Silent | Forum profile

Thank you both for posting about her and offering this info. For what I found out, she has never been willing to talk about her experience in films which I think is unfortunate, for it deprives us lovers of silent and old films the opportunity to learn more about cinema, especially since she is one of the last remainig links to the silent film era. On a personal note I wish her many happy returns! "it's a Kafka high, you feel...

So I noticed many silent films that you can buy on DVD have skipped/missing frames. I was wondering why they are missing. -Did it already happen during filming (unreliable camera's, some exposures failed)? -Did they have to remove them during restoration because they were deteriorated? -Other reasons? ---------- My movie ratings: http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=22350856

Both. Hand-cranking a camera isn't an entirely reliable practice; it's not so much that exposures failed to register as that film could momenarily jam or pause. Additionally, some old films are choppy because editors lacked equipment outside of their own sight. Some films just weren't as carefully made. Mostly, though, its the deterioration and the years of use of the prints. "The cinéma is an invention without...

Barbara Kent (born December 16, 1906) is an actress who was popular in silent movies. She is one of the last surviving adult-aged players from Hollywood's silent film period. Born as Barbara Cloutman in Gadsby, Alberta, she won the Miss Hollywood Pageant in 1925. She began her Hollywood career in 1925 in a small role for Universal Studios. A brunette who stood less than five feet tall, Kent became popular as a comedienne opposite such...

To stop confusion, I'm not looking for actresses who were working in the silent era, but earned fame for the first time in the talkie era. I'm looking for actors who were already stars when sound film arrived. Notable examples I can come up with are Greta Garbo and Norma Shearer. Other actors are Ronald Colman, William Powell and Claudette Colbert, but from them I'm not sure exactly how famous they were before 1928.

Laurel and Hardy The duo appeared together in 1917, but not as a team. Hal Roach cast them in much the same accidental way in 1926 and it took the normally astute Roach a couple of movies before he realized what he had. By 1928, L&H were a solid team, making shorts for Roach. They made their talkie debut in the short Unaccustomed As We Are (1929) and their voices perfectly fit their physical appearances. I believe their first feature...

A few more credits: Barbara Kent played opposite Harold Lloyd in his first two talkies, Welcome Danger and Feet First. The former was originally made as a silent, then partially re-filmed and converted to sound. Both versions were released to theaters, so it was both Kent's (and Lloyd's) last silent film and first talkie. She was also the leading lady in No Man's Law, a strange Western made at the Hal Roach Studio in late 1926...

Richard Dix, Richard Barthelmess, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, Charles Farrell, Ramon Navarro, Warner Baxter all made successful transitions to sound. Keaton quickly sank under the yoke of MGM. Baxter's star rose greatly. Dix remained relatively popular, Barthelmess too for a few years, and Farrell continued his successes with Janet Gaynor. Navarro had a few good years in sound until about 1934, and Lloyd, although not nearly as popular...

It reminds me of one of my favorite silent era actresses, whom I earnestly tried contacting (unsuccessfully) for years: the beautiful Marceline Day who declined interviews with fans and critics (for her entire post-Hollywood life) until the day she died in 2000 at the age of 91. Whatever Barbara Kent's reasoning is (health or personal), it's very unfortunate that this living silent film and pre-code era time capsule (arguably the...

It's been awhile since I've watched a silent film. I believe the last was The Hunchback of Notre Dame (the Lon Chaney version). Saw it in a theater as part of a Halloween horror festival. To be honest I found it slow-moving and a bit dull; not nearly as good as the previous year's silent, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (starring John Barrymore) and not as good as the 1939 version of Hunchback with Charles Laughton and Maureen...