Description

This book does not, could not, tell the . whole story of the stars of the golden years and you might well look for all those fine players who supported the stars and contributed so much to that era. We have managed to include some who achieved star – billing and for the rest, their presence is felt. The choice has been guided by the box – office figures, by popularity polls and by the reputation that remains. There are some box – office stars who do not appear (Charles Farrell, Joe E. Brown, Jane Withers, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers) mainly because their entire careers do not seem to justify inclusion, nor have we included stars from radio and the stage who made only occasional forays into films.For similar reasons the Silent stars included are only those who are remembered today. There is enough to be written on the stars of the Silent screen to make a book twice this length – enough heartbreak and triumph – but for the most part they remain unseen, their films gathering dust in the corners of warehouses, or disintegrating. And some of them, when seen, are very dubious contenders for a pantheon of great stars. The continental stars of the period, unless they worked in Hollywood, have been left to a later volume, on the understanding that from the introduction of Talkies until well after the Second World War even the best of these players were known outside their own countries only to film societies or to the patrons of ‘specialized’ cinemas. This survey therefore includes those artists who achieved stardom before and in some cases during World War lI. The selection has had to be arbitrary: John Wayne was not a major star until after the war and yet he seems to belong to this period; while Rex Harrison, David Niven and a few others who were in starrine roles before the war seem to belong to the post-war period.Care has been taken to examine the starts and their films in the light of their own era,and to balance contemporary opinion against recent showing of the same films.Because of institutions like New York’s Museum of Modern Art and London’s National Film Theatre, and old movies on television,it is possible to re-examine and discover the films of the past but one should note, in passing that this was not always so.