As a child, Louise lived in Kansas with her parents, both overachievers. Her dad was a lawyer, and mom was a musician. They both encouraged Louise to pursue a career in dancing, sending her to a prestigious dance school, which eventually led her to New York and Ziegfield Follies. She remains intent upon achieving just as much as her parents, being certain that she herself is a natural paragon of virtue, like them.
In 1925, Louise has been invited to work on a film. She is not welcomed on location by her peers, whom she holds in low esteem, especially Wallace Beery. Apparently they've come to the conclusion that Louise possesses some questionable sexual ethics. Louise makes the picture and moves on with Hollywood, gradually entrenching herself deeper into this peculiar social scene. Eventually her own drama becomes intertwined with that of the people around her, people like Marion Davies' niece, Pepi. The drugs and alcohol are flowing, and impressionable young people have no tools to resist.
Louise marries, has a few affairs, divorces. She takes it upon herself to account for the famous names around her. Of Humphrey Bogart she writes that he is a slave to fame with no talent and a regrettable relationship to his wives. Similarly, L. Gish and Gretta Garbo are dismissed as victims of the media. Louise smiles more favorably on W.C. Fields as a stolid career man who feared the rejection which eventually became his reality. In filming Pandora's Box Louise paints herself in a favorable light, as if she were part director as well as dancing under Pabst. She suffered no such ill favor as her contemporaries whom she has so thoroughly torn apart in her accounts of them.
