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Hollywood (1923 Film)
''Hollywood'' is a 1923 American silent comedy film directed by James Cruze, co-written by Frank Condon and Thomas J. Geraghty, and released by Paramount Pictures. The film is a lengthier feature follow-up to Paramount's own short film exposé of itself, '' A Trip to Paramountown'' from 1922. The film has become famous as having featured cameos of more than fifty famous Hollywood stars. However, the film is now considered a lost film. (Wayback Machine) Plot Angela Whitaker (Hope Drown) is a young unknown who comes to Hollywood to become an actress, and brings her grandfather, Joel Whitaker (Luke Cosgrave). At the end of the first day, she has not found work, but her grandfather has.
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James Cruze
James Cruze (born James Cruze Bosen; March 27, 1884 – August 3, 1942) was a silent film actor and film director. Early years Cruze's middle name came from the battle of Vera Cruz. He was raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but did not practice the religion after his teenage years. Very little is certain about his childhood and teen years because he told a different story at every interview he granted. Career Cruze acted in, directed and or produced over 100 films mainly during the silent film era. His first known acting job was at Lubin Manufacturing Company in 1910. He started at Thanhouser Company in 1911 with ''She'' (1911) which is where the majority of his body of work was produced, much of it as the leading man. After leaving Thanhouser in 1916, he worked for several other companies as director and producer, primarily for Paramount Pictures, from 1918 to 1938. Cruze struggled to regain his successes of the silent era when sound came to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cameo Appearance
A cameo role, also called a cameo appearance and often shortened to just cameo (), is a brief appearance of a well-known person in a work of the performing arts. These roles are generally small, many of them non-speaking ones, and are commonly either appearances in a work in which they hold some special significance (such as actors from an original movie appearing in its remake) or renowned people making uncredited appearances. Short appearances by celebrities, film directors, politicians, athletes or musicians are common. A crew member of the movie or show playing a minor role can be referred to as a cameo role as well, such as Alfred Hitchcock's frequent cameos. Concept Originally, in the 1920s, a "cameo role" meant "a small character part that stands out from the other minor parts". The '' Oxford English Dictionary'' connects this with the meaning "a short literary sketch or portrait", which is based on the literal meaning of " cameo", a miniature carving on a gemstone. Mor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Betty Compson
Betty Compson (born Eleanor Luicime Compson; March 19, 1897 – April 18, 1974) was an American actress and film producer who got her start during Hollywood's silent era. She is best known for her performances in '' The Docks of New York'' and '' The Barker'', the latter of which earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Early life Compson was born on March 19, 1897, the daughter of Virgil and Mary ( Rauscher) Compson, in Beaver, Utah, at a mining camp. Her father was a mining engineer, a gold prospector, and a grocery store proprietor, and her mother was a maid in homes and in a hotel. Compson graduated from Salt Lake High School. Her father died when she was young, and she obtained employment as a violinist at 16 at a theater in Salt Lake City. Career Playing in vaudeville sketches with touring circuits, Compson got noticed by Hollywood producers. While touring, she was discovered by comedic producer Al Christie and signed a contract with him. Her first ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edythe Chapman
Edythe Chapman (October 8, 1863 – October 15, 1948) was an American stage and silent film actress. Career Born in Rochester, New York, Chapman began her stage career as early as 1898 when she appeared in New York City in ''The Charity Ball''. She performed at the Shubert Theater in Brooklyn in a production of ''The Light Eternal'' in 1907. The play was a romantic drama of Imperial Rome which was supported by a cast of approximately 100 people. Chapman played maternal roles in numerous silent motion pictures and became known in the 1920s as ''Hollywood's Mother''. She played ''Ma Jones'' in the film version of '' Lightnin''' (1925), a screen production which featured Will Rogers. Edythe was ''Grandmother Janeway'' in ''Man Crazy'' (1927). The film starred Dorothy Mackaill and Jack Mulhall. Chapman was praised by reviewers for her performance. Chapman came to Hollywood around 1909 with her husband, screen and stage actor, James Neill. The two met in Cincinnati when Chap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. (16 April 188925 December 1977) was an English comic actor, filmmaker, and composer who rose to fame in the era of silent film. He became a worldwide icon through his screen persona, the Tramp, and is considered one of the film industry's most important figures. His career spanned more than 75 years, from childhood in the Victorian era until a year before his death in 1977, and encompassed both adulation and controversy. Chaplin's childhood in London was one of poverty and hardship. His father was absent and his mother struggled financially — he was sent to a workhouse twice before age nine. When he was 14, his mother was committed to a mental asylum. Chaplin began performing at an early age, touring music halls and later working as a stage actor and comedian. At 19, he was signed to the Fred Karno company, which took him to the United States. He was scouted for the film industry and began appearing in 1914 for Keystone Studios. He soon d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Boyd (actor)
William Lawrence Boyd (June 5, 1895 – September 12, 1972) was an American film actor who is known for portraying the cowboy hero Hopalong Cassidy. Biography Boyd was born in Hendrysburg, Ohio, and reared in Cambridge, Ohio and Tulsa, Oklahoma, living in Tulsa from 1909 to 1913. He was the son of a day laborer, Charles William Boyd, and his wife, the former Lida Wilkens (aka Lyda). Following his father's death, he moved to California and worked as an orange picker, surveyor, tool dresser and auto salesman. In Hollywood, he found work as an extra in ''Why Change Your Wife?'' and other films. During World War I, he enlisted in the army but was exempt from military service because of a "weak heart". More prominent film roles followed, including his breakout role as Jack Moreland in Cecil B. DeMille's '' The Road to Yesterday'' (1925) which starred also Joseph Schildkraut, Jetta Goudal, and Vera Reynolds. Boyd's performance in the film was praised by critics, while movie-goer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Noah Beery
Noah Nicholas Beery (January 17, 1882 – April 1, 1946) was an American actor who appeared in films from 1913 until his death in 1946. He was the older brother of Academy Award-winning actor Wallace Beery as well as the father of prominent character actor Noah Beery Jr. He was billed as either Noah Beery or Noah Beery Sr. depending upon the film. Early life Noah Nicholas Beery was born on a farm in Clay County, Missouri, not far from Smithville.''Dictionary of Missouri Biography'', Lawrence O. Christensen, University of Missouri Press, 1999. The Beery family left the farm in the 1890s and moved to nearby Kansas City, Missouri, where the father was employed as a police officer. While still a young boy Beery got his first exposure to theatre, and at the same time showed budding entrepreneurship by selling lemon drops at the Gillis Theater in Kansas City. Beery's deep, rich voice in his early teens led several actors at the Gillis Theater to encourage him to take singing le ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Diana Serra Cary
Diana Serra Cary (born Peggy-Jean Montgomery; October 29, 1918 – February 24, 2020), known as Baby Peggy, was an American child film actress, vaudevillian, author and silent film historian. She was the last living person with a substantial career in silent films. Baby Peggy was one of the three major American child stars of the Hollywood silent film era along with Jackie Coogan and Baby Marie. Between 1921 and 1924, she made over 150 short films for the ''Century Film Corporation''. In 1922, she received over 1.2 million fan letters and by 1924, she had been dubbed ''The Million Dollar Baby'' for her $1.5 million annual salary ($ million in ). Despite her childhood fame and wealth, her parents mismanaged her finances and by the time she came of age she found herself poor and working as an extra by the 1930s. Having an interest in both writing and history since her youth, Montgomery found a second career as an author and silent film historian in her later years under the nam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agnes Ayres
Agnes Ayres (born Agnes Henkel; April 4, 1896 – December 25, 1940) was an American actress who rose to fame during the silent film era. She was known for her role as Lady Diana Mayo in '' The Sheik'' opposite Rudolph Valentino. Career Ayres began her career in 1914 when she was noticed by an Essanay Studios staff director and cast as an extra in a crowd scene. After moving to Manhattan, New York City with her mother to pursue a career in acting, Ayres was spotted by actress Alice Joyce. Joyce noticed the physical resemblance the two shared which eventually led to Ayres being cast in ''Richard the Brazen'' (1917), as Joyce's character's sister. Ayres' career began to gain momentum when Paramount Pictures founder Jesse Lasky began to take an interest in her. Lasky gave her a starring role in the Civil War drama ''Held by the Enemy'' (1920), and also lobbied for parts for her in several Cecil B. DeMille productions. During this period Ayres began a romance with Lasky. In 1921 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mary Astor
Mary Astor (born Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke; May 3, 1906 – September 25, 1987) was an American actress. Although her career spanned several decades, she may be best remembered for her performance as Brigid O'Shaughnessy in '' The Maltese Falcon'' (1941). Astor began her long motion picture career as a teenager in the silent movies of the early 1920s. When talkies arrived, her voice was initially considered too masculine and she was off the screen for a year. After she appeared in a play with friend Florence Eldridge, film offers returned, and she resumed her career in sound pictures. In 1936, Astor's career was nearly destroyed by scandal. She had an affair with playwright George S. Kaufman and was branded an adulterous wife by her ex-husband during a custody fight over their daughter. Overcoming these stumbling blocks in her private life, she went on to greater film success, eventually winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of concert ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gertrude Astor
Gertrude Astor (born Gertrude Irene Eyster; November 9, 1887 – November 9, 1977) was an American motion picture character actress, who began her career playing trombone in a woman's band. Early years Gertrude Irene Eyster was born in Lakewood, Ohio, to a working-class family of German descent. Her father was Glen Eyster, an assistant fire chief in Lima, Ohio. Career Astor joined a woman's band as a trombone player and toured the states. In New York she left the band to obtain film work and got a job as an extra before her career took off. In 1915, Astor gained a contract with Universal Studios. Between then and 1962, she appeared in over 250 movies. Her first known credit is in a Biograph short in 1915. She then became a contract player at Universal. A tall, angular and beautiful woman, Astor frequently towered over the leading men of the era; thus, she was frequently utilized in comedy roles as aristocrats, gold-diggers, and "heroine's best pal". Her best-known si ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roscoe Arbuckle
Roscoe Conkling "Fatty" Arbuckle (; March 24, 1887 – June 29, 1933) was an American silent film actor, comedian, director, and screenwriter. He started at the Selig Polyscope Company and eventually moved to Keystone Studios, where he worked with Mabel Normand and Harold Lloyd as well as with his nephew, Al St. John. He also mentored Charlie Chaplin, Monty Banks and Bob Hope, and brought vaudeville star Buster Keaton into the movie business. Arbuckle was one of the most popular silent stars of the 1910s and one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood, signing a contract in 1920 with Paramount Pictures for $14,000 (). Arbuckle was the defendant in three widely publicized trials between November 1921 and April 1922 for the rape and manslaughter of actress Virginia Rappe. Rappe had fallen ill at a party hosted by Arbuckle at San Francisco's St. Francis Hotel in September 1921, and died four days later. A friend of Rappe accused Arbuckle of raping and accidentally killing her ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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