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.