Here's a snippet from the NY Times 1929 review of His Glorious Night . The review is positive and says about John Gilbert: Mr. Gilbert's responsibility does not lie with his lines and therefore he is to be congratulated on the manner in which he handles this speaking rôle. His voice is pleasant, but...

I also feel the movie belongs to John Gilbert....

Yes it's an odd role in Bachelor Apartment .... she doesn't quite fit in with Lowell Sherman and Irene Dunne. I've also seen her in A Mormon Maid in which she seemed to be channeling Mary Pickford and the apparently incomplete Peacock Alley , which I liked but Murray seemed terrified. I also have a ...

I'm not sure Mae Murray ever had any chemistry with any actor other than herself.

I watched a neat little programmer called Romance of the Underworld which starred Mary Astor as a B girl who ditches her seedy nightclub life and works her way through night school, marries the boss (John Boles) only to find that snarky fingers of her past reaching out via blackmail. Oscar Apfel, Be...

I re-watched Mickey, the 1918 smash hit starring Mabel Normand. Episodic and confusing at times, still Normand is terrific. She had the perfect face for silent films with those big expressive eyes. She's also a terrific comedienne.

As for John Gilbert's excesses.... Colleen Moore seems to have been a reliable witness although by the time she published her autobiography, the stories about Gilbert had been long established as Hollywood fact. Gilbert remained one of Hollywood's best tennis players, hard to do if your're a total s...

As I remember Leatrice Fountain's excellent book, she pointed out that in fact there were NO stories written about Gilbert's voice problems in his first few films (where the problem was more technical than vocal). The stories started appearing around the time of WAY FOR A SAILOR. Gilbert's voice was...

I'll play devil's advocate. Everything I have every read about Mayer has shown him to be a vicious and vindictive person. From what I've read, his dealings with John Gilbert were poisonous, and he vowed to ruin Gilbert's career (and he did). He tried everything to make Gilbert break his control and ...

I just watched Griffith's 1924 Isn't Life Wonderful , about post-WW I family in Germany dealing with inflation, no jobs, and starvation. Excellent film with many Griffith touches and solid performance from Carol Dempster, Neil Hamilton, and Lupino Lane in the comic relief role. A very touching film ...

good comments.... my IMDb review of this film: Buck Jones is a huge surprise in this 1925 silent, playing a rural man who lives with his mother (Edythe Chapman) and is known as Lazybones. Frank Borzage's delicate film (beautifully shot) shows the true of a man no one really knows. He sits around and...

I have several more Barrymore silents I haven't watched yet, but I liked him and Dolores Costello in The Sea Beast although she had a small part and although it had little to do with Melville's novel.

Wolheim appaeared very late the show....

what a shame Barrymore never did a talkie version of Holmes... he would have been splendid.

I have a copy of Sherlock Holmes and watched it before the TCM airing. It was ok but nothing special IMO. I thought it was too slowly paced, lacked humor, and looked very very cheap. I did like John Barrymore in the role but the storly seems dull. The biggest surprise was seeing Carol Dempster as th...

Back from Maine (20 below with wind chill factor).... I watched The Mating Call with Thomas Meighan, Evelyn Brent, and Renee Adoree. Nice lurid story but I don't get the title. Brent is a spectacular b**** in this one. Back from the war, Meighan rushes to meet Brent who has annulled her marriage to ...