Since Mary Pickford had cornered the market in "wholesome", that meant other actresses had to find their own angle: Theda Bara was the first to use sex appeal. Let's remember her as a trailblazer, the girl next door who never let anyone push her around. She retired as sound arrived and her "fairytale" marriage to Fairbanks (according to every fan magazine of the era) broke down soon after.
This gave her levels of control and renumeration pretty much unparalleled in Hollywood history. Sweet, demur Mary was also one hell of a businesswoman: after years of fighting for control from the studios, she established her own company, United Artists, in collaboration with other, less popular stars Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks (her husband of the time). Mary Pickford wasn't the first "movie star" (that was the euphoniously-named Florence Lawrence), but she was there near the very start.īorn in 1885, Mary P (or rather, Gladys Smith, as she was known before taking to the stage) started appearing in flicks in the 1900s: a stop-gap, she thought, before taking Broadway by storm. Here we profile five of the very best, hoping to unpick at least something of their unique allure-it says something that, even though they lived a full century ago, their charms remain undimmed. While there were certainly well-liked men, none could match the popularity of their leading ladies. Most especially, it was the women who caught imaginations. Stars never burned brighter than in the silent era, when the movies themselves were still young and the novelty of these beautiful creatures was still fresh.
#STARS OF THE SILENT AGE HOLLYWOOD MOVIE#
No matter how many movie tickets they shift or magazine covers they decorate, there's no performer today that gets even close to the icons of the glory days.īack in the day, "stardom" meant more than glorified celebrity it was a rank awarded by the public to those they truly loved, those who shone on-screen like. James Oliver hymns the queens of the silent screen-they didn't need dialogue.
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