#silent classics

[howardhawkshollywoodannex]

Anna May Wong as Tiger Lily in a publicity still for Peter Pan (1924). Anna was born in Los Angeles and had 64 acting credits from 1920 to a 1960 episode of The Barbara Stanwyck Show. Her entry among my best 1,001 movies is The Thief of Bagdad (1924).

Her other notable credits include Shanghai Express (with Marlene Dietrich), Limehouse Blues, Island of Lost Men, episodes of Mike Hammer and The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, and Portrait in Black (1960 with Lana Turner).

Anna was the top billed star of a few Paramount second features in the late 30s, most notably Daughter of Shanghai (1937) and Dangerous to Know (1938)

[bebs-art-gallery]

Winter Sunset in a Pine Forest (1898) by Yuly Yulyevich Klever ❅ A Sunset in a Winter (1900) by Nils Hans Christiansen

[eternvlsound]

[weirdlookindog]

Conrad Veidt and Lil Dagover in Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920)

[meaganreallygood]

. lesa.milan

[bwallure]

SHERLOCK JR. (1924) dir. Buster Keaton

[pardonmybunion]

So this @laurenillustrated artwork and all the vintage-dream-casting at @hotvintagepoll got me thinking: if Scooby Doo were a thing in the 1890s, then a few years later it would be a NATURAL for silent Hollywood. So who do we cast in Hal Roach’s hit 1915-1919 series of Scooby Doo live-action comedy shorts?

Shaggy and Scoob are both easy, because look, here’s Charley Bowers! He always plays chaotic pottering-around-with-machinery types, which is exactly the vibe that 1890s Shaggy gives, and he does so with a surrealist slapstick edge that’s perfect for the material. On top of that, Bowers is a pioneering stop-motion special effects artist—so he can also be our lead animator, and the rapport between live-action Shaggy and his animated Scooby will be delightful.

Like Shaggy, Velma has to have a certain slapstick quality (“Where are my glasses? I can’t see without my glasses”), so it’s lucky we have Alice Howell—nicknamed “the female Charlie Chaplin” by the tiresome people who use that type of comparison. The point is, she can give Velma the bookish self-possession suggested in the 1890s look, AND also run through a gajillion doors in a wacky hallway chase culminating in a spectacular pratfall.

(Mabel Normand is another contender, but her acting style seems a couple notches too naturalistic for Scooby Doo. I definitely see her directing a bunch of the shorts though.)

Fred needs to be both a conventionally hot manly-hero type and a bit of an idiot, so hello Reginald Denny! This British actor emigrated to Hollywood in the early 1910s, became a comedy star, and played himbos so well that he was still playing them into the 1960s. He’s even in the Adam West Batman movie as the naval hero Commodore Schmidlapp, who’s so ditzy he doesn’t realize he’s been kidnapped by the Penguin.

Daphne is a fun one—let’s assume that by this point, Pearl White is tired of all those straight-up action serials like The Perils of Pauline, and wants to do a spoof for a change. With silent comedy shorts there’s always a chance the plot will wander away and leave the individual gags running the store, and White brings enough tension and gravitas to prevent that situation and keep things moving. At the same time, since she favors action roles, she can easily match the dynamism of Bowers, Howell, and Denny.

And that’s to say nothing of all the silent actors who could appear in bit parts on their way to fame. Maybe the gang tears the mask off the ghost, and discovers it’s an early-career Buster Keaton?

[inthedarktrees]

Lillian Gish as "Letty” in The Wind, 1927

[stephaniesblogxx]

dear little child

[garlandedspirits]

some rare and gorgeous mugshots photos of Conrad Veidt as Cesare the Somnambulist in the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari which I sadly don't know the original source or context for

[howardhawkshollywoodannex]

James Wong Howe filming Cyril Chadwick as Mr Darling and Betty Bronson as Peter Pan in Peter Pan (1924). This is cinematography great Jim's sixth honorable mention, after Manhattan Melodrama, Mark of the Vampire, Algiers, Abe Lincoln in Illinois, and City for Conquest.

His last great film, John Frankenheimer's Seconds with Rock Hudson (1966) is one of Jim's most impressive achievements.

[littlehorrorshop]

newly-discovered fragment of Theda Bara in Cleopatra (1917)

[dragon-of-the-night]

I saw this meme a while ago, and have felt the urge ever since to Caligari-fy it.

[weirdlookindog]

Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922)

[mindless-cinematic-trash]

[horygory]

Silent Hill (2006)