Anita Loos

While she is now best known for her book "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," Anita Loos was one of Hollywood's foremost early screenwriters. She began writing screen scenarios for the 'Biograph Company' at an early age (though not 12, as she later claimed), and the first to be produced, The New York Hat (1912), was not only directed by the legendary D. W. Griffith but starred another of Hollywood's future heavyweights: Mary Pickford.

After working for some years with Griffith (including writing the surtitles for his epic Intolerance (1916), she began to work for Douglas Fairbanks, whom she had championed in his early days in Hollywood. Her husband and collaborator John Emerson convinced her to quit screenwriting for the sake of his own pride -- nevertheless, fate intervened in the form of "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes," an unassuming book she had compiled from a series of magazine stories she had based on the predilection of then-famous intellectual H. L. Mencken to be dazzled by gold-digging ditzes. The book was a surprise smash all over the world, later spawning a sequel ("But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes"), which became a not particularly successful silent movie but later a hugely successful film starring Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell, and a hit Broadway musical.

By the end of the 1920's, Anita Loos was personal assistant of Richard Rubin, vice-president of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives." Volume One, 1981-1985, pages 511-512. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1998.