How many famous silent film stars really had their careers ruined with the advent of "talkies"?

"too awful" I meant!

Mae McAvoy, according to legend, said "There are no thutch things" in the first talkie horror picture, The Terror in 1928. This supposedly sealed her doom at the box office, though another legend is that her husband Maurice Cleary(a producer at United Artists) asked her not to work anymore, and she complied. Though she did appear in the 1959 version of Ben Hur.

Meryl Streep. Her performance in anything in the last 15 years made me wish we could go back to silent movies only.

Marie Prevost, I think. The one who died penniless and her little pooch gnawed on her to try and her to wake up.

Silent film removed language barriers from acting, so actors who didn't speak much English could thrive in sound film, but started accepting offers in their home countries when dialogue came in. Greta Garbo was the only foreign star to make a successful transition to talkies, and IMHO part of the reason was that she waited as long as she could before making her first sound film.

The early talkies were just godawful, totally unwatchable today, and it was impossible to do a good job of acting while being unable to move because of the primitive cameras and microphones of the time. Heartthrob John Gilbert had a decent speaking voice, but trying to say "I love you I love you I love you" in the clunky films of the time was laughable, and he wasn't the only one who looked ludicrous in the new medium. Garbo waited until 1930 to make her first sound film, and by then they'd figured out how to do a little camera work and the film was a success.

R5, when would you say that early talkies started to really thrive? I'd say late 1930 into 1931. We got All Quiet on the Western Front, Journey's End, the original(and far superior to the remake) Waterloo Bridge, The Criminal Code, Public Enemy, Dracula, and Frankenstein. A very good year indeed, and I think I'm forgetting a few.

Olga Baclanova (she had a heavy Russian accent.)

Olga Baclanova is incredibly hot in The Man Who Laughs. The scene where she tries to seduce Conrad Veidt has to be one of the sexiest scenes ever filmed. I'm gay, but she still gave me a woodie.

Besides the many European-born stars (Lars Hanson, Nils Asther, Vilma Banky, etc.), I would add William Haines to the list.

Patti Lupone, Faye Dunaway.

Marion Davies, William Randolph Hearst's girlfriend? It's said she had a stutter. She was charming in silents though, and very pretty.

Are you watching the silent films every weekend on TCM, OP? I love watching them. The sets and clothing are so simple and modest. Very little of the "simple housewife living in a giant mansion" in the old movies. I like watching for the sets and clothing too. Interesting to see the old customs like a small Christmas tree covered with tinsel on top of a table, baby boys wearing dresses, or roommates sharing one bed. That's real, unself-conscious history.

IMHO sound films really arrived around 1932, and films like "Freaks", "Red Dust", "Love Me Tonight", and "Blonde Venus" are genuinely enjoyable today. By then, directors had figured out how to do good camera work with a microphone present, and actors had figured out how to act for sound films. Films made in 1930 are more curiosities than pleasures, they're still pretty stiff and primitive to watch.

And FYI most silent movie stars were initially successful in film. Clara Bow, Douglas Fairbanks, Gloria Swanson, Mary Pickford, and most of the English-speaking stars of the day had successful sound films, but their stars faded anyway, as new people with new skills came in. Joan Crawford was probably the only silent movie star to keep her stardom in sound films over a long term.

Here's a clip from "Love Me Tonight" (1932). Just to show what sound films had accomplished in 5 short years.

Actually Ronald Colman, English silent star, kept his career and was voted most popular male star several times after talkies came out. His career was going strong all through the thirties, and into the forties and even fifties. He was born in 1891, but kept his looks into his old age. And he had a lovely, fit for radio voice.

He and his wife, Bonita Hume, a British actress, even did a radio show together, The Halls Of Ivy. They played a college professor and his wife, and touched on social issues of the day as well as comedy. He also guested on Jack Benny's radio show, playing Jack's neighbor, who was annoyed with Benny but too well mannered to show it. He was a big hit.

If you would like to hear The Halls of Ivy radio show episodes, they are at the below link. That site has a lot of info about old time movie stars if you're interested.

Lina Lamont

R5, I absolutely adore Love Me Tonight. I once showed it to a bunch of friends who aren't into old movies, and they loved it. Truly a great film.

R12 is correct on both points

#4 Marie P -- I didn't know whom she was, but what a sad story. Did anyone adopt her dog, Maxie?

Madge Bellamy. Though ironically, she's best remembered today for an early talkie, the marvelous White Zombie with Bela Lugosi.

Vilma Banky. Her Hungarian accent was so thick she didn't even try a sound test. She was a lesbian and after bearding with Valentino she married another closeted leading man Rod La Rocque whose heavy French accent nixed his career. They retired together to Palm Springs and their "lavender marriage" lasted 32 years.

Man, these silent film stars had crazy lives.

The foreign stars were hit hardest, like Karl Dane, whose accent was considered too thick for talkies. He shot himself when he was 47. Rod LaRoque and Renee Adoree had the same problems.

Part of the problem was that in the 1920s, being European was seen as trendy and chic. After the stock market crash, people started considering European styling to be vulgar. That meant European stars as well as those with faux European names that were big in the 1920s (like Fifi D'Orsay) didn't fare well, either, because they were considered out of style.

Aaaand on top of all that, the style of movies simply changed. There are some early proto-noir and proto-gangster films in the late silent era ("The Locked Door" and "While the City Sleeps" are two I can think of off the top of my head) and there just weren't many silent movie stars who could have transitioned to that genre for any reason, even if sound HADN'T come in.

Lon Chaney could have, had he lived. Ricardo Cortez transitioned, too, but he was VERY lucky. He had been promoted as a suave European playboy in silents but had a rough New York voice that didn't work with his image. So he re-imagined himself as a hard-boiled detective and/or gangster and it gave him a whole new career.

R18, most sources I've read said that the dog was put down, which was the usual procedure in these cases. People believed (or still believe?) that once a dog "eats" a person then they're no longer able to be pets.

That said, Hollywood Babylon has a picture of Marie Prevost's corpse and even though Kenneth Anger says she was eaten by the dog, she's clearly not missing any chunks of her body, so I don't think she was eaten. Probably just nipped at and discolored from laying there a couple days.

Rod LaRocque was born in Chicago & made the transition to talkies.

#23, Thanks. I guess. I was really wanting to hear better news.

Sorry R34, someone above mentioned Rod LaRocque had a foreign accent so I took their word for it and didn't look it up.

His post-silent career wasn't that great, though, you have to admit. He did okay very early on but was dropped by MGM in 1928 and out of films by the end of 1930. LaRocque went a few years without being in a film at all and not doing well on stage, then came back to do a handful of B movies or small roles in A films, then disappeared.

Looks like he and his wife Vilma Banky worked with Leni Riefenstahl. Yuck.

Mae Murray.

Mae Murray in her sad later years. Died broke.

Mae Murray, aka Her Highness Princess Mdivani the first Queen of MGM. Marion Davies BFF. Valentino's dance hall tango partner. The "deluxe starlet". Mae's white Pierce Arrow upholstered in ermine with ivory door handles driven by her albino chauffeur. She ordered her Shalimar by the gallon. Her houseboys from Rio. Mae sapphic danced with Pola Negri while Rudy looked on.She slapped Eric Von Stroheim calling him a "dirty Hun".

Between parts the "self enchanted" vagrant was found sleeping in Central Park. Mae slapped "the brute" policeman who arrested her.A forgotten glamour queen of yesteryear she was living in the basement of a theatre when she was "rescued" by some of her elderly but still loyal fans.

Living at the Motion Picture Country Home Mae wrote her memoirs. After it was claimed Sunset Blvd's Norma Desmond was based on her she snapped " Us floozies were crazy but not that crazy!"

From her eternal movie set at the end of Burbank Airport's Runway A, Mae whispers: "I'm ready for my close up ya filthy Hun."

I love these stories of the early days of Hollywood. A lot of the history has been written and talked about, but there is so much more that has been lost, never having been recorded in any way.

"I'm not counting the physical comedians like Chaplin, Lloyd, and Keaton. because they seemed to work as often or as little as they wanted to anyway"

True for Chaplin and maybe Lloyd, but Keaton did not have that option. He would continue to work until his death in 1966, but his life as a movie star was over by 1930. It probably had more to do with bad career choices that simply coincided with the introduction of talkies than anything else. IMHO, while Keaton also had a deep-ish voice, it wasn't one that could be called "leading man" - it was the epitome of "whiskey-soaked". And in his case, in spades.

Clara Bow.

John Gilbert had a staged trained voice, and sounded a bit like Ronald Coleman. Unfortunately, it didn't really fit his image as the happy go lucky all American boy next door. But he did do a number of films during the sound era, most of them not very good.

Clara Bow actually made the transition with little trouble. But she retired before her contract was up, due to other problems, some personal and others with public perception of her private life.

Rod LaRoque pinged so much in talkies you couldn't take him remotely seriously in a straight role

[quote]Clara Bow actually made the transition with little trouble.

Not really. Her voice was fine but she got stage fright around microphones. It seems like it was a good excuse for her to leave the movies, which she'd wanted to do for a while.

Her fear of talking on film wasn't as bad as that tired old queen David Stenn claimed, though. He's always played fast and loose with the facts; he finally got into trouble about his interesting "fact checking" habits with his doc "Girl 27." That seems to have cooled his jets, thankfully.

Clara was a crazy insatiable nympho who fucked her Great Danes.

Colleen Moore

Hollywood in the 1920s was a wild place, lots of crazy parties, drugs, booze and wild sex. You have to remember that back then LA was still a small town in some ways. Sparsely populated, and not much in the way of businesses or cultural activities. There was basically fuck-all to do in LA back then except throw wild house parties, and people got really crazy behind closed doors.

John Gilbert is a sad case. He was at the pinnacle of his success in the 1920s and was Valentino's rival but he died at the age of 39 after the talkies came out. He was an alcoholic, had a very abusive childhood (his mother would keep him locked up in the closet while she entertained her male friends). I read he got in a fight with Louis Mayer after he insulted Garbo. Mayer couldn't fire him because of contract so he gave him inferior scripts and it was rumored that he altered the sound of his voice which really wasn't so bad. His career suffered so he drank himself to death.

Art Acord was a real life cowboy who made over 100 westerns during the silent film era. Despite his strapping physique, he had an incongruously high voice unsuitable for talkies. Broke and a serious alcoholic, Acord took his own life by ingesting cyanide.

Dolores and Helene Costello, the beautiful and glamorous daughters of stage and screen star Maurice Costello, were destined for great movie careers. However, both possessed lispy baby girl voices, and when they appeared in their first talkie together "The Show of Shows," the critics noticed. Dolores went on to marry John Barrymore and devoted her life to being wife and mother (and grandmother to Drew), while Helene went through several marriages, developed drug and alcohol problems, filed for bankruptcy, and died of pneumonia at Patton State Hospital where she was being treated for her addictions.

Oy vey! If had a year of life for every goy boy who claimed to have punched me in the nose I'd still be running MGM today.

Hey, Mister! I was in plenty of talkies, including that classic, "The Magnificent Ambersons!" And my voice was fine! F**K you!

The others just couldn't cut it. No discipline.

Keaton's contract was sold to MGM before the transition to sound. His silent The Cameraman came out from MGM. But Keaton quickly lost control of his movies to the MGM machine, which did not know how to use him at all. He starred in plenty of films after the transition to sound, often paired with Jimmy Durante, but he was an alcoholic and turned to booze after losing creative control.

So it wasn't the advent of sound that did him in so much as MGM and alcohol.

[quote]Dolores Costello spoke with a lisp, and found it difficult to make the transition to talking pictures, but after two years of voice coaching she was comfortable speaking before a microphone. (Reference.com)

[quote]

[quote]Exacerbated by intense self consciousness and poorly written dialogue, (Costello's) feeble delivery was up there on the screen for everyone to hear and see. She was not helped my Michael Curtiz's inadequate direction, horrendous tension on the set, and by another mechanical failing, a tendency toward sibilance. The lisp, though Costello got the rap for it, was Vitaphone's, usually caused by a deadly combination of primitive amplifiers and worn discs. In this case it rendered one of her lines as "Merthy, merthy, have you no thither of your own?" To make matters worse, she was completely stymied by the notion that visual and vocal acting could be corellated into a seamless whole. (Richard Barrios, "A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Musical Film")

Ronnie

Granny Clampett obviously never watched one of Rod LaRqocue's seven part-talkies of talkies. There's no trace of a French accent.

Who's you get the Lavender Marriage thing from? The same source as the French accent?

Go spread more horseshit around, Granny Clampett; I'd gladly shove some down your throat.

Lillian Gish remained a star, although she usually played supporting roles in her later career. Garbo and Shearer were big silent stars who made the transition. Each lasted a decade or more in talkies, and each ended her career by choice.

As famous as she was, I do think Lillian Gish is still underrated. Her remarkably translucent screen acting as a very young woman, a very sturdy stage career- playing Ophelia to Gielgud's Hamlet in her 40s, and a very long career as an older character actress until 1987 where she gives one of the most incredible performances of her career in "The Whales of August". Like Mickey Rooney, she worked for over 80 years consistently.

Pola Negri appeared as Madame Habib in Disney's 1964 film "Moon Spinners." She's got a baritone Polish accent, a feisty leopard, and some kinda bird's nest on her head.

Wasn't Lillian Gish the director's side piece, and that's why he put her in a lot of his racist films?

Bad gay men, all of you!

Nobody mentioned Ramon Novarro? He did successfully transition to sound films, but he pinged like crazy. As times changed - Gable was a pre-code sensation - audiences and studio execs wanted new stars.

Garbo brought John Gilbert back to make Queen Christina (1933) with her. He played the lead in the Columbia comedy The Captain Hates the Sea (1934) then he shot color camera tests to do a film with Dietrich but he had a mild heart attack and she dumped him. Then he died of a major heart attack.

I've seen John Gilbert's daughter Leatrice Gilbert Fountain talk about her dad in a number of documentaries, and she's a plummy treat.

r9

Haines was a flaming homosexual

It only helped me

Some early talkies did use actors who couldn't speak English well and dubbed their voices live production. Hitchcock did this with Blackmail

[quote]The first casualty would be, unfortunately, Anny Ondra – or more specifically her voice. Ondra had a thick Czech accent, and so Hitch had to replace her voice on film with that of English actress Joan Barry. Ondra would soon return to Germany, unable to continue on in English films. Unfortunately, over-dubbing, or dialogue replacement hadn’t been invented yet – so the only way to replace Ondra’s voice was to have the English actress standing off screen with a microphone and speaking live while Ondra mimed the words. This makes for a somewhat awkward performance from the otherwise brilliant Anny Ondra in scenes where she has to talk.

If I could chose any time and place to live and work, it would be the film industry in Hollywood in the 1920s.

It sounds like the most interesting time in the history of the US.

So...Drew's babytalk and lisp are genetic?

Lina Lamont from the duo, Lockwood & Lamont.

Many actors were gay back then

[quote]I'm not counting the physical comedians like Chaplin, Lloyd, and Keaton. because they seemed to work as often or as little as they wanted to anyway

Keaton ruined his own career in silents by overspending on The General. He descended into full-blown alcoholism with the arrival of the talkies and his career as a film star ended.

Corinne Griffith. Huge, then washed up by 1932.

Conrad Veidt, mentioned above, made the silent/talkie transition and was also able to transition between languages. When talkies came in he continued as a star actor in Germany and (after his exile) in Britain, and he was also successful in Hollywood as a character actor.

Wow. Our eldergays really are old.

[quote]Our eldergays really are old

No, we're knowledgeable

Old and knowledgeable!

[quote]Many actors were gay back then

People in general were much more gender fluid.

[quote]Films made in 1930 are more curiosities than pleasures, they're still pretty stiff and primitive to watch.

MGM's 1930 output is pretty decent technically (The Divorcee, Anna Christie). The others lagged.

Norma and Constance Talmadge, Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry, Claire Windsor, Anna Q. Nilsson, Antonio Moreno, Thomas Meighan, Vilma Banky

"Keaton ruined his own career in silents by overspending on The General. He descended into full-blown alcoholism with the arrival of the talkies and his career as a film star ended."

So not true. Keaton continued to successfully make films for Schenk after The General. Even after Schenk sold Keaton's contract to MGM (an indication of Keaton's high value at the time), Keaton made the Cameraman which was very profitable for MGM. It was only after MGM took away Keaton's creative control with his next films, which were talkies, that Keaton started drinking. But he continued to work throughout the 30s for MGM, then Columbia, then back to MGM, then as a pioneer in TV and advertising, before eventually being rediscovered in the late 50s and 60s, making appearances in films like Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Mad, Mad World, and the Beach movies.

OP, the question is really who made the transition from silent to talkies (which has been pretty much answered by posters here). Just about everyone with a decent career in silent films was finished by talkies, whether or not they had the ability and talent. Audiences were ready for new types of stories and actors due to the Depression.

're: 71

Other good films from 1930: The Big House, The Blue Angel, Journey' s End, All Quiet on the Western Front, Monte Carlo (a Lubitsch film with DL fave Jeanette MacDonald), The Doorway to Hell, Morocco, Ladies of Leisure, The Unholy Three, Outward Bound, Sinners Holiday, The Big Trail, The Dawn Patrol...

There are two other factors here besides crappy voices: the great Depression struck in 1929 with the stock market crash and bank failures. Also the jazz era ended, so flapper or sheik types went out of fashion. Also, with the new technology the studios started hiring unknown stage-trained actors from New York and stock companies for peanuts. Their old silent-era superstars like Mae Murray and Gloria Swanson and John Gilbert had very expensive contracts paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in the post-WWI boom. Some of them, the women especially, were aging out. There were a ton of new young actors who could be developed into new stars and paid less. It made it easier to jettison a lot of overpaid dead wood who were going out of style or aging out. Clara Bow and Colleen Moore were stuck in their flapper personas and their careers died (Bow did well in her early talkies and left by choice). Joan Crawford, another 20's flapper was smart and restyled herself as a poor shop girl or kid from the wrong side of the tracks trying to break into the hoi polloi upper class life.

Some of these silent stars were already on the way down when the talkies arrived. Actually, Marion Davies was not one of those who were badly impacted by sound - she is totally charming in "Blondie of the Follies", "Peg O' My Heart" and "Five and Ten" and the stutter doesn't show up in her talkies - retakes I guess. Janet Gaynor was another successful transition from silents to talkies but her leading man Charles Farrell had a thin speaking voice and weak delivery and his star faded.

Another somewhat related topic are the early musical films:1927-1932..

Almost all of the original All Talking-All Singing-All Dancing films are horrible (Love Me Tonight is one exception) and unwatchable today except as jaw-dropping curiosities. Musicals had fallen completely fallen out of favor within a few years of the advent of sound and it wasn't until Warner Bros. and Busby Berkeley made Gold Diggers of 1933 and 42nd Street that audiences came back. But then that new genre of musical quickly grew tiresome and was superseded by the Astaire/Rogers films, Nelson and Jeanette and the MGM Eleanor Powell musicals.

Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929) was a huge hit though.

A clip survives. Of course much of it is lame to modern eyes, complete with a bevy-of-beauties parade....the kind "Singin' in the Rain" poked fun of.....but there's some terrific tap-dancing and acrobatics.

Seeing this in 1929 on a huge screen with sound and (early) Technicolor must have been quite an experience.

R78 that was great!

Lilian Gish's star was already dimming by the time sound came in. She was over 30 and was considered a "prestige" actress rather than someone every young man mooned over, and she was in the position of badly needing a hit when sound films came in. She was of course an excellent actress in any medium, and if her stardom faded with the silents, that was more about changing tastes than anything she'd done. She was typecast as the golden-haired ingénue, an aging virgin in the age of Jean Harlow. It wouldn't do.

She left Hollywood in the 1930s and did a lot of theater for the next decade, and returned to films later to build a solid career as a character actress. She kept working throughout her long life, always earning praise and occasionally being brilliant, because she there was so much more to her than her pretty face.

R36 GIRL 27 has had new resurgence thanks to the #metoo movement. Jessica Chastain was promoting it on her Twitter as required viewing. No mention of Stenn playing fast and loose with the facts, though. In fact, Stenn was being praised for bringing the story to light.

Corinne Griffith had a way more interesting post-movie life.

After her US film career fizzled, she worked a bit in the UK and then gave up acting except for the occasional role. She then built a new career as a writer. One of her books, the family memoir [italic]Papa's Delicate Condition,[/italic] was made into an Oscar-winning movie starring Jackie Gleason.

Her longest marriage was to Washington Redskins owner George Preston Marshall. She wrote another memoir about life as an NFL wife called [italic]My Life with the Redskins,[/italic] and she wrote their official fight song, "Hail to the Redskins." She was friends with the great Curly Lambeau and introduced him to the woman he would marry. She invested in real estate. She was also involved in Republican politics and was friends with Nixon and the Reagans.

After George Marshall died, she married a fourth time, in 1966, when she was 71 and her new husband, a Broadway actor named Danny Scholl, was 45. They divorced less than a month after they got married, and in court she claimed that the real Corinne Griffith was dead and that she was her own younger sister—a claim she would make for the rest of her life. She even claimed (as her sister) that she had married her second husband (movie producer Walter Morosco) after the real Corinne had already died. Her story inspired Thomas Tryon's novel [italic]Fedora,[/italic] which Billy Wilder adapted as a movie starring William Holden and Marthe Keller.

Though nutty at the end, she was also rich—she died with a fortune estimated at around $150,000,000.