Louise Brooks
2 credits on HibingeTV
American film actress, born in 1906. She is best known now for the two films she made in Germany with G.W. Pabst, Pandora's Box (1929) and Diary of a Lost Girl, but she also made a number of American silents including Beggars of Life (1928). Her American career collapsed after she left for Europe without telling her studio, and she spent decades in obscurity before her films were rediscovered in the 1950s. She then became a sharp, witty essayist on her own life and the silent era.
Acted In
Comedy, Silent
A silent comedy directed by Howard Hawks, starring Victor McLaglen as Spike Madden, a rough-and-tumble sailor who leaves a girl in every port he visits. When he befriends fellow sailor Salami (Robert Armstrong), the two become inseparable buddies—until they both fall for the same woman, the alluring Marie (Louise Brooks) in a French port. Brooks, in one of her earliest American roles, is magnetic, her bobbed hair and smoldering gaze already hinting at the icon she would become. The film's blend of brawling humor, male bonding, and exotic locales made it a hit, and Fox remade it as Goldie (1931) with Spencer Tracy and Jean Harlow. The film is in the public domain.
Comedy · Silent
A Girl in Every Port
1928 - as Marie
Drama, Crime
William Wellman's part-talking drama about a young woman who kills her abusive stepfather and goes on the run dressed as a boy, joining a band of hoboes riding the rails. Louise Brooks, in her best American role, plays the girl; Wallace Beery is Oklahoma Red, the hobo king who takes her in; Richard Arlen is the farm boy who throws in with her. The film was made in the transitional sound period and uses synchronized music, sound effects, and a few spoken passages rather than full dialogue. Wellman shot much of it on location with real trains and real transients, giving it a grit that most studio films of the year did not have. Brooks would leave for Germany and make Pandora's Box shortly after, and her American career never recovered. The 1928 film entered the United States public domain on January 1, 2024.
Drama · Crime
Beggars of Life
1928 - as The Girl