Classics of the silent screen (1959)

Foreword This is an enthusiastic book. I love the silent screen and think that the film makers of those days did some magnificent things— some of them so magnificent that they have never been equalled. So you will find a lot of superlatives in this book, such as "masterpiece" and "genius," "great" and "superb." I haven't used these words lightly, and if they turn up with amazing regularity, it is because in this book we are dealing with the cream of the crop— seventy-five players selected from hundreds, fifty films selected from thousands! They have all been chosen because, in one way or another, they are great. I have no patience with writers on the film who temper their respect for motion pictures with condescension, who use phrases like "commendable" and "not without interest" in place of the sincere and unrestrained praise so many of these grand films and performers so richly deserve. In compiling a book of this sort, the biggest problem is not so much which films and players to include, but rather which ones to leave out. It is a tremendously difficult decision to make. I feel that Chaplin's The Gold Rush is a "must"— yet in its way his Easy Street is equally good, and perhaps even funnier. Harold Lloyd's Safety Last cannot possibly be omitted— but this does not mean that Buster Keaton's Our Hospitality is not just as good. Including the best of Lloyd and the best of Keaton seems only a partial solution to the dilemma. And what of all the other comedians —from cheerful, breezy little Billy Bevan to the underrated and brilliant Charlie Chase? And the dramatic stars? It was a pity not to have been able to include more of the real pioneers, like Hobart Bosworth, Edward Earle and Lois Meredith; such box office stalwarts of the 20's as Antonio Moreno, Bod La Bocque, Monte Blue and Owen Moore; the legions of western idols including Ken Maynard, Buck Jones and Hoot Gibson; or such delightful flapper-age heroines as Marceline Day, Jacqueline Logan, Sue Carol and Shannon Day. I list these names not so much as an advance tip-off as to who isn't in the book (although of course many of them are represented via films), but to stress that there is a definite reason for every name and title that is included. Every one was weighed in terms of historical, box office, artistic or innovational importance. Milton Sills' The Sea Hawk, for example, was a dandy swashbuckler— but I selected in its stead The Black Pirate, which served to illustrate so many additional facets of the development of the movies. Since this book is devoted exclusively to the American silent screen, perhaps I should stress that the foreign stars included— notably Greta Garbo (if one can justifiably call her a foreign star), Pola Negri and Emil Jannings— all achieved fame in Hollywood movies on a par with that of their American contemporaries. Werner Krauss, Buby Weyher, Asta Nielsen and manv other great European luminaries made no films in the United States at all, and the outstanding silent films of such fine directors as Fritz Lang, G. W. Pabst and Bene Clair could hardly be represented, since they made no films in this country until the sound era. However, you'll find, these few names excepted, all of the great directorial talents represented in this book— D. W. Griffith, James Cruze, Charles Chaplin, Herbert Brenon, William Wellman, King Vidor, the great Swedish director Victor Seastrom— and some of the lesser-known but no less worthy directors like William Beaudine, George Fitzmaurice and Albert Parker. In short, this book is (or it is my fond hope that it is) two things. Firstly, and only indirectly, it is a rough history of the silent movies as seen through the films that were either the greatest artistic triumphs or the greatest box office triumphs. Secondly, and more importantly, it is a rich sampling of some of the highspots