Silent era Fame
by Kitsfi | created - 04 Dec 2020 | updated - 10 Oct 2021 | Public
1. Greta Garbo
Actress | Ninotchka
Greta Garbo was born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson on September 18, 1905, in Stockholm, Sweden, to Anna Lovisa (Johansdotter), who worked at a jam factory, and Karl Alfred Gustafsson, a laborer. She was fourteen when her father died, which left the family destitute. Greta was forced to leave school and ...
2. Ernst Lubitsch
Director | To Be or Not to Be
From Ernst Lubitsch's experiences in Sophien Gymnasium (high school) theater, he decided to leave school at the age of 16 and pursue a career on the stage. He had to compromise with his father and keep the account books for the family tailor business while he acted in cabarets and music halls at ...
3. Stan Laurel
Actor | Saps at Sea
Stan Laurel came from a theatrical family, his father was an actor and theatre manager, and he made his stage debut at the age of 16 at Pickard's Museum, Glasgow. He traveled with Fred Karno's vaudeville company to the United States in 1910 and again in 1913. While with that company he was Charles ...
4. Oliver Hardy
Actor | Saps at Sea
Although his parents were never in show business, as a young boy Oliver Hardy was a gifted singer and, by age eight, was performing with minstrel shows. In 1910 he ran a movie theatre, which he preferred to studying law. In 1913 he became a comedy actor with the Lubin Company in Florida and began ...
5. Jean Epstein
Director | La chute de la maison Usher
Jean Epstein was born on March 25, 1897 in Warsaw, Poland, Russian Empire [now Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland]. He was a director and writer, known for The Fall of the House of Usher (1928), Mauprat (1926) and Le lion des Mogols (1924). He died on April 2, 1953 in Paris, France.
6. Man Ray
Director | Home Movies
American painter and artist in various media who participated in a few films. He helped found the Dada movement and was the prime American participant in the Surrealist movement. An American expatriate to Paris in the 1920s, he was a member of the so-called "Lost Generation" of creative minds ...
7. Hans Richter
Director | Vatertag
Hans Richter was born on January 12, 1919 in Nowawes, Germany. He was an actor and director, known for Vatertag (1955), Hurra - die Firma hat ein Kind (1956) and The Punch Bowl (1944). He was married to Ingeborg Bieber. He died on October 5, 2008 in Heppenheim, Hesse, Germany.
8. Dziga Vertov
Director | Chelovek s kino-apparatom
Dziga Vertov was born on January 2, 1896 in Bialystok, Grodno Governorate, Russian Empire [now Podlaskie, Poland]. He was a director and writer, known for Man with a Movie Camera (1929), Three Songs About Lenin (1934) and The Sixth Part of the World (1926). He was married to Elizaveta Svilova. He ...
9. Mauritz Stiller
Director | Erotikon
Moshe "Mauritz" Stiller, born July 17, 1883, in Helsinki, Finland, was a director, writer and actor. He began his artistic activity in the theatre, as an actor at 16. Mauritz Stiller portrayed 87 roles from 1899-1916 and directed 16 productions 1911-28. Together with Viktor Sjöström ( director, ...
10. William K.L. Dickson
Cinematographer | Sandow
Born in France to British parents, William Kennedy-Laurie Dickson stayed in that country until age 19, when he, his mother and sisters (their father had died sometime before) returned to Great Britain. Once there, Dickson--in an early indication of his lifelong fascination with science and ...
11. Thomas A. Edison
Director | The Trick Cyclist
Thomas A. Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio, USA as Thomas Alva Edison. He was a producer and director, known for silent movies such as, The Trick Cyclist (1901), The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914) and Bicycle Trick Riding, No. 2 (1899). He also produced the first American film ...
12. Graham Cutts
Director | Woman to Woman
Graham Cutts' career in the film industry began in 1909, when he became a film exhibitor. It wasn't long before he got involved in the production end of the business, and became a director in 1922. He was a co-founder of the prestigious studio Gainsborough Films, and while at Gainsborough guided ...
13. Mary Pickford
Actress | Coquette
Mary Pickford was born Gladys Louise Smith in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to Elsie Charlotte (Hennessy) and John Charles Smith. She was of English and Irish descent. Pickford began in the theater at age seven. Then known as "Baby Gladys Smith", she toured with her family in a number of theater ...
14. Anny Ondra
Actress | Blackmail
Anny Ondra was a Polish-Czech-Austrian-German-French singer and a film and stage actress. As a child she lived in Prague, where her father was a colonel in the Austro-Hungarian army. After graduating from convent school in Prague, she studied to be an actress with Professor Bor. She was already a ...
15. Busby Berkeley
Director | Gold Diggers of 1935
Busby Berkeley was one of the greatest choreographers of the US movie musical. He started his career in the US Army in 1918, as a lieutenant in the artillery conducting and directing parades. After the World War I cease-fire he was ordered to stage camp shows for the soldiers. Back in the US he ...
16. Gary Cooper
Actor | High Noon
Born to Alice Cooper and Charles Cooper. Gary attended school at Dunstable school England, Helena Montana and Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa (then called Iowa College). His first stage experience was during high school and college. Afterwards, he worked as an extra for one year before getting a ...
17. Josef von Sternberg
Director | The Devil Is a Woman
Josef von Sternberg split his childhood between Vienna and New York City. His father, a former soldier in the Austro-Hungarian army, could not support his family in either city; Sternberg remembered him only as "an enormously strong man who often used his strength on me." Forced by poverty to drop ...
18. Dimitri Tiomkin
Soundtrack | High Noon
Dimitri Tiomkin was a Russian Jewish composer who emigrated to America and became one of the most distinguished and best-loved music writers of Hollywood. He won a hallowed place in the pantheon of the most successful and productive composers in American film history, earning himself four Oscars ...
19. Angus MacPhail
Writer | Spellbound
London-born Angus MacPhail worked as a screenwriter for many years with producer Michael Balcon, but he wrote for many of Britain's most prestigious studios, such as Gainsborugh, Gaumont-British and Ealing. He is probably best known for his script for the classic British feature Dead of Night (1945)...
20. Brigitte Bardot
Actress | Le mépris
Brigitte Bardot was born on September 28, 1934 in Paris, France. Her father had an engineering degree and worked with his father in the family business. Brigitte's mother encouraged her daughter to take up music and dance, and she proved to be very adept at it. By the time she was 15, Brigitte was ...
21. Jane Russell
Actress | Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell was born on June 21, 1921, in Bemidji, Minnesota. Her father was a United States Army lieutenant and her mother had been a student of drama and an actress with a traveling troupe. Once Mr. Russell was mustered out of the service, the family took up residence in ...
22. Marilyn Monroe
Actress | Some Like It Hot
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, comedienne, singer, and model. Monroe is of English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh descent. She became one of the world's most enduring iconic figures and is remembered both for her winsome embodiment of the Hollywood sex symbol and her tragic personal and ...
23. Sophia Loren
Actress | La ciociara
Sophia Loren was born as Sofia Scicolone at the Clinica Regina Margherita in Rome on September 20, 1934. Her father Riccardo was married to another woman and refused to marry her mother Romilda Villani, despite the fact that she was the mother of his two children (Sophia and her younger sister ...
24. Gennady Shpalikov
Writer | Dolgaya schastlivaya zhizn
Gennady Shpalikov was born on September 6, 1937 in Segezha, Karelian ASSR, Russian SFSR, USSR [now Republic of Karelia, Russia]. He was a writer and actor, known for Dolgaya schastlivaya zhizn (1966), Ya shagayu po Moskve (1964) and You and Me (1971). He was married to Inna Gulaya and Natalya ...
25. Vasiliy Shukshin
Writer | Kalina krasnaya
Vasili Shukshin, one of Russian cinema's notable figures, was born Vasili Makarovich Shukshin into a peasant family on July 25, 1929, in the village of Srostki, Altai province, Siberian Russia. His father, named Makar Leontievich Shukshin, was a landlord who refused to join a collective farm and ...
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