Famous Silent Film Actors: From Chaplin to Garbo
The silent film era produced a generation of movie stars whose fame was unprecedented. For the first time, ordinary people around the world recognized the faces — and the gestures, the walks, the tics — of men and women they had never met. Charlie Chaplin was arguably the most famous person on earth in the 1920s, recognized in every country where his films played. The silent film stars invented modern celebrity, and their names and images are still recognized a century later.
This page surveys the major silent film stars. For the era in which they worked, For the 1929 transition that ended their world, For the studio system that made them, and famous silent film directors.
Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977)
Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin was born in London on April 16, 1889, the son of two music-hall performers. His childhood was Dickensian — his mother was committed to an asylum, his father died of alcoholism. He came to America in 1910 with a Fred Karno comedy troupe and was hired by Mack Sennett’s Keystone Studios in 1913. There he created the Tramp — the little man in the baggy trousers, the tight coat, the oversized shoes and bowler hat, the cane, the toothbrush mustache — his signature character for the next quarter century. The Tramp appeared in 1914’s Making a Living and a dozen other Keystone shorts, then moved with Chaplin to Essanay, Mutual, and First National, where he directed his own films.
Chaplin’s 1920s features were major cultural events. The Kid (1921) was the first feature to combine comedy and pathos at feature length. The Gold Rush (1925) is widely considered his masterpiece. The Circus (1928) won a special Academy Award. In 1919, Chaplin co-founded United Artists with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D.W. Griffith. Chaplin resisted sound: City Lights (1931) was a silent film with synchronized music, Modern Times (1936) partly a talkie. In 1952, during the McCarthy era, he left for Switzerland and lived in exile until his death on Christmas Day 1977. He received an honorary Academy Award in 1972.
Buster Keaton (1895–1986)
Joseph Frank “Buster” Keaton was born in Piqua, Kansas, on October 4, 1895, into a vaudeville family. By age three he was part of the Three Keatons, a knockabout comedy act; the boy was once billed as “the small boy who can’t be damaged.” Keaton moved into films in 1917 with Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, and by 1920 was directing his own short films.
The 1920s were Keaton’s creative peak. Our Hospitality (1923) and The Navigator (1924) established his gift for elaborate physical set-pieces. Sherlock Jr. (1924) demonstrated his technical daring. The General (1926) combined comedy and action on a scale rarely matched. Keaton’s screen persona — “the Great Stone Face” — was the opposite of Chaplin’s: a thin, impassive man in situations of absurd physical danger with no expression. The 1928 move to MGM ended his independence; his marriage to Natalie Talmadge ended unhappily, his alcoholism deepened. A 1950s comeback restored his reputation. He received a special Academy Award in 1959 and died on February 1, 1986.
Harold Lloyd (1893–1971)
Harold Clayton Lloyd was born in Burchard, Nebraska, on April 20, 1893. He entered films around 1913 and developed the “Glasses Character” — an eager, optimistic, middle-class young man in round horn-rimmed glasses and a straw boater. The character was a deliberate alternative to both Chaplin’s Tramp and Keaton’s stone face, and Lloyd’s 1920s features made him a major box-office rival to both.
Lloyd’s most famous films are Safety Last! (1923), with its iconic scene of the young man hanging from a clock high above a city street; Girl Shy (1924); The Freshman (1925); and Speedy (1927). Lloyd’s films were less melancholy than Chaplin’s and less technically adventurous than Keaton’s, but they were enormously popular, the box-office champion of the 1920s. He received a special Academy Award in 1952. He died on March 8, 1971.
Mary Pickford (1892–1979)
Gladys Louise Smith was born in Toronto on April 8, 1892. After a stage career as a child, she joined D.W. Griffith’s Biograph Company in 1909 and was renamed Mary Pickford. Her combination of girl-next-door charm, ringlet curls, and emotional directness made her the first true movie star, and by 1914 she was earning thousands of dollars a week — an unprecedented sum. She was known as “America’s Sweetheart.”Pickford’s 1920s features include Pollyanna (1920), Tess of the Storm Country (1922), and My Best Girl (1927). In 1919 she co-founded United Artists with Chaplin, Fairbanks, and Griffith, and in 1920 she married Fairbanks. The Pickford-Fairbanks marriage, the first great Hollywood celebrity couple, ended in divorce in 1936. Pickford was unable to make the transition to sound and retired from acting in 1933. She received an honorary Academy Award in 1976, three years before her death on May 29, 1979.
Douglas Elton Thomas Ullman was born in Denver on May 23, 1883. He entered films in 1915 and was soon starring in swashbuckling adventure films. His 1920s films — The Mark of Zorro (1920), Robin Hood (1922), The Thief of Bagdad (1924), The Black Pirate (1926) — defined the adventure genre for decades. His athletic stunts made him a role model for millions of American boys. He received an Academy Award in 1936, three years before his death on December 12, 1939.
Greta Garbo (1905–1990)
Greta Lovisa Gustafsson was born in Stockholm on September 18, 1905. After a stage career in Sweden, she was cast by the Finnish-Russian director Mauritz Stiller in The Saga of Gösta Berling (1924) and brought to Hollywood in 1925, where Louis B. Mayer rechristened her Greta Garbo. Flesh and the Devil (1926), co-starring John Gilbert, made her a star. Her 1920s films established the Garbo mystique: the woman of mystery, the tragic heroine, the foreign beauty whose aloofness was itself the performance. Her 1930s talkies, including Grand Hotel (1932) and Camille (1936), were major successes. Garbo retired from film in 1941, at 36, with the famous line “I want to be alone.” She died on April 15, 1990.
Clara Bow (1905–1965)
Clara Gordon Bow was born in Brooklyn on July 29, 1905, the daughter of a mentally ill mother. After winning a magazine beauty contest, she was cast in a series of low-budget films and became a star with the 1926 film It, based on a short story by Elinor Glyn. The title, and the “It Girl” label that followed, defined a new kind of female movie star: the energetic, sexual, working-class woman who became a model for millions of American flappers. Bow’s other 1920s hit was Wings (1927), the first Best Picture winner. Her career declined in the early 1930s due to scandals, mental health problems, and a difficult transition to sound. She retired from film in 1933 and died on September 27, 1965.
Rudolph Valentino (1895–1926)
Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentino d’Antonguolla was born in Castellaneta, Italy, on May 6, 1895, and came to the United States in 1913. He became a star with The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921), in which a famous tango scene established him as a sex symbol. The Sheik (1921) made him a sensation. Valentino died on August 23, 1926, at 31, of a perforated ulcer. The public response was unprecedented: thousands gathered outside the Campbell Funeral Home in New York, a riot broke out — the first modern case of mass celebrity mourning. A 1961 biopic, Valentino, starred Rudolf Nureyev.
Lillian Gish and Gloria Swanson
Lillian Diana Gish (1893–1993), born in Springfield, Ohio, made her career with D.W. Griffith and was “The First Lady of American Cinema.” Her 1920s films for Griffith — Way Down East (1920), Orphans of the Storm (1921) — made her one of the most respected dramatic actresses of the silent era. She received an honorary Academy Award in 1970.
Gloria May Josephine Svensson (1899–1983), born in Chicago, was a major Paramount star of the 1920s, earning up to $20,000 a week. Her career declined in the sound era, but her comeback as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (1950) is one of the great performances of American cinema. She received an honorary Academy Award in 1975.