Silent Film Era
Most often, the viewing of the film was accompanied live by an organist or piano player. Sometimes, dialogue was conveyed by inserting black frames with white printing on them between shots or scenes. All silent films of this era are also black and white films, as inexpensive color film was not invented until the late 1930s.
Mack Sennett (creator of the Keystone Cops) and Hal Roach were two of the most famous producers of silent comedies. Famous actors from this era are now legendary: Ben Turpin, Mabel Normand, Edna Purviance, Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Charley Chase, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy (the duo of Laurel & Hardy were among those who made a commercially successful transition into talking pictures), and many others.
Read more about this topic: Silent Comedy
Famous quotes containing the words silent, film and/or era:
“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings ...
And while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.”
—John Gillespie Magee (c. 1922–1941)
“A good film script should be able to do completely without dialogue.”
—David Mamet (b. 1947)
“I call her old. She has one family
Whose claim is good to being settled here
Before the era of colonization,
And before that of exploration even.
John Smith remarked them as he coasted by....”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)