Louise Cromwell Brooks

Louise Cromwell Brooks (September 24, 1890 – May 30, 1965) was an American socialite whose four marriages included seven years as the first wife of General Douglas MacArthur. She was "considered one of Washington's most beautiful and attractive young women".

Biography

She was born September 24, 1890 in Rye, New York to Eva Roberts Cromwell and Oliver Eaton Cromwell. Her brothers were the American mountain climber Oliver Eaton Cromwell, Jr., and James H. R. Cromwell, the American diplomat and first husband of Doris Duke. After her father's death her mother married prominent investment banker Edward T. Stotesbury in 1912.

She made her debut in Washington, DC in 1910.

In 1911, at St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Washington, DC, she married Baltimore businessman Walter Booth Brooks, Jr., in a ceremony called "one of the most brilliant social affairs in the Capital that season." They had three children, a son and two daughters. Brooks and Cromwell divorced in 1919.

She then married Brigadier General Douglas MacArthur in 1922. William Manchester, in his biography of MacArthur, stated that General John J. Pershing, then the Army Chief of Staff, summarily transferred MacArthur from his post as Superintendent of West Point to the Philippines because Pershing was himself interested in Mrs. Brooks. She claimed that Pershing wanted to marry her and had threatened to send MacArthur to the Philippines if they married. Pershing said the allegation was "all damn poppycock". Her marriage to MacArthur ended in 1929.

She next married the actor Lionel Atwill, whom she divorced in 1943. In 1944 she married bandleader Alf Heiberg, then a Lieutenant Colonel in the US Army Air Force and the first leader of the US Air Force Band. That marriage also ended in divorce.

Brooks died of a heart attack in Washington, DC at the age of 74. She was buried in the Roberts Family plot at Chicago's Oak Woods Cemetery.