Little known 1931 interview with Louise Brooks uncovered

It's rare these days when a truly "new" (meaning little seen) image or magazine clipping about Louise Brooks comes to light. Many of the images which circulate online are "recycled" from past posts on eBay or Facebook or Pinterest or a blog or website, including this. But still, new material occasionally comes to light.

Just recently, additional years of the two main Wichita newspapers have come online. I have been systematically plowing through them, gleaming bits of new information, some of which I have been adding to my extensive three part chronology on the Louise Brooks Society website beginning at Louise Brooks: Day by Day 1906-1939 part 1. 

I was a bit gobsmacked when I came across a new-to-me May 1931 interview with Louise Brooks which appeared in the Wichita Eagle and which contains a new-to-me portrait of the star. The occasion for the piece, "Pajamas the Latest Thing in Hollywood, Wichita Star Says," was Brooks return to Wichita for a brief, three day visit. A reporter caught wind or her arrival, and spoke with the star at her parent's home.

 

 

Aside from a factual error, i.e., the fact that Brooks was a Paramount actress and not a First National star, what I find remarkable about this piece is Brooks' candor. The anonymous reporter asked about Hollywood trends and hairstyles, and after asking about pajamas, Brooks referenced Marlene Dietrich, her supposed rival for the role of Lulu. I wish she had said more.

Brooks seemingly refused to comment ("was non-committal") when asked to dish further Hollywood gossip, but she did let slip on hot Hollywood couple of the moment Estelle Taylor and Jack Dempsey, who she apparently said where having difficulty over money matters. And regarding Clara Bow, for whom Brooks had a genuine affection, she said the "titian-haired star" had suffered a nervous breakdown and was recovering in a sanatorium and "hiding away from blackmailers." To be sure, the marriage difficulties experienced by Taylor and Dempsey were reported on in the press, as was Bow's emotional distress and trouble with those who sought to exploit her. But that fact that Brooks mentioned them specifically suggests to me a personal awareness of those star's public difficulties.

At the time Brooks gave this interview, she was only 25 years old, yet she speaks like an old-timer pointing out the behavior of the young whipper snappers nipping at her heals. "Really life among the stars who are really big in their profession is as matter-of-fact as that of any prosperous and highly respected business man," Brooks declared. "Take a party in Hollywood, for instance," Brooks continued. "The kids and newcomers to the screen. who don't really amount to much, throw wild parties and get their names over the front pages, but the really worthwhile people there have dinner, play bridge and go home early so that they can be fit for the next day's work in the studios." Either Brooks or the reporter who transcribed this interview really liked the word "really."

The newspaper reporter was likely tasked with asking Brooks about something more than just Hollywood gossip. That newsworthy something was a concern shared by everyone everywhere in the country. In 1931, the one thing on everyone's mind was the depression then ransacking the nation. Brooks seems to have had a real awareness of the hurt everyday people were suffering, including those in the bubble known as Hollywood. The article notes, "The depression which has slowed down business over the United States the past year is just now being felt in the film colonies, Miss Brooks said. Several hundred workmen have been laid off in the various studios and the production of pictures has slowed down considerably in the last few weeks." The pieces continues, and Brooks exaggerates a bit to make a point. "Actors and actresses are also taking the depression more seriously than many suspect. Instead of rushing out and buying a couple of Rolls Royces out of one pay check, they save their money and invest it in something that will pay good dividends, she declared." Unfortunately, Brooks didn't act as cautiously as she said others did. She was something of a live-for-today spendthrift. In 1932, she declared bankruptcy.

By the time Brooks gave this interview, she had completed work on three films, each of which were released in 1931. It is interesting that Brooks said at the end of the piece that she would be out of pictures for a year, as she hoped to act on the stage. Her stage work, in a NYC production of Norma Krasna’s comedy, Louder, Please, came to naught. Brooks did not return to pictures for five years, when she appeared in the Buck Jones western, Empty Saddles.

By the way, Louise's pretty younger sister, June, who is pictured in the clipping above, never had the Hollywood career she had once hoped for and is mention at the end of the article. She ended up going to college at Wichita State University before eventually relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area in California.