TMS Muse of the Week: Anita Loos

(via moma.org)

Much has been written and said about the founding fathers of cinema, i.e. D.W. Griffith, Cecil B. DeMille, King Vidor, and not much later, John Ford. But there are plenty of founding mothers who paved the way as well. Mabel Normand, for instance, was directing just as many silents as legends Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. But she’s not as remembered as her male peers for various reasons, including a premature death at age 36. My choice for favorite lady to influence the early film industry is actually a writer more than a filmmaker: Anita Loos. One of the very first screenwriters to be contracted to a film studio [Biograph and Lubin], Anita supposedly wrote and submitted up to 105 scripts and 200 scenarios between 1912 and 1915, though only about a dozen silents during that period would actually feature her input. Anita gradually rose into the ‘talkies’ and pre-code era before peaking with the golden age of Hollywood in the mid-to-late 1930s. It’s always interesting to me Griffith, such a traditional man of his era [in good and bad ways], was a big champion of the successful women he knew and worked with—including Anita. DWG was the one who convinced the screenwriter to leave Biograph in 1916, and introduced her to her second husband, writer-director John Emerson.

While Anita was making a name for herself in showbusiness at Triangle Film Corp. and as an occasional freelance script writer, she also began writing a series of short stories later adapted into her famous 1925 novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. It tells the tale of Lorelei Lee and Dorothy Shaw, two best friends trying to make it as chorus girls, and even more importantly, future trophy wives. There’s a little bit of Anita’s contemporaries as inspiration for the cheeky satire, such as screen stars Mary Pickford and Marion Davies. But the author largely based the leads’ personalities on popular NYC showgirls she knew at the time, as well as the socialite wives of the Hollywood men she was working with. Anita later admitted she was secretly jealous of the preferred giggly, light-haired young women her male colleagues were interested in. Some have also noticed similarities between Dorothy and Anita’s own persona, including brunette hair. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes went on to be both a 1949 Broadway musical with Carol Channing and Yvonne Adair, and Howard Hawks’ classic 1953 movie musical starring Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell. Reading the book or watching the film now, we can even see some influence on future projects like HBO’s “Sex and the City” (1998-2004) and “Girls” (2012-17).

After the success of Blondes, Anita penned a sequel, But They Marry Brunettes in 1927, and hit her prime as a screenwriter in the 1930s at MGM Studios. Originally recruited by studio head Irving Thalberg, Anita became the legendary company’s go-to female writer for vehicles of leading ladies like Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer. The most popular of Anita’s MGM efforts were Jack Conway’s racy melodrama Red-Headed Woman (1932), with blonde-turned-ginger bombshell Jean Harlow; and the all-star ensemble comedy of George Cukor’s The Women (1939). Both pictures were based on works of fellow female authors too [Red-Headed Woman with Katharine Brush’s 1931 novel and The Women adapted from Clare Boothe Luce’s hit stage play from 1936]. The latter ended up being one Anita’s last features for MGM, as her hey-day took a turn when she left to sign with United Artists, and was almost instantly wasted on mediocre projects. She bought out of her contract and went back to MGM for a few years, but the 1940s wouldn’t bring her any hits. The real reason Anita’s career never fully recovered though, was because of combing work with her love life.

(Donaldson Collection)

Despite her stories usually featuring happy endings, Anita’s personal life was far from perfect. In 1915, she left her first husband, Frank Pallma, Jr., after only six months when she discovered Frank wasn’t being completely honest about his financial stability. Although they never officially separated or divorced, Anita and John’s marriage from 1919 to John’s death in 1956 had its own issues too. A 15-year age difference, John’s growing symptoms of schizophrenia, moments of depression by Anita, affairs, embezzlement, and even living separately for periods of time. Maybe for the best considering the circumstances, Anita didn’t have any children from either marriage as well. Interestingly, Anita later claimed in one of her memoirs, Cast of Thousands (1977), it wasn’t John’s cheating, manipulation or neglect that was the biggest blow to her ego; but realizing she was the big bread-winner in the relationship. “I had set my sights on a man of brains, to whom I could look up. But what a terrible let-down it would be to find out that I was smarter than he was.”

John died almost a decade after Anita left screenwriting and switched primarily to literature and theatre. Though her prime was over, she managed one more success, adapting Colette’s 1944 novella Gigi into the famous 1951 Broadway production, which was also the debut of superstar Audrey Hepburn. In her later years, Anita wrote fiction, non-fiction and columns for popular magazines sporadically until her death in 1981 at age 93. I really can not think of anyone with a more impressive, lifelong resume of writings than Ms. Loos. She didn’t need to be anyone’s muse because she found plenty of her own inspiration around her. Amusingly, Anita actually admitted in her 1966 autobiography, A Girl Like I, that her main motivation to keep writing was the paychecks. Anita’s life is so fascinating, I didn’t even get into some of the more bewildering trivia about her [like why 12-year-old Tatum O’Neal loosely portrayed her in Peter Bogdanovich’s Nickelodeon (1976)]. Next to Lillian Gish, Anita is the full package and definition of a legend.