BARBARA BENNET INTRODUCED LOUISE BROOKS TO WALL STREET MEN

Louise Brooks was invited to their parties by Randolph Hearts and his mistress Marion Davies both in California and New York.  She was also a friend of the Bennett family, known for the actress Constance Bennett, Joan Bennett, and Barbara Bennett.  Barbara was a good friend.

pages 14 - 15 of LULU IN HOLLYWOOD - essays by Louise Brooks

... Among the Hollywood detestables, even I was no match for Constance, who could sit across from me at the dinner table in Marion Davies' beach house and never acknowledge my existence with so much as an icy nod....

It was then that Barbara introduced me to a group of Wall Street men who made it possible for me to buy expensive clothes.  These most eligible bachelors in their thirties, finding debutantes a threat, turned to pretty girls in the theatre, whose mothers weren't husband hunting.  Cafe society developed about this time.  The theatre, Hollywood, and society mingled in the monthly Mayfair dances at the Ritz, where society women could monitor their theatrical enemies and snub them publicly.  All the rich men were friends who entertained one another in their perfectly appointed Park Avenue apartments and Long Island homes.  The extravagant sums given to the girls for clothes were part of the fun - part of competing to see whose girl would win the Best-Dressed title.  Sexual submission was not a condition of this arrangement, although many affairs grew out of it.  For a time, Barbara was kept by William Rhinelander Stewart, who gave her a square cut emerald from Cartier.  One night when we were swimming of Caleb Bragg's houseboat, the Masquerader. she watched it slip off her finger into Long Island Sound.  She kept this hilarious accident secret from Stewart by buying a fake emerald from Denis Smith, whose jewelry business was unknown to innocent lovers.  They would have been staggered to learn how many of their gifts were converted into imitations and cash.  Truly, ours was a heartless racket.  After receiving an ermine coat from Jaeckel's, the gift of a stockbroker named John Lock,  I let him take me just once to a tea dance at the Biltmore Hotel.