Ramon Novarro II: Best Films, Rex Ingram
Jeanette MacDonald, Ramon Novarro in The Cat and the Fiddle. Photo: Courtesy Matias Bombal Collection.
Ramon Novarro: Allan Ellenberger Interview I
How would you describe Ramon Novarro the actor?
Novarro was a first-rate actor – maybe not an Olivier, but a good solid actor. Even in bad films such as Laughing Boy (1934), he had his moments. He was excellent in dramatic roles such as the aviator Alexis Rosanoff opposite Greta Garbo in Mata Hari (1931), or as the rapist-suitor of Myrna Loy in The Barbarian (1933). He excelled in light comedic moments, especially in The Prisoner of Zenda (1922) and in several of his musicals including The Cat and the Fiddle (1934) and The [...]
by Andre Soares | October 27, 2009
| Subscribe / Syndicate
Tags: Allan Ellenberger, Anita Page, Classic Movies, Gay Interest, Interviews, Ramon Novarro, Rex Ingram, Silent Films, The Cat and the Fiddle
Best Films – 1926
Mary Pickford in Sparrows
FILM
Dancing Mothers
d: Herbert Brenon; scr: Forrest Halsey
Don Juan
d: Alan Crosland; scr: Bess Meredyth; titles: Walter Anthony, Maude Fulton
Kid Boots
d: Frank Tuttle; scr: Luther Reed, Tom Gibson; titles: George Marion Jr.
The Scarlet Letter
d: Victor Sjöström (aka Victor Seastrom); scr: Frances Marion
The Show
d: Tod Browning; scr: Waldemar Young; titles: Joseph W. Farnham
Sparrows
d: William Beaudine; scr: C. Gardner Sullivan; titles: George Marion Jr.
The Volga Boatman
d: Cecil B. DeMille; scr: Lenore J. Coffee
CHECK THESE OUT
You Never Know Women
d: William A. Wellman; scr: Benjamin Glazer
Old Ironsides
d: James Cruze; scr: Dorothy Arzner, Harry Carr, Walter Woods; titles: Rupert Hughes
Mare Nostrum
d: Rex Ingram; scr: Willis Goldbeck
Tell It to the Marines
d: George Hill; scr: Richard Schayer; titles: Joseph W. Farnham
ACTOR
John Barrymore
Don Juan
Eddie Cantor
Kid Boots
John Gilbert
The [...]
by Andre Soares | April 2, 2009
| Subscribe / Syndicate
Tags: Alan Crosland, Alice Terry, Best Films, Cecil B. DeMille, Classic Movies, Don Juan, Flesh and the Devil, Florence Vidor, Frances Marion, George Hill, Gertrude Astor, John Barrymore, John Gilbert, Kid Boots, Lillian Gish, Mare Nostrum, Mary Pickford, Renée Adorée, Rex Ingram, Silent Films, Sparrows, Tell It to the Marines, The Scarlet Letter, The Show, The Volga Boatman, Victor Sjöström
Best Films – 1923
I must admit that I’m not a fan of Charles Chaplin’s comedies. Heresies aside, I did very much enjoy Chaplin’s dramatic A Woman of Paris, an attempt to turn his frequent leading lady Edna Purviance into a star. The film was a box-office success (despite rumors to the contrary), but Purviance’s career never took off. That is unfortunate, as she gives a moving performance in this tale of lost love and single motherhood. She is with Carl Miller in the photo. Things are obviously not going very well for the couple, but Purviance is surely suffering in style.
FILM
Cameo Kirby
d: John Ford; scr: Robert N. Lee
Scaramouche
d: Rex Ingram; scr: Willis Goldbeck
The White Rose
d, scr: D. W. Griffith
A Woman of Paris
d, scr: [...]
by Andre Soares | April 2, 2009
| Subscribe / Syndicate
Tags: A Woman of Paris, Alice Terry, Best Films, Cameo Kirby, Charles Chaplin, Classic Movies, D. W. Griffith, Edna Purviance, Eleanor Boardman, G. W. Bitzer, John F. Seitz, John Ford, John Gilbert, Karl Brown, Lewis Stone, Mae Marsh, Nita Naldi, Ramon Novarro, Rex Ingram, Scaramouche, Silent Films, Souls for Sale, The Covered Wagon, The Ten Commandments, The White Rose, Willis Goldbeck
Best Films – 1922
Ok, so Max Schreck (literally, Max Fright) was not romantic leading man material, but he did quite well for himself as the creepiest vampire of them all, Nosferatu. Those who think of director F. W. Murnau as the creator of film poetry in pictures such as Sunrise and Tabu should realize that Murnau was equally adept at creating sheer horror. No other vampire movie I’ve seen is as eerie as Nosferatu the Vampire. Max Schreck’s ratman-like presence, of course, is an enormous help.
FILM
Monte Cristo
d: Emmett J. Flynn; scr: Bernard McConville
Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens / Nosferatu the Vampire
d: F. W. Murnau; scr: Henrik Galeen
The Prisoner of Zenda
d: Rex Ingram; scr: Mary O’Hara
CHECK THESE OUT
Back Pay
d: Frank Borzage; scr: Frances [...]
by Andre Soares | April 2, 2009
| Subscribe / Syndicate
Tags: Alice Terry, Back Pay, Best Films, Classic Movies, F. W. Murnau, Frank Borzage, John Gilbert, Max Schreck, Monte Cristo, Moran of the Lady Letty, Nosferatu the Vampire, Ramon Novarro, Rex Ingram, Seena Owen, Silent Films, The Prisoner of Zenda
Best Films – 1921
A sensation in its day, Rex Ingram’s film adaptation of Vicente Blasco Ibáñez’s The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, from a screenplay by June Mathis, catapulted Mathis’ protégé Rudolph Valentino to superstardom. Ingram’s wife, the highly capable Alice Terry, played the romantic interest. More than 80 years after its initial release, The Four Horsemen remains a powerful cinematic experience.
FILM
The Conquering Power
d: Rex Ingram; scr: June Mathis
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
d: Rex Ingram; scr: June Mathis
Nobody
d: Roland West; scr: Roland West, Charles H. Smith
Wallace Reid, Bebe Daniels in The Affairs of Anatol
CHECK THESE OUT
The Affairs of Anatol
d: Cecil B. DeMille; scr: Jeanie Macpherson
Richard Barthelmess in Tol’able David
ACTOR
Richard Barthelmess
Tol’able David
Jackie Coogan
The Kid
Ralph Lewis
The Conquering Power
Kenneth Harlan, [...]
by Andre Soares | April 2, 2009
| Subscribe / Syndicate
Tags: Agnes Ayres, Alice Terry, Best Films, Charles Rosher, Classic Movies, Jewel Carmen, John F. Seitz, June Mathis, Karl Struss, Nobody, Rex Ingram, Richard Barthelmess, Roland West, Rudolph Valentino, Silent Films, The Affairs of Anatol, The Conquering Power, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Tol'able David, Wanda Hawley
Phil Hall’s Top 50 Lost Films of All Time
At Film Threat, Phil Hall lists the "Top 50 Lost Films of All Time."
According to Hall, "among the missing movies are the world’s first feature film [The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906), right], the first Technicolor feature [The Gulf Between (1917)], the first animated feature in both the silent and sound eras [El Apastol (1917) and Peludópolis (1931), respectively], the first werewolf movie [The Werewolf (1913)], the first appearance by Dracula [Drakula halála (1923)], the first kaiju film [King Kong Appears in Edo (1938)], and movies created by Charlie Chaplin [A Woman of the Sea (1926), directed by Josef von Sternberg, produced by Chaplin], Orson Welles [the 40-minute Too Much Johnson (1938)], Woody Allen [the alternate version of [...]
by Andre Soares | January 7, 2008
| Subscribe / Syndicate
Tags: Barbara La Marr, Classic Movies, Lost Films, Phil Hall, Ramon Novarro, Rex Ingram, Silent Films, Take It Out in Trade, The Story of the Kelly Gang, Trifling Women
Rex Ingram: Part II
Rex Ingram with off-screen girlfriend Rosita Garcia in Baroud
Rex Ingram Part I
Without MGM’s financial and distribution support, Ingram managed to direct only two more films: The Three Passions (1928), released in the U.S. via United Artists, and his only talkie, the somewhat amateurish adventure tale Baroud (1931), starring Novarro look-alike Pierre Batcheff (who would commit suicide a couple of years later) and Ingram himself as a dashing legionnaire in North Africa. Baroud got few bookings.
With his film career over, Ingram spent much of his time reading and studying Islam. (He had become fascinated with Arab culture while filming The Arab in Tunisia in the mid-1920s.) According to several reports, he became a Muslim in the early 1930s, though the free-thinking [...]
by Andre Soares | January 16, 2006
| Subscribe / Syndicate
Tags: Alice Terry, Baroud, Classic Movies, Ivan Petrovich, Liam O'Leary, Pierre Batcheff, Rex Ingram, Rosita Garcia, Silent Films, The Garden of Allah
Rex Ingram Remembered
Since it’s still Jan. 15 in large chunks of the Pacific Ocean, I have enough time to briefly mention film director Rex Ingram (top right), whose birth — as Reginald Ingram Montgomery Hitchcock — took place in Dublin exactly 113 years ago. (Some sources claim Ingram was born in 1892, but in Rex Ingram: Master of the Silent Cinema author Liam O’Leary clearly states that 1893 is the right date.)
While writing Beyond Paradise: The Life of Ramon Novarro, I often became more intrigued with two of the story’s top supporting players than with the biographical subject himself. One was Novarro’s lover in the mid-1920s, columnist Herbert Howe, quite likely the wittiest writer to ever cover the Hollywood scene. [...]
by Andre Soares | January 16, 2006
| Subscribe / Syndicate
Tags: Alice Terry, Barbara La Marr, Classic Movies, Herbert Howe, John F. Seitz, June Mathis, Ramon Novarro, Rex Ingram, Rudolph Valentino, Silent Films, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Trifling Women
BEYOND PARADISE: THE LIFE OF RAMON NOVARRO
Ramon Novarro was the first Latin-American performer to become a Hollywood superstar. Born Ramón Samaniego to a prominent Mexican family, Novarro arrived in Hollywood in 1916 as a refugee from the civil wars that rocked Mexico in the early 20th century.
A few years later, the young Mexican made a name for himself following the 1922 release of Rex Ingram’s period adventure-romance The Prisoner of Zenda. The handsome and wildly eccentric Ingram was Metro Pictures’ foremost director and the man who had helped to turn Rudolph Valentino into a star in the 1921 blockbuster The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. In the aftermath of an acrimonious split with Valentino, Ingram did his utmost to transform the inexperienced Ramón Samaniego into [...]
by Andre Soares | August 14, 2004
| Subscribe / Syndicate
Tags: André Soares, Ben-Hur, Beyond Paradise: The Life of Ramon Novarro, Books, Classic Movies, Gay Interest, Hollywood Scandals, Ramon Novarro, Rex Ingram, Silent Films
