Louise Brooks

Andrew Sydenham, Hollie Latham Hucker and Tracy Calder recreate Eugene Robert Richee’s stylish 1920s portrait of Louise Brooks

- Eugene Robert Richee’s

Louise Brooks

Eugene Robert

Richee, 1928

Known as much for her distinctive bob as for her acting ability, intelligence and fi ery nature, actress Louise Brooks had starred in 12 fi lms by the time she posed for Eugene Robert Richee in 1928. Richee had been working for Paramount Pictures for seven years, and during his career photographed some of Hollywood’s most dazzling stars, including Fay Wray (the star of King Kong) and Clara Bow (the original ‘It Girl’.) He photographed Brooks on a number of occasions, but the pictures from this photo session capture the spirit and fashion of the late 1920s perfectly. Another image survives from the ‘pearls’ shoot - a head and shoulders shot of Brooks with her sharp bob and perfectly lined lips, but this doesn’t quite have the magic of the full length shot, and is much less well known.

A ctress and dancer Louise Brooks left her Kansas home at the age of 15 and headed to New York to study at the Denishawn School of Dancing. Three years later, she appeared in her fi rst fi lm, The Street of Forgotten Men, which was fi lmed at Paramount’s Astoria Studios. By the late 1920s, she was rubbing shoulders with legends such as Humphrey Bogart and Charlie Chaplin (who later denied having an affair with her).