John Barrymore: At first a reluctant actor, this member of the renowned Drew and Barrymore families made his stage debut at age 18 in an early 20th-century play starring his…
Lillian Gish: The Birth of a Nation actress enmeshed in Bowling Green University controversy. Should Lillian Gish be labeled a racist because at age 21 she had one of the…
“Movies” or…? Quo Vadis: One of the first feature films ever made, Enrico Guazzoni’s Italian epic came out in 1913, going on to become a global sensation. Should American “moving…
Antihero Ricardo Cortez in Symphony of Six Million, with Irene Dunne. Directed by Gregory La Cava, this 1932 family/romantic melodrama may have been one of Cortez’s favorite among his own…
How to be a Latin Lover: Ricardo Cortez, formerly known as Jacob Krantz from a working-class family of Austrian/Hungarian immigrants that had settled in New York City, succeeded in restyling…
“Latin Lover” Ricardo Cortez, who went on to play a series of all-American scoundrels and criminals, in addition to similar unsavory types of other nationalities. Although never as big a…
Ricardo Cortez biography The Magnificent Heel: The Life and Films of Ricardo Cortez. Dan Van Neste’s book covers the life and career of Paramount’s “Latin Lover” threat to a recalcitrant…
The Doll with Ossi Oswalda and Hermann Thimig. Early Ernst Lubitsch satirical fantasy starring “the German Mary Pickford” has similar premise to that of the 1925 Buster Keaton comedy Seven…
“Amazing Tales from the Archives”: Pioneering female documentarian Aloha Wanderwell Baker remembered at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival – along with the largely forgotten sound-on-cylinder technology and the Jean…
One of cinema’s early comediennes, Dorothy Devore: between 1918 and 1930, the Ft. Worth-born actress was seen in nearly 100 movies, both features and shorts. Among them were Salvation Sue,…
Comedy actress Alice Howell on the cover of film historian Anthony Slide’s latest book: Pioneering funky-haired performer “could have been Chaplin” – or at the very least another Louise Fazenda.…
Women’s suffrage movie Mothers of Men: Dorothy Davenport becomes a judge and later State Governor in socially conscious thriller about U.S. women’s voting rights. Are females too emotional to be…
Die Nibelungen: Siegfried: Paul Richter as the tragic dragon-slaying hero of medieval Germanic mythology – with a bit from Homer’s Iliad thrown in. ‘Die Nibelungen’: Enthralling silent classic despite complex…
Ernst Lubitsch movies: Subtle, sophisticated ‘Touch’ all but gone from contemporary filmmaking. Ernst Lubitsch movies: The forgotten, passé ‘Touch’ Ernst Lubitsch and William Cameron Menzies were Turner Classic Movies’ “stars”…
Ben-Hur movie: Ramon Novarro starred in the silent version, at the time the most expensive film production and the biggest worldwide blockbuster in history. ‘Ben-Hur’ movie: Semi-biblical epic starring Ramon…