#anita loos

[withnailrules]

Anita Loos, the first woman to work as a staff screenwriter in Hollywood. She wrote a little novel called “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.”

[maudeboggins]

Anita Loos

[clarabowlover]

Anita Loos (Aged 35)

For First National Pictures (1923)

[citizenscreen]

Anita Loos and Jean Harlow promoting RED-HEADED WOMAN (1932). Loos was brought in on write the script after MGM’s first hire, F Scott Fitzgerald, had submitted work that was too serious.

[trungles]

Cross-posting from my Patreon and my newsletter!

Welcome to this new, hopefully regular way for me to attempt to organize all the questions folks might ask about me or my work. I'll do my best to answer them, and I have a healthy backlog of these to get through! I'll still dig through my inbox on Tumblr here, but I just don't spend a ton of time here, and it's not the best way to get ahold of me.

ANYWAY, more after the cut (because I don't want to gum up your dashboard with a long post)

No holds barred, no IP or people off-limit: You can do a graphic novel adaptation of anything (or anyone's life story). What (or who) are you choosing?

With that in mind, I wanted to write and draw a book about an alternate universe Wanda in middle school having to navigate the quagmire of pediatric mental health services through the American public school system on top of figuring out her reality-warping powers. Like, what would the challenge of developing the tools for self-affirmation look like for a middle school girl who can change reality at will or by accident? How can she figure out and center what’s real or not if reality itself is literally malleable around her? How would she confront the emotional and physical gauntlet of being a tween when a mental health spiral could upend the fabric of the universe? That sort of thing. The whole arc of it was inspired by seeing how difficult it was for my little niece, who has similar brain issues to me, and her mother try to get adequate mental health support services for her in school, even with an IEP. It's a doozy of a process!

Anyway, the timing just didn’t work out. I’m just too tied up in projects I’m excited about at the moment, which is such a nice problem to have, honestly! 

Thanks so much for your question!

If you have any Office Hours questions for me, feel free to drop them here anonymously or through my website contact form.

[gacougnol]

Cecil Beaton

Anita Loos

[norashelley]

Charles Chaplin hosted a party at Harry Sugarman's Tropics in Beverly Hills in November 1936. Seated left to right in the outdoor patio of the Tropics are Mr. Chaplin, Anita Loos, Paulette Goddard and John Emerson.

[justbusterkeaton]

Compilation Of Nice Quotes About Buster 💗

Music: The Swan from Carnival Of Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns

[silvestriste]

Writer Anita Loos shot by famed photographer Edward Steichen, c. 1926. After becoming Hollywood's first female staff screenwriter in 1912, she went on to pen or co-write a number of iconic movies, including 1932's Red-Headed Woman starring Jean Harlow and the all-female film The Women (1939) with Joan Crawford. However she was perhaps best known for her 1925 novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Intimate Diary of a Professional Lady, which focused on an unapologetic and free-living flapper and would later be adapted into the 1953 Marilyn Monroe movie of the same name. An international bestseller, the book was additionally praised by no less than F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, William Faulkner, H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, and Edith Wharton.

[les-annees-vingt]

Anita Loos, 1925. by Alexander ‘Sasha’ Stewart.

[biblioklept]

Anita Loos' Recipe for Kitten's Tongue

Anita Loos’ recipe for kitten’s tongue: Take 2 eggs and not quite a cup of sugar. Whip them just a little, then add not quite a cupful of melted butter and a cup of flour. Stir the mixture, spread it on a tin in small quantities, bake them. Roll in nuts and sugar. From Famous Recipes of Famous Women (ed. Florence Stratton, 1925).

[thereadersdesire]

[nodeadfandoms]

Art deco inspired bindings of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos!

[friendlessghoul]

Newlyweds----John Emerson, well known director in the background, and Mrs. John Emerson, formerly Anita Loos, "master of the sub-title" in the foreground. On the left is Constance Talmadge who will be starred in an Emerson-Loos production "A Temperamental Wife," to be distributed by First National Exhibitors' Circuit. Norma Talmadge, who will soon be starred in a series of First National releases is the lady on the right.

[citizenscreen]

Lillian Gish, Edith Bouvier Beale (aka Little Edie Beale), and Anita Loos in New York City’s Russian Tea Room on March 29, 1976.

[understandingbimbos]

Rosalie Duthé, Anita Loos, Bill Wenzel, and Barbie.

I think at this point we've all accepted there's no single bimbo point of origin (or, POO). No bimbo ground zero. Rosalie Duthé is often cited as not only the first example of a bimbo but the first dumb blonde.

At the moment, she's even on the Wikipedia page!

Which is honestly really unfortunate imo seeing as she was a real person and a prostitute, but that's neither here nor there, I guess. Anyway. Unless I'm mistaken, we don't actually know much about Rosalie Duthé. And even if she was a singular influence on the very concept of bimbos and dumb blondes, then what happened? Where are the examples of dumb blonde and bimboish characters appearing in plays and literature from 1775 onward? How far did this idea spread outside of France? I'm not saying its not possible or that these examples don't exist, but its hard to pin down. When Rosalie Duthé was alive "bimbo" was still only Italian for "little boy". And while the play mocking her may have introducd the concept of the dumb blonde that doesn't mean it was necessarily solidified as an archetype right then and there.

Enter Anita Loos. By the time her comic novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, is published in November of 1925 (after having been serialized in Harper's Bazaar) the dumb blonde, bimbo, and gold digger are already established archetypes. While Loos most definitely helped popularize these idea with her internationally best-selling often-adapted satire, she was utilizing what was already there. If anything the original idea she pushed was that men prefer blondes and that blondes have more fun. Anita Loos also wrote the screenplay for the 1932 film, Red-Headed Woman, where Jean Harlow plays an ambitious flirty giggly woman that fucks pretty much every male character that appears in the film (and doesn't appear in the film).

(pictured, Jean Harlow and Anita Loos)

Then of course in the 50s we get Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield, Mamie Van Doren, and Judy Holliday. There were also men's magazines like Humorama featuring art from artists like Bill Ward, Dan DeCarlo, and Bill Wenzel. Featuring women who were either clueless, horny, or gold-digging, but all extremely buxom.

And 1959 saw the release of the original Barbie, which was just a slightly modified version of Bild Lilli, a German sex doll. I don't have much to say about that, its still something I need to do more research on, and that's part of the point of this post. Connections are there but hard to find. I really can't speak to what influence Barbie has had specifically, I think it may all be surface level, but there's something to be said about the fact so many women I follow will cite or invoke her. And that "doll" is even considered a compliment/ideal in general, physically and non-physically. You know in the sense of "You're such a doll" or "She's so pretty she looks like a doll." Its interesting. My friend says dolls represent "an easily replicated curated aesthetic" and that may be the reason for the point of reference.

There was a lot more I was going to say and this post was going to be a lot less nonsensical but I am extremely tired. I thought I could clearly and quickly get my thoughts out before I had to go to sleep. I was wrong. Sorry. Goodnight!