#silent fims

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Boris Karloff

November 23, 1887 - February 2, 1969

☆ English actor who was active in the silent film era, beginning his film career as an extra around 1916 and appearing in over 40 films before finding fame in early talkies. He worked in Hollywood during the 1920s, featuring in movies like The DeadlierSex (1920), Dynamite Dan (1924), and Tarzan and the Golden Lion (1927). 

He portrayed Frankenstein's monster in the horror film Frankenstein (1931), his 82nd film, established him as a horror icon, and he reprised the role for the sequels Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and Son of Frankenstein (1939).

He also appeared as Imhotep in The Mummy (1932), and voiced the Grinch in, as well as narrating, the animated television special of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966), which won him a Grammy Award.

Aside from his numerous film roles (174 films), Karloff acted in many live stage plays and appeared on dozens of radio and television programs as well.

For his contribution to film and television, Karloff was awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on 8 February 1960.

[toughtalkers]

Evelyn Nesbit

December 25, 1884 –January 17, 1967

☆ American artists' model, chorus girl, actress. and acclaimed beauty, was a popular fashion model of the Guilded Age and the Stanford White scandal (the 1906 murder of famed architect Stanford White by millionaire Harry Thaw, fueled by Thaw's jealousy over White's earlier affair with Thaw's young wife, actress and model Evelyn Nesbit, which began when she was 16, involving allegations of White drugging and raping her. The resulting sensational "Trial of the Century" exposed elite society's secrets, with Thaw pleading temporary insanity, leading to a media frenzy and public fascination with the love triangle and White's debauched lifestyle).

Although she was a Vaudeville star, press coverage touted her physical charms and potent stage presence, and her acting skills were rarely mentioned.

She appeared in several silent films during the early 1910s and early 1920s. Her filmography includes titles like Threads of Destiny (1914), Redemption (1917), Her Mistake (1918), and The Hidden Woman (1922).

[toughtalkers]

Buster Keaton

October 4, 1895 – February 1, 1966

☆ American legendary silent film actor, comedian, filmmaker, director, and producer. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest comedic talents of the silent era during the 1920s, in which he performed physical comedy and inventive stunts.

He frequently maintained a stoic, deadpan facial expression that became his trademark and earned him the nickname "The Great Stone Face"

Busters acting career spanned from his childhood in vaudeville starting around 1899 until his death in 1966.

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Colleen Moore

August 19, 1899 –January 25, 1988

☆ American film actress who began her career during the silent film era and continued into the early sound film era. Moore became one of the most fashionable (and highly-paid) stars of the era and along with others helped popularize the bobbed haircut.

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Vilma Banky ~born January 9, 1901 in Nagydorog, Tolna County, Austria-Hungary

🎞️Hungarian-American silent film actress she was hailed as "The Hungarian Rhapsody" and was an immediate hit with American audiences. The New York Times remarked in its review of her first American film, The Dark Angel (1925), that she "is a young person of rare beauty and so exquisite. Known for her work with Rudolph Valentino and Ronald Colman. (d. 1991)

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Mary Nash

August 15, 1884 – December 3, 1976

☆ American stage actress in New York and London, and vaudeville. After brief appearances as a dancer at the Herald Square Theatre in 1904, she made her off-Broadway debut on Christmas Day 1905 as Leonora Dunbar in James M. Barrie's Alice-Sit-by-the-Fire, which starred Ethel Barrymore.

Her Hollywood career began in 1934 and she is best remembered on screen for being nasty to Shirley Temple in Heidi (1937) and The Little Princess (1939), and for playing Katharine Hepburn's elegant and proper society mother in The Philadelphia Story (1940).

[toughtalkers]

🎬 Ramon Novarro was a Mexican actor that began his career in American silent films in 1917. He eventually became a leading man and one of the top box-office attractions of the 1920s and early '30s.

Novarro was promoted by MGM as a "Latin lover" and became known as a sex symbol after the death of Rudolph Valentino. He is recognized as the first Latin American actor to succeed in Hollywood.