170-587: Gloria Josephine Mae Swanson (March 27, 1899 – April 4, 1983) was an American actress. She first achieved fame acting in dozens of silent films in the 1920s and was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Actress , most famously for her 1950 turn in Billy Wilder 's Sunset Boulevard , which also earned her a Golden Globe Award . Swanson was born in Chicago and raised in
340-691: A "Project Prayer" rally attended by 2,500 at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles. The gathering, which was hosted by Anthony Eisley , a star of ABC's Hawaiian Eye series, sought to flood the United States Congress with letters in support of mandatory school prayer, following two decisions in 1962 and 1963 of the United States Supreme Court , which struck down mandatory prayer as conflicting with
510-445: A 16 fps projection of the same reel would take 16 minutes and 40 seconds, or 304 millimetres (12.0 in) per second. In the 1950s, many telecine conversions of silent films at grossly incorrect frame rates for broadcast television may have alienated viewers. Film speed is often a vexed issue among scholars and film buffs in the presentation of silents today, especially when it comes to DVD releases of restored films , such as
680-598: A card game of bridge with a group of actors also known as "the Waxworks ". They included Buster Keaton , H.B. Warner and Anna Q. Nilsson . During the scene leading up to Cecil B. DeMille's cameo, where Max chauffeurs Joe and Norma to the studio, her Isotta Fraschini luxury automobile was towed from behind the camera, because Stroheim had never learned how to drive. Norma's dreams of a comeback are subverted, and when Gillis tries to break up with her, she threatens to kill herself, but instead kills him. She becomes delusional by
850-639: A comedy that had run on the Broadway stage with Tallulah Bankhead as its star. Kennedy wrote the script for the play A Goose for the Gander , which began its road tour in Chicago in August 1944. Swanson also toured with Let Us Be Gay . After her success with Sunset Boulevard , she starred on Broadway in a revival of Twentieth Century with José Ferrer , and in Nina with David Niven . Her last major stage role
1020-554: A couple of his Bing Crosby two-reelers to theaters, nothing happened. Sennett did appear in front of the camera, however, in Hollywood Cavalcade (1939), itself a thinly disguised version of the Mack Sennett-Mabel Normand romance. In 1949, he provided film footage for the first full-length comedy compilation film, Down Memory Lane (1949), written and narrated by Steve Allen . Sennett made
1190-428: A failed screenwriter Joe Gillis ( William Holden ). She lives at the mansion with her former-husband-director-turned-butler Max von Mayerling ( Erich von Stroheim ), who personally disliked the role and only agreed to it out of financial need. A clip from Queen Kelly was used for the scene where Joe and Norma are watching one of her silent films, and she declares, "... we didn't need dialogue, we had faces ". Norma plays
1360-435: A general newsletter. She toured in summer stock , engaged in political activism, designed and marketed clothing and accessories, and made personal appearances on radio and in movie theaters. “It should be pointed out that Gloria Swanson was not Norma Desmond. Unlike her delusional screen counterpart, Swanson was fiercely realistic. She lived in the present –not in the past– and pursued many interests with passionate zeal. She
1530-608: A great screen chemistry that proved popular with audiences. Director Charley Chase recalled that Swanson was "frightened to death" of Vernon's dangerous stunts. Surviving movies in which they appear together include The Danger Girl (1916), The Sultan's Wife (1917), and Teddy at the Throttle (1917). Badger was sufficiently impressed by Swanson to recommend her to the director Jack Conway for Her Decision and You Can't Believe Everything in 1918. Triangle had never put Swanson under contract, but did increase her pay to $ 15
1700-566: A guest appearance in the film, and received a special "Mack Sennett presents" credit. Sennett wrote a memoir, King of Comedy , in collaboration with Cameron Shipp. The book was published in 1954, prompting TV producer Ralph Edwards to mount a tribute to Sennett for the television series This Is Your Life . Sennett made a cameo appearance (for $ 1,000) in Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops (1955). Sennett's last appearance in
1870-413: A key professional in silent film and was often separate from the scenario writer who created the story. Inter-titles (or titles as they were generally called at the time) "often were graphic elements themselves, featuring illustrations or abstract decorations that commented on the action". Showings of silent films almost always featured live music starting with the first public projection of movies by
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#17327717347352040-469: A low budget salute to sentimental silent comedies, particularly Charlie Chaplin 's The Kid . The German film Tuvalu (1999) is mostly silent; the small amount of dialog is an odd mix of European languages, increasing the film's universality. Guy Maddin won awards for his homage to Soviet-era silent films with his short The Heart of the World after which he made a feature-length silent, Brand Upon
2210-542: A military family that moved from base to base. Her infatuation with Essanay Studios actor Francis X. Bushman led to her aunt taking her to tour the actor's Chicago studio. The 15-year-old Swanson was offered a brief walk-on for one film and eventually a stock-players contract, beginning her life's career in front of the cameras. Swanson left school, and was soon hired to work in California for Mack Sennett 's Keystone Studios comedy shorts opposite Bobby Vernon . She
2380-411: A mistake and saw no way out of it. She did not like his home or his family and was repulsed by him as a lover. After becoming pregnant, she saw her husband with other women and learned he had been fired from Keystone. Taking medication given to her by Beery, purported to be for morning sickness, she miscarried the fetus and was taken unconscious to the hospital. Soon afterwards, she filed for divorce, which
2550-645: A much longer time for color to be adopted by the industry and an effective process to be developed. Blue represented night scenes, yellow or amber meant day. Red represented fire and green represented a mysterious atmosphere. Similarly, toning of film (such as the common silent film generalization of sepia -toning) with special solutions replaced the silver particles in the film stock with salts or dyes of various colors. A combination of tinting and toning could be used as an effect that could be striking. Some films were hand-tinted, such as Annabelle Serpentine Dance (1894), from Edison Studios . In it, Annabelle Whitford ,
2720-415: A one-million-dollar-a-year (equivalent to $ 17,500,000 in 2023) contract with Paramount in favor of joining the newly created United Artists partnership on June 25, 1925, accepting a six-picture distribution offer from president Joseph Schenck . At the time, Swanson was considered the most bankable star of her era. United Artists had its own Art Cinema Corporation subsidiary to advance financial loans for
2890-417: A partner in her World War II efforts to aid potential scientist refugees fleeing from behind Nazi lines. Swanson described herself as a "mental vampire", someone with a searching curiosity about how things worked, and who pursued the possibilities of turning those ideas into reality. In 1939, she created Multiprises, an inventions and patents company; Henri de la Falaise provided a transitional Paris office for
3060-635: A permanent US resident. Besides her Fifth Avenue apartment, she and Dufty spent time at their homes in Beverly Hills, California; Colares, Portugal ; Croton-on-Hudson, New York ; and Palm Springs, California. After Swanson's death, Dufty returned to his former home in Birmingham, Michigan . He died of cancer in 2002. Swanson died of a heart ailment at the New York Hospital on April 4, 1983, having recently returned from her home on
3230-503: A race to design, implement, and market several rival sound-on-disc and sound-on-film sound formats, such as Photokinema (1921), Phonofilm (1923), Vitaphone (1926), Fox Movietone (1927) and RCA Photophone (1928). Warner Bros. was the first studio to accept sound as an element in film production and utilize the Vitaphone, a sound-on-disc technology, to do so. The studio then released The Jazz Singer in 1927, which marked
3400-435: A secure and valued place in the history of screen comedy, it is surely not as a developer of individual talents... Chaplin, Langdon, and Lloyd were all on the lot at one point or another, but developed their styles only in spite of Sennett, and grew to their artistic peaks only away from his influence... screen comedy followed Chaplin's lead and began to focus more on personality than situation." Sennett's first female comedian
3570-404: A setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, when necessary, be conveyed by the use of inter- title cards . The term "silent film" is something of a misnomer, as these films were almost always accompanied by live sounds. During the silent era, which existed from the mid-1890s to the late 1920s, a pianist , theater organist —or even, in larger cities, an orchestra —would play music to accompany
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#17327717347353740-547: A small Eastern Townships village. At that time, Sennett's grandparents were living in Danville, Quebec. Sennett moved to Connecticut when he was 17 years old. He lived for a while in Northampton, Massachusetts , where, according to his autobiography, he first got the idea to become an opera singer after seeing a vaudeville show. He said that the most respected lawyer in town, Northampton mayor (and future President of
3910-611: A soldier. She was raised in the Lutheran faith. Her father was a Swedish American and her mother was of German, French, and Polish ancestry. Because of her father's attachment to the U.S. Army, the family moved frequently. She spent some of her childhood in Key West , Florida, where she was enrolled in a Catholic convent school, and in Puerto Rico , where she saw her first motion pictures. Her family once again residing in Chicago,
4080-498: A special effect in many of his films. His 1915 epic The Birth of a Nation used a number of colors, including amber, blue, lavender, and a striking red tint for scenes such as the "burning of Atlanta" and the ride of the Ku Klux Klan at the climax of the picture. Griffith later invented a color system in which colored lights flashed on areas of the screen to achieve a color. With the development of sound-on-film technology and
4250-458: A two-film package production for Art Cinema, which included Indiscreet and Tonight or Never (1931). Perfect Understanding , a 1933 sound production comedy, was the only film produced by this company. Made entirely at Ealing Studios , it co-starred Laurence Olivier as Swanson's on-screen husband. United Artists bought back all of her stock with them, in order to provide her financing to make this film, and thereby ending her relationship with
4420-674: A vigorous new style of motion picture comedy founded on speed, insolence and destruction, which won them the undying affection of the French Dadaists …" —Film historian Richard Koszarski Dubbed the King of Hollywood's Fun Factory , Sennett's studios produced slapstick comedies that were noted for their hair-raising car chases and custard pie warfare, especially in the Keystone Cops series . The comic formulas, however well executed, were based on humorous situations rather than
4590-408: A wall or screen. After the advent of photography in the 19th century, still photographs were sometimes used. Narration of the showman was important in spectacular entertainment screenings and vital in the lecturing circuit. The principle of stroboscopic animation was well-known since the introduction of the phenakistiscope in 1833, a popular optical toy , but the development of cinematography
4760-806: A week, to be raised to $ 200 a week, and eventually $ 350 a week. Her first picture under her new contract was DeMille's World War I romantic drama For Better, for Worse . She made six pictures under the direction of DeMille, including Male and Female (1919), in which she posed with a lion as "Lion's Bride". While she and her father were dining out one evening, the man who would become her second husband, Equity Pictures president Herbert K. Somborn , introduced himself, by inviting her to meet one of her personal idols, actress Clara Kimball Young . Why Change Your Wife? , Something to Think About (both 1920), and The Affairs of Anatol (1921) soon followed. She next appeared in 10 films directed by Sam Wood , starting with The Great Moment (1921) and including Beyond
4930-404: A week. When she was approached by Famous Players–Lasky to work for Cecil B. DeMille , the resulting legal dispute obligated her to Triangle for several more months. Soon afterward, Triangle was in a financial bind and loaned Swanson to DeMille for the comedy Don't Change Your Husband . At the behest of DeMille, Swanson signed a contract with Famous Players–Lasky on December 30, 1918, for $ 150
5100-494: A young dancer from Broadway, is dressed in white veils that appear to change colors as she dances. This technique was designed to capture the effect of the live performances of Loie Fuller , beginning in 1891, in which stage lights with colored gels turned her white flowing dresses and sleeves into artistic movement. Hand coloring was often used in the early "trick" and fantasy films of Europe, especially those by Georges Méliès . Méliès began hand-tinting his work as early as 1897 and
5270-451: Is silent during its middle third, complete with intertitles; Stanley Tucci 's The Impostors has an opening silent sequence in the style of early silent comedies. Brazilian filmmaker Renato Falcão's Margarette's Feast (2003) is silent. Writer/director Michael Pleckaitis puts his own twist on the genre with Silent (2007). While not silent, the Mr. Bean television series and movies have used
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5440-544: The benshi , a live narrator who provided commentary and character voices. The benshi became a central element in Japanese film, as well as providing translation for foreign (mostly American) movies. The popularity of the benshi was one reason why silent films persisted well into the 1930s in Japan. Conversely, as benshi -narrated films often lacked intertitles, modern-day audiences may sometimes find it difficult to follow
5610-438: The "talkies", "sound films", or "talking pictures" . The idea of combining motion pictures with recorded sound is older than film (it was suggested almost immediately after Edison introduced the phonograph in 1877), and some early experiments had the projectionist manually adjusting the frame rate to fit the sound, but because of the technical challenges involved, the introduction of synchronized dialogue became practical only in
5780-751: The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution . Joining Swanson and Eisley at the Project Prayer rally were Walter Brennan , Lloyd Nolan , Rhonda Fleming , Pat Boone , and Dale Evans . Swanson declared "Under God we became the freest, strongest, wealthiest nation on earth. Should we change that?" In 1975, Swanson traveled the United States and helped to promote
5950-704: The Keystone Cops films. He also produced short features that displayed his Bathing Beauties , many of whom went on to develop successful acting careers. After struggling with bankruptcy and the dominance of sound films in the early 1930s, Sennett was presented with an honorary Academy Award in 1938 for his contributions to the film industry, with the Academy describing him as a "master of fun, discoverer of stars, sympathetic, kindly, understanding comedy genius". Born Michael Sinnott in Danville, Quebec , he
6120-844: The New York Motion Picture Company , Sennett founded Keystone Studios in Edendale, California – now a part of Echo Park – in 1912. The original main building which was the first totally enclosed film stage and studio ever constructed, is still standing, as of 2023. Many successful actors began their film careers with Sennett, including Marie Dressler , Mabel Normand , Charlie Chaplin , Harry Langdon , Roscoe Arbuckle , Harold Lloyd , Raymond Griffith , Gloria Swanson , Ford Sterling , Andy Clyde , Chester Conklin , Polly Moran , Louise Fazenda , The Keystone Cops , Bing Crosby , and W. C. Fields . "In its pre-1920s heyday [Sennett's Fun Factory] created
6290-661: The Portuguese Riviera . Her body was cremated and her ashes interred at the Church of the Heavenly Rest on Fifth Avenue in New York City, attended by a small number of family members. Silent film A silent film is a film without synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue ). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as
6460-421: The audience could better understand what an actor was feeling and portraying on screen. Much silent film acting is apt to strike modern-day audiences as simplistic or campy . The melodramatic acting style was in some cases a habit actors transferred from their former stage experience. Vaudeville was an especially popular origin for many American silent film actors. The pervading presence of stage actors in film
6630-556: The nitrate filmstock used in that era was extremely unstable and flammable. Additionally, many films were deliberately destroyed, because they had negligible remaining immediate financial value in that era. It has often been claimed that around 75 percent of silent films produced in the US have been lost, though these estimates are inaccurate due to a lack of numerical data. Film projection mostly evolved from magic lantern shows, in which images from handpainted glass slides were projected onto
6800-526: The 1899 Cendrillion (Cinderella) and 1900 Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc) provide early examples of hand-tinted films in which the color was a critical part of the scenography or mise-en-scène ; such precise tinting used the workshop of Elisabeth Thuillier in Paris, with teams of female artists adding layers of color to each frame by hand rather than using a more common (and less expensive) process of stenciling. A newly restored version of Méliès' A Trip to
6970-458: The 1930s, Sennett tried to come to Columbia but they wouldn't have him. He was finished, and the studio was happy with Jules." Sennett did sell some scripts and stories to Jules White, receiving screen credit as "Michael Emmes" (the "Emmes" being formed by Sennett's initials). Columbia really didn't need Sennett's services; the studio already had four producers and six directors on its short-subject payroll. Mack Sennett went into semi-retirement at
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7140-519: The Brain! (2006), incorporating live Foley artists , narration and orchestra at select showings. Shadow of the Vampire (2000) is a highly fictionalized depiction of the filming of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau 's classic silent vampire movie Nosferatu (1922). Werner Herzog honored the same film in his own version, Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979). Some films draw a direct contrast between
7310-929: The Crosby and Fields shorts, Sennett's studio did not survive the Depression. Sennett's partnership with Paramount lasted only one year and he was forced into bankruptcy in November 1933. On January 12, 1934, Sennett was injured in an automobile accident that killed blackface performer Charles Mack in Mesa, Arizona . His last work, in 1935, was as a producer-director for Educational, in which he directed Buster Keaton in The Timid Young Man and Joan Davis in Way Up Thar . The 1935 Vitaphone short subject Keystone Hotel featured several alumni from
7480-646: The Devil (1927). Israel has worked mainly in silent comedy, scoring the films of Harold Lloyd , Buster Keaton , Charley Chase , and others. Timothy Brock has restored many of Charlie Chaplin 's scores, in addition to composing new scores. Contemporary music ensembles are helping to introduce classic silent films to a wider audience through a broad range of musical styles and approaches. Some performers create new compositions using traditional musical instruments, while others add electronic sounds, modern harmonies, rhythms, improvisation, and sound design elements to enhance
7650-772: The French-American comedy Madame Sans-Gêne , directed by Léonce Perret . Filming was allowed for the first time at many of the historic sites relating to Napoleon. While it was well received at the time, no prints are known to exist and it is considered to be a lost film . Swanson appeared in a 1925 short produced by Lee de Forest in his Phonofilm sound-on-film process. She made a number of films for Paramount, including The Coast of Folly (1925), Stage Struck (1925) and The Untamed Lady (1926). Before she could produce films with United Artists, she completed Fine Manners with Paramount and turned down an offer to make The King of Kings with DeMille. She turned down
7820-542: The Keystone trademark and produced a cheap series of comedy shorts that were "Keystones" in name only: they were unsuccessful, and Sennett had no connection with them. Sennett went on to produce more ambitious comedy short films and a few feature-length films. Many of Sennett's films of the early 1920s were inherited by Warner Bros. after Warner had merged with the original distributor, First National. Warner added music and commentary to several of these short subjects, and
7990-572: The Lumière brothers on December 28, 1895, in Paris. This was furthered in 1896 by the first motion-picture exhibition in the United States at Koster and Bial's Music Hall in New York City. At this event, Edison set the precedent that all exhibitions should be accompanied by an orchestra. From the beginning, music was recognized as essential, contributing atmosphere, and giving the audience vital emotional cues. Musicians sometimes played on film sets during shooting for similar reasons. However, depending on
8160-512: The Mack Sennett studios: Ben Turpin, Ford Sterling, Hank Mann, and Chester Conklin. Actually, Sennett was not involved in the making of this film; it was directed by Ralph Staub . Sennett made one last attempt to continue working in the comedy field. By this time he had been supplanted as the major producer of two-reel comedies by Jules White at Columbia Pictures . White's brother, Jack White, recalled: "When Jules and I were at Columbia in
8330-540: The Moon , originally released in 1902, shows an exuberant use of color designed to add texture and interest to the image. Comments by an American distributor in a 1908 film-supply catalog further underscore France's continuing dominance in the field of hand-coloring films during the early silent era. The distributor offers for sale at varying prices "High-Class" motion pictures by Pathé , Urban-Eclipse , Gaumont , Kalem , Itala Film , Ambrosio Film , and Selig . Several of
8500-848: The Rocks in 1922 with her longtime friend Rudolph Valentino . Valentino had become a star in 1921 for his appearance in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse , but Swanson had known him since his days as an aspiring actor getting small parts, with no apparent hope for his professional future. She was impressed by his shy, well-mannered personality, the complete opposite of what his public image would become. After her films with Wood, she appeared in Zaza (1923) directed by Allan Dwan . During her time at Famous Players–Lasky, seven more of her films were directed by Dwan. In 1925, Swanson starred in
8670-515: The Sahara desert and a British cricket pitch. War scenes were shot on the plains of Grasmere, Staten Island . The Perils of Pauline and its even more popular sequel The Exploits of Elaine were filmed largely on the island. So was the 1906 blockbuster Life of a Cowboy , by Edwin S. Porter Company , and filming moved to the West Coast around 1912. The following are American films from
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#17327717347358840-641: The United States) Calvin Coolidge , as well as Sennett's mother, tried to talk him out of his musical ambitions. In New York City, he took on the stage name Mack Sennett and became an actor, singer, dancer, clown , set designer , and director for the Biograph Company . A distinction in his acting career, often overlooked, is that he played Sherlock Holmes 11 times, albeit as a parody , between 1911 and 1913. With financial backing from Adam Kessel and Charles O. Bauman of
9010-455: The United States. In view of the enormous amount of labor involved which calls for individual hand painting of every one of sixteen pictures to the foot or 16,000 separate pictures for each 1,000 feet of film very few American colorists will undertake the work at any price. As film coloring has progressed much more rapidly in France than in any other country, all of our coloring is done for us by
9180-547: The action—particularly for comedies and action films. Slow projection of a cellulose nitrate base film carried a risk of fire, as each frame was exposed for a longer time to the intense heat of the projection lamp; but there were other reasons to project a film at a greater pace. Often projectionists received general instructions from the distributors on the musical director's cue sheet as to how fast particular reels or scenes should be projected. In rare instances, usually for larger productions, cue sheets produced specifically for
9350-687: The actual song being performed. Films in this category include Griffith's Lady of the Pavements with Lupe Vélez , Edwin Carewe 's Evangeline with Dolores del Río , and Rupert Julian 's The Phantom of the Opera with Mary Philbin and Virginia Pearson . The Silent Film Sound and Music Archive digitizes music and cue sheets written for silent films and makes them available for use by performers, scholars, and enthusiasts. Silent-film actors emphasized body language and facial expression so that
9520-427: The adolescent Gloria developed a crush on actor Francis X. Bushman and knew he was employed by Essanay Studios in the city. Swanson later recalled that her Aunt Inga brought her at the age of 15 to visit Bushman's studio, where she was discovered by a tour guide. Other accounts have the star-struck Swanson herself talking her way into the business. In either version, she was soon hired as an extra. The movie industry
9690-412: The adoption of sound-on-film technology. Traditional film colorization, all of which involved the use of dyes in some form, interfered with the high resolution required for built-in recorded sound, and were therefore abandoned. The innovative three-strip technicolor process introduced in the mid-1930s was costly and fraught with limitations, and color would not have the same prevalence in film as it did in
9860-404: The age of 55, having produced more than 1,000 silent films and several dozen talkies during a 25-year career. His studio property was purchased by Mascot Pictures (later part of Republic Pictures ), and many of his former staffers found work at Columbia. In March 1938, Sennett was presented with an honorary Academy Award : "for his lasting contribution to the comedy technique of the screen,
10030-563: The apartment. Davey moved out. In the subsequent legal separation proceedings, the judge ordered him to pay Swanson alimony. In an effort to avoid the payments, Davey unsuccessfully filed for divorce on the grounds of mental cruelty. He died within a year, not having paid anything to Swanson, and left the bulk of his estate to the Damon Runyon Cancer Memorial Fund . Swanson's final marriage occurred in 1976 and lasted until her death. Her sixth husband William Dufty
10200-460: The basic principles of which are as important today as when they were first put into practice, the Academy presents a Special Award to that master of fun, discoverer of stars, sympathetic, kindly, understanding comedy genius – Mack Sennett." Rumors abounded that Sennett would be returning to film production (a September 1938 publicity release indicated that he would be working with Stan Laurel of Laurel and Hardy ), but apart from Sennett reissuing
10370-562: The beginning of film and 1928. The following list includes only films produced in the sound era with the specific artistic intention of being silent. Several filmmakers have paid homage to the comedies of the silent era, including Charlie Chaplin , with Modern Times (1936), Orson Welles with Too Much Johnson (1938), Jacques Tati with Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot (1953), Pierre Etaix with The Suitor (1962), and Mel Brooks with Silent Movie (1976). Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-hsien 's acclaimed drama Three Times (2005)
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#173277173473510540-458: The best coloring establishment in Paris and we have found that we obtain better quality, cheaper prices and quicker deliveries, even in coloring American made films, than if the work were done elsewhere. By the beginning of the 1910s, with the onset of feature-length films, tinting was used as another mood setter, just as commonplace as music. The director D. W. Griffith displayed a constant interest and concern about color, and used tinting as
10710-476: The biggest-budgeted films to arrive at the exhibiting theater with original, specially composed scores. However, the first designated full-blown scores had in fact been composed in 1908, by Camille Saint-Saëns for The Assassination of the Duke of Guise , and by Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov for Stenka Razin . When organists or pianists used sheet music, they still might add improvisational flourishes to heighten
10880-488: The book Sugar Blues written by her husband, William Dufty . He also ghostwrote Swanson's 1981 autobiography Swanson on Swanson , which became a commercial success. The same year, she designed a stamp cachet for the United Nations Decade for Women , which was her last creative project. Wallace Beery and Swanson married on her 17th birthday on March 27, 1916, but by her wedding night she felt she had made
11050-506: The cameras, her film success waned during the 1930s. Swanson received renewed praise for her return to the screen in her role as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (1950). She made only three more films, but guest-starred on several television shows, and acted in road productions of stage plays. Swanson was born in a small house in Chicago in 1899, the only child of Adelaide (née Klanowski) and Joseph Theodore Swanson (né Svensson),
11220-470: The cartoonish silent films but ludicrous in the new, realistic atmosphere of talking pictures. Sennett was also having financial problems during the Great Depression . One of his biggest stars, Andy Clyde, left the studio after Sennett, wanting to economize, tried to cut Clyde's salary. In 1932 Sennett attempted to re-enter the feature-film market on a grand scale with Hypnotized . Remembering
11390-461: The case of the 2002 restoration of Metropolis . With the lack of natural color processing available, films of the silent era were frequently dipped in dyestuffs and dyed various shades and hues to signal a mood or represent a time of day. Hand tinting dates back to 1895 in the United States with Edison's release of selected hand-tinted prints of Butterfly Dance . Additionally, experiments in color film started as early as in 1909, although it took
11560-480: The cast and crew suffered from long hours. Shooting was shut down in January, and Stroheim fired, after complaints by Swanson about him and about the general direction the film was taking. Swanson and Kennedy tried to salvage it with an alternative ending shot on November 24, 1931, directed by Swanson and photographed by Gregg Toland . Only two other films were made under Gloria Productions. The Trespasser in 1929
11730-498: The crucial differences between stage and screen acting. Directors such as Albert Capellani and Maurice Tourneur began to insist on naturalism in their films. By the mid-1920s many American silent films had adopted a more naturalistic acting style, though not all actors and directors accepted naturalistic, low-key acting straight away; as late as 1927, films featuring expressionistic acting styles, such as Metropolis , were still being released. Greta Garbo , whose first American film
11900-550: The day. Sennett wanted W. C. Fields to star as a carnival hypnotist, but Fields declined and the role went to Ernest Torrence , sharing the spotlight with blackface comedians Moran and Mack , "The Two Black Crows". Production was completed in August 1932, but fell far short of Sennett's grandiose predictions. The finished film ran an ordinary 70 minutes and was released through ordinary channels by World Wide Pictures (Educational's feature-film outlet) in December 1932. Sennett
12070-459: The development of motion picture cameras, projectors and transparent celluloid film. Although Thomas Edison was keen to develop a film system that would be synchronised with his phonograph , he eventually introduced the kinetoscope as a silent motion picture viewer in 1893 and later "kinetophone" versions remained unsuccessful. The art of motion pictures grew into full maturity in the "silent era" ( 1894 in film – 1929 in film ). The height of
12240-401: The drama on screen. Even when special effects were not indicated in the score, if an organist was playing a theater organ capable of an unusual sound effect such as "galloping horses", it would be used during scenes of dramatic horseback chases. At the height of the silent era, movies were the single largest source of employment for instrumental musicians, at least in the United States. However,
12410-480: The episode, the Clampetts mistakenly believe Swanson is destitute and decide to finance a comeback movie for her – in a silent film. After near-retirement from movies, Swanson appeared in many plays throughout her later life, beginning in the 1940s. Actor and playwright Harold J. Kennedy, who had learned the ropes at Yale and with Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre , suggested Swanson do a road tour of "Reflected Glory",
12580-555: The famous " Mighty Wurlitzer " could simulate some orchestral sounds along with a number of percussion effects such as bass drums and cymbals, and sound effects ranging from "train and boat whistles [to] car horns and bird whistles; ... some could even simulate pistol shots, ringing phones, the sound of surf, horses' hooves, smashing pottery, [and] thunder and rain". Musical scores for early silent films were either improvised or compiled of classical or theatrical repertory music. Once full features became commonplace, however, music
12750-423: The film industry's pioneering women filmmakers. She produced and starred in the 1928 film Sadie Thompson , earning a nomination for Best Actress at the first annual Academy Awards . Her sound film debut performance in 1929's The Trespasser earned her a second Academy Award nomination. Queen Kelly (1928–29) was a box-office disaster, but is remembered as a silent classic. After almost two decades in front of
12920-560: The film industry. Also beginning in 1915, Sennett assembled a bevy of women known as the Sennett Bathing Beauties to appear in provocative bathing costumes in comedy short subjects, in promotional material, and in promotional events such as Venice Beach beauty contests. The Sennett Bathing Beauties continued to appear through 1928. In 1917, Sennett gave up the Keystone trademark and organized his own company, Mack Sennett Comedies Corporation. Sennett's bosses retained
13090-458: The film's production. Though Henri was a Marquis and related to the famous Hennessy cognac family, he had no personal wealth. She had conceived a child with him before her divorce from Somborn was final, a situation that would have led to a public scandal and possible end of her film career. She had an abortion, which she later regretted. They married on January 28, 1925, after the Somborn divorce
13260-407: The films. Pianists and organists would play either from sheet music , or improvisation . Sometimes a person would even narrate the inter-title cards for the audience. Though at the time the technology to synchronize sound with the film did not exist, music was seen as an essential part of the viewing experience. "Silent film" is typically used as a historical term to describe an era of cinema prior to
13430-481: The first film serial , The Million Dollar Mystery , released in 1914. The first westerns were filmed at Fred Scott 's Movie Ranch in South Beach, Staten Island. Actors costumed as cowboys and Native Americans galloped across Scott's movie ranch set, which had a frontier main street, a wide selection of stagecoaches and a 56-foot stockade. The island provided a serviceable stand-in for locations as varied as
13600-616: The first annual Academy Awards , Swanson received a nomination for Best Actress for her performance, and the film's cinematographer George Barnes was also nominated. By the end of 1927, Swanson was in dire financial straits, with only $ 65 in the bank. Her two productions had generated income, but too slowly to offset her production loan debts to Art Cinema Corporation. Swanson had also not made good on her $ 100,000 subscription for preferred United Artists shared stock. She had received financial proposals from United Artists studio head Joseph Schenck, as well as from Bank of America, prior to engaging
13770-411: The first commercially successful sound film , but silent films were still the majority of features released in both 1927 and 1928, along with so-called goat-glanded films: silents with a subsection of sound film inserted. Thus the modern sound film era may be regarded as coming to dominance beginning in 1929. For a listing of notable silent era films, see List of years in film for the years between
13940-596: The first live television series in 1948 in which she invited friends and others to be guests. Swanson later hosted Crown Theatre with Gloria Swanson , a television anthology series in which she occasionally acted. Through the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, Swanson appeared on many different talk and variety shows such as The Carol Burnett Show and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson to recollect her movies and to lampoon them as well. On The Carol Burnett Show in 1973, Swanson reprised her impersonation of Charlie Chaplin from both Sunset Boulevard and Manhandled . She
14110-648: The formation of the Motion Picture Patents Company in an attempt to control the industry and shut out smaller producers. The "Edison Trust", as it was nicknamed, was made up of Edison , Biograph , Essanay Studios , Kalem Company , George Kleine Productions , Lubin Studios , Georges Méliès , Pathé , Selig Studios , and Vitagraph Studios , and dominated distribution through the General Film Company . This company dominated
14280-469: The grosses for himself. Sennett told him to go to hell." Sennett left Educational and signed with Paramount Pictures . Sennett signed both Bing Crosby and W. C. Fields for two-reel comedies. Fields wrote and starred in four famous Sennett-Paramount comedies. Two other Sennett shorts were made with Fields scripts: The Singing Boxer (1933) with Donald Novis and Too Many Highballs (1933) with Lloyd Hamilton . Despite Paramount's wide distribution of
14450-465: The image to flicker , and images with low rates of flicker are very unpleasant to watch. Early studies by Thomas Edison for his Kinetoscope machine determined that any rate below 46 images per second "will strain the eye". and this holds true for projected images under normal cinema conditions also. The solution adopted for the Kinetoscope was to run the film at over 40 frames/sec, but this
14620-518: The immunity of the Shetland pony...you can have her fall into mud puddles. They will laugh at that. But the spectacle of a girl dripping with pie is unpleasing...movie fans don't like to see pretty girls smeared up with pastry. Shetland ponies and pretty girls are immune."— Max Sennett, from The Psychology of Film Comedy , November 1918 Film historian Richard Koszarski qualifies "fun factory" influence on comedic film acting: "While Mack Sennett has
14790-715: The industry as both a vertical and horizontal monopoly and is a contributing factor in studios' migration to the West Coast. The Motion Picture Patents Co. and the General Film Co. were found guilty of antitrust violation in October 1915, and were dissolved. The Thanhouser film studio was founded in New Rochelle, New York , in 1909 by American theatrical impresario Edwin Thanhouser . The company produced and released 1,086 films between 1910 and 1917, including
14960-860: The industry's acceptance of it, tinting was abandoned altogether, because the dyes used in the tinting process interfered with the soundtracks present on film strips. The early studios were located in the New York City area . Edison Studios were first in West Orange, New Jersey (1892), they were moved to the Bronx, New York (1907). Fox (1909) and Biograph (1906) started in Manhattan , with studios in St George, Staten Island . Other films were shot in Fort Lee, New Jersey . In December 1908, Edison led
15130-532: The introduction of sound with its 24 frame/sec standard speed 2-bladed shutters have become the norm for 35 mm cinema projectors, though three-bladed shutters have remained standard on 16 mm and 8 mm projectors, which are frequently used to project amateur footage shot at 16 or 18 frames/sec. A 35 mm film frame rate of 24 fps translates to a film speed of 456 millimetres (18.0 in) per second. One 1,000-foot (300 m) reel requires 11 minutes and 7 seconds to be projected at 24 fps, while
15300-412: The introduction of talkies, coupled with the roughly simultaneous onset of the Great Depression , was devastating to many musicians. A number of countries devised other ways of bringing sound to silent films. The early cinema of Brazil , for example, featured fitas cantatas (singing films), filmed operettas with singers performing behind the screen. In Japan , films had not only live music but also
15470-421: The invention of synchronized sound, but it also applies to such sound-era films as City Lights , Modern Times and Silent Movie which are accompanied by a music-only soundtrack in place of dialogue. The term silent film is a retronym —a term created to retroactively distinguish something from later developments. Early sound films, starting with The Jazz Singer in 1927, were variously referred to as
15640-568: The late 1920s with the perfection of the Audion amplifier tube and the advent of the Vitaphone system. Within a decade, the widespread production of silent films for popular entertainment had ceased, and the industry had moved fully into the sound era , in which movies were accompanied by synchronized sound recordings of spoken dialogue, music and sound effects . Most early motion pictures are considered lost owing to their physical decay, as
15810-426: The longer, more prestigious films in the catalog are offered in both standard black-and-white "plain stock" as well as in "hand-painted" color. A plain-stock copy, for example, of the 1907 release Ben Hur is offered for $ 120 ($ 4,069 USD today), while a colored version of the same 1000-foot, 15-minute film costs $ 270 ($ 9,156) including the extra $ 150 coloring charge, which amounted to 15 cents more per foot. Although
15980-401: The mid-1910s, as the differences between stage and screen became apparent. Due to the work of directors such as D. W. Griffith , cinematography became less stage-like, and the development of the close up allowed for understated and realistic acting. Lillian Gish has been called film's "first true actress" for her work in the period, as she pioneered new film performing techniques, recognizing
16150-601: The national media was in the NBC radio program Biography in Sound , relating memories of working with W.C. Fields. The program was broadcast February 28, 1956. Sennett was never married, but his tumultuous relationship with actress Mabel Normand was widely publicized in the press at the time. According to the Los Angeles Times , Sennett reportedly lived a "madcap, extravagant life", often throwing "lavish parties", and at
16320-520: The new "talkies" around the mid-1930s. The visual quality of silent movies—especially those produced in the 1920s—was often high, but there remains a widely held misconception that these films were primitive, or are barely watchable by modern standards. This misconception comes from the general public's unfamiliarity with the medium, as well as from carelessness on the part of the industry. Most silent films are poorly preserved, leading to their deterioration, and well-preserved films are often played back at
16490-504: The new talking-picture technology. Sennett's enthusiasm for talking pictures was such that he was the first to get a talkie short subject on the market, in 1928. His leading star at the time, Ben Turpin , was suddenly unemployed and moved to the Weiss Brothers studio. Sennett made a reasonably smooth transition to sound films , releasing them through Educational. Sennett occasionally experimented with color as well. In 1932, he
16660-429: The new versions were released to theaters between 1939 and 1945. Many of Sennett's First National films physically deteriorated due to inadequate storage. Hence, many of Sennett's films from his most productive and creative period no longer exist. In the mid-1920s, Sennett moved to Pathé Exchange distribution. In 1927, Hollywood's two most successful studios, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Paramount Pictures , took note of
16830-411: The news unless she agreed to marry him, something she did not want to do. Her friends, some of whom openly disliked him, thought she was making a mistake. They married on August 16, 1931, and separated 2 years later. Because of the possibility that Swanson's divorce from La Falaise had not been finalized at the time of the wedding, she was forced to remarry Farmer the following November, by which time she
17000-512: The only real peace and happiness I had ever known—or have ever known since. Of my five marriages this one came the nearest to being what I, in my haus-frau heart, have always wanted a marriage to be. He was then and he remains in memory a more delightful companion than any I have known. Gloria Swanson, 1950 During the production of Madame Sans-Gêne , Swanson met her third husband, Henri, Marquis de la Falaise (commonly known as Henri de la Falaise), who had been hired to be her translator during
17170-468: The overall experience of making the movie a pleasure, and later stated, "I hated to have the picture end ... When Mr. Wilder called ‘Print it!’ I burst into tears...” She was nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award, but lost to Judy Holliday . Swanson received several acting offers following the release of Sunset Boulevard , but turned most of them down, saying they tended to be pale imitations of Norma Desmond. Her last major Hollywood motion picture role
17340-643: The partnership. The film was panned by the critics upon its release and failed at the box office. When she made the transition to sound films as her career simultaneously began to decline, Swanson moved permanently to New York City in 1938. Swanson starred in Father Takes a Wife for RKO in 1941. She began appearing in stage productions and starred in The Gloria Swanson Hour on WPIX-TV in 1948. Swanson threw herself into painting and sculpting and, in 1954, published Gloria Swanson's Diary ,
17510-666: The peak of his career he owned three homes. On March 25, 1932, he became a United States citizen. Sennett died on November 5, 1960, in Woodland Hills, California , aged 80. He was interred in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California . For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Sennett was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6712 Hollywood Boulevard . He
17680-484: The personal traits of the comedians; the various social types, often grotesquely portrayed by members of Sennett's troupe, were adequate to render the largely "interchangeable routines: "Having a funny moustache, or crossed-eyes, or an extra two-hundred pounds was as much individualization as was required." "It is an axiom of screen comedy that a Shetland pony must never be put in an undignified position. People don't like it...immunity of pretty girls doesn't go as far as
17850-403: The play The Eyes of Youth by Max Marcin and Charles Guernon. The production was a disaster, with Parker being indecisive and the actors not experienced enough to deliver the performances he wanted. The film fell behind in its schedule and, by the time of its release, the end product had not lived up to Swanson's expectations. While it did not lose money, it was a financial wash, breaking even on
18020-450: The plots without specialised subtitling or additional commentary. Few film scores survived intact from the silent period, and musicologists are still confronted by questions when they attempt to precisely reconstruct those that remain. Scores used in current reissues or screenings of silent films may be complete reconstructions of compositions, newly composed for the occasion, assembled from already existing music libraries, or improvised on
18190-453: The position of "European director of Pathé " to put her third husband Henry de La Falaise on the payroll. Sound films were already becoming popular with audiences, most notably the films of singer Al Jolson , who had success with The Jazz Singer released in 1927 and The Singing Fool in 1928. Kennedy, however, advised her to hire Erich von Stroheim to direct another silent film, The Swamp , subsequently retitled Queen Kelly . She
18360-495: The production costs. She engaged the services of director Raoul Walsh in 1927 and together they conceived of making a film based on W. Somerset Maugham 's short story "Miss Thompson". Gloria Swanson Productions proposed to film the controversial Sadie Thompson about the travails of a prostitute living in American Samoa, a project that initially pleased United Artists president Joseph Schenck. As she moved forward with
18530-423: The productions of individual partners. The partnership agreement included her commitment to a buy-in of $ 100,000 of preferred stock subscription. The Swanson Producing Corporation was set up as the umbrella organization for her agreement with United Artists. Under that name, she produced The Love of Sunya with herself in the title role. The film, co-starring John Boles , was directed by Albert Parker , based on
18700-572: The profits being made by smaller companies such as Pathé Exchange and Earle Hammons 's Educational Pictures . MGM took over the Hal Roach comedy shorts from Pathé, and Paramount reactivated its short subjects. Hundreds of other independent exhibitors and moviehouses switched from Pathé to the new MGM or Paramount shorts, but Sennett remained loyal to Pathé and fulfilled his contract to deliver silent comedies through 1929. In 1928 Sennett canceled all of his talent contracts and retooled his studio for
18870-534: The project, association members urged Schenck to halt the production due to its subject matter. The members took further steps by registering their discontent with Will H. Hays , Chairman of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America . Walsh previously had his own battles with the Hays office, having managed to skirt around censorship issues with What Price Glory? By bringing him to
19040-438: The projectionist provided a detailed guide to presenting the film. Theaters also—to maximize profit—sometimes varied projection speeds depending on the time of day or popularity of a film, or to fit a film into a prescribed time slot. All motion-picture film projectors require a moving shutter to block the light whilst the film is moving, otherwise the image is smeared in the direction of the movement. However this shutter causes
19210-497: The promotion of Tonight or Never in 1931, given that the movie title was inspired by the Offenthal fragrance name, an unprecedented tie-in advertising campaign was conceived to promote both the movie and the fragrance. She was a pupil of the yoga guru Indra Devi and was photographed performing a series of yoga poses, reportedly looking much younger than her age, for Devi to use in her book Forever Young, Forever Healthy ; but
19380-596: The publisher Prentice-Hall decided to use the photographs for Swanson's book, not Devi's. In return, Swanson, who normally didn't do publicity events, helped to launch Devi's book at the Waldorf-Astoria in 1953. As a Republican she supported the 1940 and 1944 campaigns for president of Wendell Willkie and the 1964 presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater . In 1980, she chaired the New York chapter of Seniors for Reagan-Bush . In 1964, Swanson spoke at
19550-424: The reasons for the cited extra charge were likely obvious to customers, the distributor explains why his catalog's colored films command such significantly higher prices and require more time for delivery. His explanation also provides insight into the general state of film-coloring services in the United States by 1908: The coloring of moving picture films is a line of work which cannot be satisfactorily performed in
19720-491: The release of D. W. Griffith 's epic The Birth of a Nation (1915). In 1999, the Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki produced Juha in black and white, which captures the style of a silent film, using intertitles in place of spoken dialogue. Special release prints with titles in several different languages were produced for international distribution. In India, the film Pushpak (1988), starring Kamal Haasan ,
19890-604: The scientists and gave written documentation to authorities guaranteeing jobs for them. Viennese electronics engineer Richard Kobler, chemist Leopold Karniol, metallurgist Anton Kratky, and acoustical engineer Leopold Neumann, were brought to New York and headquartered in Rockefeller Center . The group nicknamed her "Big Chief". While still married to Henri, Swanson had a lengthy affair with the married Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. , father of future President John F. Kennedy . He became her business partner, and their relationship
20060-581: The services of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. as her financial advisor. He proposed to personally bankroll her next picture and conducted a thorough examination of her financial records. Kennedy advised her to shut down Swanson Producing Corporation. She agreed to his plan for a fresh start under the dummy corporate name of Gloria Productions, headquartered in Delaware . Upon his advice, she fired most of her staff and sold her rights for The Love of Sunya and Sadie Thompson to Art Cinema Corporation. Kennedy then created
20230-440: The silent era (from the early 1910s in film to the late 1920s) was a particularly fruitful period, full of artistic innovation. The film movements of Classical Hollywood as well as French Impressionism , German Expressionism , and Soviet Montage began in this period. Silent filmmakers pioneered the art form to the extent that virtually every style and genre of film-making of the 20th and 21st centuries has its artistic roots in
20400-470: The silent era. The silent era was also a pioneering one from a technical point of view. Three-point lighting, the close-up , long shot , panning , and continuity editing all became prevalent long before silent films were replaced by " talking pictures " or "talkies" in the late 1920s. Some scholars claim that the artistic quality of cinema decreased for several years, during the early 1930s, until film directors , actors, and production staff adapted fully to
20570-524: The silent film era and the era of talkies. Sunset Boulevard shows the disconnect between the two eras in the character of Norma Desmond , played by silent film star Gloria Swanson , and Singin' in the Rain deals with Hollywood artists adjusting to the talkies. Peter Bogdanovich 's 1976 film Nickelodeon deals with the turmoil of silent filmmaking in Hollywood during the early 1910s, leading up to
20740-483: The silent film era that had earned the highest gross income as of 1932. The amounts given are gross rentals (the distributor's share of the box-office) as opposed to exhibition gross. Although attempts to create sync-sound motion pictures go back to the Edison lab in 1896, only from the early 1920s were the basic technologies such as vacuum tube amplifiers and high-quality loudspeakers available. The next few years saw
20910-427: The silents for nearly four decades. As motion pictures gradually increased in running time, a replacement was needed for the in-house interpreter who would explain parts of the film to the audience. Because silent films had no synchronized sound for dialogue, onscreen inter-titles were used to narrate story points, present key dialogue and sometimes even comment on the action for the audience. The title writer became
21080-476: The silver screen. The animated film Fantasia (1940), which is eight different animation sequences set to music, can be considered a silent film, with only one short scene involving dialogue. The espionage film The Thief (1952) has music and sound effects, but no dialogue, as do Thierry Zéno 's 1974 Vase de Noces and Patrick Bokanowski 's 1982 The Angel . Mack Sennett Mack Sennett (born Michael Sinnott ; January 17, 1880 – November 5, 1960)
21250-438: The size of the exhibition site, musical accompaniment could drastically change in scale. Small-town and neighborhood movie theatres usually had a pianist . Beginning in the mid-1910s, large city theaters tended to have organists or ensembles of musicians. Massive theatre organs , which were designed to fill a gap between a simple piano soloist and a larger orchestra, had a wide range of special effects. Theatrical organs such as
21420-438: The spot in the manner of the silent-era theater musician. Interest in the scoring of silent films fell somewhat out of fashion during the 1960s and 1970s. There was a belief in many college film programs and repertory cinemas that audiences should experience silent film as a pure visual medium, undistracted by music. This belief may have been encouraged by the poor quality of the music tracks found on many silent film reprints of
21590-467: The standardization of the projection speed of 24 frames per second (fps) for sound films between 1926 and 1930, silent films were shot at variable speeds (or " frame rates ") anywhere from 12 to 40 fps, depending on the year and studio. "Standard silent film speed" is often said to be 16 fps as a result of the Lumière brothers' Cinématographe , but industry practice varied considerably; there
21760-547: The studio. In 1915, she co-starred in Sweedie Goes to College with her future first husband Wallace Beery . Swanson's mother accompanied her to California in 1916 for her roles in Mack Sennett 's Keystone Studios comedy shorts opposite Bobby Vernon and directed by Clarence G. Badger . They were met at the train station by Beery, who was pursuing his own career ambitions at Keystone. Vernon and Swanson projected
21930-425: The successful campaign for his very first feature-length comedy Tillie's Punctured Romance , which in 1914 was the longest comedy film ever produced, Sennett planned Hypnotized along similar lines as an epic production that would be shown first-run in select roadshow engagements. Sennett announced that Hypnotized would run 15 reels, or two-and-a-half hours, more than twice the length of a typical comedy feature of
22100-419: The table, literally over breakfast in her home, Hays and Swanson developed a working relationship for the film. Hays was enthusiastic about the basic story, but did have specific issues that were dealt with before the film's release. The project was filmed on Santa Catalina Island , just off the coast of Long Beach, California . Gross receipts slightly exceeded $ 850,000 (equivalent to $ 14,900,000 in 2023). At
22270-413: The time the police and news media arrive. Max sets up the studio lighting towards her on the staircase and directs her down towards the waiting police and news cameras, where she says, "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up." Although Swanson had objected to enduring a screen test for the film, she had been glad to be making much more money than she had been in television and on stage. She found
22440-489: The time. Since around 1980, there has been a revival of interest in presenting silent films with quality musical scores (either reworkings of period scores or cue sheets, or the composition of appropriate original scores). An early effort of this kind was Kevin Brownlow 's 1980 restoration of Abel Gance 's Napoléon (1927), featuring a score by Carl Davis . A slightly re-edited and sped-up version of Brownlow's restoration
22610-562: The title character's non-talkative nature to create a similar style of humor. A lesser-known example is Jérôme Savary 's La fille du garde-barrière (1975), an homage to silent-era films that uses intertitles and blends comedy, drama, and explicit sex scenes (which led to it being refused a cinema certificate by the British Board of Film Classification ). In 1990, Charles Lane directed and starred in Sidewalk Stories ,
22780-629: The traditional approach include organists such as Dennis James and pianists such as Neil Brand , Günter Buchwald, Philip C. Carli, Ben Model , and William P. Perry . Other contemporary pianists, such as Stephen Horne and Gabriel Thibaudeau, have often taken a more modern approach to scoring. Orchestral conductors such as Carl Davis and Robert Israel have written and compiled scores for numerous silent films; many of these have been featured in showings on Turner Classic Movies or have been released on DVD. Davis has composed new scores for classic silent dramas such as The Big Parade (1925) and Flesh and
22950-475: The viewing experience. Among the contemporary ensembles in this category are Un Drame Musical Instantané , Alloy Orchestra , Club Foot Orchestra , Silent Orchestra , Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, Minima and the Caspervek Trio, RPM Orchestra . Donald Sosin and his wife Joanna Seaton specialize in adding vocals to silent films, particularly where there is onscreen singing that benefits from hearing
23120-409: The wrong speed or suffer from censorship cuts and missing frames and scenes, giving the appearance of poor editing. Many silent films exist only in second- or third-generation copies, often made from already damaged and neglected film stock. Many early screening were plagued by flicker on the screen, when the stroboscopic interruptions between frames lay below the critical flicker frequency . This
23290-635: Was Mabel Normand, who became a major star under his direction and with whom he embarked on a tumultuous romantic relationship. Sennett also developed the Kid Comedies , a forerunner of the Our Gang films, and in a short time, his name became synonymous with screen comedy which were called "flickers" at the time. In 1915, Keystone Studios became an autonomous production unit of the ambitious Triangle Film Corporation , as Sennett joined forces with D. W. Griffith and Thomas Ince , both powerful figures in
23460-483: Was a Canadian-American producer, director, actor, and studio head who was known as the "King of Comedy" during his career. Born in Danville, Quebec , in 1908, he started acting in films in the Biograph Company of New York City , and later opened Keystone Studios in Edendale, California in 1912. Keystone possessed the first fully enclosed film stage, and Sennett became famous as the originator of slapstick routines such as pie-throwing and car-chases, as seen in
23630-688: Was a black comedy entirely devoid of dialog. The Australian film Doctor Plonk (2007), was a silent comedy directed by Rolf de Heer . Stage plays have drawn upon silent film styles and sources. Actor/writers Billy Van Zandt and Jane Milmore staged their Off-Broadway slapstick comedy Silent Laughter as a live action tribute to the silent screen era. Geoff Sobelle and Trey Lyford created and starred in All Wear Bowlers (2004), which started as an homage to Laurel and Hardy then evolved to incorporate life-sized silent film sequences of Sobelle and Lyford who jump back and forth between live action and
23800-423: Was a man of independent financial means who seemed not to have been employed. Rumors were that he was a gigolo . Swanson began spending time with him, during which she discovered a breast lump and also became pregnant, but was not yet divorced from Henri. She was not interested in marrying Farmer, but he did not want to break off the relationship. When Farmer found out she was pregnant, he threatened to go public with
23970-399: Was a promotional come-on to attract audiences into movie theaters to hear the voices of their favorite actors, as sound productions became the future of commercial films. On hand were Swanson, Charlie Chaplin , Norma Talmadge , John Barrymore , Dolores del Río , and D. W. Griffith . Before she began filming Perfect Understanding as Gloria Swanson British Productions Ltd., she finished
24140-458: Was a sound production, and garnered Swanson her second Oscar nomination. Written by Edmund Goulding , with Laura Hope Crews fine-tuning the dialogue, Kennedy approved funding for the go-ahead on the production. The film was a melodrama, complete with musical numbers sung by Swanson and completed in 21 days. The world premiere was held in London, the first American sound production to do so. Swanson
24310-940: Was a writer who worked for many years at the New York Post , where he was assistant to the editor from 1951 to 1960. He was the co-author (ghostwriter) of Billie Holiday 's autobiography Lady Sings the Blues , the author of Sugar Blues , a 1975 best-selling health book still in print, and the author of the English version of Georges Ohsawa 's You Are All Sanpaku. They met in the mid-1960s and moved in together. Swanson shared her husband's enthusiasm for macrobiotic diets , and they traveled widely together to speak about nutrition. Swanson and her husband first got to know John Lennon and Yoko Ono because they were fans of Dufty's work. Swanson testified on Lennon's behalf at his immigration hearing in New York City, which led to his becoming
24480-579: Was also a good actress. Judging by the number of people who think she was Norma Desmond, maybe a little too good.” – Biographer Lon Davis in Silent Lives: 100 Biographies of the Silent Film Era. (2008). The film Sunset Boulevard was conceived by director Billy Wilder and screenwriter Charles Brackett , and came to include writer D. M. Marshman Jr. They bandied about the name of Mae West , whose public persona even in her senior years
24650-416: Was also having differences with his distributor, Earle Hammons of Educational. Jack White , Educational's leading producer, explained, "We put Mack Sennett out of business. Theaters had [our] comedies booked solid. Sennett was very temperamental and wanted the exhibitor to do certain things, but they wouldn't stand for it. Sennett wouldn't stand for Hammons not telling him how much [money] he was cutting out of
24820-541: Was also her first color film, the poorly received 3 for Bedroom C in 1952. Nationally syndicated columnist Suzy called it "one of the worst movies ever made." In 1956, Swanson made Nero's Mistress , an Italian film shot in Rome, which starred Alberto Sordi , Vittorio de Sica and Brigitte Bardot . Her final screen appearance, in 1974, was as herself in Airport 1975 . Swanson hosted The Gloria Swanson Hour , one of
24990-460: Was an open secret in Hollywood. He took over all of her personal and business affairs and was supposed to make her millions. Kennedy left her after the disastrous Queen Kelly . After the marriage to Henri and her affair with Kennedy was over, Swanson became acquainted with Michael Farmer, the man who would become her fourth husband. They met by chance in Paris when Swanson was being fitted by Coco Chanel for her 1931 film Tonight or Never . Farmer
25160-423: Was as a sex symbol, but she objected to playing a has-been. Mary Pickford was also considered for the lead role of Norma Desmond. It was director George Cukor who suggested Swanson, noting that she was once such a valuable asset to her studio that she was "carried in a sedan chair from her dressing room to the set". The storyline of the film follows a faded silent movie actress Norma Desmond (Swanson), in love with
25330-460: Was born on October 7, 1920. In 1923, she adopted one-year-old Sonny Smith, whom she renamed Joseph Patrick Swanson after her father. During their divorce proceedings, Somborn accused her of adultery with 13 men, including Cecil B. DeMille and Marshall Neilan . The public sensationalism led to Swanson having a " morals clause " added to her studio contract. Somborn was granted a divorce in Los Angeles, on September 19, 1923. My marriage to Henri gave me
25500-415: Was compiled from photoplay music by the pianist, organist, orchestra conductor or the movie studio itself, which included a cue sheet with the film. These sheets were often lengthy, with detailed notes about effects and moods to watch for. Starting with the mostly original score composed by Joseph Carl Breil for D. W. Griffith 's epic The Birth of a Nation (1915), it became relatively common for
25670-478: Was controversial, the door had been opened for a new approach to the presentation of classic silent films. Today, a large number of soloists, music ensembles, and orchestras perform traditional and contemporary scores for silent films internationally. The legendary theater organist Gaylord Carter continued to perform and record his original silent film scores until shortly before his death in 2000; some of those scores are available on DVD reissues. Other purveyors of
25840-600: Was eventually recruited by Famous Players–Lasky /Paramount Pictures, where she was put under contract for seven years and became a global superstar. She starred in a series of films about society, directed by Cecil B. DeMille , including Male and Female (1919). She continued as a successful movie star in The Affairs of Anatol (1921) and Beyond the Rocks (1922). She also starred in critically acclaimed performances such as Zaza (1923) and Madame Sans-Gêne (1925). In 1925, Swanson joined United Artists as one of
26010-451: Was expensive for film. However, by using projectors with dual- and triple-blade shutters the flicker rate is multiplied two or three times higher than the number of film frames — each frame being flashed two or three times on screen. A three-blade shutter projecting a 16 fps film will slightly surpass Edison's figure, giving the audience 48 images per second. During the silent era projectors were commonly fitted with 3-bladed shutters. Since
26180-477: Was finalized on December 12, 1918. Under California law in that era, after a divorce was granted, there was a one-year waiting period before it became finalized so that neither of the parties could remarry. She married Herbert K. Somborn on December 20, 1919. He was at that time president of Equity Pictures Corporation and later the owner of the Brown Derby restaurant. Their daughter, Gloria Swanson Somborn,
26350-417: Was finalized. Following a four-month recuperation from her abortion, they returned to the United States as European nobility. Swanson now held the title of Marquise. She received a huge welcome home with parades in both New York and Los Angeles. He became a film executive representing Pathé (USA) in France. This marriage ended in divorce in 1930. In spite of the divorce they remained close, and Falaise became
26520-492: Was four months pregnant with Michelle Bridget Farmer, who was born on April 5, 1932. Swanson and Farmer divorced in 1934 after she became involved with married British actor Herbert Marshall . The media reported widely on her affair with Marshall. After almost three years with the actor, Swanson left him once she became convinced he would never divorce his wife Edna Best , for her. In an early manuscript of her autobiography written in her own hand decades later, Swanson recalled "I
26690-410: Was hampered by long exposure times for photographic emulsions , until Eadweard Muybridge managed to record a chronophotographic sequence in 1878. After others had animated his pictures in zoetropes , Muybridge started lecturing with his own zoopraxiscope animation projector in 1880. The work of other pioneering chronophotographers, including Étienne-Jules Marey and Ottomar Anschütz , furthered
26860-409: Was hesitant to hire Stroheim, who was known for being difficult to deal with and who was unwilling to work within any budget. Kennedy, nevertheless, was insistent and was able to get Stroheim released from contractual obligations to producer Pat Powers . Stroheim worked for several months on writing the basic script. Filming of Queen Kelly began in November. His filming was slow, albeit meticulous, and
27030-505: Was in the 1971 Broadway production of Butterflies Are Free at the Booth Theatre . Kevin Brownlow and David Gill interviewed her for Hollywood , a television history of the silent era. Swanson was a vegetarian and an early health food advocate who was known for bringing her own meals to public functions in a tin box. She was known for her love of fragrances and was often portrayed among her wide collection of bottles. For
27200-403: Was later distributed in the United States by Francis Ford Coppola , with a live orchestral score composed by his father Carmine Coppola . In 1984, an edited restoration of Metropolis (1927) was released with a new rock music score by producer-composer Giorgio Moroder . Although the contemporary score, which included pop songs by Freddie Mercury , Pat Benatar , and Jon Anderson of Yes ,
27370-658: Was mobbed by adoring fans. Before leaving London, she sang at a concert carried over the BBC. What a Widow! in 1930 was the final film for Gloria Productions. Mary Pickford and her husband Douglas Fairbanks hosted the March 29, 1928, episode of the Dodge Hour radio program, originating from Pickford's private bungalow at United Artists, and broadcast to audiences in American movie theaters. The brainchild of Joseph Schenck, it
27540-573: Was never so convincingly and thoroughly loved as I was by Herbert Marshall." Davey was a wealthy investment broker whom Swanson met in October 1944 while she was appearing in A Goose for the Gander . They married January 29, 1945. Swanson had initially thought she was going to be able to retire from acting, but the marriage was troubled from the start by Davey's alcoholism. Erratic behavior and acrimonious recriminations followed. Swanson and her daughter Michelle Farmer visited an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and gathered AA pamphlets, which they placed around
27710-514: Was no actual standard. William Kennedy Laury Dickson , an Edison employee, settled on the astonishingly fast 40 frames per second. Additionally, cameramen of the era insisted that their cranking technique was exactly 16 fps, but modern examination of the films shows this to be in error, and that they often cranked faster. Unless carefully shown at their intended speeds silent films can appear unnaturally fast or slow. However, some scenes were intentionally undercranked during shooting to accelerate
27880-625: Was nominated for the Academy Award for Live Action Short Film in the comedy division for producing The Loud Mouth (with Matt McHugh , in the sports-heckler role later taken in Columbia Pictures remakes by Charley Chase and Shemp Howard ). Sennett also won an Academy Award in the novelty division for his film Wrestling Swordfish , also in 1932. Mack Sennett often clung to outmoded techniques, making his early-1930s films seem dated and quaint: he dressed some of his actors in eccentric makeups and loud costumes, which were amusing in
28050-686: Was released in 1926, would become known for her naturalistic acting. According to Anton Kaes, a silent film scholar from the University of California, Berkeley, American silent cinema began to see a shift in acting techniques between 1913 and 1921, influenced by techniques found in German silent film. This is mainly attributed to the influx of emigrants from the Weimar Republic , "including film directors, producers, cameramen, lighting and stage technicians, as well as actors and actresses". Until
28220-575: Was solved with the introduction of a three-bladed shutter (since 1902), causing two more interruptions per frame. Another widely held misconception is that silent films lacked color. In fact, color was far more prevalent in silent films than in the first few decades of sound films. By the early 1920s, 80 percent of movies could be seen in some sort of color, usually in the form of film tinting or toning or even hand coloring, but also with fairly natural two-color processes such as Kinemacolor and Technicolor . Traditional colorization processes ceased with
28390-440: Was still in its infancy, churning out short subjects, without the advantage of today's casting agencies and talent agents promoting their latest find. A willing extra was often a valuable asset. Her first role was a brief walk-on with actress Gerda Holmes , that paid an enormous (in those days) $ 3.25. The studio soon offered her steady work at $ 13.25 (equivalent to $ 403 in 2023) per week. Swanson left school to work full-time at
28560-577: Was the "mystery guest" on What's My Line . She acted in "Behind the Locked Door" on The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1964 and, in the same year, she was nominated for a Golden Globe award for her performance in Burke's Law . She made a guest appearance on The Dick Cavett Show in the summer of 1970; a guest on the same show as Janis Joplin . She made a notable appearance in a 1966 episode of The Beverly Hillbillies , in which she plays herself. In
28730-454: Was the cause of this outburst from director Marshall Neilan in 1917: "The sooner the stage people who have come into pictures get out, the better for the pictures." In other cases, directors such as John Griffith Wray required their actors to deliver larger-than-life expressions for emphasis. As early as 1914, American viewers had begun to make known their preference for greater naturalness on screen. Silent films became less vaudevillian in
28900-511: Was the son of Irish Catholic John Sinnott and Catherine Foy. His parents married in 1879 in Tingwick , Quebec and moved the same year to Richmond, Quebec where Sinnott was hired as a laborer. By 1883, when Sennett's brother George was born, Sinnott was working as an innkeeper, a position he held for many years. Sennett's parents had all their children and raised their family in Richmond, then
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