58 Facts About Anita Loos

Corinne Anita Loos was an American actress, novelist, playwright and screenwriter.

Anita Loos is best known for her 1925 comic novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, her screenplay of the 1939 adaptation of The Women, and her 1951 Broadway adaptation of Colette's novella Gigi.

Anita Loos had one sister, Gladys Loos, and one brother, Dr Harry Clifford Loos, a physician and a co-founder of the Ross-Loos Medical Group.

Anita Loos's father founded Sisson Mascot, a tabloid newspaper, for which her mother did most of the work of a publisher.

In 1892, when Anita Loos was three years old, the family moved to San Francisco, where her father bought the newspaper Music and Drama, with money that her mother "wheedled" from her maternal grandfather, dropped the subject of music, in which he had no interest, and retitled the weekly to The Dramatic Review, filled with the photographs of pretty girls, that copied the format of the British Police Gazette, and led to her father's romance with the opera singer Alice Nielsen.

Anita Loos performed simultaneously in her father's company, and under another name with a more legitimate stock company.

Anita Loos's father had written some one-act plays for the stock company, and he encouraged Anita to write plays; she wrote The Ink Well, a successful piece, for which she received periodic royalties.

In 1911, the theater was running one-reel films after each night's performances; Anita Loos would take a perfunctory bow and run to the back of the theater to watch them.

Anita Loos sent her first attempt at a screenplay, He Was a College Boy, to the Biograph Company, for which she received $25.

Anita Loos dredged real life, including her own, for scenarios: she dished up her father's cronies and brother's friends, using the rich vacationers from the San Diego resorts; eventually every experience became grist for her script mill.

Anita Loos wrote 200 scenarios before she ever visited a film studio.

In 1915, trying to escape her mother's influence and objections to a career in Hollywood, Anita Loos married Frank Pallma, Jr.

Anita Loos returned to California as Griffith was leaving Triangle to make longer films, and she joined director and future husband John Emerson for a string of successful Douglas Fairbanks movies.

The five films Anita Loos wrote for Fairbanks helped make him a star.

Anita Loos wanted Marion as chaperone, as she found herself attracted to Emerson, a man 15 years her senior that she would refer to as "Mr E".

Anita Loos and Emerson turned down another picture with Davies, preferring to write for their old friend Constance Talmadge, whose brother-in-law Joseph Schenck was an independent producer.

Anita Loos was among the first to join Ruth Hale's Lucy Stone League, an organization that fought for women to preserve their maiden names after marriage as she continued with hers.

Loos and her new assistant, John Ashmore Creeland, visited many of the Paris-based writers Loos had met in America, as well as Gertrude Stein, Alice B Toklas, Elisabeth Marbury and Elsie De Wolfe.

Anita Loos adored Mencken, but gradually realized disappointingly, "High-IQ gentlemen didn't fall for women with brains, but those with more downstairs".

Anita Loos then began to write a sketch of Mencken and his vacant lady friends that would later become Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

Anita Loos was a practical young woman who had internalized the materialism of the United States in the 1920s and equated culture with cold cash and tangible assets.

Anita Loos garnered fan letters from fellow authors William Faulkner, Aldous Huxley and Edith Wharton, among others.

Anita Loos continued to be overworked throughout 1926, sometimes working many projects at once.

In September, their vacation was cut short; Anita Loos was needed back in New York to do revisions on Blondes for its Waldorf Theatre, Broadway debut in September 1926, running for 199 performances in two theaters, closing at the Times Square Theater, in April 1927.

Not wanting to undo all her efforts, Anita Loos retired to a life of leisure.

Since Emerson had his own entertainment, Anita Loos was often in the company of Beaton or Mizner.

Anita Loos was not completely unhappy with this, and within a few months had produced a stage adaptation of But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes and a comedy Cherries are Ripe.

Not long after, Anita Loos came upon a love letter from one of Emerson's conquests.

Devastated, Anita Loos offered him a divorce; Emerson refused and suggested they live apart, with him giving her a suitable allowance.

The first project Thalberg handed Loos was Jean Harlow's Red-Headed Woman because F Scott Fitzgerald was having no luck adapting Katherine Brush's book.

Anita Loos could be counted on to supply the delicate double entendre, the telling innuendo.

Anita Loos moved to an apartment in Hollywood, where she was unexpectedly joined by Emerson.

Mizner having abused his body with alcohol and drugs, wasted away until dying on April 3,1932, a date Anita Loos would continue to mark.

At MGM, Anita Loos happily turned out scripts; however, she frequently had to use Emerson as a conduit to communicate with directors and other executives who balked at dealing with a woman on equal footing.

Anita Loos bought a modest house in Beverly Hills in 1934.

Anita Loos was a frequent attendee at George Cukor's Sunday brunches, which was the closest Hollywood had to a literary salon.

Anita Loos based Clark Gable's character on some confidence men she had known, including Wilson Mizner.

Anita Loos signed with Samuel Goldwyn, formerly of MGM and now head of United Artists, for $5,000 a week and almost immediately regretted it.

Anita Loos, who had always left the finances to Emerson, soon discovered that most of her money was no longer in joint accounts but in his own private accounts.

Anita Loos promptly bought herself out of her United Artists contract, re-signed with MGM and bought a beach-front house in Santa Monica.

Anita Loos was apprehensive, but Cukor insisted she do the changes on set, among his all-star bevy of leading ladies on this female-only picture that included Thalberg widow Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford and Rosalind Russell.

Anita Loos made immediate friends with Paulette Goddard who was surprisingly well-read.

When Hunt Stromberg, the last producer she respected, left MGM to produce independently; Anita Loos tried to get out of her contract, but by then she had grown into too valuable a property to the studio.

Anita Loos had houseguests Aldous and Maria Huxley, from England, when World War II began in September 1939.

Anita Loos convinced Huxley that it would be safer for his family if they stayed in the United States, and she got him a job adapting screenplays at MGM.

Anita Loos kept improving the script throughout the Boston run; when it opened in New York at the Broadhurst it was a hit and ran for 600 performances.

Anita Loos threatened to quit the production unless assured she would never have to speak to Fields again.

Anita Loos had nothing to do with the production, but thought Monroe was inspired casting.

The success of Blondes the second time around meant Anita Loos had a greater profile than ever before.

Anita Loos moved to a more spacious apartment at the Langdon Hotel and bought a car.

In 1950 Anita Loos wrote A Mouse is Born, another novel, and once sent to her publisher, she left her first trip to Europe in 20 years.

Anita Loos worked on more adaptations for the next few years during travels while relocating to an apartment on West Fifty-Seventh Street.

Anita Loos worked and traveled even while being treated for a painful hand ailment that prevented her from writing.

In 1959 Anita Loos opened another Colette adaptation, Cheri, with Kim Stanley and Horst Buchholz in the title roles, but it ran for only two months.

Anita Loos continued writing as a magazine contributor, appearing regularly in Harper's Bazaar, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker.

Anita Loos would become a virtual New York institution, an assiduous partygoer and diner-out; conspicuous at fashion shows, theatrical and movie events, balls and galas.

Anita Loos was interviewed in the television documentary series Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film.

At the memorial service, friends Helen Hayes, Ruth Gordon, and Lillian Gish, regaled the mourners with humorous anecdotes and Jule Styne played songs from Anita Loos's musicals, including "Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend".