Louise Brooks' identity for sale
Filed under: Classics
Ray Pride at Movie
City Indie has unearthed this gem from the bowels (no pun intended) of eBay: someone is selling a Medicare ID card once
belonging to silent screen legend Louise Brooks. Brooks started out as a Zeigfeld girl. Exquisitely beautiful, with big, sexy brown eyes and a delicate dancer's frame, she made a small splash in Hollywood in the late Teens, working with hired hands/future auteurs such as Howard Hawks and making 21 now-forgotten silent features. When her five year contract with Paramount expired in 1929, the studio tried to lowball her on the extension, expressing doubts over her ability to transfer into sound. Brooks took one look at the offer on the table and walked out. Soon she was contacted by the great German director G.W. Pabst, with whom Brooks went on to make her two most memorable films: Pandora's Box (in which she plays a "free spirt"/sex kitten who meets her untimely death at the hand of Jack the Ripper) and the abstract Diary of a Lost Girl. though now considered classics, both films flopped, and Lulu (as history remembers her, after the character she played in Pandora) returned to Hollywood, made a few crap b-movies and retired in 1938. She eventually moved to upstate New York, where in her older days she cranked out a stunning volume of memoirs called Lulu in Hollywood before dying alone in the mid-80s. She also is credited with popularizing the black bob, thereby practically inventing hipster couture.
Anyway – the Medicaid and Blue Cross/Blue shield cards on eBay date back to the early 70s. They include Brooks' signature, as well as evidence of her wicked sense of humor – under "next of kin" on the back of one of the cards, Brooks entered, "emphysema". Bid now - the auction ends tomorrow, and the lot is currently going for about $370.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
12-23-2005 @ 4:59PM
Louise Brooks Society said...
For more on Louise Brooks, check out the Louise Brooks Society at http://www.pandorasbox.com
The LBS blog can be found at http://www.livejournal.com/users/louisebrooks/
The LBS radio station, RadioLulu, can be found at
http://www.live365.com/stations/298896
THe LBS mailing list, News of Lulu, can be found at
http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/newsoflulu/
The LBS Gift shop can be found at http://www.cafepress.com/louisebrooks
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