Louise Brooks

by Barry Paris

No other movie actress made so strong an impact with so short a roster of films. Yet Louise Brooks spent a quarter of a century in oblivion before an unsought "resurrection" confirmed her place in cinema history and generated her brilliant second career as a writer-iconoclast. Her story begins in turn-of-the-century Kansas: at age ten, a seasoned performer; at fifteen, discovered by Ted Shawn and soon touring nationwide with Martha Graham and the Denishawn company; at seventeen, fired from Denishawn as a "bad influence" - and on to Broadway, to the 1925 Ziegfeld Follies (and an affair with Charlie Chaplin). And at nineteen, signed to a ten-picture contract by Paramount, Louise Brooks became a flapper supreme, a symbol of Jazz Age caprice and the new sexual freedom. Women all over America copied her look, but they could never copy her style. "Love is a publicity stunt," she said, "and making love - after the first curious raptures - is only another petulant way to pass the time waiting