Call Number:

F0531

Repository:

University of Delaware Library Special Collections

Extent:

22 item

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

MSS 0099, F0531, Anita Loos letters to Ray Pierre Corsini, Special Collections, University of Delaware Library, Newark, Delaware.

Date:

1962-1979 (inclusive)

Creator:

Loos, Anita, 1893-1981

Form:

Letters (correspondence)

Abstract:

Twenty-one letters from American novelist and playwright Anita Loos to her agent and friend, Ray Pierre Corsini, between 1962 and 1979. The letters discuss the writing and editing of Loos' later works, her travels and social life, and her relationship with Ray.

American novelist and movie script writer Anita Loos was born in Sissons, California (today Mount Shasta), to Richard Beers and Minnie Ellen Loos. Various sources cite her birthdate as April 26, but they disagree as to the year. Loos' biographer cites the year as 1888, but other accounts claim 1893 and 1894. As Loos' father experimented with journalism and the theater in the San Diego area, she became a child actress and for many years provided the family's main source of income.

At the age of fifteen Loos began writing film scripts for D. W. Griffith of the Biograph Company. By the time she was eighteen, she had sold Griffith over one hundred scripts. In collaboration with her second husband, director John Emerson, she produced several Broadway plays as well as two non-fiction works:

How to Write Photoplays (1920) and Breaking into the Movies (1921).

She is best known, however, for her novel

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925). The book about the adventures of a blond flapper brought international fame to Loos, who, as one of the first women to bob her hair and shorten her hemlines, came to epitomize the flappers of the 1920s. The novel inspired a play, several musical versions, a sequel, and a movie, and was followed by two successful plays (Happy Birthday, 1946, and Gigi, 1951), two memoirs on the silent-movie stars Constance and Norma Talmadge, and four autobiographical works, among others. Loos died in 1981, four years after her last autobiography was published.

Carey, Gary. Anita Loos. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.Mainiero, Lina, ed.. American Women Writers: A Critical Reference Guide from the Colonial Times to the Present. New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1981.

The Anita Loos Letters to Ray Pierre Corsini comprises twenty-one letters from American novelist and playwright Anita Loos to her agent and friend, Ray Pierre Corsini, between 1962 and 1979 (Carey, p. 319). The collection also includes a copy of a letter from Loos to a Miss Taylor.

The letters discuss the writing and editing of Loos' later works, her travels and social life, and her relationship with Ray. Loos communicates her joy and frustrations with her works, seeks advice in editorial decisions, and mentions influences upon her works. She also talks about her busy lifestyle, detailing her travel plans and referring to numerous social gatherings. In all of her letters, her special friendship with Ray is apparent. Loos thanks Ray for all of Ray's support and congratulates Ray on the publication of Ray's own work.