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Lulu in Hollywood: Expanded Edition | 
 enlarge | Author: Louise Brooks
Creator: Kenneth Tynan
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
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Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 238950
Media: Paperback
Edition: Exp Sub
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 184
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8.8 x 7.8 x 0.6
ISBN: 0816637318
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.43028092
EAN: 9780816637317
ASIN: 0816637318
Publication Date: July 10, 2000
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Product Description
Film Introduction by Kenneth Tynan The collected writings of this icon of the silent era, in a new, more complete edition. Louise Brooks (1906-1985) is one of the most famous actresses of the silent era, renowned as much for her rebellion against the Hollywood system as for her performances in such influential films as Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl. Eight autobiographical essays by Brooks, on topics ranging from her childhood in Kansas and her early days as a Denishawn and Ziegfeld Follies dancer to her friendships with Martha Graham, Charles Chaplin, W. C. Fields, Humphrey Bogart, William Paley, G. W. Pabst, and others are collected here. New to this edition is the revelatory "Why I Will Never Write My Memoirs" by Brooks and "The Girl in the Black Helmet" by Kenneth Tynan, which brought about the revival of interest in her work and was the best discussion of Brooks's film work to appear in her lifetime. "The writing is assured, graceful, and magnetic; the life the dancer-actress-author describes makes most fiction trivial by comparison. . . . This is no ordinary collection of gossipy memoirs. It is a tour de force, as history and as a searching study of human nature." Publishers Weekly "Brooks is brilliantly perceptive and articulate on everything from the art of film directing to the comedy of W. C. Fields." New York Times "A minor classic." Film Quarterly Translation Inquiries: Alfred A. Knopf
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 A distant view of harmless shadows July 24, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I first read LULU IN HOLLYWOOD long ago but I did not see Louise Brooks in a full-length feature until I bought PANDORA'S BOX on DVD a couple of years ago. I believe you have to see her on film to truly "get" her. While I don't agree at all with the French proclamation, "There is no Garbo, there is no Dietrich, there is only Louise Brooks", I was impressed by her performance and her intensely charismatic and erotic/quixotic presence. She should've become a superstar after this - but the times and her own idiosyncrasies were against her. She faded into obscurity, alcohol, poverty, ill-fame till the 1950's.
LULU IN HOLLYWOOD is of most interest to Brooks aficiandos. I recently re-read the book and enjoyed it - but this time around I was more aware of the ax Brooks was grinding. Most of her essays are ostensibly about Hollywood stars and creatures of the movie business, but she is really writing about herself and what she writes is telling. Brooks had earlier written of herself that she was "selfish and stubborn" with a "rotten temper", and that's obvious, but she is also cleverly observant. While I agree with another reviewer that she tends to generalize and ramble, she can be poetic:
"...he reduced reality to exclude all but his work, filling the gaps with alcohol whose dim eyes transformed the world into a distant view of harmless shadows." ("The Other Face of W.C. Fields")
More than the book, I recommend the Criterion Collection's PANDORA'S BOX DVD package. The film is a classic. Brooks is captivating and the viewer instantly understands the uproar that ensued when the film and the star were rediscovered. This set includes the TCM production, LOOKING FOR LULU, Kenneth Tynan's profile, a 70's interview with Brooks herself, etc. Lots of extras.
I highly recommend LOUISE BROOKS, the 1989 bio by Barry Paris. It's extremely thorough and well-written. Paris is very even-handed in his treatment of Brooks. He provides much background and documentation but leaves conclusions to the reader.
 Quintessential Lulu (Louise Brooks) January 8, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
What made Louise Brooks interesting beyond just the typical celebrity she was unusually intelligent. She was an extraordinary beautiful woman but if that were all - she would have been just another face in the Hollywood crowd albeit a striking one. Her life was not so much one of just ups and downs but most generally straight down starting at the top. Lucky to have so much success early in life but maybe unlucky for her vision as to witness the folly of those who gave it. Louise's insights and critical assessment of her life and those around her were a " blessing and curse" but then again she had no choice but to follow her own mind as it played out to the end. She was certainly not one to parlay her attributes as a cunning femme fatale as it were but she existed as a passing player through a masquerade of "bread and circuses" orchestrated by those with lesser sensibilities. No, Lulu could have never been satisfied with the status quo, the mundane of the hoi polloi, the trappings of the superficial she was an individual who saw life in its raw form and played no game and for those who did not understand Louise - missed - that her only glory was the truth and its price to pay. She was an intriguing and talented woman who deserved more but would not sell her soul to gain it. Her book tells of her life and times and the pathos within it.
I will recommend highly Barry Paris' biography of Louise Brooks as a necessary read for anyone interested in reading about the life and times of Louise Brooks. The book is excellent and engrossing. It gives a most informative detail of all aspects of Lulu's life. Actually Paris' book should be read first to gain a comprehensive overview of Brook's life before reading "Lulu in Hollywood." A better biography you could not read.
sharp but rambling June 25, 2007
This book will be helpful for anyone interested in silent film. Brooks' insights about certain aspects of Hollywood are original. She has no fear of revealing some of the ugliest secrets of the past, and also has valuable things to say about why she believes certain directors and players created works of art. However, in my opinion she could have been a better writer if she'd had more education and/or editorial experience. Some of her essays are rambling and disorganized, and a number of her claims are unsupported. (e.g., that many actresses were pulled from the screen not because of the arrival of sound, but because they couldn't live up to Garbo, p.88.) She also tends to make bold generalizations (e.g., "Every actor has a natural animosity toward every other actor"), which, depending on whether you agree with them, are either smart and charming or arrogant and imprecise.
Some of Brooks' cleverest comments are reported in the introduction by Kenneth Tynan, not in her own writings. My favorite was her joking suggestion that she and Marlene Dietrich write each other's memoirs: "'Lulu' by Lola, and 'Lola' by Lulu".
Note: this is a collection of essays, which don't necessarily follow a sequence. The brief history of her family and childhood given in the first chapter fooled me into thinking this book would be an autobiography, but Brooks leaves much of her own story untold. (In fact, the epilogue is titled, "Why I Will Never Write My Memoirs.") Tynan's introduction fleshes out a little more of Louise Brooks' history, but fans will probably want to keep looking for other writings and biographies after they've read this one.
A beauty unparalleled in film history July 10, 2005
12 out of 13 found this review helpful
This book is a collection of Brooks's autobiographical essays together with an interview by Kenneth Tynan.
It shows a Louise Brooks as a fiercely independent character, as well as her failure as a social creature, because of her open critic of people's false faces.
But at what price? She survives as a kept woman by three lovers and ends in poverty, rejected and lonely.
She characterizes her work in Hollywood's film factory as slavery and throws a shrill light on Hollywood's morals (the casting couch) and cynicism: the end of the silent period served as an excuse to terminate all contracts.
The all important feature of her life was sex, not love: 'I have never been in love.' But, 'A person's sexual loves and hates and conflicts ... It is the only way the reader can make sense out of innumerable apparently senseless actions.'
She considers that 'the most fateful encounter in my life' was a sexual one with George Preston Marshall.
Nevertheless, she had some regrets: '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.'
She never wrote her biography because 'I am unwilling to write the sexual truth that would make up my life worth reading.'
Barry PARIS did it for her, admirably. His book contains also a few corrections on Louise Brooks's statements in her book.
A moving text with admirable pictures.
Musings Of A Rebel. September 29, 2004
48 out of 50 found this review helpful
I remember when this book came out, but, unfortunately, it took me over twenty years to read it. Though Louise Brooks is far from a household name, in film scholar circles, she is an icon. Her rememberances here of certain individuals and events from her years in the "Dream Factory" are brilliant. Aside from the fact that these are names that most are familiar with, Bogart, Hearst, Pabst...it is her writing style and unique observations that make these recollections interesting. Where as someone as, say, Adela Rogers St. John, a famous reporter and contemporary of Brooks, wrote accurately of that long ago time, her dusty rememberances would only interest the most devoted of film student or fan. But Brooks writings are so fresh and witty and humourous, often at her own expense. She is not only unimpressed with most of silly society, but, she was equally unimpressed with her status as film icon. In those pre Hepburn-Davis times, she was a true rebel, who was more than willing to saboutage her career rather than do anything she didn't want to do. There is no remorse detectable in her memories of her fall from status. Though it would be unfair to imply that most film stars would not be expected to be good writers, it was surprising, then and now, to find that Miss Brooks was such a highly intelligent and captivating writer. In my review of her most famous film, "Pandora's Box", which isn't so much a review of that film as it is a homage to our Miss Brooks, I recounted my having met her more than once, when I delivered her prescriptions to her in my hometown and her final, adopted city of Rochester, New York. I was very young at the time, and though I had been told that she had once been a famous actress, which fascinated me, I am sorry to have to honestly admit that my memory of her is only of a shadowy figure who I remember with intimidation. How I would have loved to have been a little older, to possibly converse with this great lady, though she may have found what undoubtedly would have been my reverence to her "legend" as film icon to be obnoxious at the least, silly at best. Well, never mind. She was and is wonderful. And, as this book attests, a scathingly intelligent lady. Celebrities of her league are no more, now we have tarts, thugs, and arrogant, illiterate self-important jerks showing off their bling-bling. How sad. If you want to hear the entertainingly clever views of this great lady who, though she went from brilliant star to near- pauper obscurity, yet never lost her class, intellect, nor pride, then read "Lulu In Hollywood." One wishes she had written much more, and, left behind more films where her inate brilliance reaches out from the screen eighty years later. But, if all we have is this book and "Pandora's Box", that's legacy enough.
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