THE FIRST AND ONLY FEMME FATALE
Kim DuToit has chosen a woman almost none of you have heard of as his "Babe of the Week." Her name is Louise Brooks, arguably the woman who most perfectly embodies the 20s; gorgeous to a fault; smoldering eyes that insinuated a heat of sexuality and possible availability; a cinematic wet dream to anyone who ever saw her. She also had that fragility of talent like F.Scott Fitzgerald, so delicate that you felt she might shatter before your eyes and be gone forever; a crystal wine goblet so brittle it breaks if it is stored incorrectly. She is an actress from the silent era, THE femme fatale of movies both here and in Europe, a successful dancer, stage actress, and writer. I met her when I was doing a play in Hollywood about a famous silent era murder that took place in the 20s. I was 23 years old and one night this incredible looking woman came into the theater and sat in the audience with the director. She was at least 60 and none of us guys could take our eyes off of her. After talking with our director for ten minutes she got up and glided out the front door. After she left I asked the director, "Who in the fuck was that?"
"That my young friend, is the most beautiful woman ever put on this earth." After a long pause he added, "And also the most unhappy." Her bio by Barry Paris is one of the best reads there is. None of us can really appreciate her unless we get to see a silent movie called Pandora's Box, which was banned in all the right places; a story about the femme fatale named Lou Lou (played by Brooks) "who wreaks emotional and physical havoc on a repressed doctor, his naive son and a lesbian Countess before finding her destiny with Jack the Ripper!" (How's that for a fucking plot?). Directed by the famous German director, G.W. Pabst, it is shown uncut on TCM once in a while. There is a terrific layout of her over at the site of the world famous photographer, Eugene Richee, who actually became a genius only after shooting photos of Brooks. It is one of his photos that is at the top of this post and if you venture to any Brooks site you will note that she is always completely covered in every photograph known.
2 comments:
Great entry, Howard, even though I've never cared for Brooks all that much, though her talent always impressed the hell out of me (I'm more of a Pola Negri man).
BTW - was that play you were doing the William Desmond Taylor murder?
No, it was a fictional account of the Fatty Arbucle thing in which a murder took place instead of just a rape. Piece of shit, but I think Brooks was called in to talk about the period and stuff. Never spoke to her, I mean no matter how good a 60 year old woman looks, no 23 year old in his right mind would want to fuck her.
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