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…
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“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…
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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…
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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…
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“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…
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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…
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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…
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“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…
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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,…
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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.…
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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…
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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…
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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”…
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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…
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Sight and Sound: Directed by Marcel L’Herbier, L’Inhumaine features Jaque Catelain and Georgette Leblanc in a great-looking (Fernand Léger sets) mix of science-fiction and sex melodrama. Marcel L’Herbier silent ‘L’Inhumaine’: Sight and sound…