LOOS: Generally, yes, at MGM we had a star in mind. I did so many screenplays in eighteen years I can’t even remember all of them.įFM: Did you write screenplays with certain stars in mind? I adapted The Women, Clare Luce’s play, for the movies. Another one I wrote for Jean Harlow was original. You may have seen it because it’s on the Late, Late show about every two months. I wrote San Francisco for Clark Gable and Jeanette MacDonald. LOOS: I wrote screenplays mostly, from other people’s books. It was a pretty sordid story.įFM: Did you write stories or screenplays?

But I was strongly attached to Irving Thalberg, and Mayer persecuted him no end. LOOS: Well, he wasn’t one of my favorite men, although I must say I never had any trouble with him myself. LOOS: I worked there for eighteen years, and I had a long, long stretch of writing for Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford, and a great many of the film stars of those days.įFM: What did you think of Louis B. I look on writing much as crossword puzzles or something of that kind.įFM: You worked at MGM for a while, didn’t you? Not consistently, but off and on because in the midst of it I had a play running in London.įFM: Was writing the book an enjoyable task? LOOS: Oh, I worked on it for about two years. In the conversation that follows, I identify myself as FFM-for Film Fan Monthly.įFM: How long were you working on your autobiography? I don’t think I have had that experience in all the years since. My most vivid memory of this brief conversation is that when I transcribed it I realized that Loos had spoken in complete sentences and paragraphs. The cover of my copy of Loos’ autobiography, which she graciously signed for me when I met her in 1966 It’s one of the most frustrating titles on that perpetual list of lost movies.) (And if only we could see the 1928 silent version of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. If only I had been more knowledgeable back then. That’s how I found myself, at age 15, sitting in Miss Loos’ spacious apartment on West 57 th Street in Manhattan, tape recorder in hand. I lucked out when the publisher of Anita Loos’ autobiography, A Girl Like I, responded to my query. I had hoped to conduct a series of interviews with New York-based subjects, but I had no idea how to reach the people I wanted to meet. I had just taken over publication of Daryl Davy’s Film Fan Monthly in May of 1966 and was hungry for content. It reminded me of my own encounter with the woman responsible for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and I thought I’d share that conversation with you here. In the weeks leading up this this year’s Academy Awards, Lesley Blume paid long-overdue tribute to pioneering screenwriter Anita Loos in a well-researched ARTICLE for the Hollywood Reporter. A poster for the movie most people associate with Loos, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

Gentlemen prefer blondes by anita loos