Louise Brooks Arrives in New York: Awkwardness Beneath the Bold Beauty
Rereading Louise Brooks’s reminiscences of her early years in New York City, published as Chapter One in Lulu in Hollywood, I’m struck by the unique blend of detail, candor, and lack of pretension or sentiment. She credits her success in the city to a soda jerk who tamed her accent, a waiter who refined her table manners, and a salesgirl who selected her clothes. What she leaves unsaid is just as revealing: that the girl stepping off the train from Kansas was already striking, quick-witted, and impossible to ignore.
What makes Brooks’s account so compelling is the disconnect between how remarkable she was and how she describes herself—not as an icon in the making but as a young woman fumbling her way through an unfamiliar world. Her writing strips away mystique and resists self-mythologizing. She casts herself not as an icon-in-the-making but as an ordinary young woman—uncertain, unpolished, eager to learn. The world surely saw something else entirely.
Mary Louise Brooks arrived in New York with a mission: to shed the trappings of her upbringing. The Denishawn dance school was her official destination, but the city itself became her real classroom, its lessons sharper and far more intoxicating. The restless small-town girl with jet-black hair and a striking presence had no intention of remaining a Midwestern ingénue. If anything, the transformation from Kansas country girl to New York sophisticate was less an evolution than an inevitability. Even in her earliest days in the city, Louise Brooks was no ordinary newcomer.
Brooks may have painted herself as naïve, but naïveté was never her defining trait. She was bold—often to the point of offense—and her striking beauty, impossible to ignore, gave her an immediate advantage in a city that thrived on audacity and allure.
Yet it was not just her looks that made Louise Brooks an undeniable force. From the start, she had a rebellious streak that set her apart. She may have lacked refinement but was unimpressed by the well-heeled denizens of high society. Her education in style and sophistication came not from books or finishing schools but through figures like actress and socialite Barbara Bennett, who introduced her to a world of fashion, wealthy admirers, and an elite social circle where money and appearances mattered more than anything.
Among the Bennett sisters—Constance, the acclaimed actress; Joan, also an actress; and Barbara, the untamed firebrand—Brooks was never just a supporting player. She watched, absorbed what was useful, but never imitated. She had no interest in blending in; she expected the world to adjust to her. The privilege and glamour of Park Avenue did not intimidate her. “If anything, she quickly recognized its contradictions. Behind the perfectly manicured exteriors, she saw the bleakness; beneath the polished elegance, the quiet despair. She appreciated sophistication but never confused it with substance.
Brooks’s transformation accelerated under Barbara’s influence. A renowned hairdresser sculpted her already striking features into something even more dramatic with the sharp angles of her soon-to-be-iconic bob. Her wardrobe was carefully upgraded, her presence refined. In short order, she was no longer a Kansas girl in the big city—she was a creature entirely of her own making, a woman who defied categorization.
Her associations with wealthy men introduced her to a world where beauty and charm could be exchanged for luxury. Yet unlike many women of her time, Brooks was never a passive recipient of male generosity. She played the game with a level of detachment that must have unnerved men used to dominating submissive young women.
Despite her quick ascent into fashionable circles, Brooks remained, in many ways, an outsider. Her sharp tongue, her refusal to defer to authority, and her tendency to speak with unsparing honesty frequently landed her in trouble. Her time at the Algonquin Hotel came to an abrupt end when the owner, alarmed by reports of a teenage girl in a short pink dress slipping out to nightclubs at all hours, quietly arranged for her relocation to a more respectable residence. That move failed just as quickly. A staid institution for working women proved to be an equally poor fit. Brooks, never one to conform, was soon dismissed from the premises for the scandalous act of exercising in “flimsy pajamas” on the roof.
Yet if these incidents embarrassed her, they did nothing to slow her down. By 1924, she was making a name for herself as a dancer on Broadway, first in George White’s Scandals and by 1925 in the Ziegfeld Follies. She was now a woman who embodied the contradictions of her era: elegant yet subversive, naturally beautiful yet deliberately styled, rebellious yet irresistibly magnetic.
Hollywood soon came calling, but with it came the first hints of trouble. A 1926 Photoplay interview, meant to promote her as a rising film star, became an early showcase of her stubborn individuality. She described the interviewer as hostile and astonished that the young actress wasn’t more impressed by her sudden film success. “She looked upon me as a stupid ‘chorus girl’ who didn’t appreciate her astonishing good luck,” writes Brooks. “I looked upon her as artistically retarded not to know that ten years of professional dancing was the best possible preparation for ‘moving’ pictures.”
Ironically, the interview itself was glowing. It referred to Brooks as “so very Manhattan. Very young. Exquisitely hard-boiled. Her black eyes and sleek black hair are as brilliant as Chinese lacquer. Her skin is white as a camellia. Her legs are lyric.” She has “a pair of eyes as wise as Solomon’s beloved.” Brooks was already something rare at the time: a performer who exuded both glamour and jaded detachment. “Most of these movie people,” she said, “they slaay me. But I admire Gloria Swanson. I admire her career. She’s gone ahead and got just what she wanted. I like that.”
She was nineteen years old.
Brooks’s early years in New York did more than refine her style and introduce her to high society; they reinforced something that had always been true about her. She was never a woman who would bend herself to fit the expectations of others.
She had learned the rules of the game, but breaking them was always more interesting. Smart, difficult, and unapologetically herself, Brooks was irresistible and unforgettable—and totally incompatible with the rules of the Hollywood system.
She was a paradox—a woman who became an icon precisely by rejecting the prescribed path to stardom. She had no patience for studio politics, no interest in cultivating a carefully managed public image, and no desire to conform to the industry’s demands. Her refusal to play by Hollywood’s rules left her all but unemployable by twenty-five. Yet it was this defiance that secured her legend. While other stars of the day faded into obscurity, Brooks remained singular—an enigma whose allure only grew with time.
Want more Louise Brooks? Check out my book of photographs, Louise Brooks: A Life in Pictures.