Louise Brooks with her sharply bobbed hair is one of the most iconic figures of 1920s cinema, but I realised I didn’t know much about this enigmatic figure. This is what I discovered…

1. Louise Brooks started off as a chorus girl and dancer in 1922, and by 1925 was a dancer for Ziegfeld’s Follies.
2. It was as a Follies girl that she was spotted by Paramount Pictures. She was also spotted by Charlie Chaplin and the two of them had an affair.
3. Her trademark bobbed haircut sparked a trend which was copied by bright young things everywhere.
4. She left Paramount pictures and moved to Europe where she made her 3 most well known movies but didn’t work much on her return as she had been unofficially blacklisted by the major Hollywood studios.
5. Louise Brooks had a one night stand with Greta Garbo
   
6. During her 10 year movie career Louise Brooks starred 25 movies (17 silent films and 8 talkies) before retiring in 1935.
7. Brooks published her memoir, Lulu in Hollywood, in 1982. I must search out a copy of that to read!
8. Brooks died in 1985 aged 78
9. She starred in seventeen silent films and eight sound films before retiring in 1935.
10. Her last movie was the 1938 western Overland Stage Raiders with John Wayne.

Read more from our “10 things you didn’t know about…” series

If you’d like to learn more about Louise Brooks I recommend The Louise Brooks Society

 

Source and copyright:This is a press photograph from the George Grantham Bain collection, which was purchased by the Library of Congress in 1948. According to the library, there are no known restrictions on the use of these photos.