AN ANITA LOOS SCREENPLAY OF I MARRIED AN ANGEL. LOOS,...

Women in Film
AN ANITA LOOS SCREENPLAY OF I MARRIED AN ANGEL.
LOOS, ANITA. 1889-1981. Mimeographed Manuscript, "I Married an Angel," 130 pp, 4to, Culver City, October 10, 1941, bound in brads and housed in goldenrod MGM wrappers with printed label, stamped "incomplete" and penciled "Hunt Stromberg" at center left, and "save for legal dept" at lower left, some creasing and wear. Legal dept copy in which names/references have been cleared for production.

Anita Loos wrote the screenplay for I Married an Angel, the screen adaptation of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's stage musical. The film stars Jeanette MacDonald as a young woman in love with an emotionally distant aristocrat played by Nelson Eddy. The film, produced by Hunt Stromberg and directed by W.S. "Woody" Van Dyke, was to be the last collaboration between the two singing stars, as it was not particularly successful at its release. In the intervening years, however, the somewhat absurdist plot, in which most of the action takes place in Eddy's dream, has won over fans of the duo.

Anita Loos was the first female staff screenwriter in Hollywood, put on the payroll of Triangle Films Corporation by D.W. Griffith. Later she moved to Famous Players-Lasky to write scripts for Marion Davies. She was vaulted to international fame in 1925 when she published her comic novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, introducing the lively showgirls Lorelei Lee and Dorothy Gale to the public. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes inspired a sequel, ... But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes, a stage play, a musical, and most famously, a film starring Marilyn Monroe. Loos continued to work as a Hollywood screenwriter throughout the Golden Age, writing the script for MGM's The Women (1939), Strange Cargo (1940) and several films starring Jean Harlow. Her memoirs, A Girl Like I and Kiss Hollywood Goodbye, are two of the best sources for insider stories of early Hollywood.