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gscottrobinson

Has anyone in the states found a way to watch the Brownlow restoration of Napoleon? It looks like the BFI version is only available on B2 Blu Ray players. I toyed around with the idea of buying a multizone bluray player expressly for this purpose, but its a big investment for one movie.

gsr

gscottrobinson

Hi! I'm doing some research on silent biopics this summer, particularly from American studios. If you have any favorite silent biopics that come to mind, could you let me know? So far, my favorite is the 1909 film Edgar Allen Poe . ("Allen" was spelled incorrectly in the title of the film.) Gregory

gscottrobinson

Or Meany? I suppose it is possible he is not a celeb - he could be rolands' (or Spence's) assistant.

Gregory

gscottrobinson

Hi! I am trying to ID a figure on the right of this image. His name is actually written on the back, but I cannot quite make out the handwriting. The one on the left is Ralph Spence (a writer during the silent era), the woman is presumably Ruth Roland, but I do not recognize the man. https://www.fli...

gscottrobinson

Hi all. Last year I wrote a book that uses silent movies as a starting point for meditation about all sorts of things. It was a way of doing something creative with a medium (silent film) that I really love, and I like to think that silent movies still have a lot to say about contemporary ideas.The ...

gscottrobinson

It has been a long time since I posted here :) A few years ago, I started playing around with creative writing about silent movies - it was a fun way to interact with silents, and a nice change from academic writing. This is the trailer from the book that resulted: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLW...

gscottrobinson

Thank you all for the suggestions.

Gregory

gscottrobinson

There's a mysterious 1925 short called 'In Youth, Beside the Lonely Sea' which is based on a poem by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. It's more significant for the fact that it uses a three-screen effect some time before Abel Gance did. The restoration I've seen physically reproduces the poem itself, but it'...

gscottrobinson

David - any idea which films parody the Service poems?

Maureen - thank you for the Chaplin film! It looks like the Internet Archive has a copy.

Gregory

gscottrobinson

I am doing some research on poetry in silent films, which seems like a relatively rare occurrence. I was just rereading an article from 1923 about a title writer who laments trying to incorporate poetry into one of his movies - apparently it didn't get the audience very excited. The Theda Bara film ...

gscottrobinson

Hi!

I am looking for an image of Gerald Duffy (1896-June 25, 1928) - a writer, an editor for Redbook, and a screenwriter for First National. I am guessing the Margaret Herrick Library has one, but I am not able to get there this week.

Thanks in advance..

Gregory

gscottrobinson

Admittedly, I am not crazy about Farnham's titles. I know he won the Academy Award for it, but Marion Jr. was better, and Spence didn't even get nominated. I have been working (very slowly) on a book about title writers, and the Ralph Spence page is one I posted to see if I could get more informatio...

gscottrobinson

As far as I know, there aren't any full books on the subject. I just wrote a chapter though for a Blackwell Companion - I'd be happy to send you my draft if you send me an email address. Honestly, the most comprehensive work on titling I've seen so far is a dissertation by Torry Liepa. He put a lot ...

gscottrobinson

Wow! Thank you so much Chris! That's a picture I haven't seen before and it is terrific. Check out that rug

If you don't mind me asking, where did you find it?

Gregory

gscottrobinson

By the way - I dug around everywhere (including visits to the Eastman House in Rochester and the Herrick Library in LA) and almost gave up on finding out any more biographical information about Spence. Then, just today I found that his grandson saw the clippings I posted and wrote me. Such a thrill!

gscottrobinson

Thank you all so much for these replies - they are very helpful!

Gregory

gscottrobinson

Hi! I'm looking for examples of what D. Cairns calls "living intertitles" - title cards that use moving images in the background rather than stagnant images. His example occurs in Lois Weber's 1921 Too Wise Wives. So far, I haven't found any others. Notably, 'm not looking (at the moment) for moving...

gscottrobinson

George Ade, who you list, may have written titles for a couple of films as a sideline.. Brett, Thank you for the name. I'll add it to my list as well. I listed Ade because his name came up in this article as being a particularly impressive title writer: http://ralphhspence.files.wordpress.com/2010/...

gscottrobinson

You need to add H.H. Caldwell to your list. He was teamed with Katherine Hilliker, and they were probably the highest paid title writers/productiion editors in Hollywood. Their screen work abruptly ended with the coming of sound. Thank you Bob, and thank you for meeting with me last month - your he...

gscottrobinson

At some point, I have to figure out J. Farnham's mystery as well. Was he a great title writer? I think he wrote a lot of titles, but I haven't actually found any that impressed me yet. Honestly, I wonder if his position as the head of MGM's title dept weighed heavily with the Academy judges. That s...

gscottrobinson

Very nice! I'm a big fan of Ralph Spence's title writing. It's amazing how a great title writer could sometimes take a mediocre film and improve or doctor it with subtitles and slight editing. Brent, I believe Spence worked for Sennett when he first came to Hollywood. Does he show up at all in your...

gscottrobinson

Very nice! I'm a big fan of Ralph Spence's title writing. It's amazing how a great title writer could sometimes take a mediocre film and improve or doctor it with subtitles and slight editing. Brent, I believe Spence worked for Sennett when he first came to Hollywood. Does he show up at all in your...

gscottrobinson

At some point, I have to figure out J. Farnham's mystery as well. Was he a great title writer? I think he wrote a lot of titles, but I haven't actually found any that impressed me yet. Honestly, I wonder if his position as the head of MGM's title dept weighed heavily with the Academy judges. The 192...

gscottrobinson

Hi!

I'm doing some research on Ralph Spence, who was known for (amongst other things) "doctoring" silent films. I've started compiling what I've found so far on him here - http://ralphhspence.wordpress.com/ , but if there is anything that you can add or suggest, I'd greatly appreciate it.

gsr

gscottrobinson

Hi! I'm trying to solve a small mystery, and if there are any answers it seems like this board would have it. This 1923 article from the Times is anonymous - the author calls himself a "Hack Title Writer." https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0B9I-kEUC4DMPMGVkYmU5M2MtOTk4NC00NjcwLThjN2YtMzk2NGE1NGMxO...

gscottrobinson

Thank you for the quick response - it is very helpful.

gscottrobinson

Hi! I'm not sure if anyone could help with this, but I thought I'd give it a go. Joseph Farnham, a title card writer at MGM, won the first and only Academy Award for title writing. Newspapers from the time don't seem to link the award to any one film, but he did work on King Vidor's The Crowd and ap...

gscottrobinson

Hi! I'm doing some research and need some help. A 1917 Everybody's Magazine‎ quotes Anita Loos as speaking about an intertitle she wrote that reads: "Count Xxerkzsxxv: To those of you who read titles aloud, you can't pronounce the Count's name. You have to think it. The wikipedia entry on Loos menti...

gscottrobinson

Oh man. First, note post #1. My question was - does a "canonized" list exist? I didn't think so, but I thought it was worth checking around. I certainly wasn't proposing to make one - which I also stated in post #3. I really was just looking for a way to look at a series of films without compiling m...

gscottrobinson

First, Thank you from the quote from Norma Talmadge - I think that is fascinating. I have to do some digging through my books to come up with the sources that she had cited, but I can attest to a few anti-titlers that I had saved from another project: 1. Vachel Lindsay, American Poet and early film ...

Search found 42 matches

Gance's Napoleon in the US

Silent BioPics?

Re: Photo Id - Ralph Spence, Ruth Rolands, and ?

Photo Id - Ralph Spence, Ruth Rolands, and ?

All Movies Love the Moon

Creative Writing on Silent Movies

Re: Poetry in title cards?

Re: Poetry in title cards?

Re: Poetry in title cards?

Poetry in title cards?

Image of Gerald Duffy (1896-June 25, 1928)?

Re: Titlewriters

Moving Images in Title Cards

farnham

Ralph Spence

Jack Natteford - Hack title writer?

Joseph Farnham - Best Title Writing Award

Loos' "Count Xxerkzsxxv" title card