Hello, my name is Justin Aclure. I'm here today with Will Sloan.

And you're listening to The Important Cinema Club. And today we're talking about the most

famous helmet-haired actor, Louise Brooks. There is no Garbo. There is no Dietrich. There is

only Louise Brooks.

Said Ari Lagloire while Louise

Brooks was standing right beside him. I would probably say the same thing if she were right here,

you know? Now, Louise Brooks is someone that I think defines Hollywood. Like, you think of old

Hollywood stardom, and I think people will picture her because her look is so iconic. But what's

funny about that is that you could then turn around and go, all right, name some movies that

she's in. They were made in Hollywood. And they'll be like, uh-uh. Yeah, that's right. I mean,

she's probably most famous as, as an icon, I guess. I mean, she's very famous for the influence that her look

has had over the years on, you know, just to name one person, Anna Karina. Her look is kind of

indebted to Louise Brooks. And I mean, I've been interested in Louise Brooks for a long time,

but I have to admit, I've been more interested in like the old Louise Brooks, the one who was, you know,

in her 70s living in Rochester, writing articles for magazines like sight and sound and

positif about her years in Hollywood. I had seen a couple of her films over the years, but until

this week, I had not seen the two films made in Germany that are

the bedrock of her reputation. Maybe 10 years ago, I read her book for the first time,

Lulu and Hollywood, which was this collection of essays that she wrote, as I said, for all those

film magazines. And, you know, it's one of the best film books ever written. She writes about

people that she knew. There's an essay about W.C. Fields. There's an essay about Humphrey Bogart,

both of whom she knew when she was in vaudeville. She writes about her own kind of brief

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