Angela comes to Hollywood with only two things: Her dream to become a movie star, and Grandpa. She leaves an Aunt, a brother, Grandma, and her longtime boyfriend back in Centerville. Despite seeing major movie stars around every corner, and knocking on every casting office door in town, at the end of her first day she is still unemployed. To her horror, when she arrives back at their hotel, she finds that Grandpa has been cast in a movie by William DeMille and quickly becomes a star during the ensuing weeks. Her family, worried that Angela and Grandpa are getting into trouble, come to Hollywood to drag them back home. In short order Aunt, Grandma, brother, boyfriend and even the parrot become superstars, but Angela is still unemployed...
08-19-1923
1h 20m
THIS
HELLA
Doesn't have an image right now... sorry!has no image... sorry!
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bess Flowers (November 23, 1898 – July 28, 1984) was an American actress. By some counts considered the most prolific actress in the history of Hollywood, she was known as "The Queen of the Hollywood Extras," appearing in over 700 movies in her 41 year career.
Born in Sherman, Texas, Flowers's film debut came in 1923, when she appeared in Hollywood. She made three films that year, and then began working extensively. Many of her appearances are uncredited, as she generally played non-speaking roles.
By the 1930s, Flowers was in constant demand. Her appearances ranged from Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford thrillers to comedic roles alongside of Charley Chase, the Three Stooges, Leon Errol, Edgar Kennedy, and Laurel and Hardy.
She appeared in the following five films which won the Academy Award for Best Picture: It Happened One Night, You Can't Take it with You, All About Eve, The Greatest Show on Earth, and Around the World in Eighty Days. In each of these movies, Flowers was uncredited. Including these five movies, she had appeared in twenty-three Best Picture nominees in total, making her the record holder for most appearances in films nominated for the award. Her last movie was Good Neighbor Sam in 1964.
Flowers's acting career was not confined to feature films. She was also seen in many episodic American TV series, such as I Love Lucy, notably in episodes, "Lucy Is Enceinte" (1952), "Ethel's Birthday" (1955), and "Lucy's Night in Town" (1957), where she is usually seen as a theatre patron.
Outside her acting career, in 1945, Bess Flowers helped to found the Screen Extras Guild (active: 1946-1992, then merged with SAG), where she served as one of its first vice-presidents and recording secretaries.
From Wikipedia
Bebe Daniels (January 14, 1901 – March 16, 1971) was an American actress, singer, dancer, writer and producer. She began her career in Hollywood during the silent film era as a child actress, became a star in musicals such as 42nd Street (1933), and later gained further fame on radio and television in Britain. Throughout her career, Daniels appeared in 230 films.
Julia Faye was born on September 24, 1893 in Richmond, Virginia, USA. She was an actress, known for The Ten Commandments (1956), Samson and Delilah (1949) and The Greatest Show on Earth (1952). She died on April 6, 1966 in Hollywood, California, USA.
She appeared in more Cecil B. DeMille movies than any other actress. She appeared in many of his silents, and in every one of his movies from Union Pacific (1939) on. She was Cecil B. DeMille's mistress off-screen for quite some time. The devoted DeMille kept her employed in bit parts long after her career (and their relationship) was over. Off-screen, she was known to be a highly skilled horsewoman.
Like many of her contemporaries, her home in Hollywood contained a Chinese room, filled with oriental art objects.
From Wikipedia
Pola Negri (born Barbara Apolonia Chałupiec, sometimes spelled Chalupec; 3 January 1897 – 1 August 1987) was a Polish stage and film actress who achieved worldwide fame during the silent and golden eras of Hollywood and European film for her tragedienne and femme fatale roles.
She was the first European film star to be invited to Hollywood, and became one of the most popular actresses in American silent film. Her varied career included work as an actress in theatre and vaudeville, as a recording artist, as a ballerina, and as an author.
Pola Negri has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contribution to Motion Pictures at 6933 Hollywood Boulevard. She was the 11th star in Hollywood history to place her hand and foot prints in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre. She received a star in Poland's Walk of Fame in Łódź and Poland's post office issued a postage stamp honouring her in 1996. The Polish Film Festival of Los Angeles remembered her with the Pola Negri Award, given to outstanding film artists, and the Pola Negri Museum in Lipno gives a Polita award for outstanding artist achievement.
Pola Negri died on 1 August 1987, She was aged 90.
Roscoe Arbuckle (March 24, 1887 - June 29, 1933), widely known to audiences as “Fatty” Arbuckle, was an American silent film actor, comedian, director, and screenwriter. He started at the Selig Polyscope Company and eventually moved to Keystone Studios, where he worked with Mabel Normand and Harold Lloyd as well as with his nephew, Al St. John. He also mentored Charlie Chaplin, Monty Banks and Bob Hope, and brought vaudeville star Buster Keaton into the movie business. Arbuckle was one of the most popular silent stars of the 1910s and one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood at the time.
In one of the earliest Hollywood scandals, Arbuckle was the defendant in three widely publicized trials between November 1921 and April 1922 for the rape and manslaughter of actress Virginia Rappe. Rappe had fallen ill at a party hosted by Arbuckle at San Francisco's St. Francis Hotel in September 1921, and died four days later. A friend of Rappe accused Arbuckle of raping and accidentally killing her. The first two trials resulted in hung juries, but the third acquitted Arbuckle. The third jury took the unusual step of giving Arbuckle a written statement of apology for his treatment by the justice system. Despite Arbuckle's acquittal, the scandal largely halted his career and has mostly overshadowed his legacy as a pioneering comedian.
Richard Arlen (born Sylvanus Richard Mattimore) was an American film and television actor. He served as a pilot in the Royal Canadian Flying Corps during World War I. After the war, he went to the oilfields of Texas and Oklahoma and found work as a tool boy. He was thereafter a messenger and sporting editor of a newspaper before going to Los Angeles to act in films, but no producer wanted him. He was a delivery boy for a film laboratory when the motorcycle which he was riding landed him a broken leg outside the Paramount Pictures lot. A sympathetic film director gave him his start as an extra. He appeared at first in silent films before making the transition to talkies. His first important film role was in Vengeance of the Deep.
He took time out from his Hollywood career to teach as a United States Army Air Forces flight instructor in World War II. Arlen is best known for his role as a pilot in the Academy Award-winning Wings with Clara Bow, Charles 'Buddy' Rogers, Gary Cooper, El Brendel, and his second wife, Jobyna Ralston, whom he married in 1927. He was among the more famous residents of the celebrity enclave, Toluca Lake, California. He married New York socialite, Margaret Kinsella, in 1946.
In 1939, Universal teamed him with Andy Devine for a series of 14 B-pictures, mostly action-comedies with heavy reliance on stock footage from larger-scale films. They are informally known as the "Aces of Action" series, which is how the stars were billed in the trailers. When Arlen left the studio in 1941, the series continued with Devine teamed with a variety of other actors.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, Arlen was active in television, having guest starred in several anthology series, including Playhouse 90, The Loretta Young Show, The 20th Century Fox Hour, and in three episodes of the series about clergymen, Crossroads. In 1960, Arlen was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame with a motion pictures star at 6755 Hollywood Boulevard for his contributions to the film industry. In 1968, he appeared on Petticoat Junction playing himself. The episode was called "Wings" and it was in direct reference to the 1927 silent movie Wings.
Arlen appeared in westerns, such as Lawman, Branded, Bat Masterson, Wanted: Dead or Alive, Wagon Train, and Yancy Derringer, and in such drama/adventure programs as Ripcord, Whirlybirds, Perry Mason, The New Breed, Coronado 9, and Michael Shayne.
Gertrude Astor (Born Gertrude Eyster November 9, 1887 – November 9, 1977) was an American motion picture character actress, who began her career playing trombone on a riverboat.
Born in Lakewood, Ohio, Astor at the age of 12 ran off and joined a woman's band as a trombone player and toured the states. In New York she left the band to obtain film work and got a job as an extra before her career took off. Astor was a prolific performer, between 1915 and 1962 she appeared in over 250 movies. Her first known credit is in a Biograph short in 1915. She then became a contract player at Universal. A tall, angular and beautiful woman, Astor frequently towered over the leading men of the era; thus, she was most frequently utilized in comedy roles as aristocrats, golddiggers and "heroine's best pal".
Her best-known silent appearances were as the visiting stage star in Stage Struck (1925) with Gloria Swanson, as the vamp who plants stolen money on Harry Langdon in The Strong Man (1926), and as Laura LaPlante's wisecracking travelling companion in The Cat and the Canary (1927).
Astor worked prolifically at Hal Roach studios with such headliners as Laurel and Hardy, Our Gang, and especially Charley Chase. She was also kept busy at Columbia Pictures' short subjects unit.
She continued to play bits in feature films throughout the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. She was briefly glimpsed as the first murder victim in the Sherlock Holmes adventure The Scarlet Claw and was among the ranks of dress extras in 1956's Around the World in Eighty Days. Her last appearance was in John Ford's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance.
In her later years, Astor was a welcome guest at several Sons of the Desert gatherings, and became an honorary member of the Way Out West tent.
She died in Woodland Hills, California from a stroke. She is interred in the Abbey of Psalms in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood, CA.
Mary Astor (May 3, 1906 - September 25, 1987) was an American actress. Most remembered for her role as Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon (1941) with Humphrey Bogart, Astor began her long motion picture career as a teenager in the silent movies of the early 1920s. She eventually made a successful transition to talkies, but almost saw her career destroyed due to public scandal in the mid-1930s. She was sued for support by her parents and was later branded an adulterous wife by her ex-husband during a custody fight over her daughter.
Overcoming these stumbling blocks in her private life, Astor went on to even greater success on the screen, eventually winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Sandra Kovak in The Great Lie (1941). She was an MGM contract player through most of the 1940s and continued to act in movies, on television and on stage until her retirement from the screen in 1964.
Astor was the author of five novels. Her autobiography became a bestseller, as did her later book, A Life on Film, which was specifically about her career. Director Lindsay Anderson wrote of her in 1990: "...(W)hen two or three who love the cinema are gathered together, the name of Mary Astor always comes up, and everybody agrees that she was an actress of special attraction, whose qualities of depth and reality always seemed to illuminate the parts she played."
Description above from the Wikipedia article Mary Astor, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Diana Serra Cary (born Peggy-Jean Montgomery, October 29, 1918 – February 24, 2020), known as Baby Peggy, was an American child film actress, vaudevillian, author and silent film historian. At the time of her death, she was the last living film star of the Silent Era of Hollywood.
Montgomery, as she then was, was one of the three major American child stars of the Hollywood silent film era along with Jackie Coogan and Baby Marie. Between 1921 and 1923 she made over 150 short films for the Century Film Corporation. In 1922 she received over 1.2 million fan letters, and by 1924 she had been dubbed The Million Dollar Baby for her $1.5 million annual salary ($22 million in 2018). Despite her childhood fame and wealth, she found herself poor and working as an extra by the 1930s.
Having an interest in both writing and history since her youth, Montgomery found a second career as an author and silent film historian in her later years under the name Diana Serra Cary. She was the author of several books including her historical novel, The Drowning of the Moon, and was an advocate for child actors' rights.
Cary died at her home in Gustine, California at the age of 101.
Barnes appeared in over 50 films between 1920 and 1935, primarily in comedies.
Barnes started his show career in vaudeville later turning to stage and film acting. During the 1920s, he often played "brash young go-getters" in supporting and leading roles. He’s best known for his roles as Buster Keaton's business partner Billy Meekin in Seven Chances (1925) and in W. C. Fields' comedy It's a Gift (1934), portraying an inquisitive Insurance Salesman. He retired from movies in 1935 and died two years later.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
William Lawrence Boyd (June 5, 1895 – September 12, 1972) was an American film actor who is best known for portraying the cowboy hero Hopalong Cassidy. Boyd was born in Hendrysburg, Ohio, and reared in Cambridge, Ohio and Tulsa, Oklahoma. He was the son of a day laborer, Charles William Boyd, and his wife, the former Lida Wilkens (aka Lyda). Following his father's death, he moved to California and worked as an orange picker, surveyor, tool dresser and auto salesman.
In Hollywood, he found work as an extra in Why Change Your Wife? and other films. During World War I, he enlisted in the army but was exempt from military service because of a "weak heart". More prominent film roles followed, including his breakout role as Jack Moreland in Cecil B. DeMille's The Road to Yesterday (1925) which starred also Joseph Schildkraut, Jetta Goudal, and Vera Reynolds. Boyd's performance in the film was praised by critics, while movie-goers were equally impressed by his easy charm, charisma, and intense good-looks. Due to Boyd's growing popularity, DeMille soon cast him as the leading man in the highly acclaimed silent drama film, The Volga Boatman. Boyd's role as Feodor blew critics away, and with Boyd now firmly established as a matinee idol and romantic leading man, he began earning an annual salary of $100,000. He acted in DeMille's extravaganza The King of Kings (in which he played Simon of Cyrene, helping Jesus carry the cross) and DeMille's Skyscraper (1928). He then appeared in D.W. Griffith's Lady of the Pavements (1929).
Radio Pictures ended Boyd's contract in 1931 when his picture was mistakenly run in a newspaper story about the arrest of another actor, William "Stage" Boyd, on gambling and liquor charges. Although the newspaper apologized, explaining the mistake in the following day's newspaper, Boyd said, "The damage was already done." William "Stage" Boyd died in 1935, the same year William L. Boyd became Hopalong Cassidy, the role that led to his enduring fame. But at the time in 1931, Boyd was virtually broke and without a job, and for a few years he was credited in films as "Bill Boyd" to prevent being mistaken for the other William Boyd.
Charles “Charlie” Chaplin (April 16, 1889 – December 25, 1977) was an English comic actor, film director and composer best-known for his work during the silent film era. He used mime, slapstick and other visual comedy routines, and continued well into the era of the talkies, though his films decreased in frequency by the end of the 1920s. His most famous role was that of The Tramp, which he first played in Kid Auto Races (1914). From 1914 onwards he was writing and directing most of his films, by 1916 he was producing them, and by 1918 he was also composing the music for them. In 1919 he co-founded United Artists. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Chaplin the 10th greatest male screen legend of all time.
From Wikipedia
Edythe Chapman (October 8, 1863 - October 15, 1948), was an American stage and silent film actress from Rochester, New York. As early as 1898 she appeared in New York, New York in the Charity Ball. Edythe performed at the Shubert Theater in Brooklyn, New York in a production of The Light Eternal in 1907.
Mrs. Chapman played maternal roles in numerous silent motion pictures and became known in the 1920s as Hollywood's Mother. She played Ma Jones in the film version of Lightnin' (1925), a screen production which featured Will Rogers. Edythe was Grandmother Janeway in Man Crazy (1927).
Miss Chapman came to Hollywood around 1909 with her husband, screen and stage actor, James Neill. The couple met in Cincinnati, Ohio when Miss Chapman was working in Mr. Neill's stock company. They were married in 1897. The two began making movies with Cecil B. Demille and other noteworthy directors and producers. They had leading roles in The Ten Commandments (1923), Manslaughter (1922), The Little American (1917), and other silent motion pictures. Mr. Neill died in 1931.
The final movie in which Edythe appeared was Double Crossroads in 1930. Prior to this, she had a large role in Navy Blues (1929).
Edythe Chapman Neill died in Glendale, California in 1948 after a brief illness.
Betty Compson (March 19, 1897 – April 18, 1974) was an American actress and film producer. Most famous in silent films and early talkies, she is best known in her performances in The Docks of New York and The Barker, the latter earning a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Ricardo Cortez (September 19, 1900 – April 28, 1977) was an American film actor who began his career during the silent film era.
Born Jacob Krantz in New York City into a Jewish family, he worked on Wall Street in a broker's office and as a boxer before his looks got him into the film business. Hollywood executives changed his name to Cortez to appeal to film-goers as a "Latin lover" to compete with such highly popular actors of the era as Rudolph Valentino, Ramon Novarro and Antonio Moreno. When rumour began to circulate that Cortez was not actually Spanish, the studios tried to pass him off as a different type of Latin, French, before they finally admitted his (supposedly) Viennese origin.
Cortez appeared in over 100 films. He played opposite Joan Crawford in Montana Moon in 1930, played Sam Spade in the original The Maltese Falcon in 1931, co-starred with Charles Farrell and Bette Davis in The Big Shakedown and Wonder Bar (with Al Jolson and Dolores del Río) in 1934. He also played Perry Mason in the 1936 film The Case of the Black Cat. Although he began his career playing romantic leads with actresses like Greta Garbo, when sound cinema arrived, his powerful delivery and New York accent made him an ideal villain and conman, and he switched from sex symbol to character actor.
Cortez was married to silent film actress Alma Rubens until her death of pneumonia in 1931.
When he retired from the film business, Cortez went to work as a stockbroker for Solomon Brothers on New York's Wall Street. He died in New York City in 1977 and was interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx.
He was the older brother of noted cinematographer Stanley Cortez (born Stanislaus Krantz).
Cecil Blount DeMille was a founder of the Hollywood motion-picture industry, one of the most commercially successful producer-directors of his time, and one of the most influential filmmakers in history. Between 1914 and 1956, he made seventy feature films; all but seven were profitable. Cecil B. DeMille is synonymous with religious epics: The King of Kings, Samson and Delilah, and The Ten Commandments (1956). He blended spectacle, sex, and spellbinding narrative to convey a message of faith.
It was DeMille who created the image of the omnipotent director, megaphone in hand, wearing boots and a visored cap. DeMille gave Hollywood numerous stars: Wallace Reid, Gloria Swanson, William (“Hopalong Cassidy”) Boyd, Claudette Colbert, Robert Preston, Jean Arthur, and Charlton Heston.
DeMille created the posts of studio story editor, art director, and concept artist. He was one of the first to use theatrical lighting on a movie set. In the late 1920s, when Hollywood converted to sound films, DeMille defied the sound experts, liberating the camera from a confining booth, and implementing the microphone boom.
DeMille’s authority extended beyond the confines of his studio. He was a power in aviation, banking, politics, and real estate. In the 1930s, his fame as a filmmaker was surpassed by his fame as a radio star.
He was a founder of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, an institution from which he eventually won two awards. In 1953 his film The Greatest Show on Earth won the Award for Best Picture of 1952; and he was presented with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award.
DeMille’s influence on world culture is incalculable, but there are estimates and milestones. His biography of Jesus Christ, The King of Kings, was a silent film, but because of a unique distribution arrangement, it was eventually seen by 800 million viewers. Samson and Delilah (1949) and The Ten Commandments (1956) are still listed with the top ten all-time box-office champions. They continue to generate revenue and provoke thought.
Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. (May 23, 1883 – December 12, 1939) was an American actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He was best known for his swashbuckling roles in silent films such as The Thief of Bagdad, Robin Hood, and The Mark of Zorro. An astute businessman, Fairbanks was a founding member of United Artists. Fairbanks was also a founding member of The Motion Picture Academy and hosted the first Oscars Ceremony in 1929. With his marriage to Mary Pickford in 1920, the couple became Hollywood royalty with Fairbanks constantly referred to as "The King of Hollywood", a nickname later passed on to actor Clark Gable.
George Fawcett was an American stage and screen actor as well as a three-time (in 1920 and 1921) film director. His screen acting career spanned the years 1915 to 1931.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alan Hale Sr. (born Rufus Edward Mackahan; February 10, 1892 – January 22, 1950) was an American movie actor and director, most widely remembered for his many supporting character roles, in particular as a frequent sidekick of Errol Flynn, as well as films supporting Lon Chaney, Wallace Beery, Douglas Fairbanks, James Cagney, Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart and Ronald Reagan, among dozens of others. Hale was born Rufus Edward Mackahan in Washington, D.C. He studied to be an opera singer and also had success as an inventor. Among his innovations were a sliding theater chair (to allow spectators to slide back to admit newcomers rather than standing), the hand fire extinguisher, and greaseless potato chips.
His first film role was in the 1911 silent movie The Cowboy and the Lady. He played "Little John" in the 1922 film Robin Hood, with Douglas Fairbanks and Wallace Beery, reprised the role 16 years later in The Adventures of Robin Hood with Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone, then played him yet again in Rogues of Sherwood Forest in 1950 with John Derek as Robin Hood's son, an unprecedented 28-year span of portrayals of the same character in theatrical films. Hale played Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), featuring in a pivotal confrontation with the Earl of Essex, portrayed by Flynn.
His other films include the 1922 epic The Trap with Lon Chaney, 1928's Skyscraper; as well as Fog Over Frisco with Bette Davis; Miss Fane's Baby Is Stolen with Baby LeRoy and William Frawley; The Little Minister with Katharine Hepburn; and It Happened One Night with Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert; all released in 1934; the 1937 film Stella Dallas with Barbara Stanwyck; High, Wide, and Handsome with Irene Dunne and Dorothy Lamour; The Fighting 69th with James Cagney and Pat O'Brien; They Drive By Night with George Raft and Humphrey Bogart; Manpower with Edward G. Robinson, Marlene Dietrich, and George Raft; Virginia City with Errol Flynn, Randolph Scott, and Humphrey Bogart; and as the cantankerous Sgt. McGee in the 1943 movie This Is the Army with Irving Berlin. He also co-starred with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland in the successful western film Dodge City (1939) where he played the slightly dimwitted but likeable and comical Rusty Hart, sidekick to Flynn's character, Sheriff Wade Hatton. Hale co-starred with Errol Flynn in 13 movies.
Hale directed eight movies during the 1920s and 1930s and acted in 235 theatrical films.
From Wikipedia
Hope Hampton (Mae Elizabeth Hampton) (February 19, 1897 - January 23, 1982) was an American silent motion picture actress and producer, who was noted for her seemingly effortless incarnation of siren and flapper types in silent-picture roles during the 1920s. She also at one time was an aspiring opera singer.
The first Western superstar, the taciturn Hart actually was a successful Shakespearean actor who played Messala in “Ben-Hur” on Broadway in 1899 before riding the range in movies. A longtime fan of the Old West, Hart was friends with Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson.
His film career began in 1914. After two supporting roles he gained fame as the lead in the feature-length western “The Bargain” shot on location at the Grand Canyon. Hart strove to make his westerns realistic with detailed attention played to costumes and props. Though Hart could be cast as a villain, he imbued all of his characters with honor and integrity.
After making western shorts for producer Thomas Ince, he went to Famous Players-Lasky, which merged with Paramount Pictures in 1917. At Paramount he made such gritty feature westerns as “Square Deal Sanderson” and “The Toll Gate.” His star began to fade in the early 1920s when audiences grew tired of his moralistic Western tales. Not helping his career was his 1923 divorce from his wife, Winifred, who accused him of having two children by another woman.
He made one last film, 1925’s “Tumbleweeds, which he financed himself. In 1939, the film was reissued this time with a prologue featuring a 75-year-old Hart shot on location at his ranch in Newhall talking about the West and his days in films. He died in 1946 at age 81. His home and ranch were turned into William S. Hart Park in Newhall.
Jack Holt (born Charles John Holt, Jr.) was an American film actor. He was a leading man of Silent and sound films and known for his many roles in Westerns.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lila Lee (born Augusta Wilhelmena Fredericka Appel, July 25, 1905 – November 13, 1973) was a prominent screen actress, primarily a leading lady, of the silent film and early sound film eras.
In 1918, she was chosen for a film contract by Hollywood film mogul Jesse Lasky for Famous Players-Lasky Corporation, which later became Paramount Pictures. Her first feature, The Cruise of the Make-Believes, garnered the teenaged starlet much public acclaim and Lasky quickly sent Lee on an arduous publicity campaign. Critics lauded Lila for her wholesome persona and sympathetic character parts. Lee quickly rose to the ranks of leading lady and often starred opposite such matinee heavies as Conrad Nagel, Gloria Swanson, Wallace Reid, Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, and Rudolph Valentino. Lee bore more than a slight resemblance to Ann Little, a former Paramount star and frequent Reid co-star who was leaving the film business and at this stage in her career an even stronger resemblance to Marguerite Clark.
In 1922 Lee was cast as Carmen in the enormously popular film Blood and Sand, opposite matinee idol Rudolph Valentino and silent screen vamp Nita Naldi; Lee subsequently won the first WAMPAS Baby Stars award that year. Lee continued to be a highly popular leading lady throughout the 1920s and made scores of critically praised and widely watched films.
As the Roaring Twenties drew to a close, Lee's popularity began to wane and Lee positioned herself for the transition to talkies. She is one of the few leading ladies of the silent screen whose popularity did not nosedive with the coming of sound. She went back to working with the major studios and appeared, most notably, in The Unholy Three, in 1930, opposite Lon Chaney Sr. in his only talkie. However, a series of bad career choices and bouts of recurring tuberculosis and alcoholism hindered further projects and Lee was relegated to taking parts in mostly grade B movies.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
May McAvoy (September 8, 1899 – April 26, 1984) was an American actress who worked mainly during the silent film era. Some of her major roles are Laura Pennington in The Enchanted Cottage, Esther in Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, and Mary Dale in The Jazz Singer.
McAvoy appeared in her first film, entitled Hate, in 1917. After appearing in more than three dozen films, she co-starred with Ramón Novarro and Francis X. Bushman in director Fred Niblo's 1925 production of Ben-Hur, released by MGM. The feature-length film was one of the most lavish and spectacular productions of the silent movie era.
Although her voice was not heard in The Jazz Singer, McAvoy did speak in several other films, including the second "all-talkie" released by Warner Brothers, The Terror, which was directed by Roy Del Ruth and co-starred Conrad Nagel.
For years a rumor circulated that McAvoy retired from the screen at the transition to sound films because of a lisp or speech impediment. In truth, she married the treasurer of United Artists, who asked her not to work.
Later, she returned to films and played small roles during the 1940s and 1950s, making her final film appearance in a small part in the 1959 version of Ben-Hur.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Owen Moore (December 12, 1886 - June 9, 1939) was an actor in American films, appearing in more than 279 movies spanning from 1908 to 1937.
Anna Quirentia Nilsson was a Swedish-born actress who achieved success in American silent movies. Starring in some 200 feature films. The first Swedish actress to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 1905, she had earned enough for a ticket across the Atlantic. In New York she was discovered on a thriving avenue by the famous portrait painter James Carroll Beckwith and soon she was New York's highest paid model. In 1907 she was named America's most beautiful woman and became a model for the 1910s beauty ideal, The Gibson Girl Look.
Gladys Marie Smith (April 8, 1894 – May 29, 1979), known professionally as Mary Pickford, was a Canadian actress resident in the U.S., and also producer, screenwriter and film studio founder, who was a pioneer in the US film industry with a Hollywood career that spanned five decades.
Pickford alongside her future husband, actor-producer Douglas Fairbanks, founded Pickford–Fairbanks Studios and United Artists, and was one of the 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Pickford is considered to be one of the most recognisable women in history. Known as "America's Sweetheart" during the silent film era, she is named on the list of the AFI's 100 Years...100 Stars as the 24th-top female star from the Classical Hollywood Cinema era and the "girl with the curls."
Pickford was one of the Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood and a significant figure in the development of film acting. She was one of the earliest stars to be billed under her own name, and was one of the most popular actresses of the 1910s and 1920s, earning the nickname "Queen of the Movies." She is credited with having defined the ingénue type in cinema.
She was awarded the second Academy Award for Best Actress for her first sound film role in Coquette (1929). By the late 1920s, Pickford's career went into decline. She received an Academy Honorary Award in 1976 in consideration of her contributions to American cinema.
Zasu Pitts was an American actress who starred in many silent dramas and comedies, transitioning successfully to mostly comedy films with the advent of sound films. She may be best known for her performance in Erich von Stroheim's epic silent film Greed.
Based on her performance, von Stroheim labeled Pitts "the greatest dramatic actress". He also featured her in his films The Honeymoon (1928), The Wedding March (1928), War Nurse (1930) and Walking Down Broadway, released as Hello, Sister! (1933). However, for the most part, with the advent of sound Pitts was mostly relegated to comedy parts. A bitter disappointment was when she was replaced in the classic war drama All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) by Beryl Mercer after her initial appearance in previews drew unintentional laughs, despite her intense performance. She had viewers rolling in the aisles in Finn and Hattie (1931), The Guardsman (1931), Blondie of the Follies (1932), Sing and Like It (1934) and Ruggles of Red Gap (1935). In 1936 and 1937 she portrayed Hildegarde Withers in two movies, succeeding Edna May Oliver as the spinster sleuth, but they were not well received.
In the 1950s she started focusing on television. This culminated in her best known series role, playing second banana to Gale Storm on CBS's The Gale Storm Show (1956) (also known as Oh, Susannah) in the role of Elvira Nugent ("Nugie"), the shipboard beautician. In 1961, Pitts was cast opposite Earle Hodgins in the episode "Lonesome's Gal" on the ABC sitcom, Guestward, Ho!, set on a dude ranch in New Mexico. In 1962, Pitts appeared in an episode of CBS's Perry Mason, "The Case of the Absent Artist". Her final role was as Gertie, the switchboard operator in the Stanley Kramer comedy epic It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963).
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Charles "Chuck" Reisner (14 March 1887 – 24 September 1962) was an American film director and actor of the 1920s and 1930s.
He directed over 60 films between 1920 and 1950 and acted in over 20 films between 1916 and 1929. He starred alongside Charlie Chaplin in A Dog's Life in 1918 and The Kid in 1921.
In 1930 under MGM he directed the film Chasing Rainbows a musical which starred actors Bessie Love and Charles King.
He died of a heart attack in La Jolla, California in 1962.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Charles Reisner, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
Dean Riesner (November 3, 1918, New Rochelle, New York – August 18, 2002, Encino, California) was an American film and television writer.
Riesner's father, Charles Reisner, was a German American silent film director, and Dean began acting in films at the age of five as "Dinky Dean". His most notable role was in Charlie Chaplin's 1923 film The Pilgrim. His career at this young age ended because his mother wanted her son to have a real childhood. As an adult, his first job in films was as a co-writer of the 1939 Ronald Reagan movie Code of the Secret Service.
Riesner won an Oscar for directing Bill and Coo (1948), a feature film with a cast of real birds, costumed as humans, acting on the world's smallest film set.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Riesner worked primarily in television, including writing for Rawhide and the "Tourist Attraction" episode of The Outer Limits, although he occasionally contributed to feature films like The Helen Morgan Story. In 1968 he landed a job working on the Clint Eastwood action film Coogan's Bluff, and this in turn would lead to him writing several other Eastwood features throughout the 1970s. Riesner helped pen the screenplays for two Eastwood films in 1971, Play Misty for Me and the original Dirty Harry. In 1973 he provided an uncredited rewrite for High Plains Drifter, and in 1976 he was one of the writers to draft The Enforcer, the third Dirty Harry thriller. That same year he provided the teleplay for NBC's highly rated miniseries Rich Man, Poor Man, starring Nick Nolte. In 1979 he wrote an early draft screenplay for The Godfather Part III, but his script was discarded when Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo finally agreed to collaborate on a third entry in the series.
Riesner continued to write into the 1980s, though most of his work from that period went uncredited. Those films include Das Boot, The Sting II, and Starman.
Riesner died in 2002 of natural causes. He had been married to actress Maila Nurmi, better known as the horror hostess Vampira.
Ford Sterling (born George Stitch; November 3, 1883 – October 13, 1939) was an American comedian and actor best known for his work with Keystone Studios. One of the 'Big 4', he was the original chief of the Keystone Cops.
Gloria Swanson (March 27, 1899 – April 4, 1983) was an American actress. She was one of the most prominent stars during the silent film era as both an actress and a fashion icon, especially under the direction of Cecil B. DeMille, made dozens of silents and was nominated for the first Acadamy Award in the Best Actress catagory. In 1929, Swanson successfully transitioned to talkies with The Trespasser. However, personal problems and changing tastes saw her popularity wane during the 1930s when she moved into Theater and TV. Today she is best known for her role as Norma Desmond, a faded silent film start, in the critically aclaimed film Sunset Boulevard (1950).
Description above from the Wikipedia article Gloria Swanson, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Estelle Taylor (May 20, 1894—April 15, 1958) was an American Hollywood actress whose career was most prominent during the silent film era of the 1920s.
Born Ida Estelle Taylor in Wilmington, Delaware, the daughter of Harry D Taylor and Ida LaBertha (Barrett) Taylor, Estelle married three times during her lifetime. Her first husband was banker Kenneth Malcom Peacock, her second was William Harrison "Jack" Dempsey (Jack Dempsey the world heavyweight boxing champion), and theatrical producer Paul Smith.
After relocating to Hollywood, she began taking bit parts in films.
One of Taylor's earliest successes was in 1920 in Fox's While New York Sleeps with Marc McDermott. She and McDermott play three sets of characters in different time periods. This film was lost for decades but has been recently discovered and screened at a film festival in Los Angeles. Taylor is possibly best recalled for her roles in the 1922 drama Monte Cristo opposite John Gilbert, the enormously successful 1923 Cecil B. DeMille directed The Ten Commandments as Miriam, the sister of Moses; as Lucrezia Borgia in the 1926 Warner Bros.' first feature-length film with synchronized Vitaphone sound effects and musical soundtrack Don Juan opposite John Barrymore, Mary Astor and Warner Oland, 1927's New York, opposite Ricardo Cortez and Lois Wilson, 1931's Street Scene with Sylvia Sidney and both the Academy Award winning Cimarron and the Clara Bow talkie, Call Her Savage in 1932.
Taylor married heavyweight boxing champion, Jack Dempsey, in 1925. She was supposed to have co-starred in a movie with actor Rudolph Valentino which would have brought her more widespread fame but he died just before production was to begin. In 1928 she and husband Dempsey starred in a Broadway play titled The Big Fight, loosely based around Dempsey's boxing popularity, which ran for 31 performances at the Majestic Theatre.
When she divorced Jack in July, 1933 she walked away with $40,000 in cash as well as 3 of their cars and their $150,000 estate. When a fan came up to her for an autographed picture of her, which had Jack's name on top she allegedly wrote: "This is the last time that son-of-a-bitch will be on top of me." Her marriage to Dempsey produced no children.
Taylor was a close friend of Mexican-born actress Lupe Vélez, and on the evening of December 13, 1944 she spent several hours at a restaurant having dinner and drinks with the actress before Vélez returned home and committed suicide. The ensuing press coverage briefly propelled Taylor once again into the headlines.
Taylor's last film appearance was in the 1945 Jean Renoir directed drama The Southerner. In her later years, Taylor devoted her free time to her pets and was the president and founder of the California Pet Owners' Protective League. In 1953, Taylor served on the City Animal Regulation Commission in Los Angeles, California.
Taylor died in 1958.She had been suffering for some time with cancer and had been bedridden the last six months.
She was interred at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Estelle Taylor was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1620 Vine Street in Hollywood, California.
In a 1983 American made-for-television movie biopic of boxer Jack Dempsey, Estelle Taylor was portrayed by British actress Victoria Tennant.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Estelle Taylor, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Tim Holt (February 5, 1918 – February 15, 1973) was an American film actor, perhaps best-known for co-starring in the 1948 film The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Tim Holt, licensed under CC-BY-SA,full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
