Legendary Broadway actor John Barrymore also enjoyed an impressive, rewarding and enduring - yet vastly undervalued - movie career in the 1920s and 1930s.
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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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“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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Starring the German Mary Pickford, Ernst Lubitsch’s The Doll movie is a satirical fantasy featuring inventive art direction and jabs at the Catholic Church.
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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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Remarkable women’s suffrage movie Mothers of Men dismisses the notion that the female right to vote would destroy American families and society.
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San Francisco Silent Film Festival highlights include hand-tinted color fantasies by Segundo de Chomón and Louis Feuillade in the days before Technicolor.
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Fritz Lang’s two-part semi-historical epic tragedy Die Nibelungen: Siegfried and Kriemhild’s Revenge is a cinematic masterpiece.
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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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Featuring modernistic sets and costumes, L’Inhumaine mixes sex melodrama, revenge thriller and science fiction. Marcel L’Herbier directed.
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Kitty Gordon: Silent film star with the ‘most beautiful’ and most heavily insured back. Rediscovering a long-forgotten silent film star: Kitty Gordon It seems almost unthinkable that there are still…
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Abandoned in post-production and long-forgotten, Bert Williams: Lime Kiln Club Field Day is a rare early movie about the lives of black people anywhere.
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Long thought lost Chinese blockbuster The Cave of the Silken Web
remains intriguing due to its focus on fierce women with supernatural powers. -
Frank Capra’s first all-talkie, The Donovan Affair is now a silent once again. In-house actors were thus needed to voice Jack Holt, Agnes Ayres et al.
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The San Francisco Silent Film Festival program ‘Amazing Tales from the Archives’ discussed the discovery of the 1916 Sherlock Holmes.
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Pioneering woman director Lois Weber movie ‘Shoes,’ with Mary MacLaren. Pioneering woman director Lois Weber socially conscious drama ‘Shoes’ screening In February 2015, National Film Registry titles will be showcased…
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First Best Actor Oscar winner Emil Jannings in ‘The Last Command.’ First Best Actor Oscar winner Emil Jannings, first Best Actress Oscar winner Janet Gaynor on TCM First Best Actor…
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Sherlock Holmes with William Gillette. Sherlock Holmes movie found at Cinémathèque Française Sherlock Holmes, a long-thought-lost 1916 feature starring stage performer and playwright William Gillette in the title role, has…
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Jack Huston. Jack Huston cast in Ben-Hur remake: Boardwalk Empire actor to follow in the footsteps of Ramon Novarro & Charlton Heston Jack Huston, best known for playing World War…
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1 hour of pure fluff, Midnight Madness doesn’t in any way whatsoever do justice to its titillating title. Clive Brook and Jacqueline Logan star.
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…
Amazing Tales from the Archives: SFSFF spotlights unusual movie audio system, pioneering female documentarian and memorably inventive comedy fantasies.
The first feature (co-)directed by Alf Sjöberg, The Strongest is a visually splendid Arctic adventure. On the downside, the narrative moves at glacial speed.
Films such as those seen in the British Film Institute’s compilation Around China with a Movie Camera offer a magical window into the past.
Greta Garbo movies: The Kiss was her final silent film. Greta Garbo movies: Rare silent era star on TCM Greta Garbo, a rarity among silent era movie stars, is Turner…
SFSFF’s ‘Avant-Garde Paris’ movies Ménilmontant and the wholly abstract Emak-Bakia were offered to those willing to take a chance.
The San Francisco Silent Film Festival’s ‘A Night at the Cinema in 1914’ was the second best thing to a time machine. World War I and Charles Chaplin featured.