1926 — Faustina
Louise Brooks
Paramount Studios Film Still from A SOCIAL CELEBRITY
December 1925-January 1926 · New York City, New York
As A SOCIAL CELEBRITY was going into production, Louise Brooks was set to play a minor role as a barber shop's manicurist. At an early stage in shooting, star Greta Nissen pulled out of the film, the small manicurist's role became a lead, and Brooks was given second-billing to star Adolphe Menjou. It was just one of many serendipitous twists of fate in her early career that propelled Brooks's rising star upward—an ascension that would never quite reach its zenith in the United States.
1926 — A Social Celebrity
Louise Brooks with Malcolm St. Clair and Adolphe Menjou
Paramount Studios Film Still from A SOCIAL CELEBRITY
1926 · New York City, New York
Louise Brooks embraced the free-spending attitude of the 1920s when it came to her wardrobe—especially when the film studio was footing the bill. She would later remember that she played the manicurist in A SOCIAL CELEBRITY in five hundred dollar dresses. It was the same for her other films at Paramount. Unlike those of bigger and better paid stars of the time, Brooks's wardrobe was chic on and off the movie set. Thus, Paramount's costume designer Travis Banton named her one of 1927's best-dressed women, and her advice to ladies wanting to mimic her celebrated sartorial flair was characteristic: "Don't economize too much on clothes."
1926 — Tuxedo Junction
Louise Brooks with Adolphe Menjou
Paramount Studios Film Still from A SOCIAL CELEBRITY
1926 · New York City, New York
Playing with Adolphe Menjou under the direction of Malcolm St. Clair, understated, natural Brooksie was out of her dramatic element. She recalled in later years: "Mal came from the mugging school of Sennett, and he did everything by making faces, and he would mug out a scene for me and then send me into the scene, and I would be so embarrassed. I tried my best to please him and yet not make all those mugging faces that date so terribly, like Adolphe Menjou."
1926 — Opposites Attract
Louise Brooks with Edward Sutherland
Paramount Studios Publicity Photograph for IT'S THE OLD ARMY GAME
1926 · Ocala, Florida
Shooting for IT'S THE OLD ARMY GAME in Ocala, Florida quickly became a drunken free-for-all with hard-drinking W.C. Fields, Louise, and her future husband, director Eddie Sutherland on the set. According to Louise: "Nobody in Ocala seemed to have heard of Prohibition. And if ever there was a company that needed no help in the consumption of liquor it was ours." However, Louise was not so soused that she didn't store away her sharpest insights and observations about her co-star, which she would record in her essay "The Other Face of W.C. Fields."
1926 — The Show-Off
Louise Brooks with Gregory Kelly, Lois Wilson and Ford Sterling
Paramount Studios Film Still from THE SHOW-OFF
1926 · New York City, New York
1926 — But They Marry Brunettes
Louise Brooks with William "Buster" Collier, Jr. and Dorothy Mackaill
First National Film Still from JUST ANOTHER BLONDE
July-August 1926 · New York City, New York
During the making of JUST ANOTHER BLONDE (as it was eventually called after nearly half a dozen working titles) Brooks nonchalantly requested a day off for the purpose of being wed. Director Alfred Santell granted his stunned permission, and Louise rushed off to become Mrs. Edward Sutherland. At the time she was also carrying on a short-lived affair with co-star Buster Collier: "the only actor [she] ever cared for." Through Collier she would come to know another, more famous Buster (Keaton), about whom she would write an adoring essay many years later.
1926 — I Put My Devils First
Louise Brooks with Arthur Donaldson
Paramount Studios Film Still from LOVE 'EM & LEAVE 'EM
September-October 1926 · New York City, New York
Is Louise contemplating a Faustian bargain? Or is she merely experiencing an ever so slight pang of conscience as the naughty baby sister whose bad deeds go unpunished? LOVE 'EM & LEAVE 'EM is one of the most enjoyable of Brooks's American films still in existence. At the time she shot it, Louise was unaware that her role was comedic. Director and admirer Frank Tuttle directed her to play the role straight, realizing that if he instructed Louise to be funny she would have become, in her own words, "an immobilized personality."
1926 — Love 'Em & Leave 'Em
Louise Brooks
Paramount Studios Film Still from LOVE 'EM & LEAVE 'EM
1926 · New York City, New York
LOVE 'EM & LEAVE 'EM afforded Brooks the opportunity to work with Osgood Perkins, one of a group of Ivy League-educated theaterfolk which included her friends Frank Tuttle, the film's director, and title writer Townsend Martin. Brooks called Perkins—father of Anthony—"the best actor I ever worked with." His skill as an actor embodied the acting philosophy Louise espoused, which consisted not of acting but reacting, and not emoting but behaving.
1927 — Odette / Odile
Louise Brooks
Home at Laurel Canyon
Paramount Studios Publicity Photograph
1927 · Hollywood, California
Kenneth Tynan mentions this photograph in his celebrated 1979 New Yorker profile of Brooks, "The Girl in the Black Helmet." In it, he compares her to Odette and Odile in "some modern-dress version of Swan Lake." Beyond the obvious allusion to Louise's dance background, the comparison was more apt than even the astute Tynan likely realized. Odette and Odile are dark and light personalities embodied in one talented dancer. In much the same way, Brooks was herself an enormous contradiction, embracing the life of both the recluse and the actress/dancer, the intellectual hermit and the party girl.
1927 — The Lady or the Flapper?
Louise Brooks with James Hall and Richard Arlen
Paramount Studios Publicity Photograph for ROLLED STOCKINGS
April-May, 1927 · Hollywood, California
In a departure from the typecasting Brooks was saddled with in many of her American films, she played not the vamping flapper in ROLLED STOCKINGS, but the straight-laced college girl betrayed by Richard Arlen. Blonde junior star Nancy Phillips was instead tapped for the role of "the Vamp," as the character was literally called. In fact, the movie was touted as Paramount's first to feature only so-called Junior Stars—those who had supposedly been selected by the front office for grooming as potential box-office draws. There was no love lost between Louise and co-star Arlen on the set. And, though she made her lack of admiration for Arlen's acting plain, he was ironically the sole Junior Star who saw any measure of success in Hollywood after the 1920s.
1927 — Her European Soul
Louise Brooks
Photographed by Eugene Robert Richee
Paramount Studios Film Still from NOW WE'RE IN THE AIR
August-September, 1927 · Hollywood, California
NOW WE'RE IN THE AIR, like the three other films Louise Brooks made in 1927, is lost. Probably notable only for the dual appearance of Brooks as twins separated at birth—one raised in Germany, and the other in France—the film anticipates her move to those same countries a short time later where she would find her most enduring film roles. Aside from this, the film was little more than a slapstick programmer, and the first in which Brooks co-starred with friend and fellow Midwesterner Wallace Beery.
1927 — Bored in Babylon
Louise Brooks with Keen Thompson
Paramount Studios Publicity Photograph for NOW WE'RE IN THE AIR
1927 · Hollywood, California
Among Brooks's innumerable publicity stills, she named this wry photo her favorite because she posed it herself. A voracious reader all her life, Louise found herself to be something of an anomaly among the decidedly unintellectual inhabitants of Hollywood—actors who would have been right at home in Gatsby's library.
1927 — The City Gone Wild
Louise Brooks with Thomas Meighan
Paramount Studios Film Still from THE CITY GONE WILD
June-July 1927 · Hollywood, California
For THE CITY GONE WILD Brooks played an absurdly named gangster's moll. Here, Snuggles Joy confers with Thomas Meighan, Brooks's real life uncle-in-law. The film was a prototype of the gangster genre that would be patented just a few years later with SCARFACE, THE PUBLIC ENEMY, and LITTLE CAESAR. Sadly, the movie is lost, having decomposed in Paramount's vaults over 30 years ago.
1928 — Oh! You Pretty Things
Louise Brooks with Victor McLaglen
Photographed by Max Munn Autrey
Fox Studios Publicity Photograph
1928 · Hollywood, California
As in LOVE 'EM & LEAVE 'EM before it, Brooks's character A GIRL IN EVERY PORT was a gem of seductive unrepentance. Whether G.W. Pabst actually saw A GIRL IN EVERY PORT—a fact that has recently been challenged—and cast Louise Brooks in PANDORA'S BOX based on that performance, the two previous bad girl roles were stellar training for the quintessential sinless temptress, Lulu.
1928 — Kansas Cleopatra
Louise Brooks
Photographed by Eugene Robert Richee
Paramount Studios Publicity Photo (Detail)
1928 · Hollywood, California
Eugene Robert Richee was Brooks's most frequent photographer. Had he only shot but two frames of her—this photo and the accompanying full-length shot—their collaboration on those alone would still have created an icon and defined the look of the 1920s. Louise summed up their work together in her typical crisp fashion: "Eugene Richee used to take sixty shots in two hours. We never said a word to each other. Perfect relationship."
1928 — Anchorless Hearts
Louise Brooks with Richard Arlen and Wallace Beery
Paramount Studios Publicity Photograph for BEGGARS OF LIFE
May-June, 1928 · Hollywood, California
It was during the filming of BEGGARS OF LIFE that Brooks's ambivalence toward Richard Arlen turned to dislike, and the feeling proved to be mutual. However, her bond with former co-star Wallace Beery was reinforced. While many who worked with Beery found him a distasteful bully, Louise adored his dark sense of humor, bravery, and grace. Beery, in a piece of paternal advice on the first day of shooting, warned her against being talked into doing any unneccessary stunts for director William "Wild Bill" Wellman. Naturally, Louise disobeyed, performing all but one of the dangerous stunts required of her on Locomotive 102, the freight train which became the film's primary set.
1928 — The Canary and The Foghorn
Louise Brooks with Jean Arthur
Paramount Studios Film Still from THE CANARY MURDER CASE
September-October, 1928 · Hollywood, California
It is one of the greatest ironies wrought by the transition to talkies that an actress with a voice as remarkably lovely as Louise Brooks' was denied the chance to sufficiently demonstrate it in films. So, while Jean Arthur—with the voice once affectionately likened by a critic to a foghorn—dutifully returned with the rest of THE CANARY MURDER CASE'S cast to Paramount for sound conversion retakes, Louise snubbed the studio that had apathetically allowed her to quit, and hop a boat for Germany and silent film immortality instead. For her rebellion, Brooks received the punishment meted out to most movie stars with chips on their shoulders: bad publicity. According to Paramount, Louise's voice didn't record well, and thus, a stand-in was found to dub her lines. Brooks's career would never recover from her own contrariness and the ensuing reprimand.
1928 — Pygmalion in Berlin
Louise Brooks with G.W. Pabst
Personal Candid Photograph
October 14, 1928 · Berlin, Germany
Brooks described her relationship with PANDORA'S BOX director G.W. Pabst as something visceral and intuitive—a rapport that began the instant she stepped off the train in Berlin to meet him. "It was," she wrote, "just as if Pabst had sat in on my whole life and career and knew exactly where I needed assurance and protection. And, just as his understanding of me reached back to his knowledge of a past we did not have to speak about, so it was with the present . . . all that I thought and all his reactions seemed to pass between us in a kind of worldess communication."
1929 — A Way You'll Never Be
Louise Brooks with Fritz Rasp
HOM-Film Film Still from DIARY OF A LOST GIRL
1929 · Berlin, Germany
G.W. Pabst's instincts regarding Louise were not limited to a mere psychological understanding of the actress. Anticipating her attraction to actor Fritz Rasp, the director quite literally conceived of their seduction scene as a subtle, erotic dance. Brooks's dance background and Rasp's physical power and agility combined to make the scene one of DIARY OF A LOST GIRL'S most affecting.
1929 — Left and Leaving
Louise Brooks with Andre Roanne
HOM-Film Still Photograph from DIARY OF A LOST GIRL
1929 · Berlin, Germany
With their second collaboration, G.W. Pabst urged Louise Brooks to remain in Germany and commit herself to acting. Although she respected the director and submitted to him as she did no one else, she declined his entreaties. In frustration, Pabst delivered a prediction on the final day of shooting that would haunt Brooks for the remainder of her life-though she scarcely understood it at the time: "Your life is exactly like Lulu's [of PANDORA'S BOX], and you will end the same way."
1929 — Perihelion in Paris
Louise Brooks
Photographed by Studio Lorelle
SOFAR-Film Publicity Photograph for PRIX DE BEAUTE
August-September 1929 · Paris, France
Although Louise felt less than positive about the finished product of PRIX DE BEAUTE, she described her time in Paris as the happiest of her life. Explaining that because she did not speak French she wasn't required to speak to anyone, or to talk at all. Is it any wonder, then, that the actress considered by some to be the greatest in silent films was most content when she didn't have to say a word?
1930 — Windy Riley Goes Hollywood
Louise Brooks
Educational Pictures Publicity Photograph for WINDY RILEY GOES HOLLYWOOD
1930 · Hollywood, California
Appearing quite different from the sulky, sooty-eyed flapper of the twenties, Brooks puts on one of the biggest grins in any of her portraits, denying the misery of the Depression. In truth, the thirties were an uncertain time for Brooksie, as well. Sadly, uncertain times would give way to desperate ones in the following two decades.
1931 — God's Gift To Women
Louise Brooks with Yola d'Avril, Joan Blondell, and Frank Fay
Warner Bros. Film Still from GOD'S GIFT TO WOMEN
1931 · Hollywood, California
Louise gets the better of the wonderful Joan Blondell in a pre-Code catfight as star Frank Fay looks on in exasperation. It was on the set of GOD'S GIFT TO WOMEN that Louise would meet longtime friend and Warner Brothers costume designer Howard Shoup.
1931 — Turning Away
Louise Brooks
Warner Bros. Publicity Photograph for GOD'S GIFT TO WOMEN
January 1931 · Hollywood, California
Judging by Louise's expression, one would be surprised to learn GOD'S GIFT TO WOMEN was a comedy. Despite a rather small role, Warner Brothers promoted Brooks generously with many stunning publicity photos such as this one. However, the change in coiffure and her melancholy countenance underscore a downturn in Louise's professional career. Declining William Wellman's offer for the role of Gwen in THE PUBLIC ENEMY shortly after making GOD'S GIFT, Louise would perform her most dramatic act of "snatching obscurity from the jaws of fame," as biographer Barry Paris fittingly described it.
1931 — Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here
Louise Brooks with bust of Dante Alighieri
Warner Bros. Publicity Photograph for GOD'S GIFT TO WOMEN
1931 · Hollywood, California
“Worldly fame is but a breath of wind that blows now this way, and now that, and changes name as it changes direction.” -Dante
A chastened Louise awaits her imminent banishment to the particular circle of hell reserved for stubborn, haughty actresses. She seems already to be in mourning for her lost vogue in this stunning photograph, and despite the prop's stinging relevance now, there does not appear to be any deliberate underlying comment relating to Brooks's then unsteady career. Dante certainly had nothing to do with GOD'S GIFT TO WOMEN, either.
1936 — Don't Tread On Me
Louise Brooks
Universal Pictures Publicity Photograph
1936 · Hollywood, California
After a successful two-year stint on the ballroom dance circuit, and an unsuccessful marriage, Brooks returned to Hollywood for a final time. Despite her still incredible, now mature beauty, her attempt at a movie comeback would be a disappointment.
1936 — End of the Trail
Louise Brooks with Buck Jones
Universal Pictures Film Still from EMPTY SADDLES
August-September 1936 · Hollywood, California
A cowboy movie with Buck Jones hardly seemed the ideal genre for a Louise Brooks comeback vehicle, but she was desperate for movie work of any kind by 1936. More to the point, she needed the $300 paycheck for the film's week-long shooting. Having turned up her nose at a Buck Jones Western some six years before, Brooks now gritted her teeth through the forgettable EMPTY SADDLES.
1936 — Just a Prairie Flower
Louise Brooks with Buck Jones and Gertrude Astor
Universal Pictures Film Still from EMPTY SADDLES
1936 · Hollywood, California
The sophisticated lawyer's daughter from Wichita, Kansas was an odd fit for EMPTY SADDLES with Buck Jones, and one can almost read the discomfort in her face here. Louise had little regard for Hollywood's version of the West, whose "unreality," she would later recall, "disgusted [her]."
1938 — Dixie Dugan Among The Cowboys
Louise Brooks with John Wayne and Ray Corrigan
Republic Pictures Publicity Photograph for OVERLAND STAGE RAIDERS
August 1938 · Hollywood, California
For her final screen appearance, Brooks would brush shoulders with John Wayne, who was perched on the brink of stardom. The next year, Wayne would finally obtain fame as The Ringo Kid in Stagecoach. OVERLAND STAGE RAIDERS was a textbook B-movie example of two stars touching briefly as they followed their opposite trajectories in filmdom.
1938 — Duke, By Divine Right
Louise Brooks with John Wayne
Personal Candid Photograph
Wrap Party for OVERLAND STAGE RAIDERS
1938 · Hollywood, California
Brooks called John Wayne "a purely beautiful being" and "the hero of all mythology miraculously brought to life." Louise rarely expressed such unmitigated enthusiasm for anyone—especially fellow actors—and the adoration for him is unmistakably written on her face in this surreal photo. One would be hard pressed to find another image of prickly, no-nonsense Brooksie looking so vulnerable.
1939 — Last Tango on Sunset Boulevard
Louise Brooks with Barrett O'Shea
Publicity Photograph for Brooks-O'Shea Dance Studio
1939 · Hollywood, California
The distinctive costume Louise wears in this promotional photo for the Brooks-O'Shea dance studio may have been designed by Warner Brothers costumer Howard Shoup. Brooks and "Shoupie," as she nicknamed him, had become fast friends on the set of GOD'S GIFT TO WOMEN eight years prior. With the small amount of money she earned from the studio, Louise commissioned a new wardrobe from the designer. Unfortunately, the Brooks-O'Shea studio proved to be only slightly more financially successful than its subsequent Kansas counterpart. In a short period of time, Louise would sell the studio to O'Shea for $2,500, then promptly board a train for Wichita, Kansas. There, Louise would find that if she'd hated Hollywood, Wichita was an even less endearing town to its once celebrated prodigal daughter.
1940 — Purgatory Waltz
Louise Brooks
Photographed by Charles Bartlett
Promotional Photograph for Brooks Dance Studio
1940 · Wichita, Kansas
Photographed for the second of Brooks' short-lived dance studios, Louise once again donned her trademark bangs, this time looking more like an aristocratic Bettie Page than the androgynous imp of the 20s. The photo also appeared on the cover of her first serious literary effort: a pamphlet of thirty-six pages entitled "The Fundamentals of Good Ballroom Dancing." The booklet was published exclusively in Wichita as a means of advertisement for the Brooks studio. Unfortunately, like the studio, "The Fundamentals of Good Ballroom Dancing" was not what one would deem a wild success. About 500 of the 750 pamphlets found a permanent home in the landfill, and the dance studio would last less than a year.