Synopses & Reviews
Review
"Bubikopf, Berliners once called her—the boyish scamp with bobbed hair. Brooks lived as close as life can come to the art of Lulu, the erotic, amoral femme fatale of expressionist Frank Wedekind, immortalized in opera by Alban Berg and on film by G. W. Pabst in Pandora's Box (1928). Lulu's theme—the antagonism of primitive sexuality to a philistine society—was Brooks' as well. In this definitive if over-devoted biography, Paris recounts Brooks' early years as Denishawn dancer and Ziegfeld girl, her films with Paramount and Pabst, and the long decades of obscurity and alcohol which ended with her rediscovery by Kenneth Tynan and others in the late 1970's, As Erdegeist and paradigmatic flapper of the silent screen, her only competitor was another black-bobbed beauty, Clara Bow. Unlike Bow's 'It' girl affirmations, however, Brooks' nihilism in life and on film—'Love is a publicity stunt,' she once said—both attracts and repels with its smell of death." Reviewed by Andrew Witmer, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)