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130-433: The original Bing was introduced in 1923. The Bing originally came in four flavors: cherry, pineapple, vanilla, and maple. It is still made by hand today. Sometime in the 1920s to 1930s, the candy bar was released in a "Crow Bar" package that included trading cards featuring film stars. Marty Palmer himself was only vaguely aware that trading cards had been packaged with one of Palmer's candy bars until someone sent him copies of

260-484: A Theosophist who had no formal architectural training, the house combines Moorish and Mission Revival styles and contains such Arts and Crafts features as art-glass windows (whose red lotus design Astor called "unfortunate"), and Batchelder tiles. Moorcrest, which has since undergone a multimillion-dollar renovation, remains standing. Before the Langhankes bought it, it was rented by Charlie Chaplin , whose tenure

390-513: A motion pictures star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6701 Hollywood Boulevard. 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 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"

520-531: A naturalized U.S. citizen; her American mother was born in Jacksonville, Illinois , and had Portuguese roots. They married on August 3, 1904, in Lyons, Kansas . Astor's father taught German at Quincy High School until the U.S. entered World War I . Later on, he took up light farming. Astor's mother, who had always wanted to be an actress, taught drama and elocution. Astor was home-schooled in academics and

650-703: A nervous breakdown . During the months of her illness, she was attended to by Dr. Franklyn Thorpe, whom she married on June 29, 1931. That year, she starred as Nancy Gibson in Smart Woman , playing a woman determined to retrieve her husband from a gold-digging flirtation. In May 1932, the Thorpes purchased a yacht and sailed to Hawaii. Astor was expecting a baby in August, but gave birth in June in Honolulu . The child,

780-717: A "masterpiece" in the August 1984 issue of Films in Review. Soon unhappy with her marriage, due to Thorpe having a short temper and a habit of listing her faults, by 1933 Astor wanted a divorce. At a friend's suggestion, she took a break from movie-making in 1933 and visited New York alone. While there, enjoying a whirlwind social life, she met the playwright George S. Kaufman , who was in a strong, but open marriage. She documented their affair in her diary. Thorpe, by now making use of his wife's income, discovered Astor's diary, and told Astor that her liaisons with other men, including Kaufman, would be used in any divorce proceeding to support

910-445: 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

1040-589: A Moorish style mansion with 1 acre (4,000 m ) of land known as " Moorcrest " in the hills above Hollywood. The Langhankes not only lived lavishly off of Astor's earnings, but kept her a virtual prisoner inside Moorcrest. Moorcrest is known not only for its ornate style, but its place as the most lavish residence associated with the Krotona Colony, a utopian society founded by the Theosophical Society in 1912. Built by Marie Russak Hotchener,

1170-522: A comeback in Return to Peyton Place (1961) playing Roberta Carter, the domineering mother who insists the "shocking" novel written by Allison Mackenzie should be banned from the school library, and received good reviews for her performance. According to film scholar Gavin Lambert, Astor invented memorable bits of business in her last scene of that film, where Roberta's vindictive motives are exposed. After

1300-499: A contract with Fox for $ 3,750 a week. In 1928, she married director Kenneth Hawks at her family home, Moorcrest. He gave her a Packard automobile as a wedding present and the couple moved into a home high up on Lookout Mountain in Los Angeles above Beverly Hills . As the film industry made the transition to talkies , Fox gave her a sound test, which she failed because the studio found her voice to be too deep. Though this result

1430-480: A daughter, was named Marylyn Hauoli Thorpe: her first name combined her parents' names, and her middle name is Hawaiian. When they returned to Southern California , Astor freelanced and gained the pivotal role of Barbara Willis in MGM 's Red Dust (1932) with Clark Gable and Jean Harlow . In late 1932, Astor signed a featured player contract with Warner Bros. Meanwhile, besides spending lavishly, her parents invested in

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1560-472: A finalist and then runner-up in the national contest. Her father then moved the family to New York City, in order for his daughter to act in motion pictures. He managed her affairs from September 1920 to June 1930. A Manhattan photographer, Charles Albin, saw her photograph and asked the young girl with haunting eyes and long auburn hair whose nickname was "Rusty" to pose for him. The Albin photographs were seen by Harry Durant of Famous Players–Lasky and Astor

1690-523: A flair for comedy as The Princess Centimillia in the Preston Sturges film, The Palm Beach Story (also 1942) for Paramount. In February 1943, Astor's father, Otto Langhanke, died in Cedars of Lebanon Hospital as a result of a heart attack complicated by influenza . His wife and daughter were at his bedside. That same year, Astor signed a seven-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM),

1820-413: 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

1950-469: 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

2080-524: A move she soon came to regret. She was kept busy, playing what appeared to be under-written and largely interchangeable supporting roles, a category Astor later dubbed "Mothers for Metro." After Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), the studio allowed her to debut on Broadway in Many Happy Returns (1945). The play was a failure, but Astor received good reviews. On loan-out to 20th Century Fox , she played

2210-645: 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 ,

2340-450: 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 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

2470-627: A play with friend Florence Eldridge , film offers returned, and she resumed her career in sound pictures. In 1936, Astor's career was nearly destroyed by scandal. She had an affair with playwright George S. Kaufman and was branded an adulterous wife by her former husband during a custody fight over their daughter. Overcoming these stumbling blocks in her private life, she went on to greater film success, eventually winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of concert pianist Sandra Kovak in The Great Lie (1941). Astor

2600-518: A priest, Peter Ciklic, also a practicing psychologist , who encouraged her to write about her experiences as part of therapy. She also separated from her fourth husband, Thomas Wheelock (a stockbroker she married on Christmas Day 1945), but did not actually divorce him until 1955. In 1952, she was cast in the leading role of the play The Time of the Cuckoo , which was later made into the movie Summertime (1955), and subsequently toured with it. After

2730-503: 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

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2860-498: 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

2990-514: A successful theatre tour of Don Juan in Hell directed by Agnes Moorehead and co-starring Ricardo Montalbán . Astor's memoir , My Story: An Autobiography , was published in 1959, becoming a sensation in its day and a bestseller. It was the result of Father Ciklic urging her to write. Though she spoke of her troubled personal life, her parents, her marriages, the scandals, her battle with alcoholism, and other areas of her life, she did not mention

3120-593: A trip around the world in 1964, Astor was lured away from her Malibu, California home, where she was gardening and working on her third novel, to make what she decided would be her final film. She was offered the small role as a key figure, Jewel Mayhew, in the murder mystery Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), starring her friend Bette Davis . She filmed her final scene with Cecil Kellaway at Oak Alley Plantation in southern Louisiana. In A Life on Film , she described her character as "a little old lady, waiting to die." Astor decided it would serve as her swan song in

3250-753: A wealthy widow in Claudia and David (1946). She was also loaned to Paramount to play Fritzi Haller in Desert Fury (1947), the tough owner of a saloon and casino in a small mining town. Before Helen Langhanke died of a heart ailment in January 1947, Astor said she sat in the hospital room with her mother, who was delirious and did not know her, and she listened quietly as her mother told her all about terrible, selfish Lucile, referring to Astor by her birth name. After her death, Astor said she spent countless hours copying her mother's diary so she could read it and

3380-494: 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

3510-481: Is memorialized by an art glass window featuring the Little Tramp . Astor's parents were not Theosophists , though the family was friendly with both Marie Hotchener and her husband Harry, prominent Theosophical Society members. Hotchener negotiated Astor's right to a $ 5 a week allowance (at a time when she was making $ 2,500 a week) and the right to go to work unchaperoned by her mother. The following year when she

3640-451: 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

3770-424: 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 the films. Pianists and organists would play either from sheet music , or improvisation . Sometimes a person would even narrate the inter-title cards for

3900-544: 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

4030-423: The 14th Academy Awards . As Sandra Kovak, the self-absorbed concert pianist who relinquishes her unborn child, her intermittent love interest was played by George Brent , but the film's star was Bette Davis . Davis wanted Astor cast in the role after watching her screen test and seeing her play Tchaikovsky 's Piano Concerto No. 1 . She then recruited Astor to collaborate on rewriting the script, which Davis felt

Twin Bing - Misplaced Pages Continue

4160-640: The Minnesota Twins are known to request them often. Grocery store chain Hy-Vee built a display of over 15,000 Bing bars of all types in 2001 as a response to Palmer Candy Company's March Madness promotion. The current owner showed his creation in the 2004 National Confectioners Association 's All Candy Expo. In 2014, a Twin Bing ice cream was created when the NAIA basketball tournament came to Sioux City, at

4290-535: The Tyson Events Center . The inside of a Twin Bing is a mixture of nougat and fondant , which combines into a cream . Author Steve Almond described the candy as "two brown lumps, about the size of golf balls, roughly textured, and stuck to one another like Siamese twins". Almond also stated that his favorite candy bar is the Twin Bing. William Grimes, the author of Eating Your Words , wrote that

4420-421: 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

4550-565: 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 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

4680-673: The stock market , which often turned out unprofitable. While they remained in Moorcrest, Astor dubbed it a "white elephant," and she refused to maintain the house. She had to turn to the Motion Picture Relief Fund in 1933 to pay her bills. She appeared as the female lead, Hilda Lake, niece of the murder victims, in The Kennel Murder Case (1933), co-starring with William Powell as detective Philo Vance . Film critic William K. Everson pronounced it

4810-526: 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

4940-533: The 1921 film Sentimental Tommy , but her small part in a dream sequence wound up on the cutting room floor . Paramount let her contract lapse. She then appeared in some movie shorts with sequences based on famous paintings. She received critical recognition for the 1921 two-reeler The Beggar Maid . Her first feature-length movie was John Smith (1922), followed that same year by The Man Who Played God . In 1923, she and her parents moved to Hollywood . After appearing in several larger roles at various studios, she

5070-519: 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

5200-646: 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

5330-698: 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

Twin Bing - Misplaced Pages Continue

5460-540: 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

5590-659: The Palmer Company decided to increase the size of Bing candy bars. However, a larger single Bing would have been problematic in vending machines , because of the candy bar's unusual shape. Palmer said of the name change and additional Bing, "Some clever person here, I don't know who, came up with the idea you could put two together and make it a twin", and that the name change was "natural". The altered name also had an effect of increasing interest. According to Marty Palmer, parents of newborn twins give out Twin Bings, and fans of

5720-515: 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

5850-458: The Twin Bing "narrowly beats out the Idaho Spud as the strangest candy bar still in production". The Twin Bing was listed among ten candy bars in an article from Chowhound titled "Candy Bars Worth Crossing State Lines For". The article describes the Twin Bing as "Two brown-gold balls of sweet cherry cream covered with crushed peanuts and chocolate". The Sioux City Journal , which refers to

5980-474: 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 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

6110-455: 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

6240-547: 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

6370-687: 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

6500-412: 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

6630-415: 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 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

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6760-562: 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)

6890-458: 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

7020-476: 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

7150-808: The candy as "one of Sioux City's quintessential treats", noted in 2016 that a bar in a local hotel makes a signature drink with the Twin Bing: the "Twin Bing Martini" contains Godiva Chocolate Liqueur , cherry-flavored Dr. McGillicuddy's , Frangelico , and splashes of Coca-Cola and grenadine. Sugar , peanuts , corn syrup , hydrogenated palm kernel oil , cocoa powder , whey , invert sugar , salt , egg whites , soy lecithin , artificial flavors, FD&C Red 3 , FD&C Red 40 , citric acid , invertase , cream of tartar . Mary Astor Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke , better known professionally as Mary Astor (May 3, 1906 – September 25, 1987),

7280-410: The cards. Comprising more than 100 cards, the series included actors such as Mary Astor and Charlie Chaplin . Bings were sold singly until the 1960s, when a second bar was added, likely in 1969, according to Marty Palmer. As the cost of ingredients rose, candy companies initially reduced the sizes of their candy bars, then later increased the price, formerly a nickel, to a dime. With the higher price,

7410-461: 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

7540-504: The charge that she was an unfit mother. Thorpe divorced Astor in April 1935. A custody battle over their four-year-old daughter, Marylyn, drew press attention to Astor in 1936. Astor's diary was never formally offered as evidence during the trial, but Thorpe and his lawyers constantly referred to it, and its notoriety grew. Astor admitted that the diary existed and that she had documented her affair with Kaufman, but maintained that many of

7670-516: The couple spend time alone together; Mary was only seventeen and legally underage. It was only after Barrymore convinced the Langhankes that his acting lessons required privacy that the couple managed to be alone at all. Their secret engagement ended largely because of the Langhankes' interference and Astor's inability to escape their heavy-handed authority, and because Barrymore became involved with Astor's fellow WAMPAS Baby Star Dolores Costello , whom he later married. In 1925, Astor's parents bought

7800-498: 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

7930-459: 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

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8060-479: The diary became public when Astor's role in Dodsworth (1936), as Edith Cortwright, was beginning to be filmed. Producer Samuel Goldwyn was urged to fire her because her contract included a morals clause. Goldwyn refused. With Walter Huston in the title role, Dodsworth received rave reviews on release, and the public's acceptance assured the studios that casting Astor remained a viable proposition. Ultimately,

8190-401: 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,

8320-641: The episode "Fearful Hour" of the Gary Merrill NBC series Justice in the role of a desperately poor and aging film star who attempts suicide to avoid exposure as a thief. She also played an ex-film star on the Boris Karloff -hosted Thriller in an episode titled "Rose's Last Summer." Astor starred on Broadway again in The Starcross Story (1954), another failure, and returned to southern California in 1956. She then went on

8450-555: 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

8580-481: 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

8710-411: 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

8840-648: 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

8970-660: The grounds of the Motion Picture & Television Country House , the industry's retirement facility in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles , where she had a private table when she chose to eat in the resident dining room. She appeared in the television documentary series Hollywood: A Celebration of the American Silent Film (1980), co-produced by Kevin Brownlow , in which she discussed her roles during

9100-465: 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

9230-715: 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

9360-535: 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 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

9490-860: 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

9620-532: 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

9750-478: 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

9880-615: 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 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

10010-426: 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

10140-401: 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

10270-467: The movie business. After 109 movies in a career spanning 45 years, she turned in her Screen Actors Guild card and retired. Astor later moved to Fountain Valley, California , where she lived near her son, Anthony del Campo (from her third marriage to Mexican film editor Manuel del Campo ), and his family, until 1971. That same year, suffering from a chronic heart condition, she moved to a small cottage on

10400-619: The movie industry or her career in detail. In 1971, a second book was published, A Life on Film , where she discussed her career. It, too, became a bestseller. Astor also tried her hand at fiction, writing the novels The Incredible Charley Carewe (1960), The Image of Kate (1962), which was published in 1964 in a German translation as Jahre und Tage , The O'Conners (1964), Goodbye, Darling, be Happy (1965), and A Place Called Saturday (1968). Astor appeared in several movies during this time, including Stranger in My Arms (1959). She made

10530-477: The name of Mary Astor always comes up, and everybody agrees that she was an actress of special attraction, whose qualities of depth and reality always seemed to illuminate the parts she played." Astor was born in Quincy, Illinois , the only child of Otto Ludwig Wilhelm Langhanke and Helen Marie de Vasconcellos. Her parents were teachers. Her German father emigrated to the United States from Berlin in 1891 and became

10660-520: 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

10790-583: The next few years, she had roles on film in The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), John Ford 's The Hurricane (1937), Midnight (1939) and Brigham Young (1940). In John Huston ’s classic The Maltese Falcon (1941), Astor played scheming temptress Brigid O'Shaughnessy. The film, based on the novel by Dashiell Hammett , also starred Humphrey Bogart and featured Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet . For her performance in The Great Lie (also in 1941) she won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress in

10920-680: The offer. At the same time, Astor's drinking was growing troublesome. She admitted to alcoholism as far back as the 1930s, but it had never interfered with her work schedule or performance. She hit bottom in 1949 and went into a sanitarium for alcoholics. In 1951, she made a frantic call to her priest and said that she had taken too many sleeping pills. She was taken to a hospital and the police reported that she had attempted suicide, this being her third overdose in two years. The story made headline news. She maintained it had been an accident. That same year, she joined Alcoholics Anonymous and converted to Roman Catholicism . She credited her recovery to

11050-518: The parts that had been referred to were forgeries, following the theft of the diary from her desk. The diary was deemed inadmissible as a mutilated document because Thorpe had removed pages referring to himself and had fabricated content. The trial judge, Goodwin J. Knight , ordered it sealed and impounded. Florabel Muir , then with the New York Daily News , is known to have invented fabricated diary passages in her articles. News of

11180-450: 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

11310-438: 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

11440-424: 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

11570-491: 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 ,

11700-482: The scandal caused minimal harm to Astor's career, which was actually revitalized because of the custody fight and the publicity it generated. In 1952, by court order, Astor's diary was removed from the bank vault where it had been sequestered for 16 years, and was destroyed. In 1937, Astor returned to the stage in well-received productions of Noël Coward 's Tonight at 8.30 , The Astonished Heart , and Still Life . She also began performing regularly on radio . Over

11830-517: The shoot in her memoir A Life on Film : The girls all giggled and chattered and made a game of every scene. Taylor was engaged, and in love, and talking on the telephone most of the time (which is fine normally, but not when the production clock is ticking away the company's money). June Allyson chewed gum constantly and irritatingly, and Maggie O'Brien looked at me as though she were planning something very unpleasant. The studio wanted to renew her contract, promising better roles, but she declined

11960-440: 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

12090-470: 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

12220-524: 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

12350-483: 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

12480-623: The silent film period. After years of retirement, she had been urged to appear in Brownlow's documentary by a former sister-in-law Bessie Love , who also appeared in the series. Astor died on September 25, 1987, at age 81, of respiratory failure due to pulmonary emphysema while in the hospital at the Motion Picture House complex. She is interred in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California . Astor has

12610-427: 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

12740-438: 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

12870-422: The sophisticated comedy Dry Martini (also 1928). She later said that, while working on the latter, she "absorbed and assumed something of the atmosphere and emotional climate of the picture." She said it offered "a new and exciting point of view; with its specious doctrine of self-indulgence, it rushed into the vacuum of my moral sense and captivated me completely." When her Warner Bros. contract ended, she signed

13000-438: 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

13130-467: 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

13260-433: 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

13390-562: 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 ,

13520-726: The tour, Astor lived in New York for four years and worked in the theater and on television. During the 1952 presidential election , Astor, a lifelong Democrat , supported the campaign of Adlai Stevenson . Her TV debut was in The Missing Years (1954) for Kraft Television Theatre . She acted frequently in TV during the ensuing years and appeared on many big shows of the time, including The United States Steel Hour , Alfred Hitchcock Presents , Rawhide , Dr. Kildare , Burke's Law , and Ben Casey . In 1954, she appeared in

13650-629: 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

13780-475: 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

13910-409: 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

14040-445: Was 19, Astor, fed up with her father's constant physical and psychological abuse as well as his control of her money, climbed from her second floor bedroom window and escaped to a hotel in Hollywood, as recounted in her memoirs. Hotchener facilitated her return by persuading Otto Langhanke to give Astor a savings account with $ 500 and the freedom to come and go as she pleased. Nevertheless, Astor did not gain control of her salary until she

14170-402: Was 26 years old, at which point her parents sued her for financial support. Astor settled the case by agreeing to pay her parents $ 100 a month. Otto Langhanke put Moorcrest up for auction in the early 1930s, hoping to realize more than the $ 80,000 he had been offered for it; it sold for $ 25,000. Astor continued to appear in movies at various studios. When her Paramount contract ended in 1925, she

14300-405: Was a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract player through most of the 1940s and continued to work in film, television and on stage until her retirement in 1964. She authored five novels. Her autobiography was a bestseller, as was her later book, A Life on Film , which was about her career. Director Lindsay Anderson wrote of Astor in 1990 that when "two or three who love the cinema are gathered together,

14430-688: 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

14560-484: Was again signed by Paramount, this time to a one-year contract at $ 500 a week. After she appeared in several more movies, John Barrymore saw her photograph in a magazine and wanted her cast in his upcoming movie. On loan-out to Warner Bros. , she starred with him in Beau Brummel (1924). The older actor wooed the young actress, but their relationship was severely constrained by Astor's parents' unwillingness to let

14690-481: Was an American actress. Although her career spanned several decades, she may be best remembered for her performance as Brigid O'Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon (1941). Astor began her long motion picture career when a teenager in the silent movies of the early 1920s. When talkies arrived, her voice was initially considered too masculine and she was off the screen for a year. After she appeared in

14820-415: 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

14950-478: 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

15080-451: 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

15210-808: Was killed in a mid-air plane crash over the Pacific . Astor had just finished a matinee performance at the Majestic when Florence Eldridge gave her the news. She was rushed from the theatre to Eldridge's apartment. A replacement, Doris Lloyd , stepped in for the next show. Astor remained with Eldridge at her apartment for some time, then soon returned to work. Shortly after her husband's death, she debuted in her first talkie, Ladies Love Brutes (1930) at Paramount, in which she co-starred with her friend Fredric March . While her career picked up, her private life remained difficult. After working on several more movies, she suffered delayed shock over her husband's death and had

15340-403: 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 ,

15470-496: Was mediocre and needed work to make it more interesting. Astor further followed Davis's advice and sported a bobbed hairdo for the role. The soundtrack of the movie in the scenes where she plays the concerto, with violent hand movements on the piano keyboard, was dubbed by pianist Max Rabinovitch. Davis deliberately stepped back to allow Astor to shine in her key scenes. In her Oscar acceptance speech, Astor thanked Bette Davis and Tchaikovsky. Astor and Davis became good friends. Astor

15600-514: 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

15730-564: Was not propelled into the upper echelon of movie stars by these successes, however. She always declined offers to star in her own right. Not wanting the responsibility of top billing and having to carry the picture, she preferred the security of being a featured player. She reunited with Humphrey Bogart and Sydney Greenstreet in John Huston 's Across the Pacific (1942). Though usually cast in dramatic or melodramatic roles, Astor showed

15860-469: Was probably due to early sound equipment and inexperienced technicians, the studio released her from her contract and she found herself out of work for eight months in 1929. During her time off, Astor took voice training and singing lessons with Francis Stuart, an exponent of Francesco Lamperti , but no roles were offered. Her acting career was then given a boost by her friend, Florence Eldridge , (wife of Fredric March ), in whom she confided. Eldridge, who

15990-686: 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

16120-574: Was signed at Warner Bros. Among her assignments was another role with John Barrymore, this time in Don Juan (1926). She was named one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars in 1926, along with Mary Brian , Dolores Costello , Joan Crawford , Dolores del Río , Janet Gaynor , and Fay Wray . On loan to Fox Film Corporation , Astor starred in Dressed to Kill (1928), which received good reviews, and

16250-426: Was signed to a six-month contract with Paramount Pictures . Her name was changed to Mary Astor during a conference among Paramount Pictures chief Jesse Lasky , film producer Walter Wanger , and gossip columnist Louella Parsons . Astor's first screen test was directed by Lillian Gish , who was so impressed with her recitation of Shakespeare that she shot a thousand feet of her. She made her debut at age 14 in

16380-575: 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

16510-529: Was surprised to learn how much she was hated. At MGM, Astor continued being cast in undistinguished, colorless mother roles. One exception was when she played a prostitute in the film noir Act of Violence (1948). The last straw came when she was cast as Marmee March in Little Women (1949). Astor found no redemption in playing what she considered another humdrum mother and grew despondent. She later described her disappointment with her cast members and

16640-672: Was taught to play the piano by her father, who insisted she practice daily. Her piano talents came in handy when she played piano in her films The Great Lie and Meet Me in St. Louis . In 1919, Astor sent a photograph of herself to a beauty contest in Motion Picture Magazine , becoming a semifinalist. When Astor was 15, the family moved to Chicago, Illinois, with her father teaching German in public schools. Astor took drama lessons and appeared in various amateur stage productions. The following year, she sent another photograph to Motion Picture Magazine , this time becoming

16770-454: 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

16900-647: Was to star in the stage play Among the Married at the Majestic Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles , recommended Astor for the second female lead. The play was a success, and her voice was deemed suitable, being described as low and vibrant. She was happy to work again, but her happiness soon ended. On January 2, 1930, while filming sequences for the Fox movie Such Men Are Dangerous , Kenneth Hawks

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