#art/ #history:
just another pretty face that isn't just a pretty face... louise brooks (born #otd in 1906) is still an icon, but she was - more importantly - a human whose surface needs to be scratched in order to reveal her true value.

it seems impossible that someone as magical ever existed, so determined was she to live life on her own terms - & so unconcerned with abiding by her era’s social mores. lulu was much more than the sum of her perfectly straight fringe, obsidian eyes & enviably legendary bob.

she carved a ragged road from the ziegfeld follies to highly vaunted (if controversial) roles in celebrated european films that were sexually charged & taut with social commentary. her return in the early 30s to hollywood saw her acting work sag, so she dabbled in dancing, radio

& writing. mercifully, her films were revived in the 1950s by french film historians, who proclaimed her superior to marlene dietrich & (alleged former dalliance) greta garbo. by her own admissions, her sexually liberal attitudes were informed by (TW:SA)

an incident of molestation when she was nine years old. she said it left her incapable of real love. this tragedy lay just beneath the surface of everything louise brooks ever did. what i love most about louise is her grace.

she wrote to an author who’d slagged off clara bow & gave him a proper verbal lashing: 'you brush off clara bow for some old nothing like brooks! clara made three pictures that will never be surpassed'... lulu died in 1985, generosity of spirit completely intact.

thanking you both kindly, @IronsideMrs & @tallulahpoke. <3