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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 letter has been personally autographed (signed) by Louise Brooks! We have previously auctioned several of these Louise Brooks letters from her to Jan Wahl (see below), but this is the only letter that we have auctioned that is HANDWRITTEN by Miss Brooks (all the others were typed, and this is the only handwritten letter our consignor purchased from Jan Wahl!). In this letter, she writes about Kenneth Tynan's profile of her about to come out in The New Yorker, and how he wants her to go from New York to California to visit him, but she is resistant because she has arthritis in her hip, and that Mr. Tynan wants to "drag" her to festivals at Telluride, Chicago, and Ontario. She concludes with "Ken is right about my picking a terrible hole in which to die if I can get the pills" (she first wrote "place" and crossed that out and wrote "hole" above it), indicating she was clearly depressed, but in fact, she lived another 7 years! At the end of the letter, she hand wrote "Love Louise" (and several of her typed letters are signed with a nickname instead of her actual name, which makes this letter signed "Louise" that much nicer, and of course, the fact that it is entirely handwritten and all the rest were typewritten makes it much more special).

Note that this autographed item is part of a remarkable collection. In each of our last several all-signed auctions, we auctioned hundreds of items from this collection and now we are auctioning many more signed photos and miscellaneous other signed items (plus many signed index cards that have a different note on those)!
     In the 1970s, our consignor was a teacher who taught a film class, and he also part-time ran the local movie theater (and he saved all the presskits from the movies the theater showed).
     Starting in the late 1970s through the late 1980s, he wrote to famous celebrities, and enclosed an 8x10 still or repro (or sometimes another item) from his collection, and he wrote a literate personalized letter, talking about his work as a film teacher, and discussing his favorite movie by that star.
     He received signed photos back from a good percentage of the people he wrote to, and if the people simply sent him a stock photo back, he did not save it, but if he felt the autograph was genuine, and if they added a personalized note, then he did save them.
     In the late 1980s, he pretty much stopped sending letters and photos, simply because he was just too busy. So this item (and the vast majority of the other photos and other items we are auctioning for this consignor) were obtained in the late 1970s or 1980s, through personal correspondence with this star. This is of course excellent, because back at that time celebrities were not selling their signatures nearly as much, and many of the stars were pretty forgotten and were happy to get letters from people like our consignor!
     He of course does not have any "Certificates of Authenticity", but he only kept ones he felt were surely authentic, and those are the ones we are auctioning. However, bidders can certainly compare the signatures to known examples on the internet to judge for themselves.

As is true of all the signed items we are currently auctioning, we give every buyer 30 days in which to review what they purchased and they can return any item as long as it is within 30 days of the end of the auction. On non-signed items, we give a "lifetime guarantee" on everything we auction, but on signed items, we give the above modified guarantee of 30 days after the auction closes.

Our address for UPS or FedEx only is:
Bruce Hershenson,
306 Washington Avenue, West Plains, MO 65775