IT IS OFTEN ASSUMED that the great stars of the silent era who didn’t make the transition to sound are somehow tragic. Perhaps not. Many of them had already enjoyed long and full careers, and some, like the Talmadges, who had worked most of their lives, were content to give up stardom. And Colleen Moore, who had once wanted fame more than anything, was clearly happy to abandon it. Whether by choice or not, however, almost all the greats of the silent era were left behind when sound came in. This was especially true for those whose careers had begun in the early to mid teens, and an important factor in their failure is seldom mentioned: at a time when thirty-five was considered middle-aged, Fairbanks, Pickford, Swanson, Negri, Barrymore, Hart, Mix, Chaney, and Normand were past their prime. Furthermore, audiences—ever fickle—had already enjoyed ten to fifteen (or nearly twenty) years of them. They turned eagerly toward new faces and new personalities. Looking back from today’s vantage point, one can see logical reasons why most silent stars didn’t continue at the same level of fame—or continue at all: Valentino, Normand, and Chaney were dead before sound was well launched; Pickford, Norma Talmadge, Negri, and Hart had images that belonged to the 1920s or earlier and didn’t translate well into the harsher Depression era; personal demons created problems for Clara Bow and John Barrymore. The great silent clowns—Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd—didn’t seem as funny with dialogue as they had without. Even when it seemed odd that the careers didn’t continue (Gloria Swanson) or perhaps unexpected that they did (Marion Davies), the bottom line is harsh: by the end of 1927, it was essentially over for the majority of silent film stars.*
sound changed everything, and as the motion picture business was transformed, America also changed, falling into a severe economic depression. The two phenomena combined to produce an appetite for new kinds of movies: harsh, unromantic stories with hard-bitten dialogue; gangster tales with sassy slang and the rat-a-tat of machine guns; musicals with songs and tapping shoes; Broadway plays with complex lines to be memorized; and pre-code plots about men and women living on the edge, drinking booze, and having sex openly. These movies cried out for stars with movie personae that fit into a world of noises and voices. Yet every star, male or female, who reached the heights in the silent era had already established a personal image. For them to change meant breaking the deep connections they had forged with their audiences. And there were other challenges, too. They had to relearn the moviemaking experience. Their directors couldn’t call out encouraging words to them as they worked, providing instruction and reassurance. They had to remember where the microphone was planted, and control their movements accordingly. There were diction coaches to be dealt with, different types of shooting schedules, and new studio personnel in every category. They had been at the top of the heap, but now they were back at the beginning, just like any newcomer. With all this to face, they first concentrated on what seemed to be the two most important issues: Would their voices record well? Could they deliver dialogue convincingly?
Soon enough, the real issue became obvious. It wasn’t so much a problem of recording or acting as it was one of image related to voice. Pirandello had said, “Film is the language of images, and images don’t speak.” But silent film stars were images that would now have to speak. Would their fans accept it? If a strong, virile man had a high-pitched voice … if a tiny little beauty talked with bass tones … if an ethereal blonde had a heavy foreign accent … if an elegantly dressed lover said “dese-dem-dose” … this was going to be a bigger challenge than adjusting to microphones. New stars starting out in sound didn’t have this problem. They could speak in strange accents or weird cadences or voices that didn’t match their bodies because the audience first met them in that condition and accepted them on those terms. The stars of the earlier era were different—their voices had already been “heard” in the heads of the moviegoing public who had met them in the silence, with only a piano or orchestra to intrude. To hear their favorites suddenly speak was a shock for fans. To hear them speak without the voices that had been mentally supplied for them wasn’t acceptable.
The transition to sound revealed that the peculiar quality of the stars of silent film—no voice—was really an asset that had lifted them up into a godlike status. Sound brought them down to earth. It was not that silent film stars didn’t seem realistic or approachable in their own era; on the contrary, many projected that kind of intimacy. But the illusion that silent film presents is removed from the everyday—even when it’s about everyday things—because audiences supply sound in a world without voices.
For most silent stars, it was a no-win situation. Except for Greta Garbo, no one who had attained really great stardom before the mid-twenties carried over well—or increased his or her status—in the sound era. Many went on making films, among them Clara Bow, Colleen Moore, Marion Davies, Richard Dix, Richard Barthelmess—but their careers soon fizzled out and the decade of the 1930s did not belong to them. Garbo, of course, not only endured, but thrived. She made her first movie in Europe in 1922, found success there in 1924 with The Story of Gösta Berling and The Joyless Street, and earned her American success in 1927’s The Torrent and The Temptress, and especially Flesh and the Devil with John Gilbert. Her throaty murmur, with its exotic foreign accent, verified her “otherness,” and the detachment she had from the ordinary worked well in both eras. Ironically, her accent was originally thought to be a problem, so her sound debut was delayed until 1930’s Anna Christie, and then treated like a major event. “Garbo Talks!” screamed the ads, and curiosity brought large crowds into the theatres. As it turned out, she not only talked well, but talked with a voice that fit her persona. Richard Watts, Jr., wrote in the New York Herald Tribune that “her … deep, husky contralto [possesses] poetic glamor” and Norbert Lusk in Picture-Play rhapsodized, “The voice that shook the world!”
Three actors who had begun early also made the transition: John Barrymore, Ronald Colman, and William Powell. Barrymore gave some of his best performances in early sound movies such as State’s Attorney, A Bill of Divorcement, and Grand Hotel, but he soon became more of a character actor than a leading man. Colman started his movie career in British silents in 1917, and made his first American film in 1921. He went on to be paired with Lillian Gish in The White Sister (1923) and Romola (1924), and had attained star status by the time he played opposite Constance Talmadge in Her Night of Romance (1924). However, he had never been one of the top names of silents, and his mellifluous voice and polished appearance made him a far bigger star in the sound era. In retrospect, it’s clear that his silent success depended on his good looks, as he mostly supported leading ladies of the era. It was his voice that made him stand out, and sound lifted him out of the category of “love interest” and gave him the opportunity to play more challenging roles. Powell is an odd case. He was solidly established as early as 1922 in When Knighthood Was in Flower, but he played villains, not leading men. Never the star, he played a thieving Legionnaire who reveals the family secret in Beau Geste (1926), a vengeful revolutionary in The Last Command, and a con man in Feel My Pulse (both in 1928). Like Colman, he had a cultured, well-modulated voice that gave his presence depth and credibility. His talent at delivering a witty put-down or a playful romantic line transformed him from a villain into one of the most sophisticated leading men of the 1930s, playing opposite the great beauties of the decade in both comedy and drama, including Myrna Loy, Jean Harlow, Carole Lombard, Hedy Lamarr, and Kay Francis. He gracefully continued until the mid-1950s, playing fathers, rich older suitors, and wise doctors.
Barrymore, Colman, and Powell, however, are special cases.† For most of the male stars, it was an especially difficult time. The coming of sound revolutionized the entire concept of “male” in the movies. The silent hero had been solidly located in the melodramatic tradition. It had seemed right—even necessary—for him to display extravagant emotion. He could cry, he could suffer over lost love, and the women in the audience loved him for it. Screenwriters now found it difficult to write dialogue for a hero who was sniffing a single rose, kissing the hem of a woman’s cloak, or staring dreamily out the window while clutching a picture of his beloved. Actors were used to being highly emotional, but sound made them seem old-fashioned, even silly. Out went the sensitive lovers, the passionate men who would die for a woman, and the stalwart heroes of a gentler, more innocent and romantic time. In came the gangsters, the snappy-talking wiseacres, the tough guys, and the low-down chiselers. (It’s the difference between John Gilbert and James Cagney—imagine pushing a grapefruit in Garbo’s face!) It was a revolution, and it called for new talent.
Barrymore, of course, could handle it. A skilled stage actor, he had matured in dialogue performances, and his ability to deliver any kind of line was secure. Chaney could have done it had he lived. Chaplin refused even to try, and former stars like Richard Dix and Richard Barthelmess rode it out, their stardom diminished, ultimately accepting supporting roles. Charles Farrell faltered at first—then did well—but retired by the end of the thirties. One other male made the transition: Gary Cooper. But he was a newcomer to silents, not yet a real star, who was playing leads in support of big names like Clara Bow and Colleen Moore. His voice recorded well. He spoke casually, slowly, like the westerner he was, and he seemed utterly natural and uniquely American. He came into his own and rose to full stardom in the sound era.
The silent stars who survived and carried forward had risen to fame at the very end of the silents (1926 or later), and most of these, like Cooper, were not fully associated with the era. And most of them were women: Joan Crawford, Constance Bennett, Norma Shearer, Janet Gaynor, and new players like Myrna Loy, Loretta Young, Carole Lombard, and Jean Arthur, who had begun to find significant roles in the late twenties.‡
Young, who is seldom associated with the silent era, nevertheless began her career there. However, she was probably the least experienced of the women who made the transition, being barely into her teens when she got her first big break opposite Lon Chaney in 1928’s Laugh, Clown, Laugh. She later said she survived because she was “so innocent I didn’t know I was supposed to be afraid.” Constance Bennett, who came from a theatre family and who understood the vicissitudes of show business, was solidly established by the mid-twenties, but wasn’t yet a big name. Her type was the soignée sophisticate, and she properly belonged in the 1930s, where she became one of the earliest stars of the transition. (A perfect example of why she was right for the 1930s occurs in her silent film Married? Standing in a thick forest attired in high heels, furs, and a cloche hat, she grandly calls out to the ranger-hero, “Get me a taxi!”)
Writing in Films in Review in 1956, the film historian John Springer assessed the female silent stars who “twinkled the most in the early days of sound” as “Gaynor, Crawford, Shearer … and, of course, Garbo.”§ According to him, “The first girl to reach stardom in the talkies had a negligible stage background and was practically unknown in the silent era.” She was Nancy Carroll, “the first girl to sing a song into a movie mike and the first to do a tap dance on a studio sound stage.” Carroll, unpopular with the press and uncooperative with studio publicity staff, had a very brief stardom.
Crawford, Shearer, and Gaynor shared these important assets: they were already well established when sound took over; they were beautiful in distinctive ways; and they were still young, with their best years ahead of them. However, the biggest asset they shared was the one that really counted: each had a unique voice that matched her looks.
Crawford and Shearer became rivals at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, with Crawford eventually winning the endurance contest. She had done well in silent films, playing opposite such superstars as John Gilbert, Lon Chaney, and Ramon Novarro. She had found fame as a typical flapper, but she easily transformed her image into that of an equally typical 1930s heroine. In fact, Crawford’s strength turned out to be that she could transform herself over and over again, managing to look modern all through the 1940s, 1950s, and into the 1960s. She became the consummate movie star. Sound presented no problem for her because she had a strong, clear voice, with a low register that matched her basic toughness. Shearer’s sound career was aided by mogul Irving Thalberg, who became her husband in 1927 (in the nick of time). Like Joseph Schenck before him, who guided Norma Talmadge, Thalberg found properties that were literary or stage successes he felt afforded Shearer the opportunity to become a great actress in respectable material. Shearer’s voice had a light, elegant quality to it, giving credibility to her ladylike roles. Its lilting tone contained a sense of underlying amusement, which also worked well in Noel Coward–type comedies.
Ronald Colman and Janet Gaynor (photo credit 13.1)
Janet Gaynor, petite and adorable, began her career in two-reelers for Hal Roach, but moved forward rapidly, appearing in films directed by John Ford (Shamrock Handicap and The Blue Eagle in 1926), F. W. Murnau (Sunrise, 1927, Four Devils, 1928), and Frank Borzage (Seventh Heaven, 1927, Street Angel, 1928). In 1927–28, she won the first Academy Award for Best Actress for her work in Sunrise, Seventh Heaven, and Street Angel. (Awards then were for multiple performances.) Gaynor, often called the “child-woman,” combines the sweetness and simplicity of the silent era with a more sophisticated sexuality of the 1930s. It has been said that she played a character everyone in the audience wanted the world to be good to, a kind of modern Cinderella. Her voice was unusual, somewhat high and girlish, but not twittery. Sweet-faced and virginal-looking, yet flirtatious and warmly loving, Gaynor also had a voice that matched her looks.
The stars who survived the end of silent film retained everything they had learned from it, particularly their ability to use their bodies expressively. To this they added their distinctive voices, and had the best of both worlds. Unencumbered by the past, they embraced sound and never looked back. The future was theirs. Most of the silent stars, however, either went out with a bang or slowly faded away. Forgotten, misunderstood, or underappreciated, they still await wide-ranging rediscovery. Those who have seen their work know that they own a glorious past, a world of beauty, talent, originality—and silence—waiting to be rediscovered, admired, and enjoyed.
* Exceptions that prove the rule are Laurel and Hardy—those two underrated geniuses of chaos—and Lillian Gish. The remarkable Gish more or less dropped out of movies during the 1930s, but she returned as a character actress in the 1940s. She had made her debut in 1912 and her last movie was The Whales of August in 1987, an unprecedented seventy-five years in movies, the longest career on record. Laurel and Hardy are more famous for their shorts than for their features, so they are frequently forgotten on lists of movie greats, but they were enormously popular in both the silent and the sound eras.
† Charactor actors like Wallace Beery, or comedians like W. C. Fields, are also different. Beery became a star in sound, but was a supporting player in silents; Fields became really big only after sound wedded his unique speaking voice and verbal wit to his physical abilities.
‡ Two of these women, Crawford and Loy, ended up enjoying more than three decades of stardom. Three others whose names might be mentioned were Marie Dressler, not a typical romantic leading lady; Dolores Del Rio, who was never a really big star in sound; and Mary Astor, who became a star opposite Barrymore in Beau Brummel in 1924.
§ Springer lists some of the early sound stars who came from the stage, not silents, as Ann Harding, Claudette Colbert, Ruth Chatterton, Jeanne Eagels, Ina Claire, and Marilyn Miller.