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unusual facts about silent films



Tongue-twister

In the 1952 film Singin' in the Rain, movie star Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) uses tongue-twisters while learning proper diction so he can make the transition from silent films to "talkies" in 1920's Hollywood.


see also

Biograph girl

Biograph Girl was a phrase associated with two early-20th-century actresses, Florence Lawrence and Mary Pickford, who made black-and-white silent films with Biograph Studios (American Mutoscope and Biograph Company).

Breil

Joseph Carl Breil (1870-1926), American composer, especially for silent films

Bruce Mitchell

H. Bruce Mitchell (died 1952), sometimes known as Bruce M Mitchell, silent films director

Davis Theater

The Pershing opened showing silent films, its first being The Forbidden City and later Pals First.

De Smet

Desmet method, a method for restoring the colours of early silent films

George Randolph Chester

He was the author of such popular works such as Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford and "Five Thousand an Hour: How Johnny Gamble won the heiress" that were made into silent films within his lifetime.

George W. Hill

A cinematographer of silent films known for his skill in lighting female stars, he worked on a series of independently produced features for Mae Marsh and others in the postwar WWI years and was eventually recruited by the burgeoning major studios to be a director, beginning in 1920.

Gottfried Huppertz

Gottfried Huppertz (11 March 1887 - 7 February 1937) was a German composer who is perhaps most known for his scores to German expressionist silent films such as the science fiction epic Metropolis (1927).

James Kirkwood, Jr.

His father James Kirkwood, Sr. was an actor and director in silent films and his mother was actress Lila Lee.

Kevin Brownlow

They also restored and released a large number of classic silent films through the Thames Silents series (later via Photoplay Productions) in the 1980s and 1990s, generally with new musical scores by Carl Davis.

Nell Franzen

She starred in several silent films, most of them with the American Film Company of Santa Barbara, in which she often acted opposite Constance Crawley and Arthur Maude.

Orlando Martins

He was an extra in silent films, having made his debut in If Youth But Knew.

Q. David Bowers

Muriel Ostriche: Princess of Silent Films, (1987) ISBN 0-911572-64-3

Ramona Park

Popular plays, musicals, Vaudeville and burlesque acts, silent films, talkies and favorite local and national entertainers, such as Will Rogers, appeared at the theatre during its heyday.

Sigurd

Fritz Lang and his then-wife Thea von Harbou adapted the story of Sigurd (called Siegfried) for the first part of their 1924 pair of silent films Die Nibelungen.

Stella Southern

Stella Southern was an Australian actor best known for her performances in the silent films A Girl of the Bush (1921) and The Bushwhackers (1925).

The Old Man in the Corner

The Old Man in the Corner was featured in a series of twelve British two-reel silent films, made by the Stoll Film Company in 1924, written and directed by Hugh Croise and starring Rolf Leslie as The Old Man and Renee Wakefield as journalist Mary Hatley (Polly Burton in the book).

The Return of Tarzan

Burroughs' novel was the basis of two movies, the silent films The Revenge of Tarzan (1920) and The Adventures of Tarzan (1921), based on the first and second parts of the book, respectively.

Tom Powers

Powers spent many years as a Broadway star in musical comedies and dramas, and had previously appeared in over 70 silent films from 1911 to 1917 opposite such actors as Florence Turner, Harry T. Morey, Clara Kimball Young, Alma Taylor and John Bunny.

Walt Strony

Strony has studied with silent-film accompanists and has accompanied silent films for years, such as The Phantom of the Opera (1925 film) and Nosferatu at the Plaza Theatre (El Paso).

William Alfred Merchant

For the 1914–15 series of silent films featuring a small boy named Little Billy see Little Billy films.

Woman in the Moon

Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow, which deals with the V-2 rockets, refers to this, along with several other classic German silent films.