Girl Like I, with ALS to Douglas Fairbanks.
Annotated By Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
Loos, Anita. A Girl Like I. New York: Viking Press, (1966).
8vo.; red paper-covered boards; pink, white and black dust-jacket; moderate wear; price sticker to lower panel. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition of Loos’s memoir. A presentation copy, inscribed to Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. on the half-title, around the printed title: To the hero of page 166 with the affection of [A Girl Like] Anita. With Fairbanks’s bookplate on the front pastedown.
Together with:
Autograph letter signed, “Anita,” to Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., March 15, 1967; one leaf of Loos’s yellow stationery; creased; thanking Fairbanks for his editorial eye.
Anita Loos (1888–1981) was an American screenwriter, playwright and author best known for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925), which began as a series of short sketches for Harper's Bazaar, then enjoyed enormous success as a book, and a 1953 film starring Marilyn Monroe. Loos wrote prolifically from a young age, eventually penning over two hundred screenplays in a career that spanned the early silent film era through the Golden Age of Hollywood: as the dust-jacket proclaims, “Anita Loos practically invented movies.”
In 1915, Loos met Douglas Fairbanks, then an up-and-coming silent film star who shot to fame in a string of highly successful films written for him by Loos and directed by her husband John Emerson. In A Girl Like I Loos recalls her “warm and cozy” friendship with Fairbanks’ son “Doug Junior”: “Junior was a mere eight years old, but we were the same size, so, feeling that we were the same age, he was always dragging me into the nursery to play with him.”
The book is annotated in pencil by Junior, with many dog-eared pages indicating his notes and corrections. In one instance, next to a paragraph introducing screenwriter “Ella Woods,” Fairbanks writes “Wasn’t it Lotta Woods? Not Ella?”; in another, near a passage on playwright Wilson Mizner, he notes “Addison Mizner/ Brother/ famous architect.” In the letter, Loos thanks Fairbanks for his notes, and writes that the corrections have been made in the book’s second edition, in full:
Dearest Douglas-
How much it touches me that you have liked my book. And how grateful I am that you send me those corrections! Luckily they were mostly corrected in the second edition. Should it ever attain a third edition, I’ll call on you for further information.
I had completely forgotten about your mother’s second marriage—and my only comfort in these mistakes is to think that, since forgetfulness in one of my characteristics, it can be considered part of my story.
My affectionate (and nostalgic) greetings to you and yours. I wish we met more often. Last summer we lived at Old St. James House—passed your office daily and thought of you.
Devotedly yrs,
Anita
(#4653805)
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