Myths and Misses
Mike Baxter1 , 16 Lady Bay Road, West Bridgford, Nottingham, NG2 5BJ, U.K.
(e-mail: michaelj.baxter@btconnect.com)
Abstract
The paper explores aspects of the careers of actresses who appeared in silent films.
An ultimate aim is to examine the effect that the coming of sound film had on
these careers. There undoubtedly was an effect but the paper suggests it has possibly
been exaggerated. Much of the ‘popular’ literature, at least, concentrates on the
‘stars’ who are not typical. Most of the actresses were not stars, or not for very
long, and had relatively short careers as far as film went, and had relatively long
and, one hopes, otherwise normal lives. Some biographers tend to emote about the
‘tragic’ lives that Hollywood actresses lived. In fact we don’t know much about the
majority of these lives. Based on a sample of about 1700 actresses for which basic
information is available some of the ‘myths’ that have accumulated about actresses
and Hollywood in the 1920s are queried.
“. . . so many of these women are almost, if not completely, forgotten today. . . . Many of these women had
tragic lives. Many had very short lives. Many were used up by the industry they helped to create and
then discarded to an uncertain future.” (Lowe, 2005, pp. vii-viii).
1
Introduction
This paper is something of a potpourri but the ultimate intention is to undertake
a statistical analysis of aspects of the careers of actresses who graced (or not)
silent cinema, with a focus on the impact that the coming of sound to cinema had
on their careers. The study is based on a large sample of silent-screen actresses,
the genesis of which is explained in Section 2. This differs, I think, from other
studies that concentrate on individual ‘stars’, or themes, that ignore what might be
thought of as the more commonplace experience of the era. ‘Stars’, by definition,
are exceptional. A similar paper might be written about actors (male) but they
have attracted less attention, and the data compilation is time-consuming.
The quotation that heads the paper is taken from An Encyclopedic Dictionary
of Women in Early American Films, 1895-1930 (henceforth The Encyclopedia),
dismissed by Anthony Slide on one of his websites as ‘based entirely on secondary
sources and is for fans rather than serious students and researchers’2 .
1 Emeritus
Professor of Statistical Archaeology, Nottingham Trent University, UK
Slide is a pioneering and prolific historian of cinema and other topics, including
silent film, and his views might, on occasion be described as ‘acerbic’. It is obvious from his equally prolific bookreviewing, on the website referenced here, that he has little regard for many film fans/buffs. In a not very favorable
review of a biograhy of Margarita Fischer he ends by saying ‘[the book] is useful to have to hand if there is a research
question to answer, but can one really support the expenditure of hours or days of one’s life in such a pursuit? A
film buff, of course, would answer that one can - but then, quite frankly, many film buffs have no lives’.
2 http://www.theslidearea.com/.
1
Slide values scholarship rather than ‘fandom’ and tends to dislike books aimed at
the ‘fan’ or ‘film buff’. Interestingly, and at the level of scholarship, he is also rather
dismissive of scholarly study that he condemns as ‘academic’, by which I understand
to mean that is driven by theory without too much reference to historical ‘fact’.
As it happens, and based on my experience in areas other than film study, I’m not
unsympathetic to some of Slide’s views, though I think ‘academic’ study or ‘theory’
has its place so long as it is readable, which isn’t always the case. Abstracting
from this a little, a distinction can be made between ‘popular’ works (biographies,
compilations of mini-biographies and so on); historical/factual analyses; and theory.
Inevitably all categories attract both good and bad work, or (if you like) the readable
and unreadable. The readable work, unfortunately, may sometimes be distantly
related to fact.
Section 3 and the bibliography is a partial survey of the literature I’m aware of
on the biographical front – I have not read most of this, nor would I wish to do so.
The section is preceded by the description of the data collection that underpins the
less opinionated parts of this paper. The quotation that heads the paper is there
for a reason. I would not dispute the assertion that many actresses from the silent
era are ‘forgotten today’. Every other statement is demonstrably wrong or can be
disputed – but they are clichés that seem to go unchallenged in much ‘popular’
literature on the subject. The arguments are presented in Section 4.
A problem is that the ‘popular’ literature has concentrated on the ‘stars’, some
of whom undoubtedly did have difficult lives – and sometimes they were their own
worst enemy. There is also what might be termed a ‘vampiristic’ tendency among
some authors to seek out and write about actresses who they deem to have had
‘tragic’ lives. It is arguable that this creates an entirely wrong impression of what
the common experience was.
The statistical analysis to come is based on a sample of almost 1700 actresses.
Most of these were never famous. Many of these had short careers. One assumes
they were aspirational, but left the industry and settled down, if not to domestic
bliss, at least to the vicissitudes of fortune that is the common lot of everybody.
That is, the suspicion is that apart from a brief (or even prolonged) experience of
Hollywood they ended up leading ‘normal’ lives, much like everyone else. Of course
we can’t really know. The data used here records, where available, the date of bitth
and death, the period in which the actresses appeared in films, and in most cases
we don’t know the story of their lives. This is in contrast to luminaries such as
Mary Pickford, Gloria Swanson, Lillian Gish, Clara Bow and lesser stars who have
attracted the attention of biographers, and who are certainly untypical.
2
Data sources and samples
Data sources and treatment
The second edition of Eugene Vazzana’s (2001) Silent Film Necrology (henceforth
the Necrology) contains over 18,500 entries on people associated with the silent film
industry, mostly actors and actresses. The volume is, on its own account, ‘by no
means exhaustive’. Some 1676 actresses culled from these pages, with a few others
2
sourced elsewhere, form the basis of the present study.
As a minimum requirement for inclusion here, actresses additionally had to
feature in the International Movies Database (IMDb), guaranteeing as a minimum
information (possibly imperfect) on the dates of their first and last performances
and of films they appeared in. About half the sample (47%) have additional entries
on the web, usually Wikipedia, which can sometimes be minimal and often to be
viewed with circumspection.
Child actresses whose career started before the age of 17 are excluded unless
their ‘careers’ were continuous and extended into their twenties3 , or where they
had a career as an adult after a break, in which case the earlier years have been
ignored in calculating statistics such as career length. Bebe Daniels, for example, was born in 1901, first appeared in a film in 1910 and then (1912 apart)
featured in films released every year till 1936, before gaps started appearing. Dolores Costello, by contrast, born in 1903, featured in at least 32 films between
1906–1915, had a break, and then resumed appearances from 1923 on becoming,
in due course, a ‘Goddess of the Silent Screen’4 . For statistical purposes the start
of her career is thus taken as 1923, whereas Bebe Daniels is credited with 1910.
The release of The Jazz Singer on 6th October 1927 is widely
credited with having sounded the death knell of silent cinema.
It wasn’t quite that simple; silent film did not go quietly. The
years 1928 and 1929 were a period of transition and sometimes
confusion, but as far as Hollywood was concerned silent film was
dead by 1930 and sound ruled. Since this study is concerned
with actresses whose careers began in the silent era anyone who
started after 1927 has been excluded, even though there are a
few who began and made silent films in 1928.
Dolores Costello
Deciding on when to ‘terminate’ a career was more problematic. Unaware of the desiderata of statistical study, many actresses did not conveniently parcel their lives into three ages, a pre- and post-film age sandwiching a
continuous period of activity. Some did so behave, giving up their careers, or the
career giving up on them, at a clear terminal date. Many didn’t end this way, appearances gradually trickling to an end with gaps between them of variable length,
in films designated as shorts or where their appearance is ‘uncredited’5 . Where
there was evidence that a career had endured continuously over several years with
a gap of three years or more then occurring with limited appearances of low quality
thereafter, it was terminated at the point where the gap began.
This was an easy enough decision in many cases but not all, and some careers
are difficult to classify in a neat way. Apart from a 1933 appearance Lillian Gish did
not appear in any films released between 1931 and 1941, concentrating on the stage.
3 ‘Age’
has been calculated as the difference between the year of birth and year of death, so might differ by a
year had calculations based on exact calendar dates, not always available, been used.
4 Apparently she lied about her age at times, some sources having her birth date as 1905; some sources also have
her name as Delores or note she was a goddess of the ‘Silver’ screen’. It is obligatory in modern accounts to note
that she is the grandmother of Drew Barrymore, having married John Barrymore in 1928.
5 ‘Shorts’ – one- and two-reelers – were the dominant form before the advent of full-length feature films about
1914-15 and remain common in some genres, such as serials and comedies, into the 1920s. Some actresses, with
respectable careers in the 1920s appeared in little else. The suspicion is, though, that by the late 1920s and early
30s the sporadic appearance in films classified as ‘shorts’ is the sign of a career in terminal decline.
3
Figure 1: Lillian Gish – “How far from then forethought of, all thy more boisterous years”
Thereafter she featured sporadically to 1987, but in enough films, and of sufficient
quality, that the accolade of having had the longest career of a silent film actress – 75
years, 1912-1987 (Lowe, 2005, p. 587) – cannot be denied her6 . Gloria Swanson, in
1925 by her own admission ‘the most popular female celebrity in the world’ with the
possible exception of Mary Pickford (Swanson, 1980, p. 4) is a similar case. Starting
later than Gish (1915) and finishing earlier (1974) her 59 years nevertheless places
her third in Lowe’s longevity list. In her case the gap, 1935-1949 leavened only by
a 1941 appearance, is a long one, but terminated memorably by a performance as
the legendary, unbalanced, murderous and faded silent-film star Norma Desmond,
in Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard 7 .
Both Gish and Swanson featured a lot on TV from the very late 1940s on, and
other silent film actresses re-emerge at this stage. If TV appearances are the only
addition to an earlier career, or mainly such, they have (perhaps unfairly) not been
counted. Another minor but noticeable class of actresses consists of those who
had some sort of presence at some time before the early 1920s, disappeared from
the lists, then re-emerged in the early sound period. This is contrary to received
6 Some of the more noteworthy films include Duel in the Sun (1946), The Night of the Hunter (1955), The
Comedians (1967) and The Whales of August (1987) which some commentators thought merited an Oscar nomination. Louise Brooks (1982) in Lulu in Hollywood puts forward the idea that Gish was marked ‘for destruction’
by producers envious of her stardom, earning power and integrity (i.e. they couldn’t control her and she cost too
much). Brooks’ take on this is that Gish was forced into inferior roles and ‘stigmatized at the age of thirty-one as
a grasping, silly, sexless antique, the great Lillian Gish left Hollywood forever’. There are some, not least Lillian
Gish herself, who have thought Brooks’ analysis a little over-the-top (Paris, 1989, pp. 262-4).
7 Who was Norma Desmond based on – the question has been asked? To qualify, various criteria have, implicitly
been proposed. (a) you were a mega-star in the silent era; (b) became reclusive in later life; (c) turned down the
role; (d) were called Norma or something similar; (e) did or said something, in real life or on film, vaguely related
to what the fictional Norma Desmond did or said. Norma Talmadge, possibly the popular favourite, qualifies on
grounds (a), (b) and (d); Mary Pickford on (a), (b) and (c); Pola Negri on (c) and possibly (in her own estimation)
(a); Mabel Normand has been put forward as a model for the name, if not the character, probably because she was
embroiled in the unsolved murder of William Desmond Taylor, a convenient source for the surname; Norma Shearer
has been proposed by someone possibly confused about their Normas. Much of this is repetitive web-speculation
with sources, if they can be detected at all, in journalistic guessing. Basinger (1999, p. 234), a scholar, suggests
a combination of the ‘ego’ of Pola Negri and ‘craziness’ of Mae Murray. The latter crops up in dispatches, and
qualifies under (e), as having said something on the release of Sunset Boulevard, possibly implying that she thought
she might be the model, and is famous enough to have had a book written about her that is not a ghost-written
‘autobiography’. Swanson herself has been mentioned as a source, but could be disqualified on the basis that she
accepted the role. Less imaginative commentators have suggested Norma Desmond might be a fictional creation, a
composite, if anything, of several people.
4
Figure 2: Gloria Swanson –“Preserve your memories, they’re all that’s left of you”
wisdom which has it that most silent film performers careers ended with the coming
of sound. There are various reasons why this appears to have happened. Some were
stage actresses first and foremost, who flirted with films when young and presumably
found sound, when it came, congenial to talents they had which were perceived as
wanting in those who had worked solely in silent film. Some retired happily into
marriage, returning after a period of child-raising or to support the family when
fortunes were depleted in the depression in the early- to mid-1930s. Where only a
very small number of silent film appearances, coupled with a lengthy later career,
is involved the actresses concerned have been omitted from the statistics.
The effect these sometimes arbitrary decisions have on data quality is marginal
when set against the nature of the data that are available. The Necrology lists a
quite large number of actresses for which ‘no data is available’. Some, in fact, do
have an IMDb presence that testifies to their appearance in films; but this, or simply
some notice in a newspaper or trade journal, attaching their names to the words
‘film’ and ‘actress’ is all that remains. There must be many such who lack even this
remembrance, and are lost to even minimal statistical recognition. Many of those
for whom some record of appearance in a film exists – at however undistinguished a
level – probably made many more. Given how many silent films have been lost; how
many were of ephemeral interest even when minted; and the fact that performers
were not credited in earlier films, it has to be accepted that the sample is imperfect.
It is, however, quite large, and perhaps more ‘representative’ of what went on than
studies of individuals can convey.
There is a little more discussion of the nature of the samples used in the Appendix, which is partly an excuse for indulging in a discussion of the WAMPAS
Baby Stars.
5
3
Literature
I regret to say that I have friends who are both intelligent and interested in film who
have not heard of Lillian Gish or Louise Brooks until I start to enthuse. Outside of
my circle of acquaintance, however, at least 100 authors – including the actresses
themselves – have found it interesting enough to have (ghost-)written accounts of
at least 55 stars; Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish and Greta Garbo have attracted most
attention. Much of this writing dates from a revival of interest in the silent era,
from the 1960–70s. With the realization that those who hadn’t passed away might
shortly do so, something of a cottage industry sprang up to record the memories
of the survivors. Later exercises in this genre have unearthed actors and actresses
whose connection with both the silent era and stardom is tenuous. Some – though
not all – is well-researched, well-written and informative; over 180 actresses have
been memorialized in the essays that have been written. Add to these entries in
‘dictionaries’ and ‘encyclopedia’ devoted entirely to silent film stars and the total
reaches well over 300.
The bibliography lists the biographies and autobiographies of actresses who
appeared in silent film, some of whom – Greta Garbo among them – survived
well into the sound era. As mentioned earlier I do not claim to have read most
of these and do not wish to do so. This is an impressionistic and partial survey.
The more obvious stars, to which Gloria Swanson may be added, have merited
several (auto)biographies. So has Louise Brooks, who is an interesting case as her
Hollywood appearances don’t really merit ‘full-scale’ treatment. She gained cult
status in later life because of the films made with G.W. Pabst and wrote intelligently,
if sometimes controversially, on aspects of silent film in Lulu in Hollywood and
elsewhere.
There is a sense that, the major stars having been thoroughly dealt with, there
is a small group of ‘professional biographers’ searching around for lesser stars to
write about, preferably those that can be portrayed as having had ‘interesting’
and ‘tragic’ lives. Such books I have delved into can be thin on text (not always
well-written), long on photographs, and padded out with detailed filmographies
you suspect nobody will be much interested in. Excluded from this generalization
is Stenn (1990), an excellent and sympathetic account of the life of Clara Bow
– a major star of the later 1920s who was badly treated by the
studios and whose later life was not entirely happy. Most texts
I’ve actually read are not of a similar quality.
A second ‘genre’ if I can call it that, is collections of essays,
often short, about actresses, some of whom are rather obscure.
One of the best writers on this kind of thing is Anthony Slide
who talked to and in some cases befriended the actresses he subsequently wrote about (Slide 1973, 1976, 2002). He is obviously
and justifiably proud of his friendship with Blanche Sweet, who
comes across as one of the more intelligent (and acerbic) actresses
Clara Bow
8
of her era . The 2002 book is interesting in that it reads almost as a valedictory
8 Slide apart, an interesting feature of some of the more intelligent writing on silent film, by respected scholars
who are essentially writing a ‘love-letter’ to the medium, is the presence of what might be called ‘heroine worship’.
6
text; Slide allows himslef to be rather ‘waspish’ about some of his subjects, his
earlier writing, where he has discussed them, presumably having concealed his true
feelings.
Figure 3: Mary Pickford; Blanche Sweet; Louise Brooks
Other books listed in this category are, as with the (auto)biographies, highly
variable in scholarship and quality – some are, frankly, dire. Slide set the standard
and got in early by talking to people. They die, particularly if they were in their
prime in the 1920s and you are writing in the 1990s or later. There is a sense of
desperation in some of the later works that attempt to emulate Slide by interviewing
survivors of the era. The main criterion for inclusion in such works is that you are
still alive. Age does not confer wisdom; such survivors can be fairly undistinguished;
and those accounts based on recorded interviews, reproduced verbatim, can be very
boring. You get to know that someone was once at the same party as Rudolph
Valentino, for example, didn’t actually speak to him, and has nothing useful to say.
Essays that don’t have access to a still living person can sometimes be informative
but often lack the benefit of original research.
A third genre that I have distinguished in the bibligraphy is what are variously
termed dictionaries and encyclopedias. They could be discussed under the heading
of ‘collections’ but generally attempt to be more comprehensive or specialized, and
generally less pretentious with the overt intention of simply listing the known facts
of a career without the emoting that occurs elsewhere.
The encyclopedia from which I’ve lifted the quotation that heads this paper is
a regrettable exception, and to the clichés it embodies I now turn.
4
Clichés?
It has already been conceded that many actresses of the silent era have been largely
forgotten. This is almost certainly true of any later era. Most actresses and actors (if
a distinction between the sexes in not politically incorrect) do not become famous.
Dispassionate analysis is interrupted by lengthy passages where the main point seems to be to emphasize the fact
that the authors counted stars such as Mary Pickford, Lillian Gish, Gloria Swanson, Blanche Sweet, Louise Brooks
and so on among their friends (e.g., Card, 1994; Wagenknecht, 1962).
7
It is pretty much the same in any other profession that has a ‘public face’ (think
sport, for example, to which I will return). Otherwise, and again as already noted,
where not demonstrably wrong the assertions can be disputed.
Very short lives?
To begin, and to take the easiest demonstration of a false assertion, The Encyclopedia, from which the opening quotation is taken, has entries for just over 250
actresses of the 1700 or so on which the following study is based. The median age at
death of just over 1300 (1308) of these for which we have dates for birth and death
was 75 years (with a mean of 71); the comparable figures for the The Encyclopedia
sample – admittedly biased towards actresses who had longer and more successful
careers than average, and about whom more is known – are 78 and 75.
The overwhelming majority of actresses in both the larger and smaller samples
were white, American and – obviously – female, many born within a few years
either side of 1900 in the period of cinema’s infancy. Such a female, born about
1900, had a life-expectancy of a bit over 50 years; had she survived for twenty years,
as almost all our sample did, (further) life expectancy was getting on for 45 years, so
our typical actress should have expired at about 65. About 80% of the Dictionary
sample, and 70% of the larger sample for who we have dates exceeded this, often
comfortably. These numbers might be thought to cast some doubt on the assertion
that ‘many’ of these women had ‘very short’ lives.
Tragic lives?
As Humpty Dumpty said ‘When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to
mean’. ‘Many’ and ‘tragic’ when used, and not uncommonly, with reference to
actresses are rarely defined. Often an early death is implied, but early death, while
‘tragic’, does not mean that the life was. Florence LaBadie (1888-1917), a successful
actress in the 1910s, died at the age of 29 in a car accident having averaged about
20 films a year since 1909 and, as her Wikipedia entry has it, was ‘the first major
female film star to die while her career was at its peak’. In the wilder reaches of
the web you can find a theory that she was ‘silenced’ because she had had a child
fathered, unwillingly on her part, by Woodrow Wilson, then President of the United
States – the fear being that she might talk about this. Otherwise indications that
she led a more than averagely unhappy life because of her profession are wanting.
‘Tragic’ here will be taken to mean that an actress had an untimely death,
having led a less than blissful life for reasons that might be directly atttributed
to her profession and the people it brought her into contact with. This definition
conveniently means that most actresses didn’t have ‘tragic lives’ since a comfortable
majority clearly exceeded their statistically allotted span9 .
9 Scholarly duty requires me to note that it is possible to die old having had a ‘tragic life’ attributable to early
career decisions and/or failures. Statistical duty requires me to note that in Vazzana’s Necrology some actresses –
a small but noticeable number – are only included because the only record of their existence is a newspaper report
of their suicide or murder (birth dates are usually lacking). It is the angel on my right shoulder, whispering in my
ear, who is insisting I admit that my sample is biased; the devil on the left shoulder argues that the tragedy of
these lives is that the individuals concerned may not always have survived long enough in the profession to merit
the appellation ‘actress’.
8
Most actresses in silent films did not have especially long careers, about 80%
stopped appearing in films by the time they were 40, and about 70% before they
were 35. Such actresses who did die before their time – as a (possible) result of
their misuse of drugs and/or alcohol, or general instability – have been mined for
all they are worth by the biographers who specialize in this sort of thing.
As an example Vogel (2010, pp.141-2) on Olive Borden (1906–47), a minor
‘star’, emotes “Hollywood was a revolving door. You’re in, you spin within the
giddy heights of success for a few years and then you’re spat out on the other side.
Done and forgotten. Alive or dead – it didn’t matter. It’s that quick. That harsh.
And, sad to say, not all that uncommon. Seldom did the fame, fans, money, lovers
or friendships last beyond the ‘use by’ date that studio bosses invisibly stamped on
the foreheads of the stars who consistently made them millions. It was a production
line.”
There is some evidence, from the book itself, that Borden was
complicit in the destruction of her career and later decline, and
the quoted passage seems rather ‘over-the-top’.
‘Tragic’, as noted, often has connotations of an early death
associated with a dissolute ‘lifestyle’; if ‘early’ is defined, entirely
arbitrarily, as 40 or younger, then 20/250 of the actresses in The
Encyclopedia qualify. About half of these deaths were attributed
to drug/alcohol related problems; the others were mostly caused
by illnesses (TB, Spanish flu, cancer) or accidents not obviously
Olive Borden
attributable to a life lived tragically or the pernicious influence
of Hollywood. The adjective ‘many’ is possibly not apposite.
Used up by the industry?
The issue of whether ’many were used up by the industry’, ‘discarded to an uncertain
future’, ‘spat out on the other side’ and so on relies on emotive language for its effect.
That actresses could be badly treated and exploited is not in doubt but it is possible
to exaggerate things as, for the purpose of selling books, biographers are prone to
do. The truth of the matter, as it seems to me, explored more objectively and
statistically in Section 5, is that many actresses had a natural and often quite short
‘shelf-life’.
Before elaborating a little on this I want to indulge myself by drawing an imperfect analogy with the careers of players in English association football (soccer).
This can be regarded as culturally specific, but I know more about soccer than I
do about sports such as baseball, for which a similar analysis would be possible.
For those not familiar with the system, at the higher level 92 teams compete in
four divisions called, confusingly, the Premier League, Championship, League One
and League Two. The footballing equivalents of Greta Garbo are to be found in
the Premier League (think, historically, of David Beckham of those with an international profile); nobody, other than dedicated fans of the teams concerned, has
heard of most of the players in Leagues One or Two.
Traditionally footballers came from the working-classes and, if you were talented
and aspirational enough, it was a potential escape from the kind of life and work
9
Figure 4: Greta Garbo and David Beckham – spot the difference.
that might otherwise be expected. Things have changed a bit – some top-flight
clubs now employ few English-born players, but that’s a separate story. If you had
some sort of talent it is likely that it would be spotted early and you could be
playing professional football in your late teens or early twenties. The career at this
level might not last long – even just one or two games – but even the more succesful
ones, as far as playing at the highest level, are typically over by the mid-30s or
earlier. This is what I mean by ‘shelf-life’ – it is an inevitable consequence of the
skills required to do the job in the first place and their decline with age10 .
Football league clubs are bound by rules that restrict the number of players
they can have in a squad. I’ve not done a thorough analysis but, to simplify things
a little, about 2000 players are registered at any one time. Most of the registered
players in the Premier League, when I last looked, were aged between 18 and 35
years old.
The point here is simply to note the (partial) analogy with the careers of actresses from the silent era. Some, if not most, came from less than privileged backgrounds; were presumably aspirational; had varying degrees of talent; and so on.
At the lower end of the talent scale a viable assumption is that they were employed,
for however brief a period, because they were young and attractive; they may have
been ‘exploited’ but, like footballers, were never going to have long careers, possibly embraced the opportunities it provided, and moved on to other things11 . You
can regard this as being ‘used up by the industry’, but some kind of reciprocity is
involved. Seeking to become an actress involves some sort of choice.
10 There are exceptions to the generalizations here – Beckham, for example, retired at the age of 38 and his
erstwhile colleague at Manchester United, Ryan Giggs, was still performing at the highest levels when 40, but they
are exceptions.
11 En passant Malcolm Macdonald, a noted English footballer of the 1970s whose career ended early because
of injury, has written “You give your life to football and then it often forgets you. Football clubs have a bad
habit of taking players in, making the most of them, and then vomiting them up once they’re too old or injured.” (http://soccerlens.com/professional-footballers-association/6096). The sentiment is remarkably similar to
that expressed by Vogel on behalf of Olive Borden.
10
The analogy is, of course, imperfect. As discussed in Section 5 plenty of actresses, of ability, were performing well beyond the age at which a football playing
career expires. The analogy works to the extent that many actresses were probably
employed for ephemeral qualities that disappeared with age and they lacked the
abilities (or wish) to take on roles demanding something other than youth.
5
Statistical analysis
The previous section is a mixture of fact and opinion, which will be justified more
objectively here. It has been necessary to be selective about the data used for
analysis; this is explained in the subsection to follow, but the gist is that the statistical analysis is focused on the period and beyond when feature films began to
become common in American film-making, resulting in what eventually became
‘Hollywood’. This is from about 1915 on. I’ve done statistical analyis on the earlier
period, but am not reporting it in any detail here.
Some background
By 1913 America producers alone were turning out two hundred reels of films a
week. From the critical-aesthetic point of view, most of these films were of course
not worth seeing (Wagenknecht 1962, p.4). Hobart Bosworth said the early Seligs
were made in two days, and Gene Gauntier claims to have ground out Kalems at
the rate of one a day. Walter Kerrigan claimed in 1914 that for three and a half
years he played the lead in two pictures a week (Wagenknecht, 1962, p.4). In his
earlier days at Biograph D.W. Griffith (say 1908-10) was churning out films at the
rate of several a week.
The reliability of the data on actresses is variable, particularly for the earliest
years. There is an interesting literature on the development of the ‘star system’, but
actresses and actors were not usually initially credited as the focus was intended
to be on the producing company (e.g., deCordova, 1990). The Florences, Lawrence
and Turner, are usually credited with being the first named film stars, from 1910.
Prior to that, film producers were reluctant to name their leading players and some
remained so for some years after, so it is only from about 1913 that the naming of
performers in film credits became routine. The Florences shone briefly; the more
stellar Mary Pickford emerging in the early 1910s and remaining in the limelight
into the early sound era nearly 20 years later.
Pickford made her name with the Biograph company and under the direction of
D.W. Griffith. Although Biograph was the last major producer to make the names
of its stars available we know a lot about Pickford, both because of her fame and
the biographical attention devoted to her, and because the early films of Griffith –
the most widely studied of early directors – survived in the form of ‘paper films’
produced for copyright purposes. This means, for example, that we know more
about the careers of actors and actresses who appeared in these films than of many
of their contemporaries.
In the early 1910s the standard unit of production was the one-reeler, a film with
a length of about 1000 feet. The duration depended on the speed of projection, but
11
call it 15 minutes, so that a four-reeler comes in at about an hour, for example.
Feature films, which in the terminology of the time could be anything from a tworeeler upward, developed more slowly in the USA than the European continent
whose productions provided some of the inspiration for development in the USA.
Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915) was not, at 12 reels and about three hours,
the first feature film, but is frequently cited as the most important. From 1915–1916
feature films, as we now understand the term, became the dominant form.
This affects the statistical patterns available for study. Mary Pickford’s career
is instructive though not entirely typical. She averaged about a film a week 1909–
1911, one a fortnight in 1912, then after a brief return to the stage averaged about
one every two months for the rest of the 1910s and one a year through the 1920s.
Pickford, an astute businesswoman as well as a major star, was able to exercise more
control over her career than most, so that for many of her earlier contemporaries
the really intensive film-making continued into the mid-teens before declining with
the advent of the feature film. Several actresses racked up well over 100 and retired
before features really took over. Among them was Linda Arvidson (Mrs. D.W.
Griffith) whose nostalgic account of early film making When the Movies Were Young
(1925) provides an idea of what film production was like in the first half of the 1910s,
the changes wrought by the advent of features, and the emergence during the 1920s
of what became known as the ‘classical Hollywood’ style. Lillian Gish, another
Griffith luminary, whose film career started in 1912, provides an account of the
same period from a more distant temporal perspective in her 1969 autobiograpy
The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me.
This variable intensity of film production over time complicates statistical comparisons. The scale and nature of film production in the early 1910s and midto late-1920s, coupled with a lack of information for the earlier period, militates
against comparison, so 1915 is taken here as a convenient ‘watershed’ for later analysis. The number of lost films also presents problems. It is difficult to place an
exact number on it, but estimates that only 10–15% of silent films survive, or that
about 20% of silent feature films from the 1920s survive, are bandied about. It is,
of course, known who performed in some of these lost films, but production records
have been lost and many were probably not of sufficient merit to command other
than brief notice, if that, even at the time.
What all this means is that some of the data available is not readily comparable
and may seriously underestimate and in a biased way, in a fashion not readily
corrected for, what actually occurred. With this general health warning in place,
and other caveats to be entered as appropriate, some of the ‘myths’ that appear in
popular writing can be subjected to statistical scrutiny.
An issue not dealt with here is the differences, as perceived at the time, between
the roles played by actresses. As an example, and from the Motion Picture Studio
and Trade Annual (1916) actresses are listed, according to category as 339 Leads, 86
Ingenues, 123 Characters, 35 Comediennes, 21 Child. With a caveat to follow child
actresses are excluded, but otherwise no attempt is made to distinguish between
types (which can, in any case, change over a career of any length).
12
Statistical analysis
The initial graphical analyses are intended to illustrate points, some of which have
already been made. Figure 5 shows the distribution of career durations for the
different samples being used for analysis. Actresses with a career of 40 years or
more are excluded12 .
All actresses
0
0.00
100
200
Frequency
0.02
0.01
Density
300
0.03
400
All actresses
20
40
60
80
100
0
10
age
20
30
career length (years)
(a) Life-span
(b) Career length
All actresses
40
Frequency
0
0
20
20
40
Frequency
60
60
80
All actresses
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
20
age at career start
30
40
50
60
70
80
age at career end
(c) Age at career start
(d) Age at career end
Figure 5: Histograms of silent film actresses life-span and career statistics.
Figure 5a simply illustrates the life-span of actresses of the period. As already
noted a large number lived beyond the age of 70 years, and a typical life-span,
however measured, exceeds the figure for comparable females of their generation.
Figure 5b, and the pronounced mode to the left, emphasizes that many actresses had
rather short careers (and are the ones I hope went on to lead reasonably ‘normal’
lives). Figures 5c and 5d, if you look at the peaks of the distributions, suggest
that typical careers start in the late teens or early 20s and are over by the mid-30s
12 This is for presentational purposes only, to avoid a long, thin and largely uninformative tail in the plots. The 32
actresses thus excluded include Bessie Love, Lois Wilson, Mary Astor, Joan Crawford, Dolores del Rio, Constance
Bennett, Betty Blythe Mary Boland, Olive Carey, Fay Compton, Bebe Daniels, Claire Du Brey, Dot Farley, Julia
Faye, Bess Flowers, Lillian Gish, Doris Lloyd, Myrna Loy, Mae Marsh, ZaSu Pitts, Marin Sais, Gloria Swanson.
13
(just like footballers with all the caveats and exceptions previously noted). The
more luminous and/or notorious stars apart (who attract biographical attention)
does the possibility exist that the majority of actresses of the period were normal
human-beings? I don’t know the answer to this question, since I’ve never met any.
The more interesting question, because it is difficult to answer, is the effect
that the coming of sound film had on the careers of the stars – and I intend the
terms ‘stars’, rather than the typical actress/actor. Anecdotal and contemporary
evidence alone suggests that it was a traumatic experience for many, and careers
were undoubtedly terminated. Stars such as the Talmadge sisters, Norma and
Constance, and Alice Joyce chose to retire rather than face the demands of sound,
but they’d had a good run for their money and were comfortably off by anybody’s
standards – they had nothing to prove. Ditto Mary Pickford, who made a few films
in the sound era, including what would now be called an Oscar winning performance.
She had nothing left to prove and was, by all accounts, disenchanted with the roles
her fans expected her to continue performing.
Constance Talmadge; Norma Talmadge; Alice Joyce
John Gilbert – not an actress – is sometimes cited as a ‘paradigm’ of what
happened to the careers of the stars of silent film with the coming of sound. In
fact he produced acceptable performances in sound (albeit not his first effort, and
not at the level of his silent career). He also had personal issues/problems that
arguably contributed more to his decline and early death than the coming of sound.
As Liebman (1998) suggests in the introduction to his book he ‘self-destructed’. On
the female front Clara Bow, though she did not die young, is sometimes cited as a
similar case. Cast properly she, in fact, turned in acceptable sound performances,
though without the success at the peak of her silent career (Steen, 1990). The main
point here is to suggest that careers that terminated with the advent of sound,
or shortly after, did so for natural or quite complicated personal reasons. The
statistical analysis to follow attempts to quantify the real effect as far as actresses
were concerned.
Comment will be based on Table 1. The analysis is fairly informal, though the
data might support more ‘sophisticated’ and formal analysis. The main aim is to
get general ideas across. For the reason previously noted earlier years are ignored
14
and the analysis is based on data from 1915 on.
Year
Total
1915
1916
1917
1918
1919
1920
1921
1922
1923
1924
1925
1926
846
892
871
799
814
826
786
725
703
688
660
615
1
746
760
735
715
727
725
685
642
631
609
575
524
2
649
655
666
651
653
641
612
578
557
532
494
456
3
555
593
605
585
577
571
550
511
485
458
429
391
4
498
534
543
517
512
513
486
441
416
396
371
309
5
448
477
479
459
463
450
418
378
362
344
292
255
6
399
418
425
412
403
386
359
330
319
269
240
226
Numbers ‘surviving in subsequent
7
8
9
10
11
351
316
286
253
218
374
336
297
252
217
382
333
283
242
211
358
303
260
228
198
343
297
258
225
183
335
290
254
207
169
313
275
219
180
155
290
232
191
164
137
249
206
179
150
130
224
196
162
140
122
212
178
154
134
112
191
166
143
118
101
years
12
190
188
184
159
148
147
132
118
114
104
97
87
13
161
164
149
129
127
125
115
103
97
89
83
80
14
138
133
124
112
106
108
100
87
83
76
77
70
15
111
110
107
95
92
94
84
76
70
70
69
66
16
90
95
90
82
81
79
74
64
66
62
65
59
Table 1: Numbers of actresses appearing 1915–1926 and their ‘survival’ in subsequent years. The
years 1928–1931 are highlighted with bold numbering.
The first column of the table lists the years between 1915 and 1926, and the
second column the number of actresses in our sample who appeared in films in that
year. Call this the ‘starting sample’ for that year. Subsequent columns indicate
how many actresses ‘survived’ to perform in subsequent years. For example, of the
846 in the starting sample for 1915, 746 (88%) appeared in films one year later in
1916, 649 (77%) were still appearing two years later in 1917, and so on.
The numbers in bold figures highlight the years from 1928, the year after The
Jazz Singer appeared, to 1931 when sound was clearly dominant in Hollywood and
silent film had all but disappeared (Charlie Chaplin being an exception). So, and
again for example, 90 of 846 actresses who featured in films in 1915 (11%) were
still active in 1931. Of those still performing in 1927 (190) 47% were still active
in 1931. For actresses active in 1926 immediately before the advent of sound, as
usually construed the comparable figures are 255/615 (41%) and 255/524 (49%).
If you adhere to the somewhat apocalyptic view that most silent film careers
were ended by the coming of sound the expectation is that the percentages above
should be close to zero. They are not even close to this so the hypothesized view
is not sustainable13 . The earlier argument is that some actresses had a natural
‘shelf-life’ or, to put it another way, there was natural wastage in the system. That
is, some actresses who were around in 1927 wouldn’t have made it through to 1931,
regardless of the major changes in the industry.
One way to look at this is to compare the ‘survival rate’ of actresses between 1927
and 1931 – a five-year period that embraces the coming and eventual dominance
of sound, and five-year periods that predate sound. This can be done in lots of
ways but, for simplicity, the 1927-1931 period will be compared with 1922-1926
data (other five-year periods could be used)14 . This excludes the starting samples
from 1923 on since they don’t have data for 1922-1926; the dates being used are
arbitrary and could be easily modified; the idea is to get some sense of what was
actually going on.
So for the starting samples between 1915 and 1922 the survival rate for actresses
still appearing in 1927 and to 1931 (in percentage terms) is (47, 51, 51, 50, 50, 50,
49, 51). The general message here is that about half of the actresses who were
13 I’m ignoring judgments about the quality of roles that actresses who made the transition had – this is a
statistical exercise
14 This is not something that will be pursued here, but the decline in the number of actresses over the period
involved is noticeable.
15
17
81
81
78
73
69
71
63
60
58
58
58
55
18
71
71
69
62
61
61
59
52
55
52
54
51
19+
61
62
58
54
51
57
51
49
50
48
50
47
performing in 1927 survived into the sound era15 .
If you now take 1926 as a fixed date and count back over five years what are the
comparable figures? They are (62, 60, 59, 59, 59, 60, 61, 61). These are remarkably
consistent. The general message is that, in the period before the advent of sound,
to 1926, the five-year ‘survival-rate’ actresses active in 1922 was 10% greater than
it would become after 1927.
These conclusions might change if you looked at different five-year periods, or
varied the length of the period, but I suspect not in a fundamental way. Assuming
the statistical analysis is valid how terrible is a 10% difference in ‘survival-rate’ ?
I don’t know, though an impressionistic view is that the scale of the effect of the
coming of sound (on careers) has possibly been exaggerated in some of the literature.
Caveats have already been entered, among them that those who survived into the
sound era did not have the quality of life or roles they had previously enjoyed. It is
impossible to quantify, and the literary and anecdotal evidence may overstate the
actuality. It would be interesting (or possibly not) to know of the stories of the
thousand and more silent-screen actresses who have failed to attract a biographer’s
attention.
Appendix – Sample selection and the WAMPAS Baby Stars
There are serious points to be made here, but it’s also an excuse for musing on the
‘WAMPAS Baby Stars’, of which more shortly.
It is possible to view the selection of actresses in The Encyclopedia as a sample,
albeit a highly biased one, of the more successful (or notorious) performers from
the silent era. It is a modern selection but it reflects, quite closely, contemporary
compilations of actress profiles published in the 1910s and 20s, sometimes with
a focus on particular studios. These inevitably concentrate on already successful
actresses or those who a studio wished to promote (not always with success). The
Necrology, by contrast and on which the sample constructed for this paper is largely
based, attempts to be comprehensive and admits it can’t be. It too is inevitably
biased, if only because it can’t record details about the careers of actresses that
were so ephemeral that there is no history of them. Nevertheless it allows a more
comprehensive analysis than any study based solely on the ‘stars’.
The WAMPAS Baby Stars (WBS) need a bit of explaining since I’m not sure
how well-known they are, despite having had a book written about them on which
I draw here (Liebman, 2000 – essentially a biographical dictionary). WAMPAS is
the ‘Western Association Motion Picture Advertisers’ founded in 1920; ‘Baby Stars’
were what would later be called ‘starlets’ and the idea was that they were young
actresses who showed promise. From 1922 on 13 were selected each year, parties
were held, publicity generated and so on.
In reality not all the actresses selected, particulary in the early years, were
that young even if they did have talent. Selection was undoubtedly affected by
the studios and powerful people in the industry, which explains why some of the
selections barely graced the screen at all. Future stars were, however, unearthed,
15 There is ‘double-counting’ going on here since for any starting sample you will have some of the same actresses
appearing but something like a 50% ‘survival rate’ seems consistent
16
the early years and 1926 being considered as good examples16 . The present analysis
focuses on the silent era; the ‘competition’ did not take place in 1930 and, for
‘political’ reasons, degenerated into something of a farce thereafter, ceasing in 1934.
Of those elected in the sound era Ginger Rogers was stellar and Joan Blondell should
be mentioned but the majority are lost to modern memory, largely because they
made few (if any) films.
Figures 6 and 7 contrast data on the career lengths of actresses for the WBS
‘sample’ and the samples culled from The Encyclopedia and the Necrology (labeled
as ‘All’). Career length has been defined in terms of both years and number of films
performed in.
0.10
0.00
0.05
density
0.15
All
Encyclopedia
Wampas Baby Stars
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
career duration − years
Figure 6: Career lengths in terms of years, for different samples of actresses.
The most obvious thing to comment on is the similarity between the data for
the first two samples and the conrast with the Necrology sample17 . Although it isn’t
illustrated here analysis has been undertaken on the actresses featured in Stars of
the Photoplay, published by Photoplay Magazine in 1924. The patterns are virtually
indistinguishable from those for the samples from The Encyclopedia and the WBS
selection.
16 On the positive side those who achieved later fame and/or had careers of some longevity and have attracted
biographical attention include Colleen Moore (1922), Evelyn Brent (1923), Clara Bow (1924), Mary Astor, Dolores
Costello, Joan Crawford, Dolores del Rio, Janet Gaynor and Fay Wray (all 1926). On the negative side Margaret
Leahy (1923), almost certainly elected because of her connections, made but one film; she was probably emulated
by Betty Arlen (1925) who, in the words of Liebman (2000, p.8) ‘was perhaps unique in that she had no credited
roles at all’.
17 The data for the first two samples have been ‘smoothed’ for ease of comprehension – I won’t give the full
statistical details here.
17
0.14
0.08
0.06
0.00
0.02
0.04
density
0.10
0.12
All
Encyclopedia
Wampas Baby Stars
0
50
100
150
200
250
career duration − number of films
Figure 7: Career lengths in terms of films, for different samples of actresses.
Leaving aside, for the moment, the Necrology sample patterns in modern selections of ‘stars’, as reflected at least in The Encyclopedia and as studied here, are
very similar to contemporary selections produced by Photoplay Magazine. There is
obviously overlap in the samples and later writing, one assumes and hopes, draws
on the contemporay literature, so the similarity is not surprizing.
Allowing the term ‘star’ to be used in a fairly loose sense what was the career
of a typical star like in statistical terms? If you look at the patterns in Figures 6
and 7, and particularly the modes, a typical star had a career of 15 years or so,
appearing in 60 films or so. There is obviously a lot of variation about this which
I’m not attempting to quantify. Some so-called ‘stars’ made very few films at all.
The contrast with the Necrology sample is stark. Many actresses had careers –
if it can be called that as far as film is concerned – that lasted just one or two years
involving very few films. The graphs suggest, at best and in contrast to those still
remembered, a career of less than 10 years with appearances in 20 or so films.
To repeat what was said earlier, and generalizing a bit, if you assume a starting
age of 20 (and it was often less) the typical more authentic stars will have left film by
their mid-thirties, while the less successful ones will have left by their mid-twenties.
On average this latter group will have had another 50 or so years of life to look
forward to and, for the most part, we don’t have a record of this. This ought to rule
out generalizations of the kind some biographers make about the malign influence
of Hollywood.
Some sort of coda seems called for, and I shall take Sally Phipps as an ex18
ample, She was not a major star; was a child actress; a WAMPAS Baby Star of
1927; had an adult film career of five years ending in 1929 involving few films
which she was not a major star in; and had a life afterwards. She married, advantageously; divorced; remarried ‘more successfully’; and had one son. This
information comes from her very short entry in Liebman (2000). I became interested when accidentally finding something on the web which was an apology
for publishing a photograph of her that was, in fact, that of another actress18 .
The error was pointed out by Sally Phipps’ son who provided
information about aspects of her earlier life and later career, as
well as some images, one shown here. Sally Phipps had a life
after a not especially major Hollywood career; it obviously had its
ups-and-downs (not necessarily attributable to Hollywood) but
wasn’t obviously unhappy. It is possible that this is more typical
than the ‘tragic’ lives of stars that has attracted biographical
attention.
Sally Phipps
18 http://operator
99.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/sally-phipps.html
19
References and Bibliography
Explanatory note: This is split into several sections. The ‘References’ are to works
cited in the text and are arranged conventionally and alphabetically by the surmae
of the author. These are books I own and have actually read. The same cannot,
alas, be said for most of the books in the ‘(Auto)Biographies’ section which are
arranged alphabetically by the subject of study rather than author. I have, in fact,
read or dipped into several of them which, as acknowledged in the text, dissuaded
me from attempting anything like complete coverage as far as reading goes. It is
there as a bibliographical resource. There is some overlap between entries in rhe
‘References’ and ‘(Auto)Biographies’.
Apart from a desire to be fairly ‘complete’ the section on ‘Collections’ is there
partly to list actresses who have been ‘memorialized’ in print, however briefly. The
quality of writing and scholarship is highly variable (and my use of the word ‘dire’
in the text was prompted by some of the collections); I was, though, surprised when
I did an analysis to find there was far less overlap in terms of the actresses covered
than I’d expected. It is perhaps evidence of a striving for ‘originality’.
The ‘Dictionaries, Encyclopedia’ section is also there for ‘completeness’ and
could have been included in the ‘Collections’ section. With exceptions they mostly
contain more, shorter, and more purely factual entries than other works where
authors allow themselves the licence to express opinions. As an aside, it has been
noted in the text that well over 300 actresses have some sort of ‘memorial’ in print
and if you count entries on the web this number can be doubled. If this is to be
called ‘forgotten’ you wonder what it means to be remembered and what other
professions from 1910-1929 would qualify as having been ‘remembered’ in terms of
the individuals who have had biographical attention paid to them.
References
Arvidson, L. (1969) When Movies Were Young. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications.
Brooks, L. (1983) Lulu in Hollywood. New York: Knopf.
Card, J. (1994) Seductive Cinema, New York: Knopf.
deCordova, R (1990) Picture Personalities: The Emergence of the Star System in
America. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Gish, L. with Pinchot, A. (1969) The Movies, Mr. Griffith and Me. Englewood
Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall.
Liebman, R. (2000) The WAMPAS Baby Stars: A Biographical Dictionary,
1922-1934. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
Liebman, R. (1998) From Silents to Sound: A Biographical Encyclopedia of
Performers Who Made the Transition to Talking Pictures. Jefferson, NC:
McFarland.
Lowe, D. (2005) An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Women in Early American Films:
1895:1930. New York: Haworth Press.
20
Paris, B. (1989) Louise Brooks. New York: Knopf.
Slide, A. (1973) The Griffith Actresses. New York: Barnes.
Slide, A. (1976) Idols of Silence. New York: Barnes.
Slide, A. (2002) Silent Players: A Biographical and Autobiographical Study of 100
Silent Film Actors and Actresses. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
Stenn, D. (1990) Clara Bow: Runnin’ Wild. New York: Penguin Books.
Vazzana, E.M. (2001) Silent Film Necrology: Second Edition. Jefferson, NC:
McFarland.
Wagenknecht, E. (1962) The Movies in the Age of Innocence. Norman, OK:
University of Oklahoma Press.
21
(Auto)Biographies
[Arvidson, Linda] Arvidson, L. (1969) When Movies Were Young. Mineola, NY:
Dover Publications.
[Astor, Mary] Astor, M. (1959) My Story: An Autobiography. New York:
Doubleday.
[Astor, Mary] Astor, M. (1971) A Life on Film. New York: Delacorte.
[Banky, Vilma] Schildgen, R.A. (2010) More Than a Dream: Rediscovering the
Life and Films of Vilma Banky. Hollywood, CA: 1921 PVG Publishing.
[Bara, Theda] Genini, R. (1996) Theda Bara: A Biography of the Silent Screen
Vamp with a Filmography. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
[Bara, Theda] Golden, E.(1996) Vamp: The Rise and Fall of Theda Bara. New
York: Empire Publishing.
[Barrymore, Ethel] Barrymore, E. (1952) Memories. London: Hulton Press Ltd.
[Basquette, Lina] Basquette, L. (1990) Lina. DeMille’s Godless Girl. Edgwater,
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[Bayne, Beverly] Maturi, R.J. and Maturi, M.B. (2001) Beverly Bayne, Queen of
the Movies: A Biography; With a Filmography and a Listing of Stage, Radio and
Television Appearances. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
[Bellamy, Madge] Bellamy, M. (1989) A Darling of the Twenties: The
Autobiography of Madge Bellamy. Vestal, NY: Vestal Press.
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[Brooks, Louise] Brooks, L. (1983) Lulu in Hollywood. New York: Knopf.
[Brooks, Louise] Cowie, P. (2006) Louise Brooks: Lulu Forever. New York: Rizzoli.
[Brooks, Louise] Jaccard, R. (ed.) (1986) Louise Brooks: Portrait of an Anti-Star.
New York: Zoetrope.
[Brooks, Louise] Paris, B. (1989) Louise Brooks. New York: Knopf.
[Burke, Billie] (1949) With a Feather on My Nose. New York: Appleton-Century.
[Castle Irene] Castle, I. (1919) My Husband. New York: New Library Press.
[Castle Irene] Castle, I. (1958) Castles in the Air. New York: Doubleday.
[Clark, Marguerite] Nunn, C. (1981) Marguerite Clark: American Darling of
Broadway and the Silent Screen. Fort Worth, TX: Texas Christian University
Press.
22
[Cooper, Miriam] Cooper, M. (1973) Dark Lady of the Silents: My Life in Early
Hollywood. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill.
[Crawford, Joan] Cowie, P. (2009) Joan Crawford: The Enduring Star. New York:
Rizzoli.
[Crawford, Joan] Quirk, L.J. and Schoell, W. (2002) Joan Crawford: The Essential
Biography. Lexington, KT: University Press of Kentucky.
[Crawford, Joan] Vogel, M. (2005) Joan Crawford: Her Life in Letters.
Shelbyville, KT: Wasteland Press.
[Davies, Marion] Davies, Marion (1975) The Times We Had: Life with William
Randolph Hearst. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill.
[Davies, Marion] Guiles, F.L. (1972) Marion Davies. New York: McGraw-Hill.
[Del Rio, Dolores] Hershfield, J. (2000) The Invention of Dolores Del Rio.
Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
[Del Rio, Dolores] Ramòn, D (1997) Dolores del Ro. Mexico D.F.: Editorial Clò.
(In Spanish)
[Dressler, Marie] Dressler, M. (1924) The Life Story of an Ugly Duckling. New
York: Robert M. McBride.
[Dressler, Marie] Dressler, M. (1934) My Own Story. Boston: Little, Brown and
Co.
[Dressler, Marie] Lee, B. (1997) Marie Dressler: The Unlikeliest Star. Lexington:
University Press of Kentucky.
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[Farrar, Geraldine] Nash, E. (2012) Geraldine Farrar: Opera’s Charismatic
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[Garbo, Greta] Bainbridge, J. (1955) Garbo. New York: Doubleday.
[Garbo, Greta] Billquist, F. (1960) Garbo: A Biography. New York: G.P. Putnams
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[Garbo, Greta] Paris, B. (1995) Garbo: A Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
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[Godowosky, Dagmar] Godowsky, D. (1958) First Person Plural: The Lives of
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[Griffith, Corinne] Griffith, C. (1972) This You Won’t Believe!. New York: F. Fell.
[Hopper, Hedda] Hopper, H. (1964) From Under My Hat. New York: Doubleday.
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[Lorraine, Lillian] Hanson, N. and Ziegfeld, R. (2011) Lillian Lorraine: The Life
and Times of a Ziegfeld Diva. jefferson, NC: McFarland.
[Loy, Myrna] Kotsilibas-Davis, J. and Loy, M. (1987) Myrna Loy: Being and
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Young. Atlantic City, NJ: O’Raghailligh Ltd. Publishers.
[Moore, Colleen] Codori, J. (2012) Colleen Moore: A Biography of the Silent Film
Star. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
[Moore, Colleen] Moore, C. (1968) Silent Star: Colleen Moore Talks About Her
Hollywood. New York: Doubleday.
[Moran, Lois] Buller, R. (2005) A Beautiful Fairy Tale: The Life of Actress Lois
Moran. Pompton Plains, NJ: Limelight Editions.
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Lips. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
24
[Murray, Mae] Ardmore, J. (1959) The Self-Enchanted Mae Murray: Image of an
Era. New York, McGraw-Hill.
[Nazimova, Alla] Lambert, G. (1997) Nazimova: A Biography. New York: Knopf.
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Personal Memoir. Minuteman Press.
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Girl. New York: Ticknor and Fields.
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Life and Films. Cinema Books
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Scarecrow Press.
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25
Snowbird: Her Complete 1930 Memoir, with a New Biography and Filmography.
Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
[Shearer, Norma] Lambert, G. (1990) Norma Shearer: A Biography. New York:
Knopf.
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Martin’s Press.
[Young, Loretta] Young, L (as told to Helen Ferguson) (1961) The Things I Had to
Learn. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill.
26
Collections
Ankerich, M.G. (1993) Broken Silence: Conversations with 23 Silent Film Stars 19 .
Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
Ankerich, M.G. (1998) The Sound of Silence: Conversations with 16 Film and
Stage Personalities Who Bridged the Gap Between Silents and Talkies 20 .
Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
Ankerich, M.G. (2010) Dangerous Curves Atop Hollywood Heels: The Lives,
Careers, and Misfortunes of 14 Hard-Luck Girls of the Silent Screen 21 . Duncan,
OK: BearManor Media.
Basinger, J. (2000) Silent Stars. New York: Knopf.
Davis, L. (2008) Silent Lives 22 . Duncan, OK: BearManor Media.
Doyle, B.H. (1995) The Ultimate Directory of the Silent Screen Performers 23 .
Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press.
Drew, W.M. (1989) Speaking of Silents: First Ladies of the Screen 24 . NY: Vestal.
Golden, E. (2001) Golden Images: 41 Essays on Silent Film Stars 25 . Jefferson,
NC: McFarland.
Lowery, C. (1920) The First One Hundred Noted Men and Women of the Screen.
New York: Moffatt, Yard.
Menefee, D.W. (2004) The First Female Stars: Women of the Silent Era 26 .
Connecticut: Praeger.
Slide, A. (1973) The Griffith Actresses 27 . New York: Barnes.
19 Lina Basquette, Madge Bellamy, Eleanor Boardman, Ethlyne Clair, Joyce Compton, Dorothy Gulliver, Maxine
Elliott Hicks, Dorothy Janis, Marion Mack, Patsy Ruth Miller, Lois Moran, Baby Marie Osborne, Muriel Ostriche,
Esther Ralston, Dorothy Revier, Gladys Walton.
20 Barbara Barondess, Mary Brian, Pauline Curley, Billie Dove, Rose Hobart, Marcia Mae Jones, Barbara Kent,
Esther Muir, Anita Page, Marion Shilling, Lupita Tovar, Marion Weeks.
21 Agnes Ayres, Olive Borden, Grace Darmond, Elinor Fair, Juanita Hansen, Wanda Hawley, Natalie Joyce,
Barbara La Marr, Martha Mansfield, Mary Nolan, Lucille Ricksen, Eve Sothern, Alberta Vaughn.
22 Theda Bara, Ethel Barrymore, Beverley Bayne, Clara Bow, Betty Bronson, Louise Brooks, Joan Crawford,
Marion Davies, Carol Dempster, Marie Dressler, Geraldine Farrar, Greta Garbo, Dorothy Gish, Lillian Gish,
Florence Lawrence, Babe London, Marion Mack, Mary MacLaren, Mabel Normand, Olga Petrova, Mary Pickford,
Edna Purviance, Jobyna Ralston, Norma Shearer, Gloria Swanson, Constance Talmadge, Natalie Talmadge, Norma
Talmadge, Lois Weber, Pearl White.
23 Leah Baird, Mabel Ballin, Vedah Bertram, Francelia Billington, Lily Branscombe, Pauline Bush, June Caprice,
Dolores Casinelli, Marjorie Daw, Bessie Eyton, Margarita Fischer, Mary Fuller, Maude George, Myrtle Gonzalez,
Evelyn Greely, Winifred Greenwood, Lillian Hall, Gloria Hope, Clara Horton, Mae Hotely, Justine Johnstone, Mollie
King, Kathleen Kirkham, Virginia Kirtley, Martha Mansfield, Vivian Martin, Violet Mersereau, Corliss Palmer,
Virginia Pearson, Dorothy Phillips, Allene Ray, Kittens Reichert, Lucille Ricksen, Lucille Lee Stewart, Edith Storey,
Rosemary Theby, Mary Thurman, Fay Tincher, Mabel Trunnelle, Marie Walcamp, Eleanor Woodruff
24 Madge Bellamy, Eleanor Boardman, Leatrice Joy, Laura La Plante, May McAvoy, Patsy Ruth Miller, Coleen
Moore, Esther Ralston, Blanche Sweet, Lois Wilson
25 Clara Bow, Gladys Brockwell, Irene Castle, Bebe Daniels, Marion Davies, Jeanne Eagels, Dorothy Gish, May
Irwin, Alice Joyce, Florence LaBadie, Martha Mansfield, Mae Marsh, Colleen Moore, Nita Naldi, Alla Nazimova,
Pola Negri, Mary Nolan, Anita Page, Marie Prevost, Esther Ralston, Alma Rubens, Clarine Seymour, Constance
Talmadge, Norma Talmadge, Lilyan Tashman, Olive Thomas, Fannie Ward, Pearl White, Kathlyn Williams, Clara
Kimball Young
26 Theda Bara, Beverly Bayne, Carol Dempster, Pauline Frederick, Gene Gauntier, Janet Gaynor, Dorothy Gish,
Mae Marsh, Mae Murray, Alla Nazimova, Constance Talmadge.
27 Miriam Cooper, Carol Dempster, Dorothy Gish, Lillian Gish, Mae Marsh, Mary Pickford, Clarine Seymour,
Blanche Sweet.
27
Slide, A. (1976) Idols of Silence 28 . New York: Barnes.
Slide, A. (2002) Silent Players: A Biographical and Autobiographical Study of 100
Silent Film Actors and Actresses 29 . Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.
Villecco, T. (2001) Silent Stars Speak 30 . Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
Wagenknecht, E. (1987) Stars of the Silents. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press.
Dictionaries,Encyclopedias etc.
Katchmer, G.A. (2002) A Biographical Dictionary of Silent Film Western Actors
and Actresses. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
Liebman, R. (1996) Silent Film Performers. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
Liebman, R. (1998) From Silents to Sound: A Biographical Encyclopedia of
Performers Who Made the Transition to Talking Pictures. Jefferson, NC:
McFarland.
Liebman, R. (2000) The WAMPAS Baby Stars: A Biographical Dictionary,
1922-1934. Jefferson, NC: McFarland.
Lowe, D. (2005) An Encyclopedic Dictionary of Women in Early American Films,
1895-1930. New York: Haworth Press,
Vazzana, E.M. (2001) Silent Film Necrology: Second Edition. Jefferson, NC:
McFarland.
28 Mignon
Anderson, Priscilla Bonner, Bebe Daniels, Jetta Goudal, Olga Petrova, Billie Rhodes, Alice Terry,
Kathlyn Williams.
29 Mignon Anderson, Mary Astor, Theda Bara, Lina Basquette, Madge Bellamy, Constance Binney, Priscilla
Bonner, Evelyn Brent, Mary Brian, Gladys Brockwell, Kate Bruce, Ruth Clifford, Miriam Cooper, Pauline Curley,
Viola Dana, Bebe Daniels, Carol Dempster, Dorothy Devore, Billie Dove, Claire DuBrey, Virginia Brown Faire,
Bess Flowers, Greta Garbo, Lillian Gish, Louise Glaum, Dagmar Godowsky, Kitty Gordon, Jetta Goudal, Ethel
Grandin, Gilda Gray, Olga Grey, Corinne Griffith, Alice Hollister, Alice Howell, Alice Joyce, Madge Kennedy,
Doris Kenyon, Laura La Plante, Babe London, Bessie Love, Dorothy Mackail, Mary MacLaren, Mae Marsh, Mae
Murray, Nita Naldi, Mabel Normand, Jane Novak, Gertrude Olmstead, Seena Owen, Jran Paige, Kathryn Perry,
Olga Petrova, Mary Philbin, Mary Pickford, Arline Pretty, Esther Ralston, Billie Rhodes, Clarine Seymour, Pauline
Starke, Valeska Suratt, Gloria Swanson, Pauline Starke, Blanche Sweet, Constance Talmadge, Norma Talmadge,
Alice Terry, Florence Turner, Kathlyn Williams, Lois Wilson, Margery Wilson, Claire Windsor, Fay Wray.
30 Baby Peggy, Priscilla Bonner, Virginia Cherrill, Pauline Curley, Jean Darling, Molly O’Day, Anita Page.
28
Mike Baxter