LOUISE BROOKS (1906-1985)



It may seem odd to include an actress whose career spanned little more than a decade and whose reputation rests almost entirely on two movies on a list of the greatest leading ladies of all time. Yet in the case of Louise Brooks, no explanation should be required. A former Ziegfeld Girl, Brooks came to Hollywood at a time when the biggest female draw was “American’s Sweetheart” Mary Pickford, who continued playing girlish characters well into her thirties. With her trademark black bob, pouty mouth and decidedly adult sensuality, Brooks couldn’t fit the type if she tried, and her outspoken nature and resistance to the narrow range of roles offered her led her to walk out on her Paramount contract. Effectively blackballed by the studios, she quickly fell in with German filmmaker G.W. Pabst, a collaboration that resulted in her two most famous films, Pandora’s Box and Diary of a Lost Girl. Thousands of miles from Hollywood, Brooks was finally able to play roles perfectly suited to her persona -- sexually-liberated, independent, and defiant. Her two films with Pabst finally brought her real big-screen stardom, and surely enough, Hollywood lured her back. Alas, the studios still didn’t know what to do with her (turning down the female lead in The Public Enemy probably didn’t help) and Brooks’ career fizzled out by the end of the 1930s. But big-screen stardom was only one chapter in Brooks’ fascinating life -- after her retirement, she worked as a ballroom-dancing teacher and a salesgirl, and for a time she was the mistress of CBS founder William Paley before becoming a call girl. But perhaps Brooks’ greatest post-fame role was as a writer and vivid raconteur of the classic era of Hollywood, whose witty memoirs of her younger days contain some of the best writing in the genre. Even in her written work, she remained defiant and unapologetic -- unmistakably, quintessentially Louise Brooks.

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If we all hit puberty overnight on our 21st birthdays, American life would be a helluva lot less complicated. But, as the recent Miley Cyrus “back-gate” scandal revealed, teenage sexuality is a topic that America doesn’t want to think about, even as it just can't seem to stop thinking about it.

On the one hand, most of us had (or at least thought about) sex in high school...on the other hand, once we’re adults, we’re all supposed to conveniently forget our memories and fantasies of adolescent lust.  On the one hand, sex education is viewed as promoting underage promiscuity...but on the other hand, abstinence-only education tends to lead to a lot of unwanted pregnancy, since teenagers somehow figure out how to have sex even without classroom lectures about condoms. On the one hand, innocent teachers, day care workers, 19-year-olds with 17-year-old girlfriends and that 6-year-old boy who smacked a female classmate on the butt have all been branded for life as sexual offenders based on false or flimsy charges in hysterical witch hunts to “protect the children” at all costs...on the other hand, research indicates 20-25% of girls and 5-15% of boys in the U.S. experience some form of abuse as children, the Catholic Church ignored its institutional abuse scandals and the international sex trade in young flesh is thriving.

Clearly, we’re a little conflicted about the whole sex thing. Sure, we’re all shocked and disgusted by those creeps on To Catch A Predator...but somebody out there is watching Gossip Girl, sneaking peeks at Barely Legal magazine, lusting after Zac Efron and buying sexy cheerleader outfits from the Frederick's of Hollywood catalogue...and it’s not all just teens and predators.  In fact, if we here at the Screengrab didn’t know better, we’d almost think Americans fetishize taboos instead of just being honest about them, leading to some pretty screwy behavior...AND the following list of films that reside in that dangerous grey area between sexual initiation and exploitation.

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Movie lovers will find a lot to enjoy in Stop Smiling 32, the "Hollywood Lost and Found" issue: interviews with Robert Towne and Robert Evans (not in the same room, thank God) and Bruce Dern, Susan Tyrrell, and Harry Dean Stanton (ditto); film scholar and Los Angeles Plays Itself director Thom Anderson and Diane Keaton offer their takes on L.A.; a Jim Hoberman essay on Sam Fuller's The Steel Helmet, illustrated with pages from Fuller's World War II notebooks; tributes to Barbara Stanwyck, Preston Sturges, Fritz Lang, Louise Brooks, Dorothy Malone, Frank Tashlin, and other worthies; and reflections on the movies by poet John Ashberry and underground comics god Kim Deitch. All this plus a photo, from 1985, of cinematographer Caleb Deschanel letting his tiny daughter, Zooey, take a look through the camera lens, that will redefine your previous conception of the term "Awwwwwwww!!" — Phil Nugent