![]() Having satisfied myself that The Chaperone was almost entirely fiction, I finished Louise Brooks’ memoir which continued into the sixties. She found love in New York and returned home to Kansas at the end of the summer, but never established a dance school. Moriarty’s character was thirty-six but not stocky, and she was not the least interested in Ted Shawn, the dance instructor, or in dance. Using that little bit, Moriarty crafted a person with a different name. ”Īnd that’s about all Louise Brooks says of her chaperone. Mills’ provincialism because she shared my love of the theatre. Most of the students were females from the Middle West, to which, like my chaperon, Alice Mills, they would return to establish Denishawn schools. She agreed to accompany me on the train and live with me in New York. " finally overcame his strong objection to sending a little fifteen-year-old girl away from her home alone by finding me a chaperon, Alice Mills, a stocky, bespectacled housewife of thirty-six who, having fallen idiotically in love with the beautiful Ted Shawn at first sight, decided to study dance with him. She mentions going to New York in 1922 to study at a famous dance studio, Denishawn, and that she was accompanied by a chaperone. Her memoirs cover her early years only superficially and that’s the part that The Chaperone covers. Mary Louise Brooks was born in 1906 and died in 1985. ![]() So I got a copy of the memoirs of Louise Brooks, Lulu in Hollywood, published in 1974. But I was curious, as I am whenever I read historical fiction–how much of it was true? The fact that her triumph runs simultaneous over twenty years to Louise's real-life collapse from celebrated star to the washed-up drunk who returned to Wichita in shame feels cheap and unearned.I enjoyed Laura Moriarty’s book, The Chaperone, a fictionalized story about the silent film star Louise Brooks. The Chaperone's quick wrap-up suggests that Norma's snap decision to change her life (by breaking every rule that's guided her narrow existence) somehow results in a seamless transition from frustration and powerlessness to complete happiness and self actualization. That Louise will become an international film star whose persona embodied the iconoclastic flapper of the Jazz Age - the precursor to the modern liberated woman - gives the story more weight than it would otherwise deserve. ![]() Performances by the endearing McGovern, who is around twenty years older than the book's character, and the cheeky Richardson are solid and admirable, but they can't overcome a sense that the script feels pat and obvious, relying on both a metaphorical and a real restrictive corset to remind us how repressed women of the time were. Twists and turns of this movie are alternately predictable and engaging, but for the most part the story seems a bit too timid and neatly tied up to pack the emotional punch it might have had. In contrast, Louise is so unrestrained, her freedom may end up harming her in a society not yet ready for her. Together these disappointments lead her to take charge of her life. Flashbacks to a trauma in Norma's marriage make it clear that she remains sexually unfulfilled. When she works around the obstacles and finds her mother, she's faced with the hypocrisy created by more rules that hold women back. Norma was adopted in New York and though she eagerly tries to find out who her parents were, the nuns at her orphanage refuse access to her records. Norma is a prohibitionist and Louise mischievously sneaks out to get drunk at a speakeasy. Although Norma admires Louise's talent and supports her breaking free of certain restraints, they're still at odds. Norma is so starchy she can't even imagine that Louise's candy has already been "unwrapped" and that the girl cares not at all about her prospects for marriage, a form of voluntary bondage in her view. "Men don't like candy that's been unwrapped," Norma advises the bemused Louise. Predictably, Louise feels constrained by the corseted Presbyterian moralist sharing her room. While THE CHAPERONE imagines the story of Wichita-bred movie star Louise Brooks (Haley Lu Richardson) as she heads to New York City of 1922 to study modern dance with the famed Denishawn dance company, the focus is on local matron Norma Carlisle (Elizabeth McGovern), who volunteers to accompany and watch over the 15-year-old in the wicked big city.
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