“I used to think that looking across a pillow into the fabulous face of Buster Keaton would be a more thrilling destiny than any screen career.” ― from her memoir, Cast of Thousands
“One might feel that, at my age, I should look on life with more gravity. After all, I’ve been privileged to listen, firsthand, to some of the most profound thinkers of my day…who were all beset by gloom over the condition the world had gotten into. Then why can’t I view it with anything but amusement?”
“Show business is the best possible therapy for remorse.”
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes starting selling like hotcakes in 1925, and its heroine, Lorelei Lee, had been doing fairly well in print, in film and on Broadway, ever since. It’s gone through at least 65 editions. Anita said, “She’s harder to kill than Rasputin.”
“I’ve had my best times when trailing a Mainbocher evening gown across a sawdust floor. “I’ve always loved high style in low company.” – from her first memoir, A Girl Like I
“Tallulah [Bankhead] never bored anyone, and I consider that humanitarianism of a very high order indeed.”
“I once witnessed more ardent emotions between men at an Elks’ Rally in Pasadena than they could ever have felt for the type of woman available to an Elk.”
To Louise Brooks: “If I ever write a part for a cigar-store Indian, you will get it.” –- In the silent screen adaptation of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Alice White picked up the part of sidekick Dorothy after Loos nixed the now iconic Louise Brooks. In real life, Louise was a real Dorothy, but apparently, she was wooden in her screen test. (Brooks herself said, “I stunk.”)
“The two biggest bores I ever met were Maurice Chevalier and Lady Mendl, and they did nothing but worry about their age.”
“That our popular art forms have become so obsessed with sex has turned the U.S.A. into a nation of hobbledehoys; as if grown people don’t have more vital concerns, such as taxes, inflation, dirty politics, earning a living, getting an education, or keeping out of jail.”
“There is so much more to Paulette [Goddard} than a camera can capture. The reverse is true of most other so-called glamour girls.”
“When I was very young and first worked in Hollywood, the films had bred in me one sole ambition: to get away from them; to live in the great world outside movies; to meet people who created their own situations through living them; who ad-libbed their own dialogue; whose jokes were not the contrivance of some gag writer.”
“From early Colonial days, sex life in America had been based on the custom of men supporting women. That situation reached its hey day in the Twenties when it was easy for any dabbler in stocks to flaunt his manhood by lavishing an unearned income on girls. But with the stock-market crash, men were hard put even to keep their wives, let alone spend money on sex outside the home. The adjustment was much easier on women than on men, who jumped out of windows in droves, whereas I can’t recall a single headline that read: KEPT GIRL LEAPS FROM LOVE NEST.”
“Today there are no fairy tales for us to believe in, and this is possibly a reason for the universal prevalence of mental crack-up. Yes, if we were childish in the past, I wish we could be children once again.”
“Fate keeps happening.” – a very Lorelei thing to say in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
“The rarest of all things in American life is charm. We spend billions every year manufacturing fake charm that goes under the heading of public relations. Without it, America would be grim indeed.”
“I can’t wait to get to my desk each morning. As soon as I found out there was money in ink I dropped acting and stocked up on ink. I tried a typewriter, but it was uncomfortable. I’m 4’11” and I weigh 94 pounds, and no chairs or desks were right for me.”
“My clothes have to be specially made. Children’s clothes don’t fit because the proportions are wrong. About the only things I can buy ready‐made are gloves and stockings. That combination might get me back on the stage, but it’s not enough to keep me from getting arrested, along with a lot of other girls on 57th Street.”
“The influence of Freud is disappearing, thank heaven “He’s a pernicious enemy to the human race, turning everyone into self‐pitying and evasive characters. Today, if you want to be fat, all you have to do is blame it on Freud and say you’re sick.”
And in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes Lorelei Lee says, “So then Dr Froyd said all I needed was to cultivate a few inhibitions and get some sleep.”
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I read Gentlemen Prefer Blonds, but could not finish. The asininity was way to much–even for me!
Anita Loos was a most fascinating person that encompassed beauty in the form of a woman without any doubt. I would have liked to have met her and walked with her in this world. I really love Anita as I see those that have gone before us as having been purified. However, the generation I’m living in does not seek nor look after those of past generations that were considered to be mainstays in trying to bring some contentment to society. Anita’s intelligence and wit was surely a gift that was bestowed upon her at a very young age. Where has this beauty gone? The world grows darker each day while the climate‘s temperature is rising swiftly, pitting one against another, inclusive of all nations as foretold to us by Our Master.
We look at the present state of affairs as a diminished effect to past years whereby there may have been a great deal of financial impact that brought degradation to the struggling economy yet women were women and men were men to a certain degree. Surely the cup was not full to the brim with perversion and sin, though there are no evil traits that have disappeared; only intensified in the amount of transgressions against the Divine Law.
I seek the Kingdom of God as the world and everything in it was created by Yahweh (God) through His Son Yahshua the Messiah (The Root of Jesse and the Offspring of David) by Him and for Him. The angels inhabited the earth prior to mankind as to dress the earth and beautify it. The serpent beguiled the woman in the garden of Eden as this was the first acknowledgement that man disobeyed God, listening to the voice of a fallen angel: Lucifer.
Finally, we are truly confident, as I, that each of us shall be redeemed by Our Messiah; then to stand before Him to give account for our works. Rewards shall be meted out accordingly to each person as it pleases God.
Anita Loos’s beauty has overcome my emotions, seeing her as a testament; in that God endowed her with a gift to write as she fulfilled her mission in the field given to her. I feel truly confident that I shall see her in the Kingdom of God. We continue to pray fervently until such time that we are called home to the Kingdom of God. Keep the faith. Everything else is immaterial.
Thomas, wow. I mean Anita Loos to the Kingdom of God with no segue. Impressive. BTW, I am Jewish so your whole Messiah and Lucifer thing is pretty much wasted on me. But good luck with all that, and have a wonderful day! Thanks for visiting us here in Dametown.