June 02, 2009

59. A Romance of the Redwoods (1917)

I don't know what's come over me but I've really enjoyed romantic films lately. Maybe because my own life lacks any of that.


Since Jack Pickford films are so hard to come by, I'll have to settle for his sister instead.
Mary (25) was just adorable as Jenny Lawrence.

Elliott Dexter (47) oozed charisma and toughness.













































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Directed by Cecil B. DeMille

4 comments:

  1. Is it possible they made a mistake with elliot dexter's birthday on wiki/imdb? To me he didn't look 47 at all. He looked at least a decade younger, but maybe that was due to the lighting.

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  2. You know, I thought about that too.
    He looks quite young, I'd say max 32 or so.
    It says on Wikipedia (not the most reliable source on earth, I know) that :

    "Dexter started his career in vaudeville and didn't move to films until he was 45. "

    I don't know... maybe he'd had a sip from the fountain of youth :P

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  3. Anonymous1/3/10

    I believe he just had a youthful look to him. Not to mention he had all that experience acting on stage, so he could be believable in just about any role at all, and his age was not very evident, especially not on the old cameras of those days. In more than one of his films he starts out with a moustache, then shaves it off halfway through the movie and looks ten years younger afterwards, which is used as an element of the plot. Clever trick! One movie where he did that was Old Wives For New, and another was Don't Change Your Husband, where Gloria Swanson was his co-star. I loved that one!

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  4. Hi disneyclint !

    You have a good point there, experience does bring extra tools when it comes to acting.

    And old cameras/lighting seem to have been quite gentle on the actors, as was with the case of Eugenie Besserer (who was about 51) in Scarlet Days. During the course of the film she could easily have passed as a 30-something, and then later on, as someone in her 60s, and all this was achieved through clothes, wigs, change of posture etc.
    I think silent acting was much more demanding but also more impressive, because actors had to express a hell of a lot of emotion than film stars today.

    I'm sort of trailing off here, sorry.

    I need to track down more Elliott Dexter films, I like him.

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