Single Greatest Figure of the Silent Era

drednm · Post by **drednm** » Thu Feb 10, 2011 8:35 am

Yes that's interesting about Valentino. His name is alive, there have been (bad) biopics, but few have probably actually seen any of his films. Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, Pickford & Fairbanks still have name recognition. Swanson is remembered but only for Sunset Boulevard. Garbo and Crawford are remembered for their talkies.

But as Rodney says even great stars like the Talmadges have slipped away because they had no real talkie careers and their silents have been pretty much unseen. I wonder how the recent Talmadge DVD sets sold?

sherry · Post by **sherry** » Thu Feb 10, 2011 9:10 am

My personal No 1 is Lon Chaney.
However, there were so many people who had their contribution, it would be hard to pick one

Gary Newman · Post by **Gary Newman** » Thu Feb 10, 2011 11:28 am

The term ‘greatest’ can mean many different things. In the entire history of film, surely the most influential person, both artistically and commercially, was D. W. Griffith.

Frederica · Post by **Frederica** » Thu Feb 10, 2011 11:47 am

Rodney wrote:
Changsham wrote:
Tracy wrote:I would say Rudolph Valentino. .....
His relevance seems to have steadily diminished as the decades roll by.
Rudolph Valentino, though his films are rarely screened, is still a household name like Charlie Chaplin. In fact, I'd say those two are perhaps the only two silent film stars whose names are still in common currency in the general world outside of film. In that particular way, he out-does Pickford, Keaton, Lloyd, Fairbanks, Griffith (DW or Raymond), Von Stroheim, and once-huge stars like the Talmadges and Gloria Swanson. And not everyone who died at the top of their game makes it into the Valentino/James Dean collection. Sure, people who know film revere Grace Kelly, but not the general public.

When Valentino's films are screened they pack the house, too. I'd agree with you, if there are any silent stars whose names are household words, it's Chaplin and Valentino.

LouieD · Post by **LouieD** » Thu Feb 10, 2011 1:29 pm

Frederica wrote:When Valentino's films are screened they pack the house, too.

Certainly not for An Adventuress (1920)

Frederica · Post by **Frederica** » Thu Feb 10, 2011 1:37 pm

LouieD wrote:
Frederica wrote:When Valentino's films are screened they pack the house, too.
Certainly not for An Adventuress (1920)

For that one they flee in droves. I'm in front of the pack.

sepiatone · Post by **sepiatone** » Thu Feb 10, 2011 9:29 pm

Changsham wrote:Though I love CC, I think he played the tramp character for far too long. He eventually became a cliche and caricature of the silent era. And Mary Pickford should never have made talking pictures. She became the cliche silent star who could not speak. I loved mostly all of her silent films but hearing her for the first time in TAMING OF THE SHEW made me wince.

that's unfair and really has been persistent throughout the years because of films like SINGIN IN THE RAIN which sort of misrepresented the silent stars changeover to sound. I'll explain, Betty Compson had a high pitched voice but nicely modulated and she enjoyed popular favor in the turn over to sound. She later was relegated to supporting parts not because of her voice but because(in Hollywood's eyes) she was aging and had been popular as a silent star. The same could be said for Monte Blue and Rod La Rocque(whom I always enjoyed in the early talkie THE DELIGHTFUL ROGUE). Helen Kane was a squeaky voiced recording artist in the 20s-30s but she at one time was bigger than Bing Crosby because of her squeaky/cute persona.
Pickford, lest we forget, started out on the stage, like the Gishes and even Chaplin, and was a theater performer for many years before working for Griffith. In other words she was no stranger to the stage. I found Pickford's last film SECRETS(1933) a competent film and was able to look past the cute-golden curl Mary Pickford of the 1910s and accept her in a grown up role. But I learned about Pickford's theatrical beginnings and dealings with David Belasco so I understood that could make a fine sound film star if she so desired.

sepiatone · Post by **sepiatone** » Thu Feb 10, 2011 9:34 pm

If we take the original poster for what he's asking "Who's the Greatest Single Figure of the Silent Era"?

I would say Eadward Muybridge, he got the ball rolling, for their would be no silent era without the zoopraxiscope, which first taught us about persistence-of-vision and then led to others who continued experimenting like Louis Le Prince, WKL Dickson, Thomas Edison and the Lumiere Brothers. A lot of Muybridge's experimental films survive to this very day, 120+ years after they were made.

drednm · Post by **drednm** » Thu Feb 10, 2011 9:49 pm

Betty Compson had a high pitched voice?

sepiatone · Post by **sepiatone** » Fri Feb 11, 2011 12:42 am

drednm wrote:Betty Compson had a high pitched voice?

I thought it was sort of high but not ridiculously high as parodied in SINGIN IN THE RAIN. And I'm judging just from viewing THE GREAT GABBO. It makes me think of how many of our stars today would make it if they had to endure the rigors of early sound tests

sepiatone · Post by **sepiatone** » Fri Feb 11, 2011 12:45 am

Frederica wrote:
LouieD wrote:
Frederica wrote:When Valentino's films are screened they pack the house, too.
Certainly not for An Adventuress (1920)
For that one they flee in droves. I'm in front of the pack.

I thought AN ADVENTURESS was lost! Certainly you guys are talking about THE ISLE OF LOVE!

drednm · Post by **drednm** » Fri Feb 11, 2011 9:23 am

I guess it's a matter of opinion but I always thought Compson's voice was fine but found it odd she seemed to have an east coast accent (born in Utah).

Frederica · Post by **Frederica** » Fri Feb 11, 2011 10:37 am

sepiatone wrote:
Frederica wrote:
LouieD wrote: Certainly not for An Adventuress (1920)
For that one they flee in droves. I'm in front of the pack.
I thought AN ADVENTURESS was lost! Certainly you guys are talking about THE ISLE OF LOVE!

I wish we weren't talking about either of them.

Silent film fan · Post by **Silent film fan** » Sat Feb 12, 2011 5:00 am

dr.giraud wrote:Snitz Edwards

Actually, snitz has developed somewhat of a following among young people (well, at least ONE young person!) In any case, he has his own Facebook page:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Snitz-Edw ... 6818666218

WaverBoy · Post by **WaverBoy** » Sat Feb 12, 2011 5:48 pm

Snitz is great in SEVEN CHANCES.

shaheena · Post by **shaheena** » Sun Feb 13, 2011 2:14 am

Rudolph Valentino, no question.

I just finished watching 2 movies tonight-- Camille (Nazimova/Valentino) and The World of Henry Orient, and the juxtaposition showed me something that I hadn't quite tumbled to in Henry Orient: Peter Sellers' comically sleazy avant-garde pianist is in large part a wonderful Valentino-imitator trope. He pursues both Paula Prentiss and Angela Lansbury dressed to the nines and spouting Italian phrases and a put-on accent (which gets dropped whenever Henry Orient gets caught off-guard, which is often and in very hilarious ways), but it is obvious his character is 'doing a (bargain-basement) Valentino' to impress the ladies. What's more, people to this day still get what's meant when someone says, 'He thinks he's Rudolph Valentino'-- he's part of our instinctive cultural mindset at this point.

I also think he was a very competent actor, with an utterly transparent face which clearly and cleanly showed many gradations and shades of emotion to the camera, not just the three (lust, anger and brain-death) in vogue today. Even though his filmography is short, he is luminous in everything, even the flicks with the not-so-hot, cliche-ridden plot-lines.

Lastly, I choose him because of all the actors I have seen in my 60 years-- many of whom were/are pleasing to look at-- only Valentino carves the heart right out of my chest every time I see him on-screen. I don't watch Camille too often because watching him go through about 50 emotions in about a minute and a half during the Hazard d'Or gambling sequence makes me cry every time, though happily, he completely holds his own in the face of Nazimova's constant scenery-chewing.

He's 85-years-dead, and many of his performances are handicapped by badly-decayed film-stock, and he still makes guys like Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom look like they have the depth of water vapor...

WaverBoy · Post by **WaverBoy** » Sun Feb 13, 2011 2:43 am

His unibrow in BLOOD AND SAND hasn't aged very well.

shaheena · Post by **shaheena** » Sun Feb 13, 2011 4:44 am

Actually, the unibrow is interesting-- Valentino was quite willing to mess up his own good looks in service to his performance. It made him at least begin to look the part of a scruffy, plain-as-mud peasant-boy, which is who and what Juan Gallardo was. And it has an interesting successor in modern movies: Mia Sara (as Lily) wore one in Ridley Scott's Legend while 'slumming' as the sweetheart of Darkness. In each case, it was both visually striking and also off-putting in that it is not a feature of the Western idea of a classically beautiful face, which is why it was used-- it functions as a 'visual shorthand' representation of a flaw in the character wearing it.