Corinne Anita Loos (April 26, 1888 – August 18, 1981) was an American actress, novelist, playwright and screenwriter. In 1912, she became the first female staff screenwriter in Hollywood, when D. W. Griffith put her on the payroll at Triangle Film Corporation. She is best known for her 1925 comic novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, her screenplay of the 1939 adaptation of The Women, and her 1951 Broadway adaptation of Colette's novella Gigi.
Early life
Loos was born in Sisson (now Mount Shasta), California, to newspaper publisher Richard Beers Loos and Minerva Ellen "Minnie" Loos ( Smith). She had one sister, Gladys Loos, and one brother, Harry Clifford Loos, a physician and a co-founder of the Ross-Loos Medical Group.
About pronouncing her name, Loos said, "The family has always used the correct French pronunciation which is lohse. However, I myself pronounce my name as if it were spelled luce, since most people pronounce it that way and it was too much trouble to correct them."
Her father founded Sisson Mascot, a tabloid newspaper, for which her mother did most of the work of a publisher. In 1892, when Anita was three years old, the family moved to San Francisco, where her father bought the newspaper Music and Drama, with money that her mother "wheedled"
Career
1897-1915: Early career
In 1897, at their father's urging, Loos and her sister performed in a San Francisco stock company production of Quo Vadis? Gladys died at age eight of appendicitis,
Anita continued appearing on stage, being the family's breadwinner. Her father's spendthrift ways caught up with them, and in 1903 he took an offer to manage a theater company in San Diego. The New York Hat, starring Mary Pickford and Lionel Barrymore and directed by D. W. Griffith, was her third screenplay and the first to be produced. Loos dredged real life, including her own, for scenarios: she dished up her father's cronies and brother's friends, also using the rich vacationers from the San Diego resorts; eventually every experience became grist for her script mill. She wrote 200 scenarios before she ever visited a film studio.
1915-1917: Hollywood
thumb|220px|Stylized cover drawing of Anita Loos by [[Frank Walts on the April 1918 issue of The Liberator|alt=|left]]
In 1915, trying to escape her mother's influence and objections to a career in Hollywood, Loos married Frank Pallma, Jr., the son of the band conductor. But Frank proved to be penniless and dull – after six months, she sent him out for hair pins, and while he was gone she packed her bags and went home to her mother. she traveled to New York City for the first time to attend its premiere. Instead of returning to Hollywood, Loos spent the fall of 1916 in New York and met with Frank Crowninshield of Vanity Fair. They had an instant rapport and Loos remained a Vanity Fair contributor for several decades. He would readily admit that he "had never been, nor could be, faithful to any one female." Loos convinced herself he would see that she was different from all his other girls, and that behind his outwardly dull exterior was a great mind. She would later consider herself misled on both counts, writing: "I had set my sights on a man of brains, to whom I could look up", she lamented, "but what a terrible let down it would be to find out that I was smarter than he was."
thumb|200px|<small>BREAKING INTO THE MOVIES</small>|left
thumb|200px|<small>HOW TO WRITE PHOTOPLAYS</small>|right
The pictures for Famous Players–Lasky were not as successful as their previous films, partly because they starred Broadway headliners not adept at screen acting and their contract was not renewed. The scripts carried both names but were mostly products of Loos alone. Later Loos would claim that Emerson took all the money and most of the credit, though his contribution usually consisted of observing from bed as she worked. Much to the chagrin of her friends, her adoration of Emerson had manifested as subservience. When William Randolph Hearst offered Loos a contract to write a picture for his mistress, Marion Davies, Loos included the unnecessary Emerson in the deal. Hearst liked the picture and Getting Mary Married (1919) was one of the first Marion Davies pictures that didn't lose money. In 1925, on the train to Hollywood with Mencken, she became keenly aware of this fact when he solicited the attention of a blonde in the dining car. published in Harper's Bazaar, known as the "Lorelei" stories. They were satires on the state of sexual relations that only vaguely alluded to sexual intimacy; the magazine's circulation quadrupled overnight. The heroine of the stories, Lorelei Lee, was a bold, ambitious flapper, who was much more concerned with collecting expensive baubles from her conquests than any marriage licenses, in addition to being a shrewd woman of loose morals and high self-esteem. She was a practical young woman who had internalized the materialism of the United States in the 1920s and equated culture with cold cash and tangible assets.
When asked who the models for her characters were, Loos would almost always say they were composites of various people. But when pressed, she admitted that toothless flirt Sir Francis Beekman was modeled after writer Joseph Hergesheimer and producer Jesse L. Lasky. Dorothy Shaw was modeled after herself and Constance Talmadge and Lorelei most closely resembled acquisitive Ziegfeld showgirl Lillian Lorraine, who was always looking for new places to display the diamonds bestowed by her suitors.
Emerson first attempted to suppress its publication and then settled for a personal dedication. Loos continued to be overworked throughout 1926, sometimes working many projects at once. In the spring of 1926 she completed the stage adaptation, which opened a few weeks later in Chicago and ran for 201 performances on Broadway. Emerson had developed a serious case of hypochondria by this time, affecting laryngitis attacks to divert attention from her work;), Broadway debut in September 1926, running for 199 performances in two theaters, closing at the Times Square Theater, in April 1927.
1927-1931: Leisure time
thumb|220px|Anita Loos 1930s|left
When But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes was published in 1927, Emerson proposed another European vacation and went ahead of Loos. A seriously ill Loos followed him, coming down with a sinus attack in Vienna. She and the ear, nose and throat specialist who was treating her came up with a method of fixing Emerson's hypochondria. From 1927 to 1929, Loos and Emerson traveled extensively, which was hard on Loos's health. All their winters were spent in Palm Beach, where Emerson would indulge in social climbing. Loos was starved of intellectual male companionship and met Wilson Mizner there, a witty and charming real estate speculator, and in some quarters – confidence man.