IN REMEMBERENCE OF LOUISE BROOKS

People who were raised on Twilight and Harry Potter teen films probably never heard of Louise Brooks.  However, she was a really huge film actress in the silent film era.  Mary Louise Brooks was born in Cherryvale, Kansas on November 14, 1906.  She died in Rochester, New York on August 8, 1985 at age 78.  Nicknamed Lulu, she was a huge icon who dominated Hollywood before the start of it's Golden Era.  The Golden Era of Hollywood had no place for Louise Brooks when silent films switched to talking sound films.  Louse Brooks was a talented piano player and started her entertainment industry career as a ballet dancer.  She started off with an uncredited acting role in the 1925 era movie The Street of Forgotten Men.  She starred in twenty-four movies stretching between 1925 to 1938.  Other films she starred in were The American Venus, A Social Celebrity, It's the Old Army Game, The Show Off, Just Another Blonde, Love 'Em and Leave 'Em, Evening Clothes, Rolled Stockings, Now we're in the Air, The City Gone Wild, A Girl in Every Port, Beggers of Life, The Canary Murder Case, Pandora's Box, Diary of a Lost Girl, Prix de Beauté, It Pays to Advertise, God's Gift to Women, Windy Riley Goes Hollywood, Empty Saddles, When You're in Love, King of Gamblers  and Overland Stage Raiders.  Overland Stage Raiders had her playing John Wayne's girlfriend.  Despite being a John Wayne film, it's not available on digital video disk.  She turned down the female lead role in the James Cagney film The Public Enemy.  I guess she didn't want James Cagney to shove a  grapefruit into her face.

After she retired from Hollywood, she briefly drifted to Wichita, Kansas.  She married twice and she divorced twice without children.  She tried and failed to operate a dance studio.  She did some work on radio and was a gossip column in a newspaper.  Not cut out for the life as a paparazzi, she worked minimum wage at Sax Fifth Avenue,  Not cut out for life in minimum wage employment either, she sold her body for money for a while.  She died of a heart attack on August 8, 1985.  She was also suffering from, but not dying from arthritis and emphysema.