Louise Brooks - Lulu In Hollywood

[dem bones]

Louise Brooks - Lulu In Hollywood (Hamish Hamilton, 1982: £4.95 net)

Jacket design by Gerard Huerta based on an original 1929 German poster for Pandora's Box

William Shawn - Introduction

Kansas To New York
On Location With Billy Wellman
Marion Davies' Niece
Humphrey And Bogey
The Other Face Of W C Fields
Gish and Garbo
Pabst And Lulu

Lotte H. Eisner - A Witness Speaks
Filmography

Blurb:
'It should not come to us as a surprise that a film actress can write, but, so narrow are our expectations, it does. We are even more surprised when it turns out that the actress is one of the great beauties of all time. And we are out-and-out astonished when we learn that to many people she is the most sexually alluring woman ever to have appeared on the screen.' So says William Shawn, in his introduction to this extraordinary book. Lcuise Brooks had, in a sense, disappeared. She had not acted for decades, few realised that she was even alive. Then the late Kenneth Tynan wrote a remarkable profile of her, and the world awoke and took notice. For Louise Brooks was– and is – a phenomenon. And these are her own words.

Lulu in Hollywood is certainly autobiography. It is the searing, utterly frank story of a rise to stardom and a vertiginous descent into the moral and spiritual depths. It is also a vivid picture of Hollywod in the early days of Louise Brooks's friends ... and enemies; of Humphrey Bogart and W. C. Fields, of Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst, of Lillian Gish and Greta Garbo. But, most compelling, it is the story of how a girl was taken over by the most famous part she played, that of Lulu in Pabst's celebrated recreation in Wedekind's Pandora's Box, how she was changed by it and perhaps ruined by it.

A French critic once wrote of Louise Brooks: 'She is the only woman who had the ability to transfigure no matter what film into a masterpiece .. . Louise is the most perfect apparition, the dream woman, the being without whom the cinema would be a poor thing.' After seeing her as Lulu and after reading this book, no one could disagree.

'This book is a fine achievement. It is not only a major contribution to real as opposed to fabricated film history. It is a serious and absolutely absorbing profile of a "dumb chorus girl" who read Schopenhauer between takes, slept with anyone who took her eye . . . and became a genuine first-rate writer. I loved this book.' – Clancy Sigal, Guardian

'Brooks's prose is precise, considered and sharply evocative . . . Her circuitous observations bring a vanished era into close-up . . . She's a brilliant historian.' – Walter Clemons, Newsweek

'Brooks brings personal experience and a very sharp, original eye for the salient detail to bear on subject matter that has been made stale with layers of myth but now is revealed as supremely interesting when penetrated to its core. Brooks is not only a great former beauty who has been around, she is a formidable personality and writer. This is a very good book indeed.' – Matthew Hoffman, Time Out

Seem to be back in the book fairy's favour again, as I nabbed this gem from charity shop on the author's birthday. The Goth volunteer on till sized me up with new admiration in her contempt when I waltzed up to the counter clutching this beauty to my bosom. I love that, in so many of her publicity photo's, 'Lulu' is clutching a book or magazine.