1919.02 Charles Chaplin signs the contract establishing United Artists while D.W. Griffith (left), Mary Pickford (center left) and Douglas Fairbanks (right)

By Guest Blogger Amanda Howard

In the four years of Bill and Marie’s courtship (1920-1924), they would have witnessed stunning changes and growth within the film industry, both in what was to become Hollywood and beyond. Motion pictures as a medium were in their adolescence, with all the excitement, creativity, and growing pains that accompany coming of age. To recognize the first ever National Silent Movie Day observed earlier this year, on September 29th, we’ll take a look at some of the stars, films and developments that occurred during this brief but groundbreaking period during the 1920s.

Hollywood Royalty
The previous decade had seen the rise of the movie star as a powerful, bankable commodity. In particular, actors such as America’s Sweetheart, Mary Pickford, her dashing action star husband and original King of Hollywood Douglas Fairbanks, and The Little Tramp himself, Charlie Chaplin. If you know no other silent film stars, you should be aware of these three as the original Hollywood royalty.

Charles Chaplin signs the contract establishing United Artists while D.W. Griffith (left), Mary Pickford (center left) and Douglas Fairbanks (right) look on.

When the three actors plus director D.W. Griffith established the company United Artists in 1919, they cemented the role of the film artist as multi hyphenate: actor-producer-distributor. United Artists sought to secure creative control over the artists’ work, evade the nascent studio system that was attempting to limit the financial independence of actors, and assist other up-and-coming Hollywood filmmakers in doing the same

Fun aside: the landmark Hollywood sign was installed in 1923. Advertising the new Hollywoodland real estate division in the Hollywood Hills, the “land” would eventually be dropped from the sign in 1949.

The Hollywoodland sign pictured shortly after its construction.

Future Icons
Some of the decade’s most iconic performers would land their first roles at the beginning of the 1920s. In 1921, Rudolph Valentino was given his breakthrough role in Rex Ingram’s The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

The Four Horsemen was an epic WWI film adapted by pioneering screenwriter and production executive June Mathis from a novel by Blasco Ibanez. Mathis herself cast Valentino in the role after seeing him in a minor part, fighting for the then-unknown Italian actor based on his obvious charisma and dancing talents.

Mexican actor Ramon Samaniegos, an extra who acted alongside Valentino in The Four Horsemen, would find a similar star image under the pseudonym Ramon Novarro. Novarro’s breakthrough role would come swiftly in another literary adaptation directed by Rex Ingram, The Prisoner of Zenda (1923).

Latinx actor and musician Ramon Novarro (referred to here as Mr. Samanegos [sic]) spotlighted as Rex Ingram’s newest find in Picture-Play magazine, June 1922. Ingram declares that he will cast the actor in an upcoming adaptation of Ben-Hur if given the opportunity to direct it. Ingram made good on his word and the lead role in Ben-Hur became one of Novarro’s most celebrated performances.

After winning a 1921 “Fame & Fortune” contest sponsored by a Motion Picture Classic magazine, the original Hollywood It Girl, Clara Bow, landed her first film part in Down to the Sea in Ships (1922). Her prize for winning the contest, a small role in the now-lost Beyond the Rainbow, is rumored to have been cut before release. However, this is unproven.

Clara Bow circa 1925

Clara Bow would go on to become Paramount Studios’ most popular and profitable stars in the ‘20s. She was the quintessential flapper: spirited, rebellious, and tender-hearted. Though still a box office draw, after a series of scandals and a nervous breakdown in the late ‘20s Bow would retire from acting in 1931 at just 26 years old.

While trailblazing Chinese-American actor Anna May Wong (Wong Liu-tsong) made her film debut in 1919 at the age of 14, she landed a leading role in The Toll of the Sea in 1922. In addition to featuring Asian-American actors, the film is unique in its use of the two-strip Technicolor process. By 1924, Anna May Wong would be starring alongside Douglas Fairbanks in The Thief of Baghdad.

Anna May Wong’s career made the transition from silent to sound films in the late 1920s, and she would create some of her most enduring work in Europe in films such as Picadilly (1929).

Scandal and Censorship
In 1920, as now, the private lives of movie stars became fodder for the scandal sheets. The accidental fatal poisoning of free-spirited flapper actor Olive Thomas in September 1920; the mysterious death of actor, model and designer Virginia Rappe after a party hosted by comedian Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle in September of the following year; the still officially unsolved murder of director William Desmond Taylor in February 1922; and the death of leading man Wallace Reid in January 1923 from substance abuse drew massive attention to Hollywood as a hotbed of wild partying, rampant addiction, and violence.

Olive Thomas eulogized in the December 1920 issue of Photoplay magazine. The caption reads, “The bright lights of Broadway were dimmed for Olive Thomas. The gracious little girl who was known as one of the world’s great beauties died in Paris of accidental poisoning in September. Her happy-hearted smile, her charm, made her a living memory. This was her last, and favorite, portrait.” Before breaking into films, Thomas had performed on Broadway in the Ziegfeld Follies.

As a result of increased scrutiny from moral reformers, muckraking newspapermen like William Randolph Hearst, and even state and federal governments, the film industry responded with a counter public relations strategy and attempts to reform from within. The result was the establishment of the Motion Picture Production Code and the appointment of former Postmaster General Will Hays as chairman of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America in early 1922. In order to circumvent inconsistent regulation by state governments, the American film industry put the Hays Code into place as a means of self-censorship.

It should be noted that while Hays is often painted as a villain within the industry, his role was really one of damage control and PR czar. Less a censor than an advisor to the studios on how not to have films banned or censored, Hays was handpicked to help Hollywood avoid government intervention in regulating movie content. As an aside, Historian William J. Mann explores the nuances of the often misunderstood crusade to reform the American movie industry in his book Tinseltown, a highly recommended book on a complex topic. It’s also a riveting true crime read that may give the most believable solution for William Desmond Taylor’s mysterious murder.

Heartthrob Wallace Reid circa 1910s

Heartthrob Wallace Reid, known for adventure and auto racing films, was injured in an on-set train accident in 1919. Prescribed morphine to manage the pain of his injury and continue filming, Reid soon became addicted. He battled drug dependence until his death in 1923. His wife, actor Dorothy Davenport, would go on to produce ‘social problem’ films dealing with the controversial topics of addiction, human trafficking, and prostitution.

“First [I have] a driving desire to create, somehow a memorial to Wallace Reid. Not to Wallace Reid, the screen idol, the successful brilliant, loveable boy you know–and I loved, but to Wallace Reid who lay, white and broken, on a little hospital cot, and died bravely and smilingly rather than even ask again for the drug that had been his ruin.”

Director William Desmond Taylor (top left) pictured in a Screenland magazine article from February 1923. The caption describes his unsuccessful attempts to rid Hollywood of “dope” and the price he paid for it: his life. This early theory of the motive for his murder is unproven, however. Taylor’s close friend, actor Mabel Normand (bottom right) would also struggle with substance issues of her own, though this was unknown to the public at that time. Note also Roscoe Arbuckle at bottom left. Normand and Arbuckle had also co-starred as a popular comedic screen duo.

Virginia Rappe circa 1920

Virginia Rappe modeled, acted and designed fashion. While attending a Labor Day party hosted by comedian Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle at a San Francisco hotel, Rappe was said to have become violently ill. Reports differed as to whether she was ill, inebriated or had been assaulted, or some combination of the three. She would die several days later of a ruptured bladder and peritonitis. Arbuckle was accused of sexually assaulting Rappe and causing her death. Rappe’s character was maligned during the trials, her talents overshadowed.

Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was a leading slapstick comedian before the scandal that tanked his career. He notably worked with silent comedy legends Charles Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Despite two mistrials and a third trial resulting in an acquittal, Arbuckle’s career never rebounded from the scandal. In the aftermath of Rappe’s death and lead-up to Arbuckle’s trials, film exhibitors resolved not to screen films of either Rappe and Arbuckle so as not to appear to capitalize on the woman’s tragic death and ensuing scandal.

Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle circa 1920

Industry and Innovation
One of the (true) clichés about silent films is that they were never silent. Pianists, organists, and even full orchestras usually accompanied a film. Silents were also frequently in color: either through overall color tinting to indicate a scene’s time of day or mood, hand tinting, or more rarely, through technological innovations. Processes such as Technicolor combined multiple strips of film to achieve a more realistic colorization effect. The aforementioned film The Toll of the Sea was only the second feature length film to be released in Technicolor.

Additionally, just as stereoscopic (or 3-D) imagery was an innovation in still photography, filmmakers also attempted stereoscopic effects in motion pictures from the beginning. The Power of Love, released in 3-D on September 27, 1922 and then in traditional 2-D in early 1923, was one such film. The camera used to shoot the film was only used for this production, and 3-D screenings in large cities were limited but positively reviewed.

The Power of Love’s stereoscopic photography is noted in this advertisement in the Exhibitor’s Trade Review from November 1923. Both the 3-D and 2-D versions are presumed lost.

Finally, outside the US, the European film industry was making creative strides, incorporating concepts from modern art and philosophical ideas stirred by the horrors of WWI. German films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Nosferatu (1922) drew on formal techniques of the Expressionist art movement. Their visual style in particular can still be seen in the films noir of the 1940s and ‘50s to the psychological thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock to the stylized horror films of Tim Burton.

Picture-Play critic Agnes Smith professes to be “somewhat baffled” by The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in June 1921. (The film is titled here as Doctor Caligari and His Cabinet). Though mystified, Smith was clearly impressed by the film’s imagination.

As with most of the existing films mentioned here, these two formative horror movies are now in the public domain. They’re easy to stream for free online, and the perfect way to celebrate the spooky season. You can also get a head start on the next National Silent Movie Day on September 29th, 2022. And, while this is only a sampler of the early 1920s silent film world, I hope it will spark some further exploration and discovery in a truly rewarding medium.

Bibliography
Bain News Service, Publisher. Clara Bow. [Between and Ca. 1925] Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2014712579/>.

Bain News Service, Publisher. Roscoe Fatty Arbuckle. [Between and Ca. 1925] Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2014713188/>.

Bain News Service, Publisher. Virginia Rappe. [Between and Ca. 1925] Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2014713221/>.

Balio, Tino. United Artists: The Company That Changed the Film Industry. University of Wisconsin Press, 2009.

Cherchi Usai, Paolo. Silent Cinema: A Guide to Study, Research and Exhibition. Third edition, Bloomsbury on behalf of the British Film Institute, 2019.

Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library. “Anna May Wong” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/a251c207-ba4b-0d4c-e040-e00a18062469

Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library. “Olive Thomas” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47df-56a4-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library. “Rudolf Valentino” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1922. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/708ebee6-30f9-9bb5-e040-e00a18067d2c

Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library. “She will dance with me now!” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1921. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47d9-4083-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library. “Unidentified men with horses standing on a hillside with “Hollywoodland” sign in background.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1923 – 1930. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/9fa73b27-2ea7-147a-e040-e00a18060c9e

Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library. “Wallace Reid” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e2-e288-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

“By Way of Remembrance.” Photoplay, vol. 19, no. 1, Dec. 1920, pp. 44.

D.W. Griffith, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin seated and Douglas Fairbanks at the signing of the contract establishing United Artists motion picture studio. [1919, Printed] Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <www.loc.gov/item/2007678308/>.

Eisner, Lotte H. The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt. Thames and Hudson, 1994.
Ettinger, Margaret. “To the Ladies–Ramon the Romantic.” Picture-Play, vol. Vol. XVI, no. 4, June 1922, pp. 25, 99.

Everson, William K. American Silent Film. 1st Da Capo Press ed, Da Capo Press, 1998.
Mann, William J. Tinseltown: Murder, Morphine, and Madness at the Dawn of Hollywood. First edition, Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2014.

Marshall, Eunice. “Dope: The Story of Wallace Reid’s Fight to Come Back.” Screenland, vol. VI, no. 2, Feb. 1923, pp. 60–63, 97.

National Film Preservation Foundation: The Toll of the Sea (1922). https://www.filmpreservation.org/preserved-films/screening-room/the-toll-of-the-sea-1922. Accessed 27 Sept. 2021.

“The Power of Love.” Exhibitor’s Trade Review, vol. 12, no. 2, Nov. 1922, p. 1452.
“The Toll of the Sea.” Screenland, vol. VI, no. 2, Feb. 1923, pp. 89.

Wexman, Virginia Wright. “June Mathis.” In Jane Gaines, Radha Vatsal, and Monica Dall’Asta, eds. Women Film Pioneers Project. New York, NY: Columbia University Libraries, 2013. <https://doi.org/10.7916/d8-npcm-5927&gt;

Amanda Howard is an oral historian and archivist specializing in audiovisual materials at University of Arizona Libraries Special Collections. A Kansas native, she has an abiding love for the people, places and history of the Midwest. Amanda is also a co-PI on a 2020 CLIR (Council on Library & Information Resources) Recordings at Risk grant that preserved the silent scientific films of astronomer and tree-ring scientist A.E. Douglass. https://new.library.arizona.edu/news/looking-back-looking-forward-preserving-ae-douglass-materials-future

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