The silent film star Patsy Ruth Miller offers portraits of such luminaries as Charlie Chaplin (highly unflattering), Buster Keaton (endearing), and “Rudy” Valentino.
,” I got curious about that film’s stars and discovered that one of them, Patsy Ruth Miller, wrote a memoir. It turns out that it’s a hidden masterwork of the genre; I’m embarrassed to be coming to it so belatedly.
In 1923, Miller was cast as Esmeralda in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” , alongside the Quasimodo of Lon Chaney. Though not so credited, she writes, Chaney co-directed the film with a keen dramatic sense, imparting to her a crucial lesson: “You don’t have to cry real tears. I hate these people who brag that they can cry at the drop of a hat. The point is not for you to cry but to make your audience cry. So you must be in control. Don’t just throw yourself into it and say ‘Oh, I felt that scene.
I do remember Elinor Glyn, the author who made the word ‘It’ synonymous with Sex Appeal through her novel Three Weeks, which was being filmed at my studio. The word around the lot was that it was very Hot Stuff! Hot stuff, in those days, was just a teeny bit more racy than Sesame Street. Madame Glyn looked like the cover of one of her sensational novels, with a few years added. She had a fine firm Valkyrien figure which she adorned with drapes and floating scarfs.
There were no longer brothels openly displaying their wares, and families could stroll with their children without fear of being accosted, or subjected to indecencies before the eyes of their little ones. For this return to decency one must take a little bombast and saber-rattling, was the general attitude.
It was sheer bedlam. People were standing wall to wall, all seeming to be shouting at one another, with no one listening. A victrola was playing somewhere, and from the bedroom came voices in a sort of off-key barbershop quartet.
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