WHY WERE THEY DROPPED????????

[salus]

Can someone please explain to me why over 80% of the silen film actors and actresses weredumped at the coming of sound? And dont give me that their voices werent good enough, sorry the complete elimination of the whole industry says otherwise. Why was Lillian Gish dropped, I could see her in all those films Helen Hayes made in the 1930s Also D.W. Griffith was a great director now all of a sudden he wasnt. Why didnt Mary Pickford and United Artists hire Griffith and the other silent actresses they were in the film business too. There even were some like Georgia Hale, and others who began late in the silent film era then as soon as sound came no more films. Would these actresses from the silent film have worked for the contracts that newcomers like Bette Davis, Katherine Hepburn Joan Bennett got at their start? Also the ones that got work even for the next 20-30 years were always uncredited, how these these who were leading stars and leading character actresses be reduced to uncredited roles. Its really amazing how they never got a featured part.

[salus]

It was very nice for Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplain to open the Motion Picture Retirement Home just as sound hit, little did they know that most of their careers were over so they could have moved in then. Even United Artists didnt hire the silent stars to continue their careers ,why didnt Mary put her friend Lillian Gish under contract to woprk at UA?

[Mike Gebert]

This thread talks a lot about that.

[salus]

While that is a nice thread it doesn't answer the specific questions i raised. Why didn't Pickford who owned United Artist hire Gish and the others. It seems to me that Louis B Mayer and the rest wanted new people with very low salaries.

[drednm]

You just answered your own question: $

[myrnaloyisdope]

Yup, it's mostly dollars and sense, with the added caveat that a lot of the top stars of the silent era were long time veterans of the industry, and would likely have been retiring or moving into character roles regardless of the coming of sound.

[Mike Gebert]

Right; age is a big part of it. If you were Gary Cooper's or Joan Crawford's age when sound came in— mid to late 20s— and you were just beginning to create your image in films, you had many years ahead of you to work and cement your image in sound. If you'd already been a star for 10 years or more, and were in your mid 30s or 40s, and had a pretty solid image as a silent film type, it was always going to be harder.

As for why Pickford didn't give Gish work— Gish didn't need handouts from Pickford or anybody else. She went back to Broadway and had notable successes including as Ophelia opposite John Gielgud, the best-known Hamlet of the 30s. When she came back to Hollywood for character parts it was as a billed player in prestige productions like Duel in the Sun (which, whatever you may think of it, was a big deal). Her post-stardom career has to be considered one of the best-managed and most successful on its own terms in Hollywood history.

As for the salary issue-- there are certainly cases of stars with expensive contracts who were dropped in favor of newer stars who cost less. (Richard Barthelmess for instance.) But it's not about money alone. Warners dropped Barthelmess because he cost too much for what his pictures made compared to, say, Cagney, one of the studio's new breadwinners. But a few years later that same studio picked up an MGM star when she was dropped and revived her career— Joan Crawford. Every day studios make decisions, betting money on who's going up and dropping who's going down and sometimes picking up one of the latter on the cheap and turning their career around. As Walter Wanger said, "there's nothing as cheap as a hit" and to look at the studios as merely pinching pennies is to miss the full complexity of how they managed their talent stable.

[Brooksie]

Warners dropped Barthelmess because he cost too much for what his pictures made compared to, say, Cagney, one of the studio's new breadwinners. But a few years later that same studio picked up an MGM star when she was dropped and revived her career— Joan Crawford.

The same thing happened to Betty Compson and Bebe Daniels - Paramount had dumped both of them and they appeared pretty much washed up, but sound gave them a whole new lease of life.

The idea that the careers of Gish, Bow, etc ended the moment sound started is a bit of a myth in the first place. Read any of the fan magazines from the early 30s and you'll be surprised at how much the studios kept hyping stars whose careers, we have all been led to assume, were already dead in the water. Buster Keaton's highest-grossing film ever was `Sidewalks of New York' in 1931.

The real problem for people like Lillian Gish and John Gilbert was that the kinds of films, and the qualities people sought in their heroes and heroines, underwent a change in the early 30s. You couldn't have had a Clark Gable in the silent era in the same way that Gilbert just seemed out of place in the sound era. Tastes change, and people move on.

[drednm]

Bessie Love was another long-time pro (like Compson and Daniels) who was doing vaudeville when talkies came in and revived her career at MGM (briefly) during the musical craze.

The great majority of silent stars had careers in talkies, at least briefly, although not necessarily as stars.

[Harold Aherne]

It's also interesting that MGM seemed to keep its earlier stars the longest--Gilbert until '33; Novarro until '35; Garbo, Shearer and Crawford until the early 40s and Lewis Stone and Lionel Barrymore until they died. Look at Paramount for contrast: by late 1934, Gary Cooper and Jack Oakie appear to have been the studio's only direct holdovers from the silent era (a case could be made for W. C. Fields if you ignore his four years away from Paramount and perhaps for Harold Lloyd as well, though he was mainly an independent releasing through them).

-Harold

[drednm]

Haines til 32

But many of these stars had per-film contracts or 1-year contracts after 1930....

[Mike Gebert]

It's also interesting that MGM seemed to keep its earlier stars the longest--Gilbert until '33; Novarro until '35; Garbo, Shearer and Crawford until the early 40s and Lewis Stone and Lionel Barrymore until they died.

MGM also continued to be run like a silent studio, focused on lavish vehicles for its stars and carefully tending their glamorous images, because of its need to provide high-end product for big Loews houses in the major cities. So that probably made sense for them in a way that it wouldn't for Warners or Universal, cranking out programmer product on a budget with each star making many more pictures a year.

[drednm]

Marion Davies was with MGM til 1934.....

[Chris Snowden]

While that is a nice thread it doesn't answer the specific questions i raised. Why didn't Pickford who owned United Artist hire Gish and the others.

Pickford didn't own United Artists. And it wasn't a movie studio, it was a distributor. The only way UA could've done business with Lillian Gish was if she had wanted her own production company, obtained financing for it, and hired a production crew. Then UA might have contracted with her to distribute the films she'd make. But Gish wasn't especially interested in producing her own films, and since her recent M-G-Ms hadn't lit any fires at the box office, she probably wouldn't have found financing anyway.

It seems to me that Louis B Mayer and the rest wanted new people with very low salaries.

'Twas ever thus.

[salus]

If i remember correctly Louise Brooks commented on how terrible the old silent stars were treated, how they were put out to pasture.

[Frederica]

If i remember correctly Louise Brooks commented on how terrible the old silent stars were treated, how they were put out to pasture.

Louise Brooks complaining. What are the chances?

[Harold Aherne]

After leaving Griffith in 1921, it does seem as if Lillian had a harder time finding her place in the film industry. Her flirtation with Inspiration Pictures (The White Sister and Romola) was the closest she came to independent production and it also led into the mess with Charles Duell. That experience might have left enough of a sour taste in her mouth never to try it again, but I also don't get the impression that she was very happy as part of the studio system with MGM. Understandably, that limited her options but also opened the door to stage work and the kind of memorable supporting roles she had for the rest of her film career.

-Harold

[Mike Gebert]

Gish painted herself, or let herself be painted, into a corner as a screen personality, hightoned and sexless and mainly for costume parts; and it's hard to imagine what she could have done in the 30s that would have changed that. (Twentieth Century? Top Hat?) Helen Hayes had something of a similar persona and career, she succeeded in soap operas for a few years but she, too, was soon back to the stage, to return only in character roles. All in all, she made the best choice taking her level of prestige, which wasn't the same as being widely loved by audiences, and going to the theater where it would count for more.

[boblipton]

If i remember correctly Louise Brooks commented on how terrible the old silent stars were treated, how they were put out to pasture.

Louise Brooks! That apologist for the studio system?


Bob