Book Reviewed: Lulu in Hollywood by Louise Brooks

Reflections on inner fury

This is actress Louise Brooks memoir that reflects on the rise and fall of her movie career. She wrote this book after a lifetime to reflect on her work in United States and Europe. There are eight essays. Some of them are about Hollywood’s definitions of success and failure, and how actors are manipulated by studios and the press. Brooks writes stardom is an abrasive disease. Her writings are eloquent, beautiful, and straight from her heart. She had decades to recollect after her fall from grace in movie business. She covers a wide range of topics from her childhood in Wichita, Kansas. Then her teenage years with the Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts in Los Angeles, California., where she met Martha Graham, Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. She also reminisces about her work in Ziegfeld Follies in New York and her friendships with Charles Chaplin, W.C. Fields, CBS founder William Paley, and Austrian director G.W. Pabst.

In the movie Pandora’s Box, Lulu is the mistress of a publisher. This role played by Louise Brooks carried her to fame and success although it was short. Reflecting on her own life, she complains that it is harder for a reader to understand without knowing the character, personal conflicts and challenges in her life. She observes that she is unwilling to write about the sexual truth that would make her life worth reading. Since she cannot unbuckle Bible Belt, she would spare the curious readers about the challenges of her as a woman in the movie industry.

In her younger days Brooks read books by philosophers like Arthur Schopenhauer, George Bernard Shaw, and Friedrich Nietzsche. She had academic interest in intellectual topics despite tremendous amount of misfortunes in her life. She contemplated suicide until William S. Paley, the founder of CBS started sending her monthly checks for decades out of his kindness.