For Louise Brooks, the 1930s marked a period of personal and professional decline. Following her return from Europe, where she was widely celebrated, Brooks found herself somewhat adrift in America. In Europe, she had starred in three outstanding films — Pandora’s Box (1929), Diary of a Lost Girl (1929) and Prix de Beauté (1930), but only Pandora’s Box played, barely, in the United States. To both American movie goers and studio executives, Brooks seemed to have disappeared. Newspaper and magazine articles either asked “whatever happened to Louise Brooks” or noted the actress might be hoping to make a comeback. The 1930s were, as well, a decade of missed opportunities. Both Columbia and Pathé expressed interest in the actress, offered her a screen test, but nothing came of it. Brooks herself turned down an important part in The Public Enemy (1931), and was reportedly considered for the lead in The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), a role which never materialized.
Throughout the 1930s, and unlike the 1920s, Brooks was without a studio contract. In need of work, she accepted small roles and bit parts in indifferent films. Between 1931 and 1938, Brooks acted in seven American films — but of those seven, she played a mere five minute cameo in one, her role was cut in another, and in another uncredited bit, she was a masked dancer who is impossible to identify. Two of her films were middling B-westerns, while another was a short from a poverty row studio.
The first film Brooks made following her return to America was Windy Riley Goes Hollywood (1931), a short, 20-minute comedy about a cocky blow-hard who attempts to revamp the publicity department of a Hollywood studio. The film, released by Educational Pictures, was directed by another actor whose career was on the skids, Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, who due to a blacklist was working under the name William B. Goodrich. Windy Riley Goes Hollywood was Brooks’ first film to feature her actual voice (her’ earlier talkies, The Canary Murder Case and Prix de Beauté, had been dubbed), and her first and only short.
Windy Riley Goes Hollywood, an undistinguished, little shown short, was followed by It Pays to Advertise (1931), a Frank Tuttle directed farce about rival soap companies, an advertising agency, and a ne’er do-well playboy who attempts to make good. Brooks plays Thelma Temple, a dancer appearing in a musical entitled Girlies Don’t Tell. If all this sounds rather blah, it was. Brooks’ small part in the film, a programmer featuring up-and-coming Carole Lombard, was done to fulfill her contract with Paramount; it amounted to little more than a five minute cameo. The Hollywood Reporter wrote “Louise Brooks flashes in and out of the opening scenes and looks like a good bet for bigger roles.”
The closest Brooks got to those bigger roles was her next film, God’s Gift to Women (1931), a pre-code musical comedy whose musical numbers were cut and whose humor and suggestive scenes are largely tempered absent due to the presence of the film’s star, Frank Fay. He plays the Parisian descendant of a Don Juan who vows to stop philandering in order to win the hand of a virtuous young lady (Laura LaPlante) with a disapproving father. Brooks plays one of a handful of women irresistibly drawn to Fay’s character. Despite the film’s bevy of beauties, which included Marguerite Livingston, Yola D’Avril, Joan Blondell, Ethelyn Claire and the Sisters ‘G’, this Michael Curtiz directed film from Warner Brothers failed to find much of an audience.
In 1930, Brooks turned down an offer to appear in a Buck Jones Western. In 1936, however, she could not afford to be so picky. By then, Brooks had been out of films for five years and was attempting a second comeback. A chance came with another Buck Jones western, Empty Saddles (1936), whose plot revolves around Jones and his attempt to convert a seemingly haunted ranch into a resort, until he discovers a group of crooked sheep ranchers have other plans. If all this sounds rather blah, it was. Nevertheless, Universal issued a press release quoting a supposed interview with Brooks: “I am delighted with my role in Empty Saddles . It gives me an opportunity to do something, not just stand around and look pretty. I wouldn’t trade it for all the other roles I ever had because I am really acting now, not just being an ornament, and I feel that, at last, I am on the road toward getting some place in pictures.”
The comeback Brooks’ hoped to make only sputtered in 1937. She appeared, or rather was cast, in two films that year. One was King of Gamblers (1937), a stylish low-budget crime drama about a slot-machine racket and the crusading reporter who uncovers it. Though a “B” picture, this almost film noir was given an “A” treatment by director Robert Florey. Brooks’ small role was cut from the film’s final release, which was unfortunate, as this Paramount release is easily the best of Brooks’ films from the 1930s. Brooks’ other film that year was When You’re in Love (1937), a romantic musical scripted and directed by long-time Frank Capra writer Robert Riskin and starring Grace Moore and Cary Grant. Its enjoyable and fast-moving plot turns on high-spirits and high-notes. Brooks makes an uncredited appearance as one of a number of chorus dancers in a musical sequence near the end of the film. Unfortunately, Brooks is wearing a mask and it is nearly impossible to identify her.
Brooks last film was Overland Stage Raiders (1938), a George Sherman directed B-western from Republic Pictures. In it, the “Three Mesquiteers” fight bad guys in the modern-day west, and the “stages” being raided are buses bearing gold shipments to the east. Airborne hijackers steal the gold, but the Mesquiteers defeat the crooks and then parachute to safety! The film stars John Wayne, on the brink of stardom. Brooks plays his love interest.