There was no mystery or assumed innocence about the flappers - Colleen Moore, Marion Davies, Clara Bow, Crawford herself. They were tough and saucy, with inexhaustible resourcefulness and wit. They breathed the spirit of emancipation. they could admire good-looking men without embarrassment; and sock any fellow who got fresh. They could dance till dawn, and then Charleston all the way home. As Wild Diana in Our Dancing Daughters, Crawford hugs herself and exclaims 'Oh! - it feels so good - just to be alive!' and their celebration of youth and beauty and the joy of living still calls out as vitally and as poignantly as anything from that lost world between the Armistice and the Wall Street crash.

(David Robinson in The Rise And Fall Of The Matinee Idol ed. Anthony Curtis)

JE: I was seventeen. Clara Bow had just made Wings, and I thought she was absolutely sensational. First thing she did, she dashed into the office one day, and the publicity department - all the writers were round in a circle - and you came down the hall and there was an opening in the middle facing those offices, and when she came down, of course everybody just stopped dead. And Clara came in with her little socks, and her little high-heeled shoes and her short, short dress, silk dress, tied-around sort of thing, and she was so wild, just flying around - she was just happiness personified. She was so natural. I've never taken dope, but it was like a shot of dope when you looked at this girl.

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JE: …Adela said: "How would you like to interview Colleen Moore?" "Well," I said, "that's fine." so she arranged for me to go to First National Studios to see her. Colleen was making Irene, and when I got to the set they were making this big production number of her coming down in the Irene dress ["Alice Blue Gown" number] and, my god, it looked marvellous!

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JK: Do you remember Louise Brooks? Do you remember her well?

JE: Well, Louise always seemed to me to be a little lazy. I don't think she ever thought of being a really big star, I don't think this was in her schedule. Because she was very arrogant. She never sort of worked with them; if it pleased her, she would do it. She knew just what she wanted to do. And of course when you're in that position and you're earning $750 a week…

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JK: Wouldn't Clara have played the same roles? [as Nancy Carroll] They were the same type.

JE: She [Clara] couldn't have played Abie's Irish Rose… no. Though she could have played a lot of things, like The Shopworn Angel with Gary Cooper, sure. But this was Paramount, they didn't know what the hell to do with her. Clara was making money doing the hula, why not keep on making millions with her doing the same thing?

JK: And Louise… what did people think about her on the lot?

JE: I don't know. I thought she was marvellous. She was as smart as they come. Very few people had her… I hate the word "chic"; she was just elegant.Her legs, her ankles, her hands, her body, the way she held her body, the way she walked, the way she dressed, furs over her shoulder, off her shoulder, her hats - she was like Lombard.

John Engstead being interviewed in John Kobal's book People Will Talk.

JM: …Colleen Moore made tests with me, but I don't remember for what…You know, Norma Shearer or somebody would see me on the set and I didn't look bad, and so they'd say, "Who's that fellow?" Colleen's brother, Cleve Moore, came up and said, "My sister wants to know if you'd make a test."

Joel McRae and John Engstead being interviewed in John Kobal's book People Will Talk. The volume also has an extensive interview with Louise Brooks, too long to reproduce here, but I'd recommend hunting it down and reading it for a glimpse of Miss Brooks' strong, intelligent personality.

AL: …Alice White never played Lorelei. She played Dorothy. There was a girl named Ruth Taylor and she was a type of Marilyn Monroe, very pretty and very dainty and delectable, and so much the real character that she married a multimillionaire and quit work!

JK: There are so many people who have played this character, and I was just talking to Louise Brooks on the phone and she was saying that she also wanted to play the part. And she said that you said to her that when you write the part of a wooden cigar-store Indian, she can have it because of her wooden face.

AL: Oh, I think she made that up as a joke against herself! I don't think I'd turn down anybody for Lorelei. Alice White was my own choice to play Dorothy. She'd never done anything in Hollywood; that was her first role. And she won it by competition. By tests. And she was fine, and it proved that we were right because she went on to a very good career.

Anita Loos being interviewed in John Kobal's book People Will Talk.