Learn about Anita Loos!
Anita Loos (April 26, 1888 - August 18, 1981) was an American screenwriter, playwright and author. On pronouncing her name, "The family has always used the correct French pronunciation which is lohse. However, I myself pronounce my name as if it were spelled luce, since most people pronounce it that way and it was too much trouble to correct them."
Following her early appearances on the stage, Loos drew on her life experiences for subject matter to fulfill her ambition to write screenplays and scripts. After a short-lived marriage and fueled by her initial writing success, she joined the Hollywood film community as a writer. In her first position with a major film company she was partnered with John Emerson, they later married, but the marriage to the philandering hypochondriac Emerson deteriorated while Loos did most of the work. When the team was offered a contract to write pictures for MGM she took the job to write alone. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, a comic novel, appeared in 1925.
Over the next few years the now happy and successful Loos worked alone, socialized, and saw whomever she wanted while giving the impression that she and Emerson were still a "team"; but following treatment at a sanatorium for Emerson's mental health, the couple lived apart until his death in 1956. Loos continued to write for MGM (after a brief spell with United Artists), and then as a free agent; writing or adapting plays, screenplays and novels.
During her later years Loos was a constant contributor to magazines, and wrote a number of memoirs. She continued to attend shows, balls and other social events, and remained a virtual institution on the New York scene until her death at the age of 93.
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes began as a series of short sketches published in Harper's Bazaar. Known as the "Lorelei" stories, they were satires on the state of sexual relations that only vaguely alluded to sexual intimacy; the magazine's circulation quadrupled overnight. The heroine of the stories, Lorelei Lee, was a bold, ambitious flapper, who was much more concerned with collecting expensive baubles from her conquests than any marriage licenses, in addition to being a shrewd woman of loose morals and high self-esteem. She was a practical young woman who had internalized the materialism of the United States in the 1920s and therefore equated culture with cold cash and tangible assets.
The success of the short stories had the public clamoring for them in book form. Pushed on by Mencken, she signed with Boni & Liveright. Modestly published in November 1925, the first printing sold out overnight. The initial reviews were rather bland and unimpressive, but through word of mouth it became the surprise best-seller of 1925. Loos garnered fan letters from fellow authors William Faulkner, Aldous Huxley, and Edith Wharton, among others. "Blondes" would see three more printings sell through by years end, and twenty in its first decade. The little book would see 85 editions in the years to come and eventually be translated into 14 languages including Chinese.
When asked who the models for her characters, Loos would almost always say they were composites of various people, but when pressed, admitted that toothless flirt Sir Francis Beekman was modeled after writer Joseph Hergesheimer and producer Jesse L. Lasky. Dorothy Shaw modeled after herself and Constance Talmadge, and Lorelei herself most closely resembled acquisitive Ziegfeld showgirl, Lillian Lorraine, who was always looking for new places to display the diamonds bestowed by her suitors.
Emerson, perhaps foreseeing the success of Blondes as a threat to his control over Loos, first attempted to suppress its publication, and then merely settled on a personal dedication. Loos continued to be overworked throughout 1926, sometimes working many projects at once. In the spring of 1926 she completed the stage adaptation, which opened a few weeks later in Chicago, and ran for 201 performances on Broadway. Emerson by this time had developed a serious case of hypochondria, using imaginary laryngitis attacks to garner attention away from her work, he was in the words of his wife, "a man who enjoyed ill health." It was the opinion of New York's leading psychiatrist, Alfred Jelliffe, that she was to blame and that in order for Emerson to "get better" she would have to give up her career. She resolved to retire after her next book, But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes, a sequel to Blondes she had promised Harper's Bazaar.
On the further advice of the psychiatrist, the couple had planned another European vacation. At the last minute Emerson feigned being unwell and insisted Loos continue alone. Arriving in London, she was promptly taken under the wing of socialite Sybil Colefax, whose drawing room had become a salon, filled with "the bright young things" of the day such as John Gielgud, Harold Nicolson, Noel Coward and notables such as Arnold Bennett, Max Beerbohm and Bernard Shaw. Photos of Loos on the social scene in London appeared in the New York papers, and Emerson's subsequent whisper-throated "death bed" phone calls managed to inflict guilt on Loos for her absence overseas. Emerson finally joined Loos in London, and to keep his spirits up she took him to the theatre every night. It worked: at times he forgot to continue his act and spoke in normal tones. The couple continued on to Paris, where Loos renewed all friendships and made new ones; Emerson's recovery was remarkable. In September, their vacation was cut short; Loos was needed back in New York to do revisions on Blondes for its Broadway debut. Despite this, Blondes closed in April 1927.