Corinne Anita Loos (1888-1981) habitually lied about her age, but 1888 is the most likely year. Her name is now inextricably linked with her most famous novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925) and its adaptations, but she was connected with the cinema for most of her career.
Loos started in public life as a child performer on the stage, and only later tried her hand at writing. In 1911, she submitted a story idea to the Biograph studio. It is often claimed that her first filmed script was D W Griffith’s The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912), but it was actually Griffith’s The New York Hat (1912), with Mary Pickford. It was only when she visited the studio some time later that Griffith discovered that ‘A Loos’ was female. She would eventually write an estimated 100 scenarios for Biograph and/or Griffith, and for the Lubin studio. Most famously, she provided the intertitles for Intolerance (1916).
Loos moved to New York in 1918 to write for Famous Players-Lasky. She also published two books on screenwriting, and wrote her first stage play in 1923. Only in 1931 did Loos settle in Hollywood, signing a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Prominent amongst her screenplays were Red-Headed Woman (1932), the musical San Francisco, for which she was Oscar nominated, and The Women (1939).
Loos’s final Hollywood film was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945, dialogue only), after which she returned to New York and worked in other mediums.
In addition to San Francisco, Loos worked uncredited on The Cat and the Fiddle and Babes in Arms, and wrote the screenplay for I Married an Angel.
Leave a Reply