Like the celebrities of today, Louise Brooks’ name and image was used in a number of advertisements and advertising campaigns. Beginning in 1926 with the “Louise Brooks Evening Gown” and running through the LUX soap campaign of the late 1920s and early 1930s, Brooks’ name, image and likeness was used to sell all manner of products and consumer goods — not only in the United States, but also elsewhere around the world. Here is one example of cosmetics.
“Belleza Resplandeciente” and “Belleza Resplandecente” (which translates either from the Spanish of Portuguese as “Resplendent Beauty”), were a series of text heavy advertisements run in Argentinean and Brazilian magazines and newspapers between 1927 and 1931. Besides Louise Brooks, other actresses featured in the series included Fay Wray, Nancy Carroll, and Sylvia Sydney. (Each were, at one time or another, associated with Paramount.) The first three ads shown below appeared in Caras y Caretas, a famous, weekly magazine published in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The examples shown below variously describe a “Way to get rid of bad skin,” how to treat “Pimples and pores”, “A feminine rebellion against beauty preparations,” and “How cinema stars take care of their skin.” The product they promote was Pure Mercolized Wax, a skin bleach which included mercury. I assume this product is no longer available.
Please note: The Belleza Resplandecente ads were not so dissimilar from the Princess Pat cosmetics ads which ran in newspapers on the island of Jamaica, in the Caribbean. There is also a page on the Louise Brooks Society archive related to those advertisements.
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| Argentina 1927 | Argentina 1928 | Argentina 1929 |
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| Brazil 1930 | Brazil 1931 | Brazil 1931 |