Essay

Some believe “Old Dark House” thrillers began with J.B. Priestley’s 1927 novel Benighted, which was adapted for the screen by James Whale as The Old Dark House in 1932. The reality is that the template had already been created by Mary Roberts Rinehart in her 1908 novel The Circular Staircase, which … [Read more...] about The Cat and the Canary

After making his name in films like The Wrath of the Gods and The Cheat, matinee idol Sessue Hayakawa was ready for a change. “Such roles are not true to our Japanese nature …,” he explained in the March 1916 issue of Photoplay. “They are false and give people a wrong idea of us. I wish to make a … [Read more...] about The Dragon Painter

 A century ago, both Los Angeles and the new movie industry within its borders were growing, and evolving, at breakneck speed. In 1923, after making nineteen independently-made short films for producer Joseph M. Schenck, Buster Keaton released his first comedy feature, Three Ages, a parody of D.W. … [Read more...] about Three Ages

Over the years, Allan Dwan told dozens of different stories about how he got into the picture business. Most involved some combination of a youthful stint as an actor, a gig helping to install mercury-vapor arc lights at Essanay Studios in Chicago, and his instant success selling original stories to … [Read more...] about Padlocked

The title didn’t exactly sell itself. “Flowing Gold?—that must be one of them moonshine pictures,” guessed an Arkansas moviegoer. Equally puzzling was the tantalizing ad banner: “Flowing Gold on Market Street on Monday.” But at least one blurb caught the film’s gist: “A thrilling story of flaming … [Read more...] about Flowing Gold

Karl Brown was only twenty-nine when he wrote and directed Stark Love, but by then he was thoroughly grounded in the motion picture business, having started with Kinemacolor’s American operation in 1912 at the age of fifteen. Developing camera negative for the company he learned the basics of film … [Read more...] about Stark Love

You could almost feel bad for Mary Philbin. A Chicago-born beauty, she’d been discovered by virtue of proximity, a childhood friend of Rebekah Laemmle, niece to Universal’s Carl Laemmle who loved nothing more than to give family and the family-adjacent a break. It didn’t hurt that she bore a passing … [Read more...] about Stella Maris

Too few people remember just how funny Marie Prevost really was. Watching Up in Mabel’s Room should put us all on to the truth about her short but brilliant career. Ontario-born Prevost was discovered in her late teens by Mack Sennett when she was working as a secretary in a law firm in 1915. She … [Read more...] about Up in Mabel’s Room