Person · Open Library
- Born
- 1906-11-14
- Died
- 1985-08-08
- Works
- 6
Top works
- Veronica and other friends
- Gritli's Children Volume I
- Rico and Wiseli
- Heidi, her years of wandering and learning
- Heidi
via Open Library + Wikidata
Film & TV
Acting · Cherryvale, Kansas, USA
Mary Louise Brooks (November 14, 1906 – August 8, 1985) was an American film actress and dancer during the 1920s and 1930s. She is regarded today as an icon of the Jazz Age and flapper culture, in part due to the bob hairstyle that she helped popularize during the prime of her career. Brooks began her career as a dancer. While dancing in the Ziegfeld Follies in New York City, she came to the…
Known for
- Clara Bow: Hollywood's Lost Screen Goddess2012
- Fragments: Surviving Pieces of Lost Films — Herself (archive footage)2011
- Flappers, Speakeasies, and the Birth of Modern Culture2010
- Why Be Good?: Sexuality & Censorship in Early Cinema — Self (archive footage)2007
- Clara Bow: Discovering the "It" Girl — Self (archive footage)
Article
Mary Louise Brooks (November 14, 1906 – August 8, 1985) was an American film actress during the 1920s and 1930s. She is regarded today as an icon of the flapper culture, in part due to the bob hairstyle that she helped popularize during the prime of her career.
At the age of 15, Brooks began her career as a dancer and toured with the Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts where she performed opposite Ted Shawn. After being fired, she found employment as a chorus girl in George White's Scandals and as a semi-nude dancer in the Ziegfeld Follies in New York City. While dancing in the Follies, Brooks came to the attention of Walter Wanger, a producer at Paramount Pictures, and signed a five-year contract with the studio. She appeared in supporting roles in various Paramount films before taking the heroine's role in Beggars of Life (1928). During this time, she became an intimate friend of actress Marion Davies and joined the elite social circle of press baron William Randolph Hearst at Hearst Castle in San Simeon.
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Categories
1906 births1985 deaths20th-century American actresses20th-century American dancers20th-century American LGBTQ people20th-century American memoiristsActresses from Wichita, KansasAmerican bisexual actressesAmerican female dancersAmerican film actressesAmerican silent film actressesAmerican women memoirists