Louise Brooks

Biography

Mary Louise Brooks made her debut on November 14, 1906 in a southeastern Kansas community of 7000 named Cherryvale. Born to prosperous attorney Leonard Brooks, age 40, and Myra (Rude) Brooks, age 23, she was the second of four children. Myra was inclined to neglect her household conventions to pursue her cultural interests. In fact, prior to her marriage to Leonard, she informed him that he was her escape to freedom and the arts, and that any squalling brats she produced could take care of themselves. Myra's reputation became that of "the most cultured and literary woman in Cherryvale." She helped established the Library Club, later lobbied successfully to obtain one of Andrew Carnegie's grants for Cherryvale's Library. She was one of the first to speak out on women's rights. Deprived of genuine maternal affection, Brooksie nevertheless observed and absorbed Myra’s moody responses to her keyboard music of Ravel and Debussy. This brought them a certain mother-daughter rapport. As Louise later remembered, "It was by watching her face that I first recognized the joy of creative effort."

At age 4, she made her first public appearance playing a pint-sized bride in a church benefit production of Tom Thumb's Wedding. Her mother, later recalled how, "She looked quite adorable in the dainty bridal apparel, and though the little bride groom was just about scared out of his poor little wits, Louise walked down the aisle and, much to our amusement, manipulated her shower bouquet and bridal veil with all the ease and assurance of a grownup bride. The female of the species seem to inherit a natural calmness concerning the marriage pageantry of which the male is quite devoid."

Brooksie was a pretty normal kid. She loved making mud pies, and many a time, while in the throes of her mud pie making, Myra would fetch her for a dance lesson. Her dance teacher, Mrs. Buckpitt, traveled 8-miles by train from Independence to Cherryvale. Most of the time Brooksie didn't want her dancing lessons. Her playmates wished they could take them in her place. "She painted and drew quite well," Myra wrote. "And was constantly making lovely sets of scenery as a background against which her knights and ladies enacted their joys and sorrows. She began teaching her little sister and some of the small girls in the neighborhood. This was naturally real work, but she seemed to regard it as play. Entirely unaided she would select records for the talking machine, arrange the dances and tirelessly drill the children. Many of these dances she costumed as well, designing and making these herself, and I must admit she did them most cleverly."

At the age of 10, she had become, in her own words, "What amounted to a professional dancer," appearing at fairs, theaters, men's and women's clubs, and various gathering in southeastern Kansas. At 11, she was dancing on a regular basis, performing in recitals and programs at the Cherryvale Opera House, considered one of the finest west of the Mississippi. By her own admission, Louise was already displaying prima-donna symptoms: "I was given to temper tantrums brought on by an unruly costume or a wrong dance tempo, but my mother, who was my costumer and pianist, bore them with professional calm." She went through the skinny little girl stage in grade school and the awkward teen-age state during her first year or two in high school, but the dance lessons she took finally began to pay off in her amazing transformation into a beautiful, confident, talented young lady. Brooksie was a great lover of moving pictures. She and her brother, Theodore, went to silent serials and features of Theda Bars, Tom Mix, Pearl White, and Dustin Farnum at the local movie theater. These films were very worn and scratchy by the time they reached Cherryvale, but Cherryvalians could keep pace with the latest flicker rages. She was especially enthralled by Gloria Swanson, the most exciting face of 1915. At this time, Myra cut the long braids of her talented daughter into a new "look" closely resembling what would become her signature "raven helmet" hairstyle.

In 1919, at the age of 13, the Brooks family moved 10-miles southwest to Independence, Kansas. Brooksie continued to focus on her dancing skills and with her bobbed-hair, captivating looks and a figure that turned many heads in the hallways of Montgomery County High School. No sooner had the flirtatious local boys focused their eyes on Louise Brooks, she vanished to Wichita with her family. In Wichita her father expand his law practice and pursued his dream of becoming a United States District Judge.