In films, a title card is a piece of filmed, printed text edited into the midst of filmed action sequences. They are used to convey character dialogue or provide descriptive and narrative material. In the early decades of filmmaking, they were also called “subtitles” and often had Art Deco motifs. They were used in silent films once the movies became of sufficient length and detail to necessitate dialogue and narration to make sense of the enacted or documented events. There was even an Academy Award for Best Title Writer at the first ceremony in 1929, but never again; by 1930 most films were “Talkies”. The last film that I remember that used title cards was the marvelous, Oscar-winning The Artist (2011).
Anita Loos (1889-1981) first had success writing clever title cards for a series of Douglas Fairbanks‘ early films; her verbal wit was a perfect match for his physical gags. She provided the screenplay and title cards for D.W. Griffith at Triangle Film Corporation, working for $75 a week. Her first screen credit was for an adaptation of Macbeth in which her billing came right after William Shakespeare‘s. When Griffith asked her to write the title cards for his epic Intolerance (1916), she went to New York City for the first time to attend its premiere. Instead of returning to Hollywood, Loos stayed in New York. She met with Frank Crowninshield of Vanity Fair and they had an instant rapport. Loos would remain at Vanity Fair as a contributor for decades.
Loos returned to California just as Griffith, who wanted to make longer films, was leaving Triangle Film Corporation. She joined director John Emerson for a string of successful Douglas Fairbanks films. His Picture In The Papers (1916) was noted for its wry style of discursive and witty subtitles. Loos’s amusing, compact title cards brought crisp dramatic statements and comical jibes like:
“When women cease to attract men they often turn to Reform as a second choice.“
She exploited her natural skill with a one-liner. Among her wry subtitles, she would sneak in little messages. If a new character was introduced and the name was something like “Count Stepananstapnavitch”, she would add a note:
“To those of you who read titles aloud, you can’t pronounce the Count’s name. You can only think it.“
The five films Loos wrote for Fairbanks made him a bigger star. When Fairbanks was offered a sweet four picture deal with Famous Players-Lasky studio, he took Loos with him, paying her $500 a week. During this time Loos, Fairbanks and Emerson worked well together, and Loos was getting as much publicity as any of the biggest stars in the world, including Lillian Gish or Mary Pickford. 4-foot 11-inches, with a chic bobbed hairdo and a terribly expensive wardrobe, Loos was a distinctive presence in the new film business and she became as famous as any movie star. Photoplay magazine gave her the moniker: “The Soubrette of Satire”.
She continued to collaborate with director Emerson, to whom she was devoted. She eventually married him, although he was a notorious womanizer and not her intellectual or artistic equal. Loos and Emerson worked as a writer/director team. Emerson took the screenwriting credit even though it was Loos’s work alone, and when Emerson was drunk, Loos took his place behind the camera.
In the silent film era, women worked at all levels of the business: directing, editing, producing and designing. Screenwriting, Loos’s area, was notably the most feminine department, with mostly female screenwriters, story editors, title artists and “script girls’. Loos was one the most successful screenwriters during Hollywood’s silent years, and she was one of its greatest wits, most popular personalities and one of its major storytellers. Griffith called her “The most brilliant woman in the world“.
Loos spent decades as a successful Hollywood screenwriter, working at Paramount, United Artists and MGM. She had moved easily into sound films, not least because her witticisms that were confined to title cards in her silent films were perfect for the rat-a-tat-tat screenplays of the 1930s.
Fashionable, gossipy and loyal, she forged lasting friendships with a number of female stars, including those she discovered, like the Talmadge sisters: Constance, Norma, and Natalie; she wrote the very affectionate biography The Talmadge Sisters (1978) about them, plus she hung out with Jean Harlow, Helen Hayes and Paulette Goddard.
Back in New York City, Emerson convinced Loos that he needed to take a break from his marriage once a week. He would have assignations with chorus girls, and Loos would console herself by entertaining her friends: the Talmadge sisters, plus stars Marion Davies, Marilyn Miller, Adele Astaire and an assortment of girls being kept by prominent men. The get togethers were called the “Tuesday Widows Club”, and they had a big influence on her later writings. The Tuesday Widows liked to go to clubs and bars in Harlem, and Loos developed a deep love for Black American culture.
In her memoir Cast Of Thousands (1977), Loos writes:
“Sometimes I get inquiries concerning my marriage to a man who treated me with complete lack of consideration, tried to take credit for my work and appropriated all my earnings. The main reason is that my husband liberated me; granted me full freedom to choose my own companions.“
When Emerson had health problems in 1937, she discovered that he had frittered away most of the money they made together. She divorced him, knowing that she would have to make a success of her career on her own. And she did.
Loos is famous today for her wickedly funny novel Gentleman Prefer Blonds written during her Hollywood years, and serialized in Harper’s Bazaar. You know the story of the adventures of blond showgirl Lorelei Lee and her man-mad brunette buddy Dorothy. Right?
The book is a smart example of Loos’s sharp and shameless sense of humor. Lorelei Lee seems to be a gold-digger and a dumb blonde, but the real butt of the jokes are the men who fall for her charms. Loos was inspired to write it when she saw her friend, the literary satirist H.L. Mencken, lose his cool over a blond beauty.
Her final credits rolled in 1981, when she was 93 years old. At the memorial service, Helen Hayes, Ruth Gordon, and Lillian Gish, offered humorous anecdotes about Loos and composer Jule Styne played and sang Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend.
Loos left behind a vast body of silent film work (over 500 screenplays or titles), as well as sound-era successes like the sizzling pre-code flick Red-Headed Woman (1932) and The Women (1939).
She wrote a dozen Broadway hits, adapting her own Gentlemen Prefer Blonds to a play and then to a triumphant Broadway musical production starring Carol Channing in 1949.
“I’m furious about the Women’s Liberationists. They keep getting up on soap-boxes and proclaiming that women are brighter than men. That’s true, but it should be kept very quiet or it ruins the whole racket.“
In her later years, Loos was a New York City institution, a dedicated partygoer and diner-out, showing up at fashion shows, Broadway openings and film premiers, and charity balls and galas. A celebrated anecdotalist, she always had a good story:
“I’ve enjoyed my happiest moments when trailing a Mainbocher evening gown across the sawdust-covered floor of a saloon.“
Loos is played by Tatum O’Neal in the late Peter Bogdanovich‘s fun movie about silent filmmaking Nickleodeon (1976), but she deserves a biopic all her own. Maybe, directed by Sofia Coppola and starring Elliot Page?
