Louise Brooks, intervista di John Kobal III

Another severe case of coughing leaves her phisically shaken. I get her something to drink and think about stopping the interview altogether, to let her get back to bed, but after the sip of water she wants to continue.
LB	I her the Reagans are visiting Claudette Colbert at her home in the Bahamas. Where'd she ever get all that dough?
JK	She never spent a cent. One of the shrewdest women in Hollywood.
LB	Was she? I didn't know. Oh, look, here's my favourite actress, Bette Davis.
JK	Why do you like her so much? A kindred spirit?
LB	Oh, no. No. I don't know. I just like Bette Davis. I liked whatever she did. I think she's a real actress, don't you?
JK	Yes, but why better than another actress? I suppose personality.
LB	Well, yes, it's her personality. For instance, I never liked Joan Crawford at all. Never. I hate fakes. She's one of the girls, incidentally, who went back and forth. And of course she was a terrible drunk. She was an awful fake. A washerwoman's daughter. I'm a terrible snob, you know. Don't forget, in the Follies I had to dress alone because I wouldn't dress with the chorus girls. No, they wouldn't dress with me because I was such a snob and didn't approve of the lower classes, my dear, who read 'The Police Gazette'. Oh, I was frightful .... and still am.
JK	But all those years when you weren't working professionally, weren't on the screen, weren't dancing ...
LB	I was just staving to death in New York ...
JK	But there were different men in your life.
LB	Oh, I could have married a dozen men. That was another thing, you see. I counted on. When I stopped movies, I thought. Well, I'll do what every other girl in movies does, I'll marry any man I like. Any rich man will marry any movie star. But I hated marriage. I tried it twice. I was to Eddie Sutherland, the director, who was a charming man. I was married to him for a year. And then I married Derring Davies, who was a Chicago socialite: polo, and didn't do anything for about six months. I hated marriage. In the first place to be called Mrs. Davies or Mrs. Sutherland would simply inflame me. My name is Mary Louise Brooks, and don't be calling me Mrs. Davies or Mrs. Sutherland. My ace in the hole, getting married, didn't work out. So I was left alone. And I couldn't get a job. Don't forget, I worked for almost two years as a salesgirl at Saks Fifth Avenue. To prove that I could sell dresses. I must have intimidated more women who left the store without buying anything. 'Who was this beauty who looks so gorgeous in these clothes, and she's waiting on me?'. I'd do funny things. I'd stand - after they put on the dress, I'd stand and they were waiting for me to zip them up or something, and I didn't do anthing. I had a black girl who was my assistant. She taught me how to do things, how to zip people up and unzip them and so on. I was going to prove a point, that I could go out and get a job and work like everybody else. But it didn't really work out at all. I quit. I wasn't fired. Yeah. Yeah. I never ... (She breaks off, pauses for the right wrds, then) I was never scheming or clever about money, I've never been clever about money.
JK	How does that tie in with your 'Dorothy from Kansas - Wizard of Oz' background?
LB	Not at ll. Isn't that funny? It's odd, I'm not at all like Kansas. Well, I went to New York for two years, and come back when I was seventeen. Then I went first into George White's Scandals and then into the Follies, and then into the movies. There was no effort to it. I was in movies, and I made such rotten pictures. I'm speaking about my attitude towards the films I made. The way I felt about myself in movies and how anybody saw me are different things. In the first place, I never went to see my movies. I hated making them. I hated Hollywood. I never stayed there an instant if I could get away. I wanted to be a great dancer like Martha Graham, that was my ambition, and I wasn't a good dancer. I never heard anyone say I was good.
JK	Well, nine out of ten of the greatest stars were dancers. Natural rhythm of movement. I mean even though Garbo moves a bit like a diesel, there was a kind of powerful rhythm to her, hpnotic.
LB	Tynan said something interesting about Garbo. I was talking to him here. I said: 'You've met everyone'. He said: 'Yes, of course. I know Garbo. She didn't do anything for me, but she's got the most interesting walk'. I said: 'What do you mean?'. And the moment he said it I realized it. 'She has a thrust - she thrusts this leg forward with this shoulder'. And he's right. I never thought about it. I usually watch movement very carefully. I can remember the railway station scene in Anna Karenina. Looking back, I remember her walking and the thrust of her shoulder.
JK	What was the happiest time in your working life?
LB	The happiest time I ever had, looking back, is when I was making pictures in Paris and didn't speak French. And the reason I was happy was I didn't have to talk to anyone. I didn't have to explain anything. I'd get up in the morning and go to the studio, and didn't have to discuss anything with anyone. (She laughs. Louise may be suffering, but she hasn't lost her ability to laugh). I didn't have to talk at all. I had a translator. I had this interpreter, but he was such a little devil. He started having an affair with my hairdresser's assistant, the girl who was supposed to assist me. I didn't need anyone to curl my hair, so he was never around. So Rudy Maté, the cameraman, looked down for a parallel one day when the Italian director (Augusto) Genina threw down his American dictionary and he couldn't explain what he wanted me to do. And Rudy, when he started on the picture, couldn't speak a word of English. But he was Hungarian, and he looked down and said: 'Miss Brooks, I can interpret for you'. He'd learned to speak English in about two weeks! That's how marvelous Hungarians are about picking up the lenguage. So form that time on, Genina would tell him what he wanted me to do. There was really no directing me anyhow. All I needed was choreography. 'You come in this door and you go out that one'. Or 'You come in and sit down'. They didn't say: 'I want one tear right now'. Because if anyone told me what to do or how to do it .... That was the funniest thing Marilyn Monroe ever said, remember? When that German Jewish director Billy Wilder said to her: 'I want two tears, right now!' (Louise is overcome with laughter at the image this story provokes in her) and Marilyn said: 'How can make two tears right now?'. And he said: 'I want two tears right now'. And she thought that was most unfair because it would take her four or five hours to get together two tears right now. (Tears are streaming down Louise's cheeks from laughing so much). Well, my mother was a natural crier, and I too could cry. I remember when we were making Lulu, we were eating this awful German food for our lunch and Pabst said: 'Luuissssse, after lunch you must cry'. I said: 'Okay, after lunch I will cry'. So then we went back on the set and I cried. It was never any problem. But I liked the way he said it while he was tossing in his food, the usual sauerkraut. And that's about all the direction he would give me. In the first place, he directed in German and I didn't speak German. I didn't know what he was talking about. Of course, all the other actors ... well, Francis Lederer was a Czech, but he spoke German, and Alice Roberts was Belgian and he had to speak her in French but as far as I was concerned, I was being directed by a German. 'Die Tür zu' he would say as I went off the set. And I'd reply: 'Can't you speak English?'. I was perfectly natural on the screen. I never did any acting at all. But you take somebody like Mal St. Clair. He was a great mugger, and he would mug scenes ahead and tell you how to act. I hated working with him. I liked Mal St. Clair, he was very nice. And the last picture I made with him, The Canary murder case, he was drunk all the time. Plus a broken leg. He was about 6' 4" ... no, he wasn't. Men then seemed taller because there weren't so many tall as you are now. Remember when actors were so small, like Richard Barthelmess?
JK	Incidentally, before we 'leave' paris, what did René Clair have to do with Prix de beauté?
LB	Well, I was supposed to direct it, and then he said to me one day ... We were being photographated there at that Studio Lorel. I never knew what happened to the pictures I had taken with him. And as we were driving back on Champs-Elysées, back to my hotel, René Clair said - and he spoke almost no English and of course I'd never learned to speak French or German, English, just barely! - and so he said to me: 'I'm not going to make that picture, and if you're smart, you'll quit too'. I said: 'Why aren't you going to make it?'. He said: 'Because they cannot get the money together. They still haven't got the money up, they never will get it up and they won't to make it. And you're just going to sit around here in Paris waiting to make a picture that will never be made'. I said: 'Well. I don't see how can quit, because I have a contract. And if I just get on a ship and go home, I'll never be able to make another picture in Europe. I'll be finished. I have to stay'. So I stayed, and they did get the money to make it. And it's a lovely picture - says she, never having seen it.
JK	You are such a bundle of contradictins. You honor your contract in Paris, then come back in America and walk out on Paramount. You could have gone into the '30s as a major star.
LB	That's right. When Tynan was here, he said to me: 'That is what is so funny about you. You mess yourself up just as the talkies are coming in, and you have the most beautiful voice, and it would have been so good'. It was a lot better then than it is now with this damn emphysema. 'And you would been so marvelous in talkies'. And I said: 'No one can understand how ... I cannot think of anything ... you don't know ... you never ...'. You see, I don't think anyone can learn to act.
JK	Why? One can learn to dance.
LB	What do you mean, one can learn dancing? That's an entirely different kind of doodad. Movement you can acquire. Elocution, for Christ's sake, you can learn how to speak a line, but I don't understand how you can learn to act. People have asked me time and time again: 'What were you thinking about when you did that scene?' and I will sit and say: 'What was I thinking about? Well, I was thinking about what I was doing. What the hell would you think I was thinking about? What I was going to eat for breakfst?'. Now on the stage ... I read this little book about Eleonora Duse, and one of the most charming chapter in it - it was written by somebody before she died in Pittsburgh. Isn't that a hell of a place for Duse to die? But she did a very famous play by a German playwright, Wassermann ... now, what was the name of it? Well, a stock play, like Ghosts. Anyway, the point of it was that she does a very famous scene at the side of the stage where she is arranging flowers in a vase in front of a mirror. A very important scene in the play. And they said to her: 'Madame Duse, what are you thinking about when you arrange those flowers?'. She said: 'Oh, I can be thinking what I am going to have for dinner!'. (She laughs). Now, you see, you can do that in the theater because that's acting.
JK	Louise, since you never liked Hollywood, what tempted you to go?
LB	To make money, to make money. To live, for God's sake.
JK	Couldn't you to get money at the Follies?
LB	Well, Ziegfeld wanted me to stay in the Follies and be a Follies star. I guess it was Walter Wanger who talked me into signing a contract. I was young then, and they said: 'Oh, you're a fool not to go into movies and sign a contract'. So I did it. But it was just for the money, that's the only thing. I could spend a week's salary buying clothes, I was mad about clothes for a time. You know, ermine cots and those things eat up a lot of money. I would go out to a nightclub every night in New york and show off my clothes. I had my literary friends. That's what life was in those days. There was nothing to do in Hollywood. After you'd finish work, you'd go to dinner and then they'd run movies.
JK	So you never really became part of Hollywood establishment?
LB	Just for the one year when I was married to Eddie Sutherland. We gave marvelous parties. Really marvelous. He was the most wonderful host. We gave that famous, famous party. It was written up everywhere. It was my idea ... all books. All the place card at dinner were books. In front of Irving Thalberg's place I put Dreier's Genius. (She chuckles quite wickedly). That's just before he married Norma Shearer. So in front of Norma's place I put Serena Blandish: The difficulty of getting married - she'd been trying and trying, and Irving's mother wanted him to marry a nice Jewish girl. It was so funny because Irving walked right in and saw Genius and sat right down. But Norma kept on walking around. She wouldn't sit down in front of The difficulty of getting married. Not at all! And there was that writer at MGM who had lost a leg in the war, and I gave him The devil in two sticks.
JK	Oh, Louise! Let me jump back a bit to Sternberg. Did you ever know Dietrich?
LB	I don't think I ever met her. Yes, I did, once in her dressing room, in Hollywood. You know, Pabst said an interesting thing. He said: 'The trouble with German actresses' - this is when he was looking for someone to play Lulu in Lulu - 'the trouble is that there aren't any good-looking girls in pictures in Germany'. That was true, there weren't. Except maybe Dietrich, and she was too old, too knowing. He want a girl who was innocent-looking, and she was too .... whorish, let's say. But I thought she was absolutely marvelous in The blue angel.
JK	Did you path ever cross with Sternberg's?
LB	Uhn-uh. I was just put in one lousy picture after the other.
JK	Did you notice the pecking order at Paramount.
LB	I didn't pay any attention to anybody. You see, the clever ones who went around like Richard Arlen wooed all the writers and all the other actors and the producers. And when they weren't working, they were on the lot every day, mooching up and making friends and whatnot. Of course, when I wasn't working, I was in New York. This is really funny ... I didn't even know Schulberg was head of the studio until I was called into his office. I thought Walter Wanger was running the place, but Walter had gone to MGM. I discovered it was Schulberg when he said: 'You can stay on at $ 750 per week or leave'. So I went to Berlin. And Paramount put out the thing that my voice didn't record well. They were right: I should have gone back. As I say, I just moved by instinct all my life. It's really true. The only picture I wanted to make, but wasn't the type for, was Alice in Wonderland.
JK	Well, maybe you should have played Dorothy in The wizard of Oz! The little girl from Kansas who goes to the big city (This gets Louise's sense of humor rolling again).
LB	You know, I saw Brooke Shields on The Muppet show the other day, and she played Alice in Wonderland, and she was adorable. She really is just darling. She's a beautiful girl, there's no doubt about it. But is that all she does, be beautiful?
JK	The comparison of you to Dorothy is just because you're from Kansas. But in a strange way, if you think of going to New York as going to the Emerald City ... and you come back to Kansas City in the end. Well, not Kansas City, but what is Rocheser if not a small town? Yours is an extraordinary life because it's so inspiring.
LB	Inspiring?
JK	People always think that if you don't make it, you're a failure, yet there's so much to draw on just by surviving. It's encouraging.
LB	That's from George Bernard Shaw. If you have an artistic life, if you have music and painting and books and so on ... See, most actors, when they're through with their careers, there's nothing left. Nothing but the Motion Picture Home. Everyone says I should fight going to the home for as long as possible. It would be terrible for me. Suppose this woman Marge, who lives in the building and she's eighty-two, you know, but suppose she stops coming down and feeding me, what's happen to me then? (...) No, I'm not. I'm miserable. If I could think of a good way of ending it all, I'd do it. I'm such a coward. I'd like to be out of the whole thing. What can you expect? I lie in bed in there day after day, and this is terrible. Emphysema is just murder. You don't realize it while I'm just sitting here, but the moment I get up and make a move, I can't breathe. It's terrible. And I know that when you go into intensive care in the hospital, you're hooked up with the oxygen tank and with the wheelchair and ... God, it's a rotten way to go. Terrible disease. No, I'm utterly miserable (...) You know, John Ruskin said: 'A great writer is a person who's seen something and tells what he saw in a plain way'. And that's the way you can write too, because you're a great 'see-er'. I've always tried to write like a movie so that everybody could understand it the same way I saw it. You can't do better than to remember Ruskin! It didn't hurt Proust. Proust couldn't read English, but a friend translated Ruskin for him, and Proust was greatly influenced: he got his way of writing from that.
(...) I thought she was asleep when I was letting myself out: 'John, is that you?'. 'Yes, I'm just off'. 'Okay, Sugar Pie. Keep it up. Be a good boy' she calls after me, chuckling, making that last admonition sound like an encouragement to wild and exciting adventure. John Kobal, Louise Brooks, in Id., People will talk, Knopf, 1985