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AN ANITA LOSS COMPANION
by Robert L. Gale
 Anita Loos (1888-1981) is best known for her novel Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. It sold in the millions, was widely translated, even into Chinese, and was reworked into a movie, a stage play, and a musical. Anita Loos is also known for writing almost countless movie scripts, beginning when as a teenager she sold one to legendary movieman D. W. Griffith for $15. She also wrote essays, autobiographical items, short stories, and other novels, including But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes, which rivals her Blondes in liveliness. Sadly, petite Anita married a big scoundrel, at first talented but soon a leech whose villainy finally cost him. Anita’s professional and social life, however, was always unabashed. At MGM studios, she associated with movie moguls Louis B Mayer and Irving Thalberg, and with author F. Scott Fitzgerald. She also knew people as diverse as literary genius Aldus Huxley and astronomer genius Edwin Hubble, actors as different as Clark Gable and Eddie Cantor, and actresses as unlike as Helen Hayes and Mae West. Anita’s writings appealed to fellow authors, not least James Joyce, H. L. Mencken, Edith Wharton, and Edmund Wilson. This Companion presents details of Anita Loos’s life, works, and friends, and also throws light on the tumultuous times in which she lived.
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