Louise Brooks, Star Witness

Performance. This article sheds light on the discourses around the figure of Louise Brooks. Honestly, I don’t know a lot about this woman, her movies, or the fan fare around here. However, after reading this article I can’t wait to see the movie Prix de beaute because it will hopefully add some color to a black and white picture that I have in my head of her right now. DeCordova articulates that during this the silent period the “real hero behaves just like the reel here” and boy did Louise embody this feature. Hastie definitely nails it on the dot at the end of this article when she describes Louise as being a very smart woman. The character, Lulu, which she became “famous” for was that of which represented many of Louises’ characters, and the way that she performed off screen lived up to people’s expectations of what. She displayed the same features as her characters, which allowed people to blur the images of Louise and Lulu. Hastie mentions that Louises’ book Lulu in Hollywood was written after her career was over and is used my many authors to document not only Ms. Brooks but use it to document Hollywood during the Silent Period. This is amazing, not only is still able to confuse Hollywood authors with her personal opinion with who Louise really was, but she is serving as a “valid” and “true” source of historical documentation. As Hastie points out this whole book could just be another performance for Louise because she already claimed that she did not want to do a biography. The title of the book is Lulu in Hollywood, which brings you to believe that this is the story of one of Louises’ characters. Ms. Brooks was really smart and I have to believe that at some point she actually did have the personality and opinions towards subjects, especially sexuality, as her characters because as person could not keep up two personas (that resemble each other) and keep out there real persona to themselves for such a long period and even write a book at the end of their career to continue this performance. It seems like way to much and if she did do all this to further a reel image off screen then she’s too smart of a woman and border line crazy.