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Louise Brooks was born Mary Louise Brooks in 1906, and she was always unconventional. She was the daughter of a Kansas lawyer, but she left at the age of 16 to go to New York and join Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn with their Denishawn dancers. Two years later she had a falling out with Shawn and was fired. She then worked in the George White's Scandals, the Ziegfeld Follies (where she was a semi-nude dancer, and was noticed, and signed to a Hollywood contract by Paramount Pictures, where she had several minor movies as a sexy flapper girl in comedies). She finally got her big break in a starring role in Beggars Of Life, and predictably she left Hollywood to go to Europe. But she had had the title role in The Canary Murder Case in 1929, which had been filmed as a silent, and Paramount asked her to return to dub the movie, and she refused, which effectively blacklisted her in Hollywood. She made two incredible movies with legendary German director G.W. Pabst, Pandora's Box, and Diary Of A Lost Girl and I highly recommend both. She made Prix de Beaute in France, and in the early 1930s she returned to Hollywood (minus her trademark flapper hairdo) where she could only get minor roles, and she returned to Kansas, and later New York. She lived an alcoholic life in obscurity (supported by former admirers including William S. Paley, founder of CBS). In the 1950s and 1960s she was "rediscovered" by film critics, and she wrote many articles and books about her life, which I also highly recommend. She is likely best remembered for her distinctive hair style! She passed away in 1985 at the age of 78.

Important Added Info: Note that this wonderful still of Louise Brooks is undated, but we know that it surely dates from between 1927 and 1929, because it was found with many stills from those exact years. What is really frustrating is that there is an entire paragraph written on the back about her "appearing in person" at a county fair, but it doesn't give the exact date, and we couldn't find exactly what it was referring to.

UPDATED 12/08/2020: Note that the Director of the Louise Brooks Society tells us that the writing on the back references a March 27, 1928 article in the Brooklyn Standard Union about Brooks' upcoming appearance at the Brooklyn County Fair and Exposition. Another knowledgeable collector tells us that it was taken by Hollywood photographer Everett Murray. It was part of a glamour photo shoot organized by a movie studio, but was not for a specific film.

Note that in our last set of auctions that include multiple stills from single titles, we had 72 sets of stills that came from a wonderful group of just-discovered stills that are from 1927 to 1929, with the majority from 1928 exactly. Now, we are auctioning the remaining stills from this wonderful group, 131, all in separate auctions. In addition to them including a LOT of previously unseen stills (and sometimes from incredibly rare titles!), most of these stills have either snipes on the bottom or back, and many have some pencil writing on the back about the movie or actors. After these stills are auctioned, there will be no more stills from this wonderful collection!

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