#WomanEmpowermentWednesday Anita Loos

Anita Loos
(1889-1981)

• First screenplay adapted to the screen was "My Baby" (1912) starring Mary Pickford and Lionel Barrymore
• First staff script writer at Triangle Film Cooperation and paid $75 a week plus a bonus for every produced script
• Assisted the French author Colette in adapting "Gigi" to the stage and launching the career of Audrey Hepburn
• Praised by MGM producer Samuel Marx as "a very valuable asset for MGM, because the studio had so many femme fatales [...] that we were always on the lookout for 'shady lady' stories. But they were problematic because of the censorship code. Anita, however, could be counted on to supply the delicate double entendre, the telling innuendo."
• Received $25 dollars for her first screenplay "He Was a College Boy" to Biograph Company
• First screen credit was for "MacBeth" (1916)
• Photoplay Magazine dubbed Loos "The Soubrette of Satire"
• First film with MGM was an adaptation of Katherine Brush's "Red-Headed Woman" starring Jean Harlow and Charles Boyer
• Got Aldous Huxley his screenwriting job at MGM
• Helped launch the career of Douglas Fairbanks, having written his first five films
• Best known for writing "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" which opened on stage in 1926 and spurned two films adaptation in 1928 (now lost) and the 1953 Marilyn Monroe vehicle.