Anita Loos

Anita Loos was an American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter, who began her career as a child actress. Born in California, Loos was the daughter of American journalist Richard Beers Loos. Struggling to get out of debt, her father took on the management of a theatre company in San Diego in 1903, and Anita appeared regularly on stage. Her father also encouraged her to write and between 1912 and 1915 she wrote over 100 screenplays which were sold to the Biograph and Lubin studios. She then joined the Triangle Film Corporation and her first screen credit was a film adaptation of Macbeth. Loos went on to write a string of successful screenplays for the actor Douglas Fairbanks, which were directed by her future husband John Emerson and helped to make Fairbanks a star. Loos and Emerson formed a successful artistic partnership, which culminated in marriage, although it was not always the happiest.

Loos wrote her first novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: The Illuminating Diary of a Professional Lady in 1925 and it was a roaring success. It was adapted for a short-lived Broadway play, which ran for 201 performances. Loos returned to writing screenplays in Hollywood and she was nominated for Best Original Screenplay for San Francisco in 1936. In 1949, Loos co-wrote the musical adaptation of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which starred a yet-unknown Carol Channing. The show was a huge success and was adapted for film in 1953 with Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell in the lead roles. Loos then went on to write a stage adaptation of Collette's Gigi, which ran for a year and starred Audrey Hepburn in the title role. She followed this in 1959 with a less successful Colette stage adaptation, Chéri.

Loos was twice married, firstly to Frank Palma, Jr., the son of the band conductor and then to John Emerson. The latter marriage ended in estrangement following Emerson's multiple infidelities and he eventually died in 1956. Loos continued to be a regular magazine contributer and socialite on the New York scene until the latter years of her life. She suffered a heart attack and died in Manhattan's Doctors Hospital in 1981 at the age of 93.