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Post by hi224 on Sept 21, 2020 19:07:34 GMT
never made it into sound? Wallace Reid died fairly young.
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Post by llanwydd on Sept 21, 2020 19:21:20 GMT
Rudolph Valentino is the most notable.
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Post by marianne48 on Sept 21, 2020 21:59:49 GMT
Raymond Griffith was born into a theatrical family and was performing onstage from the time of his toddler years. His vocal cords were damaged as a result of a childhood illness, and he lost his voice almost completely in the middle of a performance while delivering an onstage scream. Unable to speak above a whisper, he switched to pantomime performances.
He later became a popular actor in many silent films. Unfortunately, many of these films are apparently lost, but the few that survive (Hands Up! is one) show his charm as a silent comic actor.
When sound films arrived, he couldn't perform dialogue, so his acting career was over; his one notable appearance in talkies was as the dying French soldier in All Quiet on the Western Front who can only whisper a few words. Griffith later became a producer.
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Post by teleadm on Sept 22, 2020 17:42:19 GMT
Max Linder (1883–1925)  |
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Post by marianne48 on Sept 22, 2020 19:30:09 GMT
Linder didn't live long enough to work in sound films; his health problems, including chronic depression, led to his suicide along with his wife (either a suicide pact, or a murder-suicide--his wife, then himself).
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Post by Catman 猫的主人 on Sept 22, 2020 19:45:14 GMT
Harrison Ford did not make the transition from silent to sound. He instead returned to the theater after starring in only one talkie (Love in High Gear), and during World War II he toured with the USO.
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Post by BATouttaheck on Sept 22, 2020 20:33:00 GMT
Clara Bow ... tried a few sound pictures but her "it" didn't follow her there. She retired from the film world at 28 in 1933. |
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Post by phantomparticle on Sept 23, 2020 0:06:44 GMT
Vilma Banky
Born in Hungary, she was brought to Hollywood by Samuel Goldwyn who billed her as "The Hungarian Rhapsody." She played opposite Valentino in Son of the Sheik and was a major star, although her fans were unaware she spoke no English.
She eventually learned English but, according to legend, had an accent so thick she was unintelligible on screen in her first talkie, This is Heaven (1929).
Banky does a terrific job as a mail-order bride in A Lady To Love (1930), a terrible film starring Edward G. Robinson. She is engaging and strong and completely intelligible, despite the accent. The movie is available on Youtube and is a rare chance to see and hear Banky, who generated almost as much excitement as Garbo in her first talkie. She made only two more pictures and was gone.
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Post by TheGoodMan19 on Sept 23, 2020 20:38:04 GMT
Many, many, many
Louise Brooks
Thomas Meighan
Eleanor Boardman
Gibson Gowland
Emil Jannings
Richard Barthelmess
Alice Terry
On and on. Few silent stars NEVER made a talkie. They seen their starring roles dry up, they made a few B pictures or bit roles and went away. Theda Bara made two shorts after sound and retired. A shorter list would be silent actors who had big careers in sound. Even Chaplin and Garbo were all but done by 1941. Thomas Meighan was a huge star, making $10,000 a week. Now, no one has heard of him. Some lost work because of their accents, Emil Jannings most notably. The Hays Code and the new morality drove some of the more decadent stars, like Brooks and Clara Bow. I always imagined that cost drove most away. Meighan, Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish commanded big salaries. New medium, new (cheap) stars. Not a coincidence that most big "Golden Age" stars career's got going when sound came. Out goes Eleanor Boardman, in comes Bette Davis.
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