1912: The New York Hat (D. W. Griffith); My Baby (F. Powell); The Musketeers of Pig Alley (D. W. Griffith). 1913: The Power of the Camera; The Telephone Girl and the Lady (D. W. Griffith?short); A Horse on Bill (Powell); The Hicksville Epicure (Henderson); Highbrow Love (O?Sullivan); Pa Says (Henderson); The Widow?s Kids (Powell); The Lady in Black, His Hoodoo (Powell); A Fallen Hero (Powell); A Cure for Suffragettes (Kirkwood); The Suicide Pact (Powell); Bink?s Vacation (Bink Runs Away); How the Day Was Saved (Powell); The Wedding Gown (Powell); Gentleman or Thief For Her Father?s Sins (O?Brien); A Narrow Escape, The Mother, The Lady and the Mouse (D. W. Griffith) (short); The Mistake (D. W. Griffith) (short). 1914: Hickville?s Finest; His Awful Vengeance, The Saving Grace (Cabanne); A Bunch of Flowers; When a Woman Guides; The Road to Plaindale, The Saving Presence, The Meal Ticket; The Suffering of Susan; Nearly a Burglar?s Bride, Some Bull?s Daughter, The Fatal Dress Suit; The Girl in the Shack, The Stolen Masterpiece (Pollard); A Corner in Hats; The Million Dollar Bride, A Flurry in Art; Billy?s Rival (Izzy and His Rival) (Taylor?short); The Last Drink of Whiskey (Dillon); Nell?s Eugenic Wedding; The White Slave Catchers; The Deceiver (Dillon); How to Keep a Husband; The Gangsters of New York (Cabanne and Kirkwood) (short); The Hunchback (Cabanne); A Lesson in Mechanics. 1915: The Deacon?s Whiskers (Dillon); The Tear on the Page, Pennington?s Choice (Lund); Sympathy Sal; Mixed Values (Dillon); The Fatal Finger Prints (Dillon); Lord Chumley (Kirkwood); The Sisters (Cabanne) (short); A Ten-Cent Adventure (short); When the Road Parts (short); Double Trouble (Cabanne); The Lost House (Cabanne). 1916: The Little Liar (Ingraham); A Corner in Cotton (Balshofer); Intolerance (D. W. Griffith); Macbeth (Emerson); Stranded (Ingraham); Wild Girl of the Sierras (Powell); A Calico Vampire, Laundry Liz; The French
Films as Co-writer with John Emerson: 1916: His Picture in the Papers (Emerson); Manhattan Madness (Powell); The Matrimaniac (P. Powell); The Social Secretary (Emerson). 1917: In Again, Out Again (Emerson); Reaching for the Moon (Emerson); The Americano (Emerson). 1918: Let?s Get a Divorce (Giblyn); Hit-the-Trail Holliday (Neilan); Come on In (Emerson) (+ co-producer); Good-bye-Bill (Emerson) (+ co-producer). 1919: Oh, You Women! (Emerson); The Isle of Conquest (Jose); Under the Top (Crisp); Getting Mary Married (Dwan) (+ co-producer); A Temperamental Wife (Emerson) (+ co-producer); A
Child actress briefly; 1912?first film as writer, The New York Hat, followed by a large number of films for D. W. Griffith; 1916?collaborator with Emerson, and co-producer with Emerson from 1919; 1925?published the novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (play version, 1926, film version, 1928); other plays include The Whole Town?s Talking, The Fall of Eve, The Social Register, Happy Birthday, Gigi, The Amazing Ad?le, Ch?ri, Gogo Love You; 1963?one-woman show, An Evening of Theatrical Reminiscences.
Corinne Anita Loos in Sissons (now Mount Shasta), California, 26 April 1888.
Attended schools in San Francisco and San Diego.
Married 1) Frank Pallma Jr., 1915 (divorced 1915); 2) the director and writer John Emerson, 1920 (died 1956), one adopted daughter.
In New York City, 18 August 1981
At the early age of 16, Anita Loos began her career in films by scripting more than 100 scenarios for D. W. Griffith?s Biograph Company. She is credited with writing the subtitles for Intolerance (1916), and is regarded as one of the first screenwriters to employ intertitles to silent films. Although she wrote serious plots for silent films (Wild Girl of the Sierras and Stranded), her early success came as a satirist of everyday events. Indeed, her original use of intertitles provided her with the opportunity to let loose with her wisecracks that teased the picture. She was also proficient in slapstick comedy and wrote a number of half-reels featuring the Keystone Kops.
It was Loos, with her husband, the director John Emerson (who assumed much of the credit for her creative endeavors) who first realized that Douglas Fairbanks?s acrobatics were an extension of his effervescent personality. Loos, Emerson, and Fairbanks worked as a unit in Griffith?s company and parlayed Fairbanks?s natural athletic ability into swashbuckling adventure roles. Never missing a chance for satire, Loos (the ?O?Henrietta of the Screen?) parodied not only the nouveau riche American industrialist but also Fairbanks?s own star persona in American Aristocracy. The scenario for the film is typical of Loos?s humor: Fairbanks foils a buccaneer who is sending powder to Mexico in the guise of malted milk and as the result of his adventurous exploits wins the heart of a hat-pin king?s daughter. In pursuit of the villain, Fairbanks vaults a dozen walls and fences. He readies himself to leap at a window ten feet above the ground when he suddenly decides to take the easy way out and opens a basement window, climbing in the building like an ordinary mortal. Loos wrote other humorous films that firmly established Fairbanks as a major leading man of the American screen. Americans? love of publicity was ridiculed in His Picture in the Papers and pacifism was satirized in In Again, Out Again.
Loos left the Griffith studio in 1925 and moved east with her husband. During her brief ?retirement? from the film colony she wrote the durable story of Lorelei Lee, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. The story was quite successful as a novel, Broadway musical, and film. Loos and Herman J. Mankiewicz co-wrote the intertitles for the original silent film version directed by Mal St. Clair in 1928. Howard Hawks?s Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) was an adaptation of the stage play and featured Marilyn Monroe as Lorelei and Jane Russell as her dark-haired girlfriend. Through the perils of Lorelei, the amoral and dim-witted young blond from Little Rock, Loos poked fun at male-female relationships. The blond?s flirtations and the gullible millionaires who surrounded her provided Loos with rich material to gleefully expose the merchandising of sexuality.
Loos returned to Hollywood and worked for MGM during the Irving Thalberg reign. She took over the writing duties from F. Scott Fitzgerald on the Harlow vehicle Red-Headed Woman. She also wrote Hold Your Man starring Harlow and Clark Gable. Gable, Jeanette MacDonald, and Spencer Tracy were featured in the Loos script for San Francisco. This large-scale Hollywood soap opera evolved around San Francisco at the time of the great earthquake. Loos