Silent Players: A Biographical and Autobiographical Study of 100 Silent Film Actors and Actresses

by Anthony Slide

" From his unique perspective of friendship with many of the actors and actresses about whom he writes, silent film historian Anthony Slide creates vivid portraits of the careers and often eccentric lives of 100 players from the American silent film industry. He profiles the era's shining stars such as Lillian Gish and Blanche Sweet; leading men including William Bakewell and Robert Harron; gifted leading ladies such as Laura La Plante and Alice Terry; ingenues like Mary Astor and Mary Brian; and even Hollywood's most famous extra, Bess Flowers. Although each original essay is accompanied by significant documentation and an extensive bibliography, Silent Players is not simply a reference book or encyclopedic recitation of facts culled from the pages of fan magazines and trade periodicals. It contains a series of insightful portraits of the characters who symbolize an original and pioneering era in motion history and explores their unique talents and extraordinary private lives. Slide offers a potentially revisionist view of many of the stars he profiles, repudiating the status of some and restoring to fame others who have slipped from view. He personally interviewed many of his subjects and knew several of them intimately, putting him in a distinctive position to tell their true stories.

Genres: Nonfiction, Media Tie In, Film, History

464 pages, Hardcover

First published September 27, 2002

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slide discusses the various actors and actresses that made a living in the silent film era. Each segment on each actor is only a few pages long. Some made it into the talkie era but many of the others' careers ended when talkies took off. He also discusses the studios and I was surprised that the Chicago Essanay Film Manufacturing Company was a fairly big player in the silent film era. It eventually merged with other studios. Definitely for silent film buffs but I wanted more info though I fear a lot of the silent film era information has been lost.

[Carolyn Di Leo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely fun! Full of juicy bits of gossip from all your favorite silent film actors.

[Jenn · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was very excited to get this book in order to learn more facts about my favorite silent screen stars, as well as learn about other amazing actors/actresses of that era. I love that the book is compiled of different sections of biographies for each of the film stars. However, I felt that much of the info was generic and I was hoping to learn a bit more from these silent stars I came to know and love by watching them on the big screen. I have read many autobiographies/biographies on these film stars and while I understand you can only have so much room to put in info for each actor, so much interesting detail went missing. Since this is the study of not 10, but 100 different silent film stars I can understand the limitation for detail, but I would have rather preferred volumes instead of just one book since there are so many actors/actresses to go through.

[Michelle "Champ" · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full of facts about silent film stars. Some of my faves were left out, maybe because they crossed over...but some featured here crossed over to talkies so I am just not sure. Pretty good.