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: [...]

Cesar Romero Centenary Tribute

The Cervantes Center of Arts & Letters in Los Angeles will be celebrating the birth centennial of Cesar Romero (born in New York City on Feb. 15, 1907) with a screening of the 1954 biopic La Rosa blanca / The White Rose, accompanied by Romero’s last filmed interview. The tribute will take place on Thursday, Feb. 15, at 6:30p.m. at the University of Southern California’s Leavey Library Auditorium, and will be followed by a reception.
Though never a first- (or even second-) rank star, Romero was a well-known face and name in movies and later on television from the late 1930s until his death in 1994. Among his screen credits, almost invariably in supporting roles, are the Betty Grable vehicles [...]

Ivor Novello Remembered

"No Cardiff-born screen actor has ever been remotely as popular at the British box office as Ivor Novello," says author Dave Berry (Wales and Cinema: The First 100 Years) in the article "Novello Could Have Been a Hollywood Star."
A leading star on the London stage, Ivor Novello was brought to Hollywood by D. W. Griffith for the leading romantic role in the 1923 drama The White Rose, starring one of Griffith’s favorites, Mae Marsh. Unfortunately, things didn’t go too well between the Father of the American Cinema and his Welsh import even though The White Rose is one of the best — possibly the best — Griffith film of the 1920s.
Among Novello’s best-known British vehicles are The Rat [...]