Buffalo article 2
louise_brooksFAN
ANYTHING
By JENNIFER REGAN
News Book Reviewer
Published on March 18, 1990 in The Buffalo News
LOUISE BROOKS
By Barry Paris
Knopf
480 pages, $24.95
IN 1927, ACTRESS Louise Brooks plummeted from the brink of
silent-movie stardom into near-oblivion. The "girl in the black
helmet," as she was called (her shiny black hair, bobbed with bangs)
was overshadowed by "It" girl Clara Bow; Colleen Moore, the
quintessential flapper, and, of course, Greta Garbo.
Then, in 1955, a film Brooks made in pre-Reich Germany, "Pandora's
Box," was revived at a French film festival. Suddenly the actress was
hailed by critics and she was lured out of hiding to become the center
of an international cult.
Did the aging actress -- an admitted "bitch who fought with friend and
foe alike," and destroyed most of her opportunities with heavy
drinking and obsessive sex -- enjoy her late success? Barry Paris'
exhaustive and perceptive biography depicts a woman whose quips and
wisecracks cover up a depressive personality, a woman who lacked the
ability to enjoy much of anything, including success.
Brooks, who died in 1984, professed to believe in little -- friends,
God and love itself, which she cynically defined as "a publicity stunt
. . . only another petulant way to pass the time waiting for the
studio to call."
She was born in Kansas to a would-be artist mother (Myra). At 14 she
left Wichita for New York with the newly formed avant-garde Denishawn
dance company.
It was a dream come true for the "pudgy-cheeked, 5-foot-2 hayseed."
But Brooks was dismissed for "rebelliousness," setting a pattern for
her future.
After a stint with George White's Scandals, Brooks was inevitably
drawn to Hollywood, where her first film was the mean-spirited "Old
Army Game" with the meaner-spirited W.C. Fields. In 1927 she starred
in "The Canary Murder Case," based on the murder of a Ziegfeld dancer.
She was almost over the top into stardom. But she hated Hollywood,
disdained the hypocrisy of its blend of Puritanism and eroticism.
Brooks' reputation was based not so much on her acting as on her
reputation for being "the tartest piece of cheesecake in Hollywood."
When the legendary German director G.W. Pabst chose her to play Lulu
in "Pandora's Box," she broke her contract with Paramount (which then
practically blacklisted her) and fled to Berlin.
Decadent Berlin in 1928, Pabst (with whom she had an affair) and the
role of hedonist Lulu were all perfectly matched to Brooks, whose
looks -- both ultra-female and boyish -- appealed to both sexes.
Caught in the switch from silents to talkies, "Pandora's Box" went
nearly unnoticed. Critics who did review it, even less-censorious
European ones, were offended by its overt sexuality. One critic called
Brooks "an inanimate dummy."
Paris, who knew Brooks, has smoked out every detail he could, and some
he shouldn't have -- from the actress' meager subsistence years
between "Pandora" and its revival. Running dance studios, scribbling,
working at Saks in New York, leaving the church, crawling home for
three hellish years in Wichita, Brooks made do.
She followed film historian James Card, credited with "managing" her
cult, to Rochester, where he was curator of the George Eastman House
International Museum of Photography. He encouraged her writing and
helped her to place articles on Hollywood during the silent era in
film magazines. Inevitably, Brooks fought with Card. She wanted him to
marry her (he was already married); he was afraid that if he stayed
close to her he'd become an alcoholic.
The cult climaxed in a New Yorker profile on Brooks, published in
1979, which brought the actress even greater fame. British critic
Kenneth Tynan had interviewed her extensively in Rochester. They were
friends until, after the profile was published, she found fault with
it.
By the end, Brooks had fought with nearly everyone except her brother,
her nephew and the old woman upstairs who cared for her. She once
wrote, "And so I have remained, in pursuit of truth and excellence . .
. an abomination to all but those few people who have overcome their
aversion to truth in order to free whatever is good in them."
It's a lofty defense, indeed, for a life that variously can be
described as bitter, lonely, sordid, wasteful, plucky, spoiled,
defiant. Real lives are more fascinating than fictional ones, and the
more complex and unhappy they are, the better reading they make.
Louise Brooks, a lover and a fighter.