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in your opinion who in the silent era had the most non-important movie career?

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my ops.

EVELYN NESBIT
though I would love to see any of her films that have survived, seemingly the scenarios of all of them were variations or reworkings of her own life and particularly the inroads and outroads resulting from the Stanford White murder, 1906.

Julius LaRosa.

Bob

Steve Allen......The Benny Goodman Story

Danny Thomas..........The Jazz Singer

Add Liberace in SINCERELY YOURS (a remake of George Arliss's THE MAN WHO PLAYED GOD). I haven't seen the Liberace film in decades but I recall that it got silly when he kept getting his hearing back temporarily just in time for a performance.

But I think Sepiatone wanted names from silent era. How about Natalie Talmadge in OUR HOSPITALITY?

Irene Castle. Her career depended entirely on her celebrity and her looks. I have a glass slide from one of her pictures and she's described as "America's Best Dressed Woman". She was in "The Whirl Of Life" in 1915 then made 19 pictures from 1917 to 1922,

"The Whirl Of Life" is an important document of the Castle's career, but otherwise she doesn't seem to have made an impression as an actress.

bobfells wrote:Add Liberace in SINCERELY YOURS (a remake of George Arliss's THE MAN WHO PLAYED GOD). I haven't seen the Liberace film in decades but I recall that it got silly when he kept getting his hearing back temporarily just in time for a performance.

But I think Sepiatone wanted names from silent era. How about Natalie Talmadge in OUR HOSPITALITY?

Which is why I cited Larosa. His silent career is dismissable.

Bob

FrankFay wrote:Irene Castle. Her career depended entirely on her celebrity and her looks. I have a glass slide from one of her pictures and she's described as "America's Best Dressed Woman". She was in "The Whirl Of Life" in 1915 then made 19 pictures from 1917 to 1922,

"The Whirl Of Life" is an important document of the Castle's career, but otherwise she doesn't seem to have made an impression as an actress.

Her looks may have been good in person, but i don't think she photographs well. Sort of gives the impression of a perpetual sneer.

Watching only silents, i always wondered why Tom Moore was in films, i found him bland and not particularly good looking. But when i saw him in the talkie Side Street i was surprised to see his real Irish charm--i suspect he must have been a charmer in real life but i sure don't see it in his silents. Another surprise from Side Street--the terrific performance by Owen, someone who often gets accused of riding on Mary Pickford's coattails.

greta

greta

greta de groat wrote:

FrankFay wrote:Irene Castle. Her career depended entirely on her celebrity and her looks. I have a glass slide from one of her pictures and she's described as "America's Best Dressed Woman". She was in "The Whirl Of Life" in 1915 then made 19 pictures from 1917 to 1922,

"The Whirl Of Life" is an important document of the Castle's career, but otherwise she doesn't seem to have made an impression as an actress.

Her looks may have been good in person, but i don't think she photographs well. Sort of gives the impression of a perpetual sneer.

Watching only silents, i always wondered why Tom Moore was in films, i found him bland and not particularly good looking. But when i saw him in the talkie Side Street i was surprised to see his real Irish charm--i suspect he must have been a charmer in real life but i sure don't see it in his silents. Another surprise from Side Street--the terrific performance by Owen, someone who often gets accused of riding on Mary Pickford's coattails.

greta

greta

I'd tend to agree with you on Irene Castle- she doesn't seem to have had a pleasant personality: I talked with a woman who knew her in her later life and she said it frankly: A Bitch.

As to Tom Moore I see his charm in flashes- it comes out in The Clinging Vine where he gets to smile and joke a bit. He certainly had a durable career- never a leading man past the early 30's he worked regularly for years.

I haven't seen a lot of Owen Moore but he's quite good in the earlier part of The Blackbird- the script in the later reels lets him down. He was also very good in The Red Mill, though you can see his looks are starting to go.

Re Owen Moore, I was surprised to see him in the Garbo talkie, AS YOU DESIRE ME (1932). He didn't have much of a talkie career before his death in 1939, but he comes across just fine in the Garbo film. Also, considering he was working at MGM, I wonder what happened that they didn't use him after this film. Perhaps like Garbo's other co-star, Erich von Stroheim, she requested that he be hired for the film.

If you take the question to mean top notch stars who would not be diminished a jot if their silent films were removed then by virtue of the voice Ronald Colman and by virtue of screen persona Gary Cooper. On the female side probably Norma Shearer.

Why dismiss anyone's work? You're going to find that no matter how little someone has done, it's important to someone.

GooseWoman wrote:If you take the question to mean top notch stars who would not be diminished a jot if their silent films were removed then by virtue of the voice Ronald Colman and by virtue of screen persona Gary Cooper. On the female side probably Norma Shearer.

I wouldn't agree- based on what I've seen Norma Shearer was fine in silents (I'll put up LADY OF THE NIGHT) and if sound hadn't come I think she'd have continued very well.

Gary Cooper was definitely developing charisma- he might have done well.

Colman on the other hand was mostly given the sort of interchangeable supporting parts that nearly any actor could fill, though part of that is the fault of Sam Goldwyn who had a record of spotting talent but not knowing how to use it. When Colman made pictures at Paramount (Beau Geste, Lady Windermere's Fan) he showed signs of what he'd become.

Come to that,,, if you just look at the number of pictures she was in, Louise Brooks had a dismissable career. She certainly was dismissed in her lifetime.
A later time told the truth....

sp

Spiritus wrote:Come to that,,, if you just look at the number of pictures she was in, Louise Brooks had a dismissable career. She certainly was dismissed in her lifetime.
A later time told the truth....

sp

The jury's still out on that opinion

Umm, I can vaguely picture him, I just can't remember his name. Definitely dismissable.

I think it was the woman walking by with the cell phone in Chaplin's "The Circus."

What an odd question. But I'll vote for that guy in the back of the crowd... you know, the one you missed because you were watching some random dog walk through the scene.

In silents Hazel Dawn , nothing like her big Broadway career.................talkies how about Mamie Van Doren, of all the buxom blondes she did zero in films the others had hits at least