R. Beers Loos R. Beers Loos Richard Beers Loos (October 4, 1860 – March 6, 1944), was an American journalist and newspaper publisher. Loos was the father of Anita Loos, a famous American playwright and author who wrote, among other titles, "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes". Loos most often used the shortened form of his name for official work: R. Beers Loos. Anita Loos was born to Richard Beers Loos and Minnie Ellen Smith while the family lived near Sisson, California (today Mount Shasta). At that time, Loos owned a local newspaper called the "Sisson Mascot". Most accounts indicate that Loos moved from Sisson to
Anita Loos a devoted admirer of H. L. Mencken and when he was in New York, she would take a break from her "Tuesday Widows" and join his circle, which included Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Sinclair Lewis, Joseph Hergesheimer, essayist Ernest Boyd and theater critic George Jean Nathan. Loos adored Mencken with what may have been love and preferred this group over the Round Table. She gradually realized Emerson paled in comparison to someone like Mencken, and disappointingly, high-IQ gentlemen didn't fall for women with brains, but those with more "downstairs". In 1925, on the train to Hollywood for another Talmadge picture,