“Lorelei Lee” On the Screen

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 306, 17 March 1928, Page 25

“Lorelei Lee” On the Screen

How A n ita Loos Wrote Her Book WHAT DO GENTLEMEN PREFER? I I One of the screen sensations I this year will be “Gentlemen I Prefer Blondes.” Lorelei Lee, most exquisite of “Gold Diggers,” will make as many laugh from the silver sheet as she did from the written page. Here is a recent impression of little Anita Loos, whose fertile brain evolved the gay Lorelei.

The author of that clever little book, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” which swept like an hysterical monsoon all over the country, is a young and pretty brunette. Anita Loos stands some half inch over four feet in her absurdly tiny, extremely high-heeled French slippers. She looks about 1- from the rear and no more than 16 from the front. She is a snare and a delusion. Nowhere on her countenance can there be found the faintest trace of that supersophisticated wisdom and cynical knowledge life, and men and women that would have drawn the respect of Rabelais and the envy of Voltaire. BLANDLY FEMININE She is as blandly feminine in appearance as her now world-famous “Lorelei Lee.'’ Her large eyes and dark hair, propped like an Eton schoolboy, gives J? op an air of perpetual masquerade. The short "snub” nose and the rather yide mouth complete a whole which invariably suggests the world “cute.” This extremely youthful-looking pers °n, however, has had a career which •nany men would envy. Anita is a woman. She has been an actress, a newspaper reporter, a scenario writer, a playwright, a producer — a °d the wife and guiding influence of **ne of America’s leading theatrical ngures. In private life she is Mrs. J ohn Emerson. . I Was sitting with her in the charm-drawing-room of their house on Last Fifty-fifth Street. The creator "Lorelei Lee’’ was recovering from • flu attack which has left her weak exhausted. She looked so tiny {Ving on the large sofa that you could nave picked her up. slipped her into Vour pocket and walked off before she have been missed. I hadn’t any idea of starting a serial or a book when I wrote the first instalment.’’ she said. “A magazine edi*or me to do some articles. T “ ad the idea of ‘Lorelei Lee’ in my so I just wrote it down. v She wag only to live for one article, but l hen they liked her so much that I aked to continue with her. So • went on and on until I ran out of •filiations and had to stop. Anita Loos is now a very wealthy • oung woman. Publishers, theatrical producers and screen magnates are all Joying her golden tribute.