Lulu in Hollywood

by Louise Brooks

Louise Brooks (1906-1985) is one of the most famous actresses of the silent era, renowned as much for her rebellion against the Hollywood system as for her performances in such influential films as Pandora’s Box and Diary of a Lost Girl. Eight autobiographical essays by Brooks, on topics ranging from her childhood in Kansas and her early days as a Denishawn and Ziegfeld Follies dancer to her friendships with Martha Graham, Charles Chaplin, W. C. Fields, Humphrey Bogart, and others are collected here.

Originally published: New York: Knopf, 1982.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, History, Media Tie In, Essays

184 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1982

Reviews

[Federico DN · Rating 2 out of 5]

A memoir of a smart lively young actress and the not so shiny side of Hollywood.

Sometimes for some unexplainable reason an earworm plagues your mind. You set on a quest to find an unknown song with only a few lines you barely understood from the lyrics. You find a band you never heard of, and a beautiful song, with a heartbreaking story behind it.

This song is Pandora's Box. This is the story of Louise Brooks.

A haphazardly organized memoir about the not so shiny side of Hollywood: sex, drugs, alcohol, celebrities, opulence, jealousy, falseness, the costs of stardom. A wonderfully captivating beginning, a hardly interesting development and a more than acceptable ending. Ephemeral flashes of superb writing sprinkled within mind-numbingly quantities of boredom. Maybe this book is better suited for someone who actually knows at least some of the celebrities mentioned here, or is interested in the history of the early days of Hollywood. Not my case though, now I realize, I just liked the song. I am yet to find a memoir that I truly like.

*** I can count the silent films I've watched with only only one hand so my opinion is very partial. All I can say is that, considering 1929, the movie appears to be very well thought and decently made. And Louise Brooks clearly steals the show.

** Thank you Internet Archive for allowing me to borrow a copy **

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PERSONAL NOTE : [1982] [168p] [Memoir] [Boring] [Not Recommendable] [OMD-Pandora's Box] [Early Hollywood]
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La memoria de una inteligente y vivaz joven actriz y el lado no tan brillante de Hollywood.

A veces por algún motivo inexplicable un tema te da vuelta en la cabeza. Te embarcás en una misión de encontrar una canción desconocida, con sólo un par de líneas que apenas entendiste de la letra. Encontrás una banda de la que nunca oíste, y una hermosa canción, con una conmovedora historia detrás de ella.

Esa canción es Pandora's Box. Esa historia es la de Louise Brooks.

Una memoria azarosamente ordenada sobre el lado no tan brillante de Hollywood: sexo, drogas, alcohol, celebridades, opulencia, celos, falsedad, los costos del estrellato. Un comienzo maravillosamente cautivador, un desarrollo apenas interesante, y un final más que aceptable. Efímeros flashes de una sobresaliente pluma esparcidos entre sobreabrumadoras cantidades de aburrimiento. Tal vez este libro sería más apropiado para alguien que pueda reconocer al menos alguna de las celebridades mencionadas aquí, o alguien interesado en la historia de los comienzos de Hollywood. Lamentablemente no mi caso, comprendo ahora, sólo me gustaba la canción. Todavía me falta encontrar una memoria que realmente me guste.

*** Puedo contar con una sola mano las películas mudas que ví, así que mi opinión es muy parcial. Sólo puedo decir que, considerando 1929, la película parece haber sido muy bien pensada y decentemente ejecutada. Y Louise Brooks claramente se roba todo el show.

** Gracias a Internet Archive por prestarme una copia **

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NOTA PERSONAL : [1982] [168p] [Memoria] [Aburrida] [No Recomendable] [OMD-Pandora's Box] [Comienzos de Hollywood]
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[Madeline · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading Laura Moriarty's The Chaperone and being disappointed by its noticeable lack of Louise Brooks, I wanted to find a nonfiction account of the silent film star's life. Luckily, in addition to the numerous biographies available, Brooks also wrote her own account of her career. It's not as comprehensive as I wanted it to be - the book is more of an essay collection than a straight memoir - but is otherwise a completely fascinating look into the early days of Hollywood.

Louise Brooks had a unique career trajectory. She got her start as a dancer with the Denishawn company when she was fifteen, and by nineteen had started her film career. In the heyday of silent film, she was one of the biggest stars in the world, but her career faded immediately with the advent of talkies, when she refused to give in to the studios' demanding contracts and was blackballed. She went on to do several films with the German director Pabst, and then disappeared into semi-obscurity. Her film career was over, but she continued to be an active participant, writing articles for movie magazines. Her career was short, but she was one of the witnesses to the birth of movies as a new medium, and Lulu in Hollywood is her account of what she saw in that time.

The best aspect of this book is Brooks' writing, which is clear and thoughtful, describing her memories in 1920's Hollywood with no overt sentimentality. Also it's just fun - this was before Standards and Practices took over Hollywood in the 1930's, and the stars of Brooks' time were free to be as wild as they wanted. Actresses, in particular, developed their own particular brand of hustle, which Brooks outlines here:

"For a time, Barbara [Bennett] was kept by William Rhinelander Stewart, who gave her a square-cut emerald from Cartier. One night, when we were swimming off Caleb Bragg's houseboat, she watched it slip from her finger into Long Island Sound. She kept this hilarious accident secret from Stewart by buying a fake-emerald ring from Denis Smith, whose jewelry business was unknown to innocent lovers. They would have been staggered to learn how many of their gifts were converted into imitations and cash. Truly, ours was a heartless racket."

The little glimpses Brooks gives us into the wild life of a 1920's starlet are fascinating, and made me want to read an entire book just about teen movie stars partying in the Jazz Age (which, really, is what The Chaperone should have been). And at the same time, she's exploring how Hollywood developed into what it is today. It's easy to forget that in Brooks' time, movies were still a new medium, and everyone involved in the business was sort of making it up as they went along, and not really thinking about the future of the industry. To this day, there are hundreds of silent films that just don't exist anymore, because no one thought to preserve them. Writes Brooks:

"The tragedy of film history is that it is fabricated, falsified, by the very people who make film history. It is understandable that in the early years of film production, when nobody believed there was going to be any film history, most film magazines and books printed trash, aimed only at fulfilling the public's wish to share a fairy tale existence with its movie idols. But since about 1950 film has been established as an art, and its history recognized as a serious matter. Yet film celebrities continue to cast themselves as stock types - nice or naughty girls, good or bad boys - whom their chroniclers spray with a shower of anecdotes."

A fun, fascinating look at one person's incredible career, and the beginning of Hollywood as we know it. One star taken off, only because I wish it had been longer.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 3 out of 5]

LOUISE BROOKS AND CLARA BOW

We now have one hundred years, a complete century, of movies and popular music to consume should we want to. That’s a lot you know! Click click and those provocative girls Louise Brooks and Clara Bow will dance, frolic (something they used to do back then), flirt and charm everybody to death in front of your very eyes. I thought my film education should encompass these two so I watched a couple by each of them and man alive, they charmed me almost to death. They were great.

A few details – Clara Bow started in films in 1922 aged 17 – over the next five years she was in 50 (fifty) films but that was about the end – four more and she retired at the age of 28. She had so many problems by then she pretty much had to. She was kind of the original wild child.




Louise Brooks started in 1925 aged 19. She made 20 films over the next six years, including Pandora’s Box by G W Pabst, which makes the lists of Great Movies. Then she left Hollywood, more or less. She couldn’t take the control the studios required over every last part of their actors’ lives. And plus, she was kind of the original wild child.





Were these mostly silent-movie women killed off by sound? Not at all. They made a couple of sound movies and they were perfectly fine. But they were everything all the pearl-clutchers thought Hollywood actresses were. They had a great time but it kind of did them in.

AN ODD SORT OF BOOK

This book is not a memoir but seven longish articles written over the years for film mags – Louise writes about Humphrey Bogart, W C Fields of all people, GW Pabst and others, and a lot of it is gossipy stuff about life in Hollywood and all the awful things other people would do, with a few winks to us readers that tell us that she was just as bad as any of them. You could tell she was a kind of I want what I want when I want it kind of person. Kenneth Tynan’s brilliant introduction says

The pattern of her … behaviour left no doubt that what she meant by liberty and independence was what others defined as irresponsibility and self indulgence

Louise herself on her character Lulu in Pandora’s Box :

She isn’t a destroyer of men. She’s just the same kind of nitwit I am. Like me she’d have been an impossible wife, sitting in bed all day reading and drinking gin.

Louise on her Midwestern background

Born in the Bible belt of Anglo-Saxon farmers, who prayed in the parlor and practised incest in the barn

Here she tries to assess her own character

I would watch my mother, pretty and charming, as she laughed and made people feel clever and pleased with themselves, but I could not act that way. And so I have remained, in cruel pursuit of truth and excellence, an inhumane executioner of the bogus, an abomination to all but those few who have overcome their aversion to truth in order to free whatever is good in them.

She is kind of hilarious at times and I am sorry she didn’t sit and write a proper autobiography, it would have been fabulous. Here she is on trying to become less provincial by asking the waiters in the posh restaurants how to eat posh food:

There was how-to-bone-a-brook-trout night, how-to-fork-snails night, how-to-dismember-artichokes night and so on.

Here she is enjoying an evening with a girlfriend and a rich guy

Pepi conducted the conversation, which brought him to life only when we discussed the difficulty of finding unregistered names for his racehorses.

And here she is discussing Humphrey Bogart :

Over the years Bogey practised all kinds of lip gymnastics, accompanied by nasal tones, snarls, lisps and slurs. His painful wince, his leer, his fiendish grin were the most accomplished ever seen on film. Only Eric von Stroheim was his superior in lip-twitching.

And finally one of the many flashes of nastiness which makes this droll volume so readable :

In The Cradle Snatchers, Humphrey was playing a college boy being snatched by middle-aged Mary Boland, while offstage in the Bronx the year-old Lauren Bacall lay in her cradle waiting for Bogey to snatch her twenty years later as Wife Number 4.

Ouch.

[Steve Payne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whether in the magnetic throws of seduction or passion; or heartrending pain; or evincing a soul of cunning and deceit; or simply sparkling with unbridled humour, or arched with childlike curiosity – I can think of no such expressive and alluring eyes in the whole of cinema?

Silent American star Louise Brooks made few films, but if she had made only the two German films of 1929 with G.W. Pabst, her lasting fame would be assured. ‘Pandora’s Box’ and ‘Diary of a Lost Girl’ are among the greatest triumphs in the art of silent cinema. But even in her earlier American films, in most of which she was not the star, she still shines. More than shines, for the modernity of her presence appears almost mystical – as if someone has CGIed her into an old film but has forgotten to embody her with the mannerisms of the day. Her looks are striking, mesmerising even, and the low key nature of her acting serves to magnify the modernity of her presence even further.

This book begins with a long and fascinating introduction by writer and critic Kenneth Tynan, in which – after the sending of a fan letter - he analyses half a dozen of her films, before finally getting to meet the object of his desires in 1979. In her early seventies and physically frail, she nevertheless speaks clearly and engagingly. She draws you into her frank and down to earth storytelling, and is not above self-deprecation. Of her lowest point in 1954 she says, ‘I was too proud to be a call girl. There was no point in throwing myself into the East River, because I could swim; and I couldn’t afford the alternative, which was sleeping pills.’ I wished for more words from Louise Brooks in this introduction, and less of Tynan’s long plot expositions in his lengthy film analyses.

There are many books which tell the story of silent cinema and repeat many a spurious tale. Here, we have a tough, but eloquently written first-hand account from one of the stars of the era. But not any star. Louise Brooks was a party-girl who liked to read. She showed no deference towards Hollywood, nor the moguls – which partly brought an end to her brief stardom at the end of the silents. She in fact wanted, and trained to be a dancer. She had a perfectly fine speaking voice and had the chance to continue her rising profile when director William Wellman offered her a starring role opposite James Cagney in ‘The Public Enemy’ (1931). Spiky and opinionated, she later told Wellman that she turned down the role because she hated Hollywood and its BS world. It was the end. It’s sad that financial necessity saw her accept unworthy roles in a few low budget talkies. Her last (in 1938) saw her star opposite John Wayne in Republic Picture’s ‘Overland Stage Raiders.’ Fortunately, her star did rise again in the 1950s with the rediscovery of her films, and her forthright contributions to magazines such as ‘Sight & Sound.’

The main body of this book consists of articles Louise Brooks wrote for various magazines over the years, plus a new one entitled – ‘Kansas to New York,’ detailing her early years of family life, dancing, and working on her voice and accent. Other articles are on working with William Wellman on the film ‘Beggars of Life' (1928) – a story of rail-travelling drifters;’ a gossipy piece on Marion Davies’ niece, Pepi, which includes observations of William Randolph Hearst and his actress wife, Marion Davies; Humphrey Bogart; W.C. Fields; Lillian Gish and Greta Garbo; working with G.W. Pabst on ‘Pandora’s Box;’ and a short epilogue entitled, ‘Why I Will Never Write My Memoirs,’ in which she makes the point that to tell the truth means talking of one’s sex life, and ‘I am unwilling to write the sexual truth that would make my life worth reading. I cannot unbuckle the Bible Belt. That is why I will never write my memoirs.’ She was married twice. There was clearly much to tell! She does make one point clear, that despite rumour to the contrary (because of the fluidity of her role in ‘Pandora’s Box’ and a couple of experimental dalliances) she was herself not a lesbian.

A short, but fascinating tailpiece is written by German/French film critic, Lotter H. Eisner. Being a student at the time, she talks of being allowed onto the set in 1929 of ‘Diary Of A Lost Girl:-

‘I grew increasingly aware of an almost magical power emanating from this strange young woman, who spoke very little… [she] fascinated me constantly through a curious mixture of passivity and presence which she projected throughout the shooting.’

In 1929 Eisner wondered, ‘Is she a great artist or only a dazzling creature whose beauty traps the viewer into attributing complexities to her of which she is unaware?’ After speaking with her again in 1952, Eisner was no longer asking the question, but full of admiration for Brooks the woman, and Brooks the artist:-

‘This presence, which had seemed so enigmatic to me during the twenties, I now saw as the creation of a lifetime, fed by her indisputable qualities of intelligence and of heart: a frankness of opinion, a lucidity in her observation of people and things, a habit of speaking her mind with total candor.’

The Marian Davies piece has its gossipy meanderings, but the essays overall are fascinating first-hand accounts. Many photographs allow the Brooks aura to shine, despite being printed on matt paper. It’s not long at 119 pages, but is highly recommended for all lovers of old Hollywood wanting an account from someone who was there, and for those wanting to get closer to the mystique of this most modern of silent stars.

Addendum: Just watched Christopher Reeve willing himself back through the years in ‘Somewhere In Time.’ Mmmm? I may just give it a shot, you know. Look out for me in the background - wearing a tux - in ‘Pandora’s Box,’ or as a scruffy hobo leaning out of a box car in, ‘Beggars of Life.’ I could be there! I may come back and tell you about it one day. But I doubt it. Once there, I’ll be living much of my time in the backs of cinema’s watching first runs of classic silents, Universal horrors, Val Lewton’s, Bette Davis films, film noirs, and the 1950s epics… Aaaaah, Twilight Zone here we come… [Perhaps that’s what the out-of-time Louise Brooks herself did!] If I do come back, I will emerge through the mists like Sean Connery at the end of ‘Name Of The Rose’ - bowed, clutching as many reels of lost films as I can possibly carry…

[Sketchbook · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The modern actress par excellence," said Henri Langlois of the Cinematheque Francaise. "Those who have seen her can never forget her. Her art is so pure that it becomes invisible." Others have said that LB was a "luminscent personality...unparalleled in film history" who causes "a work of art to be born by her mere presence." Catch LB on YouTube in a few minutes of "Pandora's Box" and you'll grasp the luxuriant kudos.

From the rigors of Bible Belt Kansas where she read the classics, and was seemingly abused by a nabe, LB arrived (1922) with a chaperone in NYC age 15, to dance w the avant Denishawn group and quickly joined the "Scandals" and "Zig Follies" revues. With her looks and delicious style she soon met Everyone from the Bennett sisters (Connie, Barbara, Joan) to scribe Herman Mankiewicz. By age 18 in 1925, she was having intime "dinners" w young Walter Wanger and Chaplin, and trying to choose among Hollywd offers.

And then... yes, and then... she became iconic over the next 6 years (though, no one realized it then), except for the great filmmaker G W Pabst who imported her to Europe (when talent like Garbo-Dietrich was heading in the opposite direction). Refusing to return to Hollywood to dub her last movie, "The Canary Murder Case," for Par when US film was moving into sound, she earned the enmity of moguls who would soon blackball her in LA LA. The grease monkey Harry Cohn, sitting at his desk, half-naked, dangled his contract, if... (Harry's last home-made star was Kim Novak).

LB was a spirited rebel who played by her own rules -- and lost. Magical onscreen, she blended innocence w natural sexuality; she was not an asexual victim or vamp onscreen. LB was a gorgeous, perfectly photogenic star : All-Americana.

Mid30s, she was finished in US films and flushed out of the Hollywd cesspool.

I'm sure LB would concede she made some errors. But...she had millionaire beaux, and she was, after all, only in her 20s...with not a thought for tomorrow. She later worked at Sak's for two years and candidly says she was a call-girl. This book, composed of insightful essays written for filmzines like Sight & Sound, presents a remarkable picture of an era, industry, and STAR-who-should-have Reigned.

LB does not Tell-All. Her last lines : "I cannot unbuckle the Bible Belt. That is why I will never write my memoirs." Here's a very disturbing remembrance of things past.

[Evan · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to find out the whole story about Louise Brooks, Barry Paris' comprehensive biography is the place to go (I've not read that yet, but the reviews are unanimous). This book is a series of essays about the people and places Brooks encountered during her short, tempestuous career in silent movies. By telling the stories of others (her friend, Pepi Lederer, a Hollywood washout who was the niece of William Randolph Hearst's mistress, the actress Marion Davies; Humphrey Bogart; W.C. Fields and others), Brooks deftly weaves her own autobiographical portrait. The effect is not unlike "Citizen Kane;" Brooks' narrative goes back and forth in time, but she's skillful enough to hold it all together. The portraits of people as they were and their daily habits provides a vivid eyewitness account of lost times.

Brooks' observations of the famous are often at variance with accounts of them that are glossed over by publicity and myth. She presents Bogart as a shy professional, not the mythic tough guy (a role he grew into to match his own screen persona); W.C. Fields as a gracious man of heart and dignity, rather than the hateful shyster so often purveyed even by Fields himself; and she's even charitable to Wm. Randolph Hearst. Marion Davies, who often comes off as a decent goodtime girl or victim of heartless critics, comes in for a drubbing by Brooks. It's interesting to consider Brooks' observations in comparison to others' views. Brooks' writing has a laser precision; it's too bad that she didn't write more, but as she and others have made clear, this was a lady who took no guff from anyone and didn't do anything unless she felt like doing it. Her uncompromising stance guaranteed the fall of her Hollywood career, but Brooks took it all in stride. A fascinating book about a fascinating woman and her times. I just wish it was longer than the pithy 100 pages and pocket change...

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a delightful surprise! Ms Brooks was very well-read and this is probably the reason she turned out to be a writer with considerable talent. A tragedy that it was a talent that she didn't exploit to the utmost, but then Louise didn't really exploit any of her gifts to her maximum benefit.

She started out as a dancer but ended up in film almost accidentally. her iconic role of Lulu in Pandora's Box is unforgettable, and I am very happy to have seen it. After a couple more films she essentially walked away from Hollywood to enjoy the obscurity she cherished, emerging briefly to appear in a horse opera alongside the Duke. Talk about an unlikely pairing: the hulking John Wayne dwarfing the diminutive dancer!

Louise is quite frank about her fall from grace, eventually working as a call girl and a clerk in Saks. She doesn't go into gory detail, but doesn't try to cover anything up, either.

The book is generously illustrated with period photographs of Louise and other stars, a very nice complement to the text. My only disappointment with the book is that it is not a true memoir but is actually a collection of essays Louise wrote about her past and her relationships with the celebrities of her day. Ms Brooks never wrote an actual autobiography, as she believed it would be too scandalous. A pity...just another unexploited opportunity for this incredibly attractive and intelligent woman.

[Timothy Hallinan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been reading a ton of books about the early days of Hollywood and I had such high expectations about this one that I postponed it just so I could savor looking forward to it.

And what a drag. Despite all the mythologizing about Brooks (whose acting I have greatly enjoyed), in the end, this is an acerbic memoir by someone who doesn't seem ever to have actually liked anyone and who was delusional enough to say -- in this very book -- that the people living closest to the old condition of slavery were movie stars. I mean, over-entitled, anyone?

Yes, it was unusual that she READ BOOKS in early Hollywood, but she wasn't unique in doing so, and unfortunately she doesn't seem to have learned much about her own humanity from the books she read. This is a view of one of the most interesting phenomena in American history -- an isolated group of artists and businessmen and engineers who, over the course of about twenty years, created both an art form and a business to sustain it, and Ms. Brooks can't see anything beyond her own shadow.

I anticipated a somewhat spiky memoir by someone who saw through the system and fought the Philistines to find her own way, but in the end, I'm afraid she was largely just a pain in the ass.

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brooks dangles the promise a dishy personal memoir but serves up an incisive revisionist account of silent film history instead. Quite perversely, she often lightly skips over her most famous work while stopping to tarry over the seemingly superfluous, making the reader wait until the last chapter for any details about her iconic turn in Pandora’s Box and work with German director G.W. Pabst. I found this an incredibly generous book, paying tribute either to the forgotten (Marion Davies’ niece Pepi Lederer, her dear friend) or recovering a sense of the actual person behind the Hollywood publicity machine and decades of myth-making (Humphrey Bogart, Lillian Gish, W.C. Fields). But this also allows her to always remain something of a cipher—something that has obviously rankles some readers. But there are other pleasures to be had, as Brooks is a gifted storyteller with a flair for the evocative detail and wry turn of phrase; her prose style is unornamented and elegantly spare. In the afterward her friend, pioneering film historian Lotte H. Eisner, confirms no more writing would be forthcoming, quoting a letter from Brooks: “I shall write no more. Writing the truth for readers nourished on publicity rubbish is a useless exercise.” Our loss, and let us cherish this treasure all the more.

"The tragedy of film history is that it is fabricated, falsified, by the very people who make film history."

[Emily]

I truly dreaded reading this. Whenever I had downtime in which I would usually read, I found myself doing the crossword on my phone instead. While I'm interested in old Hollywood (particularly the silent era) and Louise Brooks's career, I found her writing insufferable. She's one of those people who Values Truth Above All Else, which is nice in your art I suppose but in real life makes you someone who's not very fun to be around.

And that's not to say Brooks has to be likeable - she certainly doesn't - but that while this strain of "truth above all else" is woven through the writing, she's also omitting certain pieces from her narrative that would help you actually figure out what's going on in her head. An example: she grouses quite a bit about her treatment on the set of Beggars of Life, particularly in regard to a meathead she finds disrespectful and obnoxious - but then on the next page, she's sleeping with him and grousing about how everyone made fun of her afterwards! She skips B when trying to get from A to C, and I found her so off-putting that I couldn't give her the benefit of the doubt.

I only got about halfway through, but as a PSA there's some good stuff in here about Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst if you're into that.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Decided to read this one after really liking The Chaperone featuring Brooks. Overall, it's solid writing - made me truly sad that Brooks didn't write essays during her lifetime!

I will say that it did get a bit detailed regarding mid-century movie stars; as I'm not a film buff, that aspect was lost on me for the most part. I did appreciate her fondness for the Astoria movie set in NYC from the Silent Era, which later became a screening venue of obscure films where I'd seen a few offerings myself.

[mackenzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5
I fear this may have triggered a Louise Brooks obsession

[Rama Rao · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reflections on inner fury

This is actress Louise Brooks memoir that reflects on the rise and fall of her movie career. She wrote this book after a lifetime to reflect on her work in United States and Europe. There are eight essays. Some of them are about Hollywood’s definitions of success and failure, and how actors are manipulated by studios and the press. Brooks writes stardom is an abrasive disease. Her writings are eloquent, beautiful, and straight from her heart. She had decades to recollect after her fall from grace in movie business. She covers a wide range of topics from her childhood in Wichita, Kansas. Then her teenage years with the Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts in Los Angeles, California., where she met Martha Graham, Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. She also reminisces about her work in Ziegfeld Follies in New York and her friendships with Charles Chaplin, W.C. Fields, CBS founder William Paley, and Austrian director G.W. Pabst.

In the movie Pandora’s Box, Lulu is the mistress of a publisher. This role played by Louise Brooks carried her to fame and success although it was short. Reflecting on her own life, she complains that it is harder for a reader to understand without knowing the character, personal conflicts and challenges in her life. She observes that she is unwilling to write about the sexual truth that would make her life worth reading. Since she cannot unbuckle Bible Belt, she would spare the curious readers about the challenges of her as a woman in the movie industry.

In her younger days Brooks read books by philosophers like Arthur Schopenhauer, George Bernard Shaw, and Friedrich Nietzsche. She had academic interest in intellectual topics despite tremendous amount of misfortunes in her life. She contemplated suicide until William S. Paley, the founder of CBS started sending her monthly checks for decades out of his kindness.

[Jim Dooley · Rating 4 out of 5]

No one tells the story of Hollywood in quite the same way as Louise Brooks. Her star shown especially bright during the years surrounding the transition from silent to sound films, and her reputation was as an especially difficult actress...primarily because she had a sense of what was right and she wouldn't back away from it. At the same time, she was the first to admit that she was a spoiled brat.

To us lesser mortals, she will always be The Girl With The Black Helmet because of her unique hair style. If her films had only consisted of her American releases, it is likely that she would have disappeared into obscurity. However, to see her in DIARY OF A LOST GIRL or PANDORA'S BOX is to see a transformation not often witnessed on the screen. Yes, she is one of my favorites and deserving of the description "star."

Very well read, Louise Brooks was also a writer, launching a series of essays that showed the filmmaking world with which she was familiar. Gossip and press stories didn't interest her, and she ultimately stopped writing for publication and turned to painting because she felt that people weren't interested in the perspectives she offered.

This book is a collection of seven essays, one of which was written solely for this collection and provides details of her early years and arrival in New York. All of them are worth reading, although the one on Lillian Gish and Greta Garbo offers startling insights. Also, her analysis of the persona of Humphrey Bogart has changed forever my viewing of his performances, as if I held some little known secret.

For the remainder, we are treated to a high level overview of the star system. The title is something of a misnomer since the first essay occurs mostly away from Hollywood, and the final essay details her work in Germany with a few comments about France before a brief stop back in Hollywood. To fill in the gaps, the interested student would be advised to check out Playboy's video biography (including interviews with her) and the remarkable book by Barry Paris.

However, for a no-holds-barred recitation, you can't do much better to read it in the sultry lady's own words. Then, watch one of the Pabst movies and prepare to be stunned.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Louise Brooks was a true original, a brilliant actress who paradoxically didn't care about acting and actively loathed the Hollywood system, she made a handful of pictures in the US before committing what many would consider "career suicide" and heading off to Europe to make the luminous PANDORA'S BOX and DIARY OF A LOST GIRL for German filmmaker G.W. Pabst. Regrettably her career slowly fizzled after that and she was largely forgotten until silent film aficionados like Lotte Eisner and Kevin Brownlow rediscovered her old films in the 60s. By then living in poverty, she was rescued by James Card of the Eastman House film archive, who supported her in her remaining years. In return, she turned her hand to writing, creating these pieces, most of which were published in SIGHT AND SOUND, combining brief memoirs of her days in Hollywood that are remarkable for their clear-eyed approach and freedom from self-pity, along with reminiscences of people she'd met along the way, both famous (W.C. Fields, Humphrey Bogart, and Lillian Gish, amongst them), and forgotten (Pepi Lederer, a niece of William Randolph Hearst, whose short, unhappy life Brooks chronicles sympathetically). The world may have lost a great actress when she walked away from Hollywood stardom, but in the end there's some compensation in knowing that it gained a lively and perceptive writer in the process.

[MAP · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Even nearly 100 years after her career, Louise Brooks manages to mesmerize.

Why I practically had to beat up librarian to get my hands on this book

[Claudia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love how books are like Frost's "Two Roads" poem, where book leads to book to book. This has happened to me this summer. I read THE CHAPERONE by Laura Moriarty, bought on a whim in an airport because I needed a book for the plane. http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13...

More than half-way through I realized that one of the characters, irrepressible Louise Brooks from Wichita, was a real person! A silent movie star. I became enthralled and had to know more. Images of her are breathtaking for sure.

Then I learned she'd written about her time in Hollywood, and was considered a strong writer. Not a surprise, because she and her entire family were passionate readers. And thinkers. That didn't serve her well in early Hollywood.

This book, in her words, is NOT a memoir. Her last essay in the book is entitled, "Why I Will Never Write my Memoirs," and ends with, "I...am unwilling to write the sexual truth that would make my life work reading. I cannot unbuckle the Bible Belt."

Instead, what we have here are her observations of the world and people of filmmaking and Broadway in the 20's and 30's. Along the way, I found tidbits that informed Moriarty's book...names, details. It was fascinating.

Lulu was in the middle of so much...she worked with Bogart, and makes a distinction between Bogey and Humphrey. She knew W.C. Fields. She hung out with the Bennett sisters, Constance and Joan. She was invited to parties at San Simeon with W.R. Hearst Marion Davies. But she doesn't write gossip. She tries to make sense of the life before her.

I was taken by her writing, and the richness of her allusions and analogies.

Samples:

"Debussy -- a composer new to the prairie in 1920. It was by watching her (Louise's mother) face that I first recognized the joy of creative effort."

"I decided right then that onstage I would never smile unless I felt like it." Used in THE CHAPERONE, and if you look at stills, she has such a stern look in most of them.

"She (Marion Davies' niece, Louise's friend) could not discipline her gluttony...and if she could not do this, she certainly could not learn to write, for writing is perhaps the most disciplined of all the arts."

Speaking of her affinity to Bogart, another loner, "As a loner I count as my two most precious rights those that allow me to choose the periods of my aloneness and allow me to choose the people with whom I spend the periods of my not aloneness."

Leslie Howard: "I wasn't cut out to be an actor. I haven't the energy for acting. It's exhausting."

Brooks didn't last long in Hollywood, and had very little besides her observations and memories when she was forced out...she wasn't willing to play the games...

She died alone, and that's sad. But I'm so grateful that I met her...even if it was years after she was gone.

Way led on to way, and I discovered a jewel.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yQom...

[Phil · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fascinating collection of essays written by one of the most iconic legends of silent cinema. Brooks was a meteor - burning brightly, burning quickly, frighteningly individual and refusing to show any deference to authority. Other than a few small parts in the mid-thirties, her career in the movies was over by the time she was 25 and without any really big hits on her hands and yet, her instantly recognisable hairstyle and rare-for-a-movie-star intelligence has left her on the popular "memory" more than anyone else from that era bar Chaplin. And yet .. and yet, even though everyone knows who she is - how many people have seen Pandora's Box or Diary of a Lost Girl, never mind any of her Hollywood silents. She's also widely cited as the gossipy second-hand source that Orson Welles had for the meaning of "Rosebud" in Citizen Kane - a sly, private dig against newspaper and movie magnate William Randolph Hearst (who was the obvious model for Charles Foster Kane) - as being his pet name for an intimate anatomical feature of mistress Marion Davies.

In later life, she was finally started writing and she's a agreat writer. Always an outsider when a star she had no axes to grind and no egos to massage or friendships to oil when writing about Lillian Gish being killed by the studios, Bogart developing his off-screen character, WC Fields being broken by having to live his on-screen persona, the gossip, the flattery, the backbiting, the constant affairs, the too-easily acquired riches ... it's all here and it's fascinating told without hyperbole or breathless excited hysteria.

Forget the fanboyish introduction and only read the essays and look at the photographs. It's a shame that Brooks didn't write more because she has an easy way with words and an intelligent way to construct a tale. If you have any interest whatsoever in this era of cinema, then this is well worth reading - just unfortunately a tad short.

[Christie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Maybe it's because I don't have a solid background knowledge of Hollywood and the people in it during Brooks's era, but I had a hard time getting through most of the essays in the book. Brooks seems to assume the reader knows most of the people she writes about or has been taken in by studio propaganda. While I believe Brooks was probably an intelligent woman, I have the impression that her writing is like her life: undisciplined and disorganized. With a couple of exceptions, I found her essays to be sprawling and lacking much of a point. It's unfortunate that she didn't write her memoirs because her writing about her experiences tends to be better than her analyses of others.

Aside from her writing, the other thing that makes her essays occasionally annoying is the sense that she was just kind of a brat. I'm sure the Hollywood system of the time was a mill. But when she talks about how acting was akin to slavery, she lists as some of the brutality showing up on time and being on set during filming. Isn't that what they call a job? She doesn't give an explanation of why she stayed as long as she did. At one point she says that what she really wanted to be was a dancer not an actor. Why did she give up dancing? You get the impression that she gave up dancing for acting because acting didn't require the same kind of discipline. She could make money and get by on her beauty and allure. If she was a good actress, it wasn't because she worked at it, but rather, because she had a talent for expressing emotion and being in the moment. My guess is that if you're already a fan of Louise Brooks and film history, you might get a kick out of this book. Otherwise, I'd give it a pass.

[Kirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story behind this book is almost as famous as the star who wrote it. In 1979, renowned British critic Kenneth Tynan---known for being the first man to say the F word on British television---was living in semi-exile in America when he happened to see a broadcast of PANDORA'S BOX. He immediately tracked down former silent film star Louise Brooks to Rochester, New York and began what can only be described as a decidedly kinky relationship with the septuagenarian. What do I mean by kinky? Well, it depends on who you chose to believe. Tynan's own family would later insist it was a full-blown sexual affair, but others find that doubtful. The point is that Lulu became a symbol for Tynan of his own sadomasochistic tendencies, a role that (emotionally for certain) Louise was well-suited to play out.

Whatever the nature of the relationship, it is clear that Tynan was central to the improbable rediscovery of Brooks, whose essays for Sight and Sound and other film magazines are collected in this book. It's hard not to understand Tynan's fetishistic attraction to Lulu given her voice. At the time reviewers tended to make the rather pinheaded claim that they were surprised to discover Louise Brooks was as smart as she was beautiful. Today we know better. Icons are icons for a reason: they can embody a single emotion in a pose. Lulu was a symbol of something more than sex: she was allure, and this book makes you appreciate that it was a quality she owned in more than just that famous black helmet hair.

[Jenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I adore Louise Brooks, she was so multi-talented and cared not for the false glamour of Hollywood's allure. This novel is a collection of autobiographical essays that Louise had written. I find her very complicated despite her simplistic way of viewing life. She was fiercely independent I believe it was her fear of allowing people in or her fear of rejection that caused her to state that she had never been in love; although sex made up a great deal of her persona. She hinted that her mistakes may have cost her in the end. Her writing though is open and her raw honesty makes for a book that is hard to put down.

[Christopher (Donut) · Rating 4 out of 5]

It has been a while, but I do remember the style as no nonsense.

The decision to make The Canary Murder Case a talkie was her final straw. She did not agree to the extra work, and so it was her last Hollywood movie (and if you watch it on Youtube, you see her speaking scenes were all workarounds).

That she went on to make two more films with G. W. Pabst was more of an artistic decision than a financial one. She wanted to make a couple of great films, and for her, great meant 'silent.'



I probably need to re-read this sometime.

[Ken · Rating 3 out of 5]

Eight well written autobiographical essays which cover a variety of topics and opinions. I especially enjoyed her thoughts on Humphrey Bogart and W.C. Fields. Her friendship with Pepi Lederer, niece of Marion Davies allowed her to become a part of the William Randolph Hearst 'scene' at The Hearst Castle in San Simeon.
Louise Brooks has been called one of the brightest, and most intellectual actresses in Hollywood. And after reading her memoir, I think it's more accurate to refer to her as a writer who just happened to be a Hollywood actress.

[Rebekah Lazaridis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Totally elitist and had no clue what the hell she was talking about half the time. You'd have to run in the same crowd as Louise to know what was going on. Didn't learn a thing about her personally. Why did she write this book? Stick to Barry Paris if you want to know anything about her.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

classic must-read Hollywood book

[Writer's Relief · Rating 5 out of 5]

The much-mythologized history of Old Hollywood continues to intrigue readers, but it’s rare to find a participant in that bygone era who writes about it with honesty. That’s just what silent film star Louise Brooks did when she wrote Lulu in Hollywood, a series of essays detailing her observations and stories about Old Hollywood and its denizens.

Lulu in Hollywood (named after her character in the G.W. Pabst film Pandora’s Box) begins with Louise as a young girl from Kansas who becomes a dancer in New York. After performing in shows produced by Florenz Ziegfeld (including his legendary Follies), Louise moves to Hollywood, where her sleek, dark, bobbed hairdo becomes an icon for women all over America.

Brooks writes with a fierce intelligence, great compassion, and acerbic wit about 1920s Hollywood. She talks about how stars such as Humphrey Bogart and W.C. Fields were essentially compromised onscreen (although one can certainly argue that Bogart turned out better on screen than Fields). In her most heartbreaking essay, she tells of the tragic life and suicide of Pepi Lederer, niece of film star Marion Davies (longtime mistress of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst). Finally, Brooks talks about working with German film director G.W. Pabst on Pandora’s Box and Diary of a Lost Girl, and how the differences between his directing style and the demands of the Hollywood studio system motivated her to walk away from Hollywood for good.

Brook writes with a clear eye, an unsentimental heart, and a deep well of compassion for her companions in the entertainment industry. Her book doesn’t feel like a self-important, tell-all celebrity autobiography, although Brooks certainly does a lot of telling. It reads like your best friend who just so happens to be a celebrity is regaling you with stories (and the occasional name-dropping) about life in early Hollywood.

Perhaps the only criticism about Lulu in Hollywood is that it’s too short. One wishes that Louise could write a larger tome about her experiences as a star, or even some essays about her post-Hollywood life. But for fans of film history, especially the silent/early sound era, Lulu in Hollywood is insightful, thought-provoking, and an entertaining read.

[Doctor Moss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Louise Brooks called herself “the best-read idiot in the world.” The only part of that that isn’t true is the “idiot” part. She was no idiot.

If you’re interested in this book, you probably know that Brooks was a film star, mainly in silent movies in the 1920s. Despite her years in Hollywood, her best and best known films were made in Germany with Director G.W. Pabst (Pandora’s Box, Diary of a Lost Girl) and France (Prix de Beauté).

The book contains 8 essays written by Brooks, a short piece on her by Lotte Eisner, and a long introduction (40 pages) by Kenneth Tynan. There are also many pictures — movie stills, publicity photos, etc.

Brooks herself doesn’t give anything like a linear account of her life. The essays take particular events, friendships, and topics as organizing themes. Especially in her later years, after her acting career was long over (she left Hollywood for good in 1938), she wrote these essays on life, film, and the film industry.

The essays include ones on her background in Kansas, and her introduction to the movies and Hollywood, numerous friendships and working relationships, major figures in the movie industry of the time, and the industry itself. There are depictions of Charlie Chaplin, W.C. Fields, Humphrey Bogart, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Marion Davies, Brooks’ longtime friend Pepi Lederer (Davies’ niece), William Randolph Hearst, and many more.

To the extent that there is a straightforward biography here, it’s the introduction by Tynan. Normally I’m not a fan of long introductions, but I was grateful for this one. It provides the context in which to read Brooks’ own thoughts about herself, her life, and the movies.

I think what makes Brooks likable, and she is very likable, is a kind of guileless guile. The quote about being the “best-read idiot in the world” is a good example — she’s messing with us in such a transparent, self-effacing way, we can’t help but walk right in where she wants us and smile along with the gag.

And it’s the same with her character, Lulu, in the first of her German movies. She’s the “bad girl” — a prostitute, an amoral figure that floats above the categories of victim, perpetrator, and observer. But it’s as if she doesn’t know why anyone would think anything wrong with being the “bad girl.” And when someone does, she’s disappointed and even a little confused.

What’s wrong with pleasure? What’s wrong with using the power you have, as little as it might be? She seems to walk around with permanent thought bubbles over her head asking questions like that.

She seemed very uncomplicated. She liked dancing, sex, drinking, and reading. And she liked those things a lot, on the same moral plane, without apology or guilt.

She does call herself an “idiot,” but she’s an idiot who quotes Goethe and Proust, who reads Schopenhauer on set while waiting between scenes, and whose insights on the movie industry cut through the glossy story to the reality of the years of the studio system.

She talks a great deal about the power of the studio and the studio executives. Her own struggles with the studio system undoubtedly limited her career. In the transition from the silent era to talkies, the studios used the uncertainty of actors’ and actresses’ speaking talents to hedge their salaries. Brooks declined the studio’s contract offer, turned on a dime to go to Germany to work with a director she’d never heard of, and made her landmark movies there.

Brooks, by my reading, retained power over herself at the cost of power over her situation. Maybe that’s the cost of authenticity. Even in her interview with Tynan toward the end of her life, no apologies, no regrets, no guilt, and maybe now that there’s no point to guileless guile, just guileless.

I think the theme of power in the lives of actresses in the twenties and thirties, and in the roles they played is fascinating. Brooks takes one path — maybe we can call it authenticity. Others had different paths — Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson, Barbara Stanwyck, Norma Shearer, and many others — and all of them are interesting in their own ways. Partly because they had to navigate a world of power in which they had none by default. They picked their battles and strategies.

Maybe Brooks fought the good fight, and in some ways she lost, but she seems to have won what was most important to her.

Unlike some others of her time, she didn’t die young. She lived more of her life after Hollywood than before, long enough to be interviewed much later in life by Tynan when she lived in a one bedroom apartment in Rochester, New York. Her insights in that interview are as sharp, unpretentious, and transparently revealing as ever.

[Phrodrick slowed his growing backlog · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some times a review is more about the reviewer than the book. I still rankle over a review of a major Dostoevsky book because is wasted time describing uniforms at a ball. Clearly the reader was from a post television generation and could not imagine a world where words took the place of images. I have a similar problem reviewing Lulu in Hollywood by Louise Brooks. I spent a lot of time trying to dislike the book, and ultimately realized that my problem was a disinterest in the topic. To the degree I can be objective, Ms. Brooks writes intelligent, perspicacious analysis. She is clearly protective on matters reflecting on herself, but absent more information that I care to collect, she is adding to the history and analysis of Hollywood plus with some contrast with her experience with German filmmaking.

This is an extended edition, lavishly illustrated.

Much of what may have been unknown or under appreciated at the time she was writing is less so now, thou perhaps because she said so then. We know and justly despise the casting couch. The old Hollywood star machine and associated contracting processes was silly when it was not despicable. We all ‘know’ that William R. Hearst was frequently a jerk. What we now call the ‘Suits”, I.e. the visionless risk avoiding money people were and are short sighted and were and are given to the sicker excess of the patrimony.

Beyond that which drove her out of Hollywood, both by choice and by the corporate abuse of black balling is one set of problems. Parenthetically she has almost nothing to say about the red scare and the movie industry. Ms Brooks gives us extended analysis on stars she watched in the making: Humphrey Bogart, W.C Fields, Lillian Gish among others. I can only guess that these are some of the best chapters. I have to guess, because mostly this is a topic that does not interest me. Four stars by way of giving Lulu Brooks the benefit, not five for not motivating me to read deeper into tinsel town.

[Sophia]

I love you Louise I probably drove past your old house which is now a hospital carpark in a rough part of Wichita

[Robert Paul Olsen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well this was a surprise, and a pleasant one at that. Louise was not only a beautiful actor of both the silent and talking era, but a wonderful writer as well, while having that sense about her to see the genius in those she worked with. I found this book in the Biography section but saw it more as a bio-memoir. She always seemed to know the right thing to do and life was never easy, what with her being a woman of her own mind. She hated all producers, and when the silent film era ended and talkies began all actors were told they would have to take a pay-cut. Louise was the only one to refuse and was thusly blackballed for a long period. She was always quoting to anyone who would listen "....there was no other occupation in the world that so closely resembled enslavement as the career of a film star.......". She does Marion Davis, Humphrey Bogart, W.C. Fields, Lillian Gish, and Greta Garbo, there's so much more, give it a try.