Upon returning to Hollywood, however, Brooks found she was still not considered a hot property and defied studio bosses when they tried to put her in minor roles she considered demeaning. (She was offered the Jean Harlow role in "Public Enemy," but turned it down.)

As a result, Brooks appeared in a few minor movies through the 1930s, including several B-Westerns ("Overland Stage Raiders," with an unknown actor named John Wayne), but eventually quit show business, never to fulfill the promise of her early successes.

In the 1950s, Brooks' German films were rediscovered, and critics began heaping praise on her work, and when Brooks herself was eventually tracked down, she was living in New York, oblivious to the fact that her work was being examined anew.

Later, Brooks wrote essays on cinema for film journals, and her writings today are considered unparalleled criticism. She lived out her life as a virtual recluse in Rochester, New York, and died in 1985.

The rebirth of her fame has been compared to that of Buster Keaton in his later years and is yet another testament to the power and longevity of film.

Brooks put it this way:

The art of films does not consist of descriptive movement of face and body, but in the movements of thought and soul, transmitted in a kind of intense isolation.