliness; as to our mental acumen, there was nothing to discuss: I was smarter.Then why did that girl so far outdistance me in allure? The situation was palpably unjust but, as I thought it over, a light began to break through from my subconscious; possibly the girl's strength was rooted (like that of Samson) in her hair.At length I reached for one of the large yellow pads on which I jot down ideas and started a character sketch which was the nucleus of a small volume to be titled Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

If only she had titled her memoir what her ladies maid had said to her!

I believe that my character was best summed up in a comment from Gladys, my devoted companion of over thirty years. It was prompted by a phone call from one of the Argentine gigolos I had met in the days of my first gay, windblown appearance in Paris. Using gallant terms that were a sort of verbal "kiss on the hand," my beau stated he wished to talk to me about something and invited me to the z00 in Central Park, there to partake of a cheap lunch at the cafeteria. Although I sensed that his "talk" might hinge on the subject of a little loan, I nevertheless accepted the invitation with delight. But as I hung up the receiver Gladys brought me back from the clouds to stern reality. "Miss Loos," she said,"you sure are flypaper for pimps!" Hahahaha!

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it. I only want to read about early movie history forever! Lapped up stories of the affairs and addictions of silent movie stars of whom I’ve never seen a single film. Ms Loos is one of my favourite Hollywood figures - an effortless raconteur, tiny and chic, who knew everyone and saw everything and commented on it all with a sharp wit. Unlike many memoirs written in later life, this one is lean and trim too. It’s disappointing to learn that she’s decidedly not a feminist, and to read her describe her revered DW Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation as ‘grappling with race’ - a dangerously euphemistic way to describe one of the most vilely racist films of all time. And I recognise the self-protecting tactic of wryly making light of mistreatment at the hands of the men she loved. But these are all downsides of the kind of personality that believes dullness is the worst sin there is. She’s the kind of twentieth-century dame they don’t make anymore.

[Robyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a woman and what a story of her life!

[Donna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I must have forgotten that I read this book when I bought it at a book sale! The reread is as fresh as the first time I read this…I sure did forget a lot. Anita still feels current day to me. She was way ahead of her time, writing and selling her work from a grammar school age and enjoying it. She knew exactly what she wanted to do. Write!

Anita was lucky enough never to have dealt with gender issues in her line of work. Wonder how that happened? She even chopped her hair before it was the fashion..claiming she started the craze. Maybe she did. There is so much I can say about this lady. Some things I question...like her opinion of the Fatty Arbuckle debacle, and her opinion of Alexander Woolcott...she had some harsh words and opinions of people that I didn't care for. However I wasn't there... The book ended with how the story of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes began....... I love this kind of stuff...show biz and history.

And now...once again...I have another book I do not want to give up.

(1st read June 25, 2009 - Review)
Ahead of her time, she had a mind and style of her own. She was at the start of the movies, writing subtitles for the silent era and eventually for the "talkies". She knew or knew of everybody who was in those days. Her observations and thoughts on her acquaintances and life are amusing and very candid. I enjoyed the behind the scenes stories of Hollywood, before it became HOLLYWOOD.

[Nora · Rating 4 out of 5]

The common statement made about this book is that since Ms. Loos wrote this in the 1960s about her life 40 years or more prior that the accounts she gives are most likely embellished and the truth grayed by the passing of time. But what autobio is without embellishment, really? "A Girl Like I" not only provides an insight into Anita's beginnings but also the beginnings of the movie industry (and first hand accounts of "Dougie" Fairbanks' start as well as his relationship with Mary Pickford among other stories). If you have an interest in that era, this is definitely a book you want to read. And since she did write it in the 1960s, she often compares the "then and now" which adds an extra layer comparing her present day to ours. My only disappointment was that it ended too soon as she ends her book with how "Gentleman Prefer Blondes" was created but doesn't go on to share what happened in her life after.

[Mark Vieira · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Girl Like I was written by the author of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Anita Loos is deservedly famous, a deft writer who covers a fascinating range of milieus in this autobiographical view of pre-1925 San Francisco, Hollywood, New York, and Europe.

However, to fit in all the personalities she met in her lifetime, she telescopes years and gets dates wrong. Her anachronisms are glaring, not to mention misspellings of celebrities' name: actress Margalo Gilmore. playwright John Colton, to name just two.

And she has many axes to grind: against her credit-snatching, purse-rifling husband John Emerson; and against nearly every accomplished contemporary in the book.

I never heard of a woman having a Napoleon complex, but Anita Loos qualifies. I very much admire her film work. I wish I had enjoyed this more. Too tart for my taste.

[Katherine · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found a paperback version of this autobiography in a used bookshop on a summer holiday. Perfect choice for an easy read. She's one of my favourite writers, so finding out more about her early life was fascinating. It's probably embellished in part, and some of the anecdotes have the high gloss that comes from frequent retelling. But if those things had happened to me, I'd tell and re-tell. Her occasional comments on the world of the 1960s and how it differed to the 1920s were also curious, particularly about women and sex and writing. You need to be an Anita Loos fan to really enjoy this, otherwise you won't get most of the references. But if you've seen Gentlemen Prefer Blondes as often as I have, then this is a treasure.

[Trudy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A week after I watched The Women, which was by Anita Loos, I read a mention of this book on This Recording. I found a copy on Amazon Marketplace and plowed through the book once I received it. Anita's life story is so entertaining, and to have it told by a writer as engaging as herself is great. My only complaint is that the book just kinda ends, and does so right before all the goodness of any of her movies I have actually seen. But if you see a copy of this book, or are interested in old Hollywood or the life of women in the early twentieth century, check it out!

[Eliza · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very selective memoir but still the reader gets a sense of what a remarkable life Loos had. She started her career writing for DW Griffith and was successful and well-paid at a time when most women didn't work outside the home. She traveled the world and lived among some of the most famous writers of the 20th century.

[Richie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the best Hollywood autobiography. The fact she states that women have never written anything important is both self-defeating and sad. Plus she thought it was endearing her jealous husband wanted to take credit for her work. Blah.

[Muffy Kroha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and fun. Anita Loos' ( Gentlemen Prefer Blondes) autobigraphy. She was a plucky little lady indeed.

[Molly · Rating 4 out of 5]

To come

[Ashley Lambert-Maberly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not every author is equally adept in all forms. I love some Agatha Christie novels, and generally like most of them, but her short stories leave me cold. Woody Allen's films are mostly delightful, but his sole Broadway musical was a dud. And Anita Loos, author of one of my favourite novels, has sadly failed to thrill me with her autobiography.

Yes, there are occasional bon mots or clever sentences, but they aren't enough to make up for the dreary slog that is this autobiography. Among my many complaints:


1. it ends when she write Gentleman Prefer Blondes (1925) thereby leaving 40 years unaccounted for.

2. 80% of the book is name-dropping and her associations thereof (and 80% of the names are now unknown, so a bit less impressive than might once have been the case)

3. it's all a bit samey-samey and lacks a narrative arc

4. I read the fabulous Underfoot in Show Business last month by Helene Hanff, covering similar ground (a writer's attempts to make good by breaking into show business at an early age), and this suffers by comparison.

5. no one seems like a nice person, let alone her (tired of her parents' admonitions, she married someone for the sole purpose of being able to say "I'm married now, leave me alone," to them, and left her hapless husband after two days without even saying goodbye).

So ultimately it's a serious of anecdotes about unpleasant people I don't know, and after getting about 2/3 through it and realising we were never getting to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, I skipped ahead to the last five pages, read that bit, and closed the book up.

(Note: I'm a writer myself, so suffer pangs of guilt every time I offer less than five stars. These aren't ratings of quality, just my subjective account of how much I liked them: 5* = one of my all-time favourites, 4* = enjoyed it, 3* = readable but not thrilling, 2* = disappointing, and 1* = hated it.)

[Toni Wyatt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anita Loos was the first paid woman writer for motion pictures. This book had me mesmerized in many parts. I would highly suggest that if you pick this one up, you search the name drops. It was so much fun to pull up a picture to go along with the stories.

As for Ms. Loos, she was married twice, but unlucky in love. Her second husband, John Emerson, is not painted in a good husbandly light. Seems as if he ran around quite a bit, but Anita did her fair share of it too, and it’s a shame that she cultivated such a twisted view of love.

There is one story that captivated me, and that was the story of the murder of Virginia Rappe. Ms. Loos tells us that Fatty Arbuckle, although acquitted, was to blame. This crime was so horrendous. So disgusting. It makes me so angry.

Anita Loos wrote Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She did it to get back at a girl named Mae Davis, who stole the attention of her husband. There were many incidents where Ms. Loos wrote hateful, snippy things about women she disliked. It just so happened that she was able to turn this dislike into a fortune.

There were several instances where she also wrote about the stupidity of people acting or being prejudiced.

An interesting autobiography. 4 stars.

[Kathleen Vincenz · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's difficult for a girl like I to appreciate a girl like Anita. The number of parties she went to. The people she met (and ratted on). The clothes she bought. How genius she was. How sad she was--she needed to attend church more than the speakeasies. ;)

I especially liked the beginning, where she relates her tales of poverty and her Pop. Again, it is difficult for a girl like I of the suburbs to relate to a girl like her of the city but oh, so fascinating. Poverty for me was only buying my clothes from Montgomery Wards and not from Sears or Marshall Fields. Or having one piece of gum from a pack shared with five other siblings. I didn't have to support my Pop like Anita did, first in the theater and then by writing scripts.

She drops name--a lot! And tells tales--she shouldn't! And is so judgmental--critical she calls it. Prejudice too. Prejudice she wasn't aware of. Because of that, I'm done reading her memoirs. I'm glad I read the two I did. Old, old Hollywood was a fascinating place to visit but a girl like I wouldn't want to live there.

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anita Loos is almost a forgotten American literary lion, more successful than most of her famous counterparts like Dorothy Parker and the rest of the Algonquin Round Table. She got rich, lost it all, and then became a millionaire by writing "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." For every class that teaches "The Great Gatsby," there should be a matching unit on "GFB." Loos captures the reality of being female in the 1920s, which often means gold-digging and social ambition. Her sense of humor is brilliant and knowing.

Like most biographies of women of this era, her personal life will drive you crazy. I was appalled at what she endured in her "marriage" to a total narcissist, but the reality was she married an identical match of her father. Her male advisors were equally puritanical with everything but their own personal lives. If she had listened to them, she never would have published her bestselling book.

She has a lovely voice in her writing and her life provides MORE than enough material for this bio.

[Kaitlyn Johnson · Rating 3 out of 5]

5/10
For the historical aspect very cool. However, there were SO many things in this book that remind me that to be anything but a rich, white, man back in history means struggle and pain. Like seriously so many times reading this my jaw just dropped because of the things that were unfortunately common place back then.

[Samantha]

Loos led an interesting life, but I needed a glossary for the old Hollywood names. Additionally, there are parts that feel racist by today's standards, so just a heads up. Little side comments about people.

[Diane Madlon-Kay · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 stars

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some parts are enjoyable, some parts drag / too much info about too many random people. Doesn’t feel like there was a strong narrative.

[Madeline Blake · Rating 5 out of 5]

Miss Loos understands me, bob recognizes bob 👩🏻

[Francesca Penchant · Rating 4 out of 5]

“No cérébrale could ever be happy as a Cinderella.”

Anita Loos’s claim to fame is writing the worldwide bestseller “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”

The novel was tangentially inspired by H.L. Mencken, whom she was in love with in 1926, but who was smitten with a blonde—whom Loos subsequently burned to ridicule. (Loos’s none-the-wiser husband asked her to dedicate the novel to him, which she did.)

Nita didn’t understand how Menck could be fascinated by a female who was less intelligent, less charismatic, less funny, and less pretty than she, until finally she identified the one thing the blonde had less of that mattered: melanin in her hair.

The most fascinating part of “A Girl Like I” is Nita’s early life, culminating in her Hollywood touchdown in 1915 at age 27, mother attached.

The leitmotif of “A Girl Like I” is the financial power-relationships between the sexes that Loos observed throughout her life. Her relationship with her father, an amusing alcoholic sponge, was formative. In fact, Nita supported both father and mother from the age of about fifteen. Loos punctuates the book with a friend’s declaration: “You sure are flypaper for pimps!”

Loos writes in a precise and formal style; a style so grammatically correct and tortuously witty as to be delicious to bluestockings—or cérébrales—like I.