Louise Brooks

 Louise Brooks (November 14, 1906 – August 8, 1985)

Brooks is best known as the lead in three feature films made in Europe, including two G. W. Pabst films: Pandora's Box (1929), Diary of a Lost Girl (1929), and Prix de Beauté (Miss Europe, 1930). She starred in seventeen silent films and eight sound films before retiring in 1935. Brooks made her screen debut in the silent The Street of Forgotten Men, in an uncredited role in 1925. Soon, however, she was playing the female lead in a number of silent light comedies and flapper films over the next few years, starring with Adolphe Menjou and W. C. Fields, among others. When talkies exploded onto the screen and Paramount used her voice as an excuse to not give her a raise, she shocked the studio system by walking out on her contract. Her seemingly effortless incarnation of sensuality attracted the attention of German director G.W. Pabst who cast her as Lulu in the movie Pandora's Box(1929). Brooks soon returned to Hollywood, but at that point her popularity had declined. She was relegated to B movies, and left the movies after a few years. She emerged in the 1950s-1970s as a respected, articulate historian and writer when a revival of the silent film era opened in the film industry. In 1982, three years before her death, she published Lulu In Hollywood, a reflection on her career. Louise Brooks died of a heart attack at age 78 in 1985, and is buried at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Rochester, NY.