Breaking the Silence Trivia Quiz

Answer: Pola Negri

Born Barbara Apollonia Chalupiec in Poland in 1897, Pola Negri was a star in Poland and Germany before she came to the United States and Hollywood in 1923. She became one of the richest stars of her day, living in a mansion modelled on the White House.

When Rudolph Valentino died Negri claimed that they had been about to marry (which was denied by those close to Valentino) and she 'fainted' several times during his lavish funeral. All a publicity stunt, claimed her critics. Unfortunately she lost much of her money in the crash of 1929 and the advent of the talkies put paid to her Hollywood career because audiences could not understand her heavily-accented English.

She returned to Germany in 1930 and recouped her fortunes making films there. She fled Germany in 1938 after rumours began circulating that she was half Jewish.

She returned to the US in 1941. Billy Wilder offered her the part of Norma Desmond in his film 'Sunset Boulevard' but she turned it down (the part went to Gloria Swanson, another great star of the silent era, and it briefly revitalized Swanson's career).

She died in 1987 in Texas and is buried in Hollywood.

Answer: Fatty Arbuckle

Roscoe Conkling Arbuckle (1887-1933) started his career in vaudeville and later became one of the highest paid stars in Hollywood. He was not only a comic actor, but also a gifted screenwriter, director and singer (after hearing Arbuckle sing Enrico Caruso tried to persuade him to "give up this nonsense" to pursue a singing career.) While he was billed as Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle - the nickname was apt because Arbuckle was a man of massive girth - he allowed no one to call him Fatty offscreen. (Despite the fact that was a large, heavy-set man, Arbuckle was surprisingly lithe and an excellent acrobat and tumbler.) Arbuckle's career in movies came to an abrupt halt in 1921 when, while partying in San Francisco, one of his guests, an aspiring actress named Virginia Rappe, became ill.

The hotel doctor diagnosed her case as one of extreme intoxication, but Rappe died three days later of peritonitis caused by a ruptured bladder. Another of the party guests, Maude Delmont, accused Arbuckle of raping Rappe and charges of murder were filed against him. Rumours flew thick and fast.

The Hearst newspapers published stories that pronounced Arbuckle guilty before he even went to trial, and the prosecutor, Matthew Brady, saw the trial as his ticket into the Governor's mansion. Arbuckle was tried three times - the first two trials were declared mistrials after the juries voted 10-2 in favour of acquittal, and in the third trial the jury, having learned that Maude Delmont had a rap sheet as long as your arm for fraud, embezzlement and other misdoings, returned a unanimous verdict of Not Guilty. It was too late for Arbuckle, though. His career was in ruins. He descended into alcoholism and although he was poised for a comeback, he died in June 1933.

Answer: Harold Lloyd

Harold Lloyd is best known for his comedic 'young man with glasses' character (invariably named Harold), portraying a resourceful, eye-on-the-prize types in a series of silent films that hit the silver screen in the teens and twenties of the silent movie era.

He was born in Nebraska in 1893 and was a successful child actor in theatre before arriving in California in 1912. After a brief stint working for Thomas Edison's production house, he formed a partnership with Hal Roach in 1913 and went on to write, produce and star in some of the blockbuster comedies of the day. Lloyd was a bit of a daredevil and performed all his own stunts (the scene from 'Safety Last', with Harold clinging for dear life to the minute hand of a clock high above a busy street, is one of the most memorable of his career).

In 1919 he lost the index finger and thumb on one hand to an accident with a prop bomb and thereafter used a prosthesis in his films. From 1914 to 1919 his love interest - both on and off screen - was a young actress named Bebe Daniels.

They parted ways when Bebe left to pursue loftier acting goals. Mildred Davis became Lloyd's acting partner, and in 1923 they married. The Lloyds had three children and lived in a palatial house with 26 bathrooms (why would anyone need 26 bathrooms?) The Lloyd estate in Beverley Hills has long since been subdivided but the house remains and is frequently used as a location in films. Mildred died in 1969, and Harold died in 1973.

Answer: Lillian Gish

Lillian Diana de Guiche was born in Springfield, Ohio on October 14, 1893 and died on February 27, 1993, and in the intervening years she enjoyed an acting career that spanned almost her whole life. Her father, James de Guiche, abandoned his family when Lillian and her younger sister Dorothy were very young.

In order to support her two daughters, Mrs. de Guiche embarked on an acting career under the name Mary McConnell. When Lillian and Dorothy were old enough, they joined their mother on stage as the Gish sisters.

It was Mary Pickford who introduced Lillian to director D.W. Griffith in 1912, and Lillian went on to star in many of Griffith's most acclaimed films, including 'The Birth of a Nation', 'Intolerance', 'Broken Blossoms', 'Way down East' and 'Orphans of the Storm'.

The American Film Institute named Gish one of the greatest female stars of all time, and she received an Honorary Academy Award in 1971. With the advent of talkies, Lillian returned to the stage and played a variety of roles on Broadway (she delighted in telling people that she played Ophelia as an absolute wanton in Guthrie McClintic's universally hailed production of 'Hamlet', which also starred John Gielgud and Judith Anderson).

She returned to movies in the mid-1940s and won an Oscar nomination for her role in 'A Duel in the Sun' (1946). For the remainder of her career she appeared in films and on television (she hosted a successful PBS series, 'The Silent Years', in 1975. Despite rumours of love affairs with D.W. Griffith (which they both denied), producer Charles Duell (who created a scandal by doing a kiss-and-tell routine when they broke up) and theatre critic George Jean Nathan, Lillian Gish never married. Her multi-million dollar estate was willed to her dear friend Helen Hayes, the mother of Gish's godson, James McArthur. Hayes died a month after Gish and the money is now used by a foundation that provides awards for artistic excellence.

Answer: Mary Pickford

'America's Sweetheart' Mary Pickford was a Canadian, born Gladys Louise Smith on April 8, 1892 in Toronto. After her father walked out on his family in 1895, her mother Charlotte worked as a seamstress and also took in boarders to support Gladys and her younger siblings Jack and Lottie. Gladys became an actress at age seven when one of the boarders got her a part in 'The Silver King' at the Princess Theatre in Toronto, and a star was born. Theatre became the career of choice for the whole family with Jack and Lottie treading the boards and Mother Charlotte acting as agent for her children. By 1907, Gladys was appearing on Broadway in 'The Warrens of Virginia' and it was the play's director, David Belasco, who insisted that Gladys change her name to Mary Pickford. From the stage, Mary went on to work in films at the Biograph Studio in New York and the rest, as they say, is history.

Pickford was married three times - to actor Owen Moore, actor Douglas Fairbanks (the great love of her life) and to actor/singer/bandleader Charles 'Buddy' Rogers. She and Rogers adopted two children, but Mary was not as successful at motherhood as she had been in films and the two children left home at a young age.

In 1919 Pickford joined forces with Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks and D.W. Griffith to form United Artists, a company that produced and distributed films, which allowed them creative control over their work. Chaplin and Pickford remained partners in United Artists until 1955 (Fairbanks died in 1939) and Mary sold her shares in 1956 for three million dollars. United Artists made Mary Pickford the most powerful woman in all of Hollywood history. Even after she retired from acting in 1933, she continued to produce films until 1956, despite increasing depression and alcoholism.

Pickford died in 1979.

Answer: John Gilbert

Billed as the Great Lover, John Gilbert was a dashing leading man and big box office during the silent era. Born John Cecil Pringle on July 10,1895 in Logan, Utah, he suffered a childhood of abuse and neglect at the hands of his feckless actor parents, who were members of a stock theatrical troupe. Gilbert left his family when he was still a teenager and made his way to Hollywood where he signed on with the Thomas Ince Studios as an extra. Director Maurice Tourneur saw distinct possibilities in the young man and hired him to write and direct several pictures.

His first real acting role was opposite Mary Pickford in 'Heart o' the Hills' (1919) and thereafter his ascent to stardom was swift. In 1921 Gilbert signed a three-year contract with Fox Studios, and in 1924, he moved to M-G-M where he established himself as the leading romantic hero of the movies.

He starred in a string of hits throughout the 1920s, opposite such stars as Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford, Mae Murray and Lillian Gish. He married four times, and has the distinction of being jilted by Greta Garbo who left him standing at the altar on their wedding day! That fateful wedding day-that-wasn't in 1926 was one of the reasons why his career went into decline after the advent of the talkies.

While they were waiting for the bride (it was to be a double wedding - the other couple was director King Vidor and actor Eleanor Boardman), guest Louis B. Mayer made an off-colour remark about Garbo. Gilbert flew into a rage and physically attacked the movie mogul. Big mistake! Mayer threatened to ruin him (Boardman later said the look on Mayer's face was terrifying), but Gilbert's good friend Irving Thalberg, Mayer's right-hand man, intervened on Gilbert's behalf, and saved the day. Unfortunately, Thalberg's failing health didn't allow him to protect Gilbert from Mayer's vengeance for long. In 1933, Gilbert made his last movie, 'Queen Christina' with Garbo. Despite the long-held theory that it was his voice that killed his career, that wasn't so - it was more likely studio politics (Mayer) and his flamboyant acting style - the hilarious scene in 'Singin'in the Rain' with the audience laughing at the preview of 'The Dueling Cavalier' was a parody of audience reaction to Gilbert's first talkie 'His Glorious Night' (1929). Gilbert's failing health was exacerbated by alcoholism and he died in 1936.

Answer: Gloria Swanson

Gloria Swanson (1889-1993) was one of the very few stars of the silent era who performed under her own name. She was born Gloria Swanson (or Svensson - the family used both spellings) in Chicago and spent her childhood in Chicago, Florida and Puerto Rico (her father was a soldier). Gloria never intended on a career in show business.

After graduating from high school in Chicago she went to work as a sales clerk in a department store. In 1914 she went on a tour of Essanay Studios in Chicago and jokingly remarked that she'd like to act in a film. One of the studio executives taken by the diminutive (she was barely five feet tall) Miss Swanson's photogenic face, took her up on the dare, and hired her as an extra for a film called "Song of the Soul".

She spent two years at Essanay making movies, getting increasingly better parts. One of her big roles with Essanay was in a film called 'His New Job', in which she played opposite the movie's writer/director/star Charlie Chaplin. In 1916 she headed for Hollywood and stardom, first in a series of Mack Sennett comedies and then, in 1919, she was put under contract by Cecil B. De Mille who transformed her from a comedienne into a romantic lead.

She appeared in films with the top leading men of the day, including Rudolph Valentino. The actress was not only much-admired for her acting abilities but also as a trend-setter in fashion. She affected elegant gowns and headdresses designed to make her look taller. Swanson married six times and had two children, an adopted son and a natural daughter. She also carried on a not-so-secret affair for several years with her business partner, a fellow from Boston named Joseph Kennedy. Unlike other stars of silent films, Swanson made the transition to talkies quite effectively, but with changing audience appetites and attitudes her career went into decline. In 1951, she made a brief but compelling comeback in 'Sunset Boulevard', which one her an Oscar nomination for her role as Norma Desmond. Gloria Swanson died in New York in 1989 at the age of 84.

Answer: Tom Mix

Before Roy Rogers and Gene Autry, even before William S. Hart, there was Tom Mix, the first cowboy movie star. Mix was born Thomas Hezekiah Mix in Mix Run, Pennsylvania, a logging community. In 1898 he enlisted in the American army, to serve in the Spanish-American War, although he never left Stateside.

In 1908 he rode in Theodore Roosevelt's Inaugural Parade, with other army veterans. For years afterwards, Hollywood publicists spread the word that Mix had been one of Roosevelt's famous Rough Riders, and although Mix repeatedly denied it (because it wasn't true), that image captured the imagination of the American public and it stuck.

After leaving the army, Mix drifted west and wound up working on the famous 101 Ranch in northern Oklahoma(it was called the 101 because it covered 101,000 acres - or over 400 square kilometres).

Here he developed his riding, roping and shooting skills, and in 1909 he won the National Riding and Rodeo Championship. He made his first Hollywood western in 1910 and was a standout with his expert horsemanship. Between 1910 and 1935 Mix made 336 movies, only nine of which were talkies.

He established the Western Hero template - the strong, silent (well, you know what I mean) clean-cut man of action in the white hat, who always saved the day. Mix did all his own stunts and was injured many times. In 1929, he took a few days off from acting to be a pall bearer at the funeral of an old friend named Wyatt Earp. Somewhere along the way, he met a young man who had just been cut from his college football team because of injuries, and gave him his first Hollywood job - in the props department on the Fox studios lot. That young man was John Wayne and much of Wayne's style was modelled on that of Tom Mix. Mix died in an automobile accident in 1940.

Answer: Mae Murray

Billed as "the Girl with the Bee Stung lips", Virginia-born Mae Murray (1889-1965 - birth name Marie Adrienne Koenig) started her show business career as a dancer, appearing on Broadway in 1906 with Vernon Castle. In 1908 she joined the Ziegfeld Follies and became one of the stars of that glitzy revue.

In 1916, Hollywood beckoned and Mae became one of the top stars in the MGM pantheon. While critics often had unkind things to say about her over-the-top costumes, her over-the-top-acting style and her 'way over-the-top ego', the public adored her.

However, they didn't adore her enough to make the transition into talkies easy and when the talkies revealed that Mae's speaking voice in no way matched her romantic screen persona, her career hit the skids.

It is sadly ironic that she ended her days broke and suffering from dementia in the Motion Picture Country Home, a retirement home for movie people with few or no resources run by the Motion Picture and Television Fund. In the glory days, Mae had been a member of the board of the foundation!

Answer: Theda Bara

Despite her exotic appearance and her undisputed prominence as the reigning sex symbol of Hollywood during the era of silent films (the word Vamp - short for vampire - was coined to describe Bara's persona as the femme fatale of all femmes fatales). Theda Bara was nothing like her screen image. She was born Theodosia Barr Goodman in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1885, into a prosperous Jewish family. She studied theatre at the University of Cincinnati and then moved to New York where she made her Broadway debut in 1908. She began her Hollywood career in 1914 and her first starring movie was 'A Fool There Was' (1915), produced and directed by William Fox. Fox made enough money on the film to set up his own studio and Theda Bara became Fox's biggest star and major money earner. She fought constantly with Fox for better roles - and got to play a few: Juliet in 'Romeo and Juliet', and the wholesome heroines of 'Under Two Flags' and 'Her Double Life' - but her major triumph was playing the sultry Cleopatra in the 1917 movie of that name. The skimpy costumes the studio designed for her to wear as Cleopatra and in her other vamp roles eventually led to the prudish Production Code in 1930, which banned all risque images - including screen husbands and wives sleeping in the same bed, which produced skyrocketing sales for single bed manufacturers.

Publicists enhanced the vamp image with wild stories about her name being an anagram for 'Arab Death' and promoting her as the mysterious Egyptian-born daughter of a French actress and an Italian sculptor who had spent in childhood in the shadow of the sphinx and later moved to France to follow in her supposed mother's footsteps. All a far cry from the comfortable house on Hitchins Avenue in Cincinnati!

In 1919, Theda Bara left Fox, and made only two films after that - 'The Unchastened Woman' (1925) and a comedy called 'Madame Mystery' (1926). Of her 40 films, only six survive intact, although there are innumerable still photos of Ms Bara at her sultry best.

In 1921, she married director Charles Brabin (imagine a Hollywood sex symbol who had only one husband!). Brabin wasn't terribly keen on his wife continuing her acting career, so she eventually settled down to a life of comfort and wealth and became one of Hollywood's leading hostesses. Theda Bara died of cancer in 1955.