Posts tagged as:

Silents

Edith Roberts

March 25, 2010
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Born in New York City on September 17, 1899, Edith Roberts was a child prodigy, displaying a talent for singing and dancing from her earliest years. After performing for a time in Vaudeville, Edith made her way to Hollywood at age 15, where she appeared in a number of small roles before getting more significant [...]

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DVD Review: The First Kings of Comedy

March 2, 2010
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If you have a casual interest in silent comedies, The First Kings of Comedy Collection might convert you into the ranks of a true enthusiast. The disk consists of two documentaries about the silent comedy era, both produced by Robert Youngson, that serve up laughs as well as interesting facts about the films and their [...]

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Rascal Review: The Sun Down Limited

February 22, 2010
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This is a wild guess you understand, but I suspect that 95% of Atomic Antiques readers have never watched any of the silent Little Rascals shorts. In fact, I’ll bet that 80% didn’t even realize the Rascals were around in the silent era! There’s certainly no shame in this, as only silent film aficionados, and [...]

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The Kid

February 15, 2010
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Many today know Jackie Coogan only from his portrayal of Uncle Fester on the 1960s TV series, The Addams Family, but in the ’20s he was a popular child star, appearing in a number of silent movies that are considered classics. Perhaps his greatest role was in The Kid, a 1921 film also starring Charlie [...]

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Gloria’s Romance

December 9, 2009
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Recognize the woman on the far left? It’s Billie Burke, the actress best known for her portrayal of Glinda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz. Here she’s seen in a film she did twenty-three years earlier, a twenty-chapter serial called Gloria’s Romance. In only her second film role, Billie plays Gloria Stafford, a [...]

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Hearts of the World

November 11, 2009
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Released in 1918, Hearts of the World is often dismissed as nothing more than a propaganda film, but D.W. Griffith wasn’t capable of making a film of substance, however flawed. The star, Lillian Gish, said years later that Griffith regretted depicting the Germans in so harsh a light.

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The Sheriff’s Reward

November 4, 2009
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Another early film from the greatest screen cowboy, Tom Mix starred in The Sheriff’s Reward while still with Selig-Polyscope. It was but one of fifty-four films that Mix did for the studio in 1914.

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Elmo Lincoln, the original Tarzan

November 3, 2009
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Years ago (many years ago) I saw Tarzan of the Apes on channel 13, my local PBS affiliate. The first film portrayal of Tarzan, it starred “barrel-chested Elmo Lincoln”, an actor whose name is seldom uttered without “barrel-chested” tacked to the front of it. I’ve not seen the movie since that viewing thirty-odd years ago, [...]

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The Rustler’s Reformation

October 31, 2009
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Released in 1913, The Rustler’s Reformation was made by Selig Polyscope, the company that first put Tom Mix on the big screen. The star of Rustler’s Reformation was Lester Cuneo, who had switched from comedy to westerns. In 1920 he married actress Francelia Billington, and they co-starred in a number of films. When they divorced [...]

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The Real Thing in Cowboys

October 31, 2009
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Discovered while working at the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch, Tom Mix was hired to handle the stock used in western movies for the Selig Polyscope Company. Mix was also used in occasional bit roles, and in time he was allowed to assemble his own film unit and was given his first starring role, the appropriately [...]

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Cecil B. DeMille’s Saturday Night

October 30, 2009
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Best known for the many historic spectacles he brought to the screen, Cecil B. DeMille also did a number of successful comedies. One of these was the 1922 release, Saturday Night, starring Leatrice Joy, Conrad Nagel, Edith Roberts, Jack Mower and Julia Faye.

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Blanche Sweet

October 30, 2009
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Blanche Sweet was an early star of silent motion pictures. Born in Chicago on June 18, 1896, Blanche came from a theatrical family, and by the age of thirteen was under contract to the renowned director D.W. Griffith. In 1914 she left Griffith and Biograph Studios behind, signing a lucrative contract with Paramount. At Paramount [...]

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Tom Mix, Hollywood’s Original Western Hero

October 23, 2009
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Before John Wayne, Gene Autry or Roy Rogers there was a pioneer, a movie cowboy that not only paved the way for all the heroes that followed but was quite possibly the greatest of them all. One of the first Hollywood mega-stars, Tom Mix is a bit of a mystery, his studio-penned biography having been [...]

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The Little Rascals in the Silent Era

September 23, 2009
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Many of us watched the Little Rascals on television in the 1950s and 1960s, and it must be said that without that syndication I doubt that many today would remember the comedies. If TV saved the Rascals, a different fate has befallen their earlier shorts, the silents. Produced between 1922 and 1929, the Little Rascals [...]

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