Louise Brooks in a publicity still for The Canary Murder Case (1929, dir. Malcolm St. Clair) (via)

Louise Brooks & Gustav Diessl in Pandora’s Box (1929, dir. G.W. Pabst) (via)

Louise Brooks and Fritz Rasp in Diary of a Lost Girl (1929, dir. G.W. Pabst) (via)

Louise Brooks in publicity still for Pandora’s Box (1929, dir. G.W. Pabst)

During the filming of Pandora’s Box, [G.W. Pabst] asked Louise Brooks, as Lulu, just emerged from taking a shower and coming into the living room to greet her lover, Alva (portrayed by Franz Lederer), “What do you have on under that robe?”

“My slip,” answered Miss Brooks.

“Go back in the bathroom and take it off,” said Pabst, which she did. 

When she returned, wearing just the robe, she asked her director, “Mr. Pabst, why did you make me take my slip off? The audience won’t know that I have nothing on under my bathrobe.”

“That’s right,” he replied. “The audience won’t know, but he’ll know,” he said, pointing at Lederer, “and he’ll play the scene with you differently, knowing that, than he would if he didn’t know it. And that’s what I want, that difference.”

Miss Brooks told me this story and I think it underlines the point I’m trying to make that the director must do everything he can think of to feel that the scene is ready to be played to the maximum that he can feel. If he feels it, the audience will feel it. Ergo - the director as psychologist.”

-Herman G. Weinberg, excerpted from The Complete Wedding March (1975)

“For all actors know that truly natural acting is rejected by the audience. Although people are better equipped to judge acting than any other art, the hypocrisy of ‘sincerity’ prevents them from admitting that they too are always acting some part of their own invention. To be a successful actor, then, it is necessary to add some eccentricities and mystery to naturalness so that the audience can admire and puzzle over something different from itself.”

-Louise Brooks, Lulu in Hollywood (photo via Kobal Collection, c. 1929)

Excerpted from mid-1960’s letter from Brooks to a friend:

“The BBC interview, which ran 50 minutes, was pretty good, although the kid who interviewed me was a screaming pansy. Happily, we did not discuss [Charlie] Chaplin. That such a barren little man could have produced such a monumental collection of work is beyond belief.

I have been so busy defending him over the last decades that I had forgotten, until I read his book, how very vulgar and cheap he was…His character becomes more Dorian Gray-ish—his films becoming more wonderful as he devolves into something frightful, vapid, and crass. Another fine example of the missing link between genius and humanity!!”

Regards,

Louise Brooks

(Scan of full letter here/via, photo via)

Louise Brooks in Pandora’s Box (1929, G.W. Pabst)

Louise Brooks in publicity still for Pandora’s Box (1929, dir. G.W. Pabst)

“In writing the history of a life I believe absolutely that the reader cannot understand the character and deeds of the subject unless he is given a basic understanding of that person’s sexual loves and hates and conflicts. It is the only way the reader can make sense out of innumerable apparently senseless actions.

To paraphrase Proust: how often do we change the whole course of our lives in pursuit of a love that we will have forgotten within a few months. We flatter ourselves when we assume that we have restored the sexual integrity which was expurgated by the Victorians. I too am unwilling to write the sexual truth that would make my life worth reading. I cannot unbuckle the Bible Belt. That is why I will never write my memoirs.”

-Louise Brooks, “Why I Will Never Write My Memoirs”, Lulu in Hollywood

“For two extraordinary years I have been working on it - learning to write - but mostly learning how to tell the truth. At first it is quite impossible. You make yourself better than anybody, then worse than anybody, and when you finally come to see you are “like” everybody - that is the bitterest blow of all to the ego.

But in the end it is only the truth, no matter how ugly or shameful, that is right, that fits together, that makes real people, and strangely enough, beauty.” 

-Louise Brooks on writing her memoirs 

(via)

Louise Brooks, 1925

Louise Brooks, Ziegfeld Follies of 1925