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Mary Louise Brooks (November 14, 1906 August 8, 1985), generally known by her stage name Louise Brooks, was an American dancer, model, showgirl and silent film actress, famous for pioneering the bobbed haircut. Brooks is best known for her three feature roles including two G. W. Pabst films in Pandora's Box (1929), Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), and Prix de Beauté (Miss Europe) (1930). She starred in 17 silent films and, late in life, authored a memoir, Lulu in Hollywood.
She made an appearance as a featured dancer in the 1925edition of the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway, also having an affiar with Charlie Chaplin that Summer.
French film historians rediscovered her films in the early 1950s, proclaiming her as an actress who surpassed even Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo as a film icon (Henri Langlois "There is no Garbo, there is no Dietrich, there is only Louise Brooks!"), much to her amusement.
Brooks had retired from the screen that same year after completing one last film, the John Wayne western Overland Stage Raiders in which she played the romantic lead with a long hairstyle that rendered her all but unrecognizable from her "Lulu" days. She then briefly returned to Wichita, where she was raised. "But that turned out to be another kind of hell," she said. "The citizens of Wichita either resented me having been a success or despised me for being a failure. And I wasn't exactly enchanted with them. I must confess to a lifelong curse My own failure as a social creature." After an unsuccessful attempt at operating a dance studio, she returned East and, after brief stints as a radio actor and a gossip columnist, worked as a salesgirl in a Saks Fifth Avenue store in New York City for a few years, then eked out a living as a courtesan with a few select wealthy men as clients. Brooks had been a heavy drinker since age and was an alcoholic for a major portion of her life and some biographers have suggested that she turned to prostitution.
On August 8, 1985, Louise Brooks was found dead of a massive heart attack. She was buried in Sepulchre Cemetery in Rochester, New York.
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She made an appearance as a featured dancer in the 1925edition of the Ziegfeld Follies on Broadway, also having an affiar with Charlie Chaplin that Summer.
French film historians rediscovered her films in the early 1950s, proclaiming her as an actress who surpassed even Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo as a film icon (Henri Langlois "There is no Garbo, there is no Dietrich, there is only Louise Brooks!"), much to her amusement.
Brooks had retired from the screen that same year after completing one last film, the John Wayne western Overland Stage Raiders in which she played the romantic lead with a long hairstyle that rendered her all but unrecognizable from her "Lulu" days. She then briefly returned to Wichita, where she was raised. "But that turned out to be another kind of hell," she said. "The citizens of Wichita either resented me having been a success or despised me for being a failure. And I wasn't exactly enchanted with them. I must confess to a lifelong curse My own failure as a social creature." After an unsuccessful attempt at operating a dance studio, she returned East and, after brief stints as a radio actor and a gossip columnist, worked as a salesgirl in a Saks Fifth Avenue store in New York City for a few years, then eked out a living as a courtesan with a few select wealthy men as clients. Brooks had been a heavy drinker since age and was an alcoholic for a major portion of her life and some biographers have suggested that she turned to prostitution.
On August 8, 1985, Louise Brooks was found dead of a massive heart attack. She was buried in Sepulchre Cemetery in Rochester, New York.
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