Biography for Louise Brooks

When a series of lackluster roles failed to establish her as a major star, Brooks--who led a highly publicized social life and was known to read Schopenhauer between takes--left Hollywood and headed for Germay at the invitation of G.W. Pabst. It was under Pabst's guidance, in the twilight of the silent era, that Brooks gave two performances which helped redefine the art of screen acting; first as the amoral Lulu in "Pandora's Box" and shortly thereafter in "The Diary of a Lost Girl" (both 1929). Both films flopped in the US, however, and Brooks, whose increasingly sporadic film career was over by 1940, began a gradual, tragic slide into oblivion.

The critical rediscovery of Brooks' work began during the "60 Ans de Cinema" exhibition at the Musee National d'Art Moderne in 1955, when Henri Langlois issued the rallying cry: "There is no Garbo! There is no Dietrich! There is only Louise Brooks!"

With the help of figures such as William S. Paley and film historian James Card, the destitute Brooks was relocated to Rochester, New York, where her second career, as an acerbic, perceptive film essayist, began in earnest.

The two greatest boosts to the enduring cult of Louise Brooks were the appearance of Kenneth Tynan's celebrated New Yorker profile, "The Girl in the Black Helmet," in 1979, followed by the publication, to lavish praise, of Brooks' collected writings, "Lulu in Hollywood", in 1982.