Silent film actors

1. William S. Hart

A storybook hero, the original screen cowboy, ever forthright and honest, even when (as was often the case) he played a villain, William S. Hart lived for a while in the Dakota Territory, then worked as a postal clerk in New York City. In 1888 he began to study acting. In 1899 he created the role ...

2. Louise Dresser

Actress | The Scarlet Empress

This knowing, plump-framed, strong-willed actress went on to play the gamut of emotions, from downtrodden, drunken ex-stars to self-controlled dowager empresses, in both silent pictures and early talkies. Grandly supporting the huge stars of her day (including Rudolph Valentino and Will Rogers), ...

3. Lionel Barrymore

Actor | You Can't Take It with You

Famed actor, composer, artist, author and director. His talents extended to the authoring of the novel "Mr. Cartonwine: A Moral Tale" as well as his autobiography. In 1944, he joined ASCAP, and composed "Russian Dances", "Partita", "Ballet Viennois", "The Woodman and the Elves", "Behind the Horizon...

4. H.B. Warner

Actor | It's a Wonderful Life

Henry Byron Warner was the definitive cinematic Jesus Christ in Cecil B. DeMille's The King of Kings (1927). He was born into a prominent theatrical family on October 26, 1875 in London. His father was Charles Warner, and his grandfather was James Warner, both prominent English actors. He replaced ...

5. Alla Nazimova

Actress | Salomé

The grand, highly flamboyant Russian star Alla Nazimova of Hollywood silent films lived an equally grand, flamboyant life off-camera, though her legendary status has not held up as firmly as that of a Rudolph Valentino today.

Alla Nazimova was born Miriam Edez Adelaida Leventon in 1879, in Yalta, ...

6. Ethel Barrymore

Actress | The Spiral Staircase

Ethel Barrymore was the second of three children seemingly destined for the actor's life of their parents Maurice and Georgiana. Maurice Barrymore had emigrated from England in 1875, and after graduating from Cambridge in law had shocked his family by becoming an actor. Georgiana Drew of ...

7. Will Rogers

Actor | Steamboat Round the Bend

World-famous, widely popular American humorist of the vaudeville stage and of silent and sound films, Will Rogers graduated from military school, but his first real job was in the livestock business in Argentina, of all places. He transported pack animals across the South Atlantic from Buenos Aires...

8. Tom Mix

Actor | Dick Turpin

The son of a lumberman, Tom Mix joined the army as a young man and was an artillery sergeant during the Philippine campaign from 1898 to 1901, though he never saw action. In fact, Mix deserted from the army and carefully kept the facts about his military service a closely guarded secret. About 1903...

9. John Barrymore

Actor | Twentieth Century

John Barrymore was born John Sidney Blyth on February 15, 1882 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. An American stage and screen actor whose rise to superstardom and subsequent decline is one of the legendary tragedies of Hollywood. A member of the most famous generation of the most famous theatrical ...

10. Donald Crisp

Actor | How Green Was My Valley

White-haired London-born character actor, a familiar face in Hollywood for more than five decades. He was born George William Crisp, the youngest of ten siblings, to working class parents James Crisp and his wife Elizabeth (nee Christy). Despite his humble beginnings, Donald was educated at Oxford ...

11. Francis X. Bushman

Actor | Sabrina

Francis X. Bushman was born on January 10, 1883 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Sabrina (1954), The Phantom Planet (1961) and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925). He was married to Iva Millicient Richardson, Norma Emily Atkin, Beverly Bayne and Josephine ...

12. Lon Chaney

Actor | He Who Gets Slapped

Although his parents were deaf, Leonidas Chaney became an actor and also owner of a theatre company (together with his brother John). He made his debut at the movies in 1912, and his filmography is vast. Lon Chaney was especially famous for his horror parts in movies like e.g. Quasimodo in The ...

13. Douglas Fairbanks

Actor | The Thief of Bagdad

Douglas Fairbanks was born Douglas Elton Thomas Ullman in Denver, Colorado, to Ella Adelaide (nee Marsh) and Hezekiah Charles Ullman, an attorney and native of Pennsylvania, who was a captain for the Union forces during the Civil War. Fairbanks' paternal grandparents were German Jewish immigrants, ...

14. Emil Jannings

Actor | The Last Command

His real name was Theodor Friedrich Emil Janenz, and in the early 1900s, he was already working in the theater under Max Reinhardt's company. Important movies where he defined himself as a convincing actor were Passion (1919) and Quo Vadis? (1924), followed by The Last Laugh (1924) (aka The Last ...

15. Wallace Beery

Actor | A Date with Judy

In 1902, 16-year-old Wallace Beery joined the Ringling Brothers Circus as an assistant to the elephant trainer. He left two years later after a leopard clawed his arm. Beery next went to New York, where he found work in musical variety shows. He became a leading man in musicals and appeared on ...

16. Theda Bara

Actress | A Fool There Was

Theda Bara was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, as Theodosia Goodman, on July 29, 1885. She was the daughter of a local tailor and his wife. As a teenager Theda was interested in the theatrical arts and once she finished high school, she dyed her blond hair black and went in pursuit of her dream. By 1908 ...

17. Erich von Stroheim

Actor | Sunset Blvd.

Erich von Stroheim was born Erich Oswald Stroheim in 1885, in Vienna, Austria, to Johanna (Bondy), from Prague, and Benno Stroheim, a hatter from Gleiwitz, Germany (now Gliwice, Poland). His family was Jewish.

After spending some time working in his father's hat factory, he emigrated to America ...

18. Clive Brook

Actor | Cavalcade

Born in London, England to Charlotte Mary (opera singer) and George Alfred Brook. He was educated privately. Stage experience included: "Oliver Twist", "Voysey Inheritence", "If I were King", "Importance of Being Ernest", Fair and Warmer", "Over Sunday", "Clothes and the WOman", and many others. ...

19. Warner Baxter

Actor | Penthouse

Warner Baxter claimed to have an early pre-disposition toward show business: "I discovered a boy a block away who would eat worms and swallow flies for a penny. For one-third of the profits, I exhibited him in a tent." When he was age 9, his widowed mother moved to San Francisco where, following ...

20. Charles Chaplin

Writer | The Great Dictator

Considered to be one of the most pivotal stars of the early days of Hollywood, Charlie Chaplin lived an interesting life both in his films and behind the camera. He is most recognized as an icon of the silent film era, often associated with his popular character, the Little Tramp; the man with the ...

21. Mae Murray

Actress | The Merry Widow

Dubbed "The Girl with the Bee Stung Lips" and "The Gardenia of the Screen," silent screen star Mae Murray was born in New York City as Marie Adrienne Koenig on May 10, 1885. The middle of three children born to French and German émigrés, she began studying dance at a young age.

Mae's professional ...

22. Sessue Hayakawa

Actor | The Bridge on the River Kwai

Sessue Hayakawa was born in Chiba, Japan. His father was the provincial governor and his mother a member of an aristocratic family of the "samurai" class. The young Hayakawa wanted to follow in his father's footsteps and become a career officer in the Japanese navy, but he was turned down due to ...

23. Stan Laurel

Actor | Saps at Sea

Stan Laurel came from a theatrical family, his father was an actor and theatre manager, and he made his stage debut at the age of 16 at Pickard's Museum, Glasgow. He traveled with Fred Karno's vaudeville company to the United States in 1910 and again in 1913. While with that company he was Charles ...

24. Oliver Hardy

Actor | Saps at Sea

Although his parents were never in show business, as a young boy Oliver Hardy was a gifted singer and, by age eight, was performing with minstrel shows. In 1910 he ran a movie theatre, which he preferred to studying law. In 1913 he became a comedy actor with the Lubin Company in Florida and began ...

25. Ronald Colman

Actor | A Double Life

British leading man of primarily American films, one of the great stars of the Golden Age. Raised in Ealing, the son of a successful silk merchant, he attended boarding school in Sussex, where he discovered amateur theatre. He intended to attend Cambridge and become an engineer, but his father's ...

26. Wallace Reid

Actor | Carmen

The son of writer-theater producer-director-actor Hal Reid, Wallace was on stage by the age of four in the act with his parents. He spent most of his early years, not on the stage, but in private schools where he excelled in music and athletics. In 1910, his father went to the Chicago studio of "...

27. Jetta Goudal

Actress | Open All Night

Although Dutch-born silent screen femme fatale Jetta Goudal (pronounced Zhett-eh Goo-doll) may be pretty much forgotten today, she was, in her glorious Hollywood heyday, a star rivaling that of Gloria Swanson and fellow vamps Barbara La Marr and Nita Naldi. The daughter of a Jewish orthodox diamond...

28. Alan Hale

Actor | The Adventures of Robin Hood

Alan Hale decided on a film career after his attempt at becoming an opera singer didn't pan out. He quickly became much in demand as a supporting actor, starred in several films for Cecil B. DeMille and directed others for him. With the advent of sound, Hale played leads in a few films but soon ...

29. Mary Pickford

Actress | Coquette

Mary Pickford was born Gladys Louise Smith in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to Elsie Charlotte (Hennessy) and John Charles Smith. She was of English and Irish descent. Pickford began in the theater at age seven. Then known as "Baby Gladys Smith", she toured with her family in a number of theater ...

30. Mabel Normand

Actress | Mickey

Mabel Normand was one of the comedy greats of early film. In an era when women are deemed 'not funny enough' it seems film history has forgotten her contributions. Her films debuted the Keystone Cops, Charlie Chaplin's tramp and the pie in the face gag. She co-starred with both Chaplin and Roscoe "...

31. Conrad Veidt

Actor | Casablanca

Conrad Veidt attended the Sophiengymnasium (secondary school) in the Schoeneberg district of Berlin, and graduated without a diploma in 1912, last in his class of 13. Conrad liked animals, theater, cinema, fast cars, pastries, thunderstorms, gardening, swimming and golfing. He disliked heights, ...

32. Harold Lloyd

Actor | Safety Last!

Born in Burchard, Nebraska, USA to Elizabeth Fraser and J. Darcie 'Foxy' Lloyd who fought constantly and soon divorced (at the time a rare event), Harold Clayton Lloyd was nominally educated in Denver and San Diego high schools and received his stage training at the School of Dramatic Art (San ...

33. Lillian Gish

Actress | The Night of the Hunter

Lillian Diana Gish was born on October 14, 1893, in Springfield, Ohio. Her father, James Lee Gish, was an alcoholic who caroused, was rarely at home, and left the family to, more or less, fend for themselves. To help make ends meet, Lillian, her sister Dorothy Gish, and their mother, Mary Gish, ...

34. Dorothy Gish

Actress | Nell Gwyn

Dorothy Gish was born into a broken family where her restless father James Lee Gish was frequently absent. Mary Robinson McConnell a.k.a. Mary Gish, her mother, had entered into acting to make money to support the family. As soon as Dorothy and her sister Lillian Gish were old enough, they became ...

35. Charley Chase

Actor | Neighborhood House

While Charley Chase is far from being as famous as "The Big Three" (Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd) today, he's highly respected as one of the "greats" by fans of silent comedy.

Chase (real name Charles Parrott) was born in Maryland, USA, in 1893. After a brief career in vaudeville,...

36. Zasu Pitts

Actress | Greed

Classic comedienne Zasu Pitts, of the timid, forlorn blue eyes and trademark woebegone vocal pattern and fidgety hands, was born to Rulandus and Nellie (Shay) Pitts, the third of four children on January 3, 1894. Her aged New York-native father, who lost a leg back in the Civil War era, had settled...

37. Norma Talmadge

Actress | Camille

Norma Talmadge was born on May 26, 1895, in Jersey City, New Jersey. The daughter of an unemployed alcoholic and his wife, Norma did not have the idyllic childhood that most of us yearn for. Her father left the family on Christmas Day and his wife and three daughters had to fend for themselves. Her...

38. Constance Talmadge

Actress | Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages

Constance was blonde; star sister Norma Talmadge was brunette. She was buoyant and a comedienne; Norma was introspective and a tragedienne. Nicknamed "Dutch" by her stage mother Peg as she looked like a cherubic Little Dutch Boy, silver screen star Constance Talmadge was one of silent pictures' ...

39. Mae Marsh

Actress | The Birth of a Nation

Mae Marsh's father was an auditor for the railroad who died when she was four. Her family moved to San Francisco, where her stepfather was killed in the 1906 earthquake. Her great-aunt then took Mae and her sister to Los Angeles. With her show business background, Mae's aunt took them to the ...

40. Nita Naldi

Actress | The Ten Commandments

Nonna Dooley, the future silent screen star, began her career as a showgirl in a Shubert revue in the Winter Garden, later went on to the famed Ziegfeld Follies.

After a successful career on the stage with the Follies, Nita decided to try her hand with films in Hollywood. Her rise to fame was very ...

41. Rudolph Valentino

Actor | The Eagle

Hollywood's original Latin Lover, a term that was invented for Rudolph Valentino by Hollywood moguls. Alla Nazimova's friend Natacha Rambova (nee Winifred Hudnut) became romantically involved with Rudy and they lived together in her bungalow from 1921 (during the filming of Camille) until they ...

42. Richard Barthelmess

Actor | Only Angels Have Wings

Richard Barthelmess was born into a theatrical family in which his mother was an actress. While attending Trinity College in Connecticut, he began appearing in stage productions. While on vacation in 1916, a friend of his mother, actress Alla Nazimova, offered him a part in War Brides (1916), and ...

43. Buster Keaton

Actor | The General

Joseph Frank Keaton was born on October 4, 1895 in Piqua, Kansas, to Joe Keaton and Myra Keaton. Joe and Myra were Vaudevillian comedians with a popular, ever-changing variety act, giving Keaton an eclectic and interesting upbringing. In the earliest days on stage, they traveled with a medicine ...

44. Blanche Sweet

Actress | Anna Christie

Born into a family of show people, Blanche Sweet first appeared on the stage when she was 18 months old. She was a dancer by the time she was four and a talented actress by 1909 when she started work at the Biograph with D.W. Griffith. By 1910, aged 14, she was four years younger than Mary Pickford...

45. Natalie Talmadge

Actress | Passion Flower

Natalie Talmadge was the middle daughter of the original "stage mother", Margaret Talmadge (Peg). Her two sisters, Constance Talmadge (the comedienne) and Norma Talmadge (the tragedian) were also in the movies, and had their own production companies, bankrolled by Norma's husband in the 1920s, ...

46. Marion Davies

Actress | Little Old New York

Marion Davies was one of the great comedic actresses of the silent era and into the 1930s.

Marion Cecelia Douras was born in the borough of Brooklyn, New York on January 3, 1897, the daughter of Rose (Reilly) and Bernard J. Douras, a lawyer and judge. Her parents were both of Irish descent. Marion ...

47. Pola Negri

Actress | Bella Donna

Pola Negri was born in Lipno, Poland, and moved to Warsaw as a child. Living in poverty with her mother, a teenage Pola auditioned and was accepted to the Imperial Ballet. Due to an illness that ended her dancing career, she soon switched to the Warsaw Imperial Academy of Dramatic Arts and became ...

48. Nils Asther

Actor | The Man in Half Moon Street

Nils Asther was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1897 and raised in Malmö, Sweden, by his wealthy Swedish parents. After attending the Royal Dramatic Theater School in Stockholm, he began his stage career in Copenhagen. His film debut came in 1916 when the director Mauritz Stiller cast him in the ...

49. Conrad Nagel

Actor | The Ship from Shanghai

Conrad Nagel was born on March 16, 1897 in Keokuk, Iowa, USA. He was an actor and director, known for The Ship from Shanghai (1930), Quality Street (1927) and Kongo (1932). He was married to Michael Coulson Smith, Lynn Merrick and Ruth Helms. He died on February 24, 1970 in New York City, New York,...

50. Betty Compson

Actress | Street Girl

A mining engineer's daughter, blond, blue-eyed Betty Compson began in show business playing the violin in a Salt Lake City vaudeville establishment for $15 a week. Following that, she went on tour, accompanied by her mother, with an act called 'The Vagabond Violinist'. Aged eighteen, she appeared ...

51. John Gilbert

Actor | The Big Parade

John Gilbert was born into a show-business family - his father was a comic with the Pringle Stock Company. By 1915 John was an extra with Thomas H. Ince's company and a lead player by 1917. In those days he was assistant director, actor or screenwriter. He also tried his hand at directing. By 1919 ...

52. Vilma Bánky

Actress | The Son of the Sheik

Vilma Bánky appeared in Hungarian, Austrian and French movies between 1920 and 1925, the year in which Samuel Goldwyn signed her, in Budapest, to a Hollywood contract. In Hollywood she was billed as the "The Hungarian Rhapsody". In the mid and late 1920s she was Goldwyn's biggest money maker, ...

53. Agnes Ayres

Actress | The Sheik

Extremely popular silent star of the 1920s. Her popularity was enhanced when she co-starred with Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik (1921) and The Son of the Sheik (1926). She made her screen debut at Essanay Studios in 1915. While she was popular in the 1920s (thanks to the patronage of her lover, ...

54. Eleanor Boardman

Actress | Souls for Sale

Philadelphia-born Eleanor Boardman had always wanted to be an actress, and as soon as she graduated high school she headed for New York to conquer Broadway. When Broadway proved not quite ready to be conquered yet, she took whatever jobs she could find, including one as an artist's model. In that ...

55. Bessie Love

Actress | The Broadway Melody

Bessie Love was born in Texas. Her cowboy father moved the family to Hollywood, where he became a chiropractor. As the family needed money, Bessie's mother sent her to Biograph Studios, hoping she would become an actress. D.W. Griffith saw she was pretty and had some acting talent, and put her in ...

56. Renée Adorée

Actress | The Big Parade

Renee Adoree was born Jeanne de la Fontein in Lille in Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France, on September 30, 1898. She had what one could call a normal childhood. Her background is, perhaps, one of the most difficult to find information on any actress in existence. What we do know that her interest in ...

57. Ramon Novarro

Actor | Ben-Hur A Tale of the Christ

Ramon Novarro was born José Ramón Gil Samaniego on February 6, 1899 in Durango, Mexico, to Leonor (Gavilan) and Dr. Mariano N. Samaniego Siqueiros, a prosperous dentist. Ramon and his family moved to Los Angeles in 1913, as refugees from the Mexican Revolution. After stints as a ballet dancer, ...

58. Gloria Swanson

Actress | Sunset Blvd.

Gloria Swanson was born Gloria May Josephine Svensson in Chicago, Illinois. She was destined to be perhaps one of the biggest stars of the silent movie era. Her personality and antics in private definitely made her a favorite with America's movie-going public. Gloria certainly didn't intend on ...

59. George O'Brien

Actor | Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans

George was the son of the San Francisco Chief of Police who became a college athlete. He was the Heavyweight Boxing Champion of the Pacific Fleet during World War I. In the early 1920s, George wound up in Hollywood where he worked as a stuntman and part time actor. In 1924, Director John Ford ...

60. Colleen Moore

Actress | So Big

Colleen Moore was born Kathleen Morrison in Port Huron, Michigan. Her father was an irrigation engineer and his job was good enough to provide the family a middle-class environment. She was educated in parochial schools and studied at the famed Detroit Conservatory. Colleen's family moved to ...

61. William Haines

Actor | Show People

Born in Staunton, Virginia, William Haines ran off to live life on his own terms while still in his teens, moving to New York City and becoming friends with such later Hollywood luminaries as designer Orry-Kelly and Cary Grant. His film career started slowly, but by the end of the silent era he was...

62. Alice Calhoun

Actress | The Little Minister

Alice Calhoun, of Cleveland, OH, was one of those rare actresses who didn't get into the film industry through the usual procedure at the time--the stage. In fact, performing on stage held no interest whatsoever for her, but films did. She traveled to New York in the late 1910s to break into the ...

63. Bebe Daniels

Actress | 42nd Street

Bebe Daniels already had toured as an actor by the age of four in a stage production of "Richard III". She had her first leading role at the age of seven and started her film career shortly after this in movies for Imperial, Pathe and others. At 14 she was already a film veteran, and was enlisted ...

64. Mary Philbin

Actress | The Man Who Laughs

Mary Philbin's life should be a lesson to domineering parents. Mary was born on July 16, 1903, in Chicago, Illinois, to John Philbin and his first wife and namesake, Mary. The child was regarded as a little beauty from an early age and her mother was exceedingly proud of her and loved to show her ...

65. Norma Shearer

Actress | The Divorcee

She won a beauty contest at age fourteen. In 1920 her mother, Edith Shearer, took Norma and her sister Athole Shearer (Mrs. Howard Hawks) to New York. Ziegfeld rejected her for his "Follies," but she got work as an extra in several movies. She spent much money on eye doctor's services trying to ...

66. Billie Dove

Actress | The Black Pirate

In her silent heyday, this ravishing and highly photogenic star, known for her voluptuous femininity on the silent screen, rivaled that of Mary Pickford, Marion Davies and Clara Bow in popularity. She retired after only a few years into the talking picture era, however, and is not as ...

67. Dolores Costello

Actress | The Sea Beast

Dolores Costello was once known as the Goddess of the Silent Screen but is probably best remembered today as Drew Barrymore's grandmother. She was born in 1905 to actors Maurice Costello and Mae Costello. Her father began his film career in 1908 and soon became the most popular matinée idol of his ...

68. Maurice Costello

Actor | The Man Who Couldn't Beat God

Maurice Costello was born on February 22, 1877 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor and director, known for The Man Who Couldn't Beat God (1915), The Golden Pathway (1913) and Iron and Steel (1914). He was married to Ruth Reeves and Mae Costello. He died on October 28, 1950 in ...

69. Helene Costello

Actress | The Fatal Warning

Some of Helene Costello's films available on video are Her Crowning Glory (1911), Lulu's Doctor (1912) and Lights of New York (1928), the first all-talking feature. She worked for a time as a reader for 20th Century Fox in the early 1940s. Miss Costello died on January 26, 1957, in California's ...

70. Dorothy Davenport

Actress | Human Wreckage

The Davenport family was well known in theatrical circles. Her aunt, Fanny Davenport was considered one of the greatest stage actresses of her time and her father, Harry Davenport, was a Broadway star before later venturing into movies. Her mother, Alice Davenport, was a respected Broadway and film...

71. Florence Turner

Actress | Far from the Madding Crowd

Widely publicized as "The Vitagraph Girl," dark-haired silent film actress Florence Turner was one of the screen's first celebrities to be called by the term "movie star." Born in New York City in 1885, she was pushed into the business at age 3 by an overzealous stage mother, performing on the ...

72. Joan Crawford

Actress | What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Joan Crawford was born Lucille Fay LeSueur on March 23, 1906, in San Antonio, Texas, to Anna Belle (Johnson) and Thomas E. LeSueur, a laundry laborer. By the time she was born, her parents had separated, and by the time she was a teenager, she'd had three stepfathers. It wasn't an easy life; ...

73. Charles 'Buddy' Rogers

Actor | Wings

"America's Boyfriend" Buddy Rogers was born in Olathe Kansas and became a talented musician on several instruments. He began acting in Hollywood in the 1920's and is probably best remembered as Clara Bow's love interest in "Wings". He also made several appearances in the "Mexican Spitfire" series ...

74. Anna May Wong

Actress | The Toll of the Sea

Anna May Wong, the first Chinese-American movie star, was born Wong Liu Tsong on January 3, 1905, in Los Angeles, California, to laundryman Wong Sam Sing and his wife, Lee Gon Toy. A third-generation American, she managed to have a substantial acting career during a deeply racist time when the ...

75. Clara Bow

Actress | Wings

Clara Gordon Bow, destined to become "The It Girl", was born on July 29, 1905 in Brooklyn, New York, and was raised in poverty and violence. Her often absentee and brutish father could not or did not provide and her schizophrenic mother tried to slit Clara's throat when the girl spoke of becoming ...

76. Greta Garbo

Actress | Ninotchka

Greta Garbo was born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson on September 18, 1905, in Stockholm, Sweden, to Anna Lovisa (Johansdotter), who worked at a jam factory, and Karl Alfred Gustafsson, a laborer. She was fourteen when her father died, which left the family destitute. Greta was forced to leave school and ...

77. Baby Peggy

Actress | Helen's Babies

Silent moppet star Jackie Coogan, immortalized as Charles Chaplin's The Kid (1921), had only one screen rival during the early 1920s, and that was none other than Baby Peggy. She was "discovered" while visiting the Century Studios lot on Sunset Boulevard with her mother when she was a mere 19 ...

78. Mary Astor

Actress | The Maltese Falcon

Mary Astor was born Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke on May 3, 1906 in Quincy, Illinois to Helen Marie Vasconcellos, an American of Portuguese and Irish ancestry from Illinois, and Otto Ludwig Langhanke, a German immigrant. Mary's parents were very ambitious for her and wanted something better for her...

79. Janet Gaynor

Actress | A Star Is Born

Janet Gaynor was born Laura Gainor on October 6, 1906, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a child, she & her parents moved to San Francisco, California, where she graduated from high school in 1923. She then moved to Los Angeles where she enrolled in a secretarial school. She got a job at a shoe ...

80. Louise Brooks

Actress | Die Büchse der Pandora

Mary Louise Brooks, also known by her childhood name of Brooksie, was born in the Midwestern town of Cherryvale, Kansas, on November 14, 1906. She began dancing at an early age with the Denishawn Dancers (which was how she left Kansas and went to New York) and then with George White's Scandals ...

81. Billy Bevan

Actor | Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Billy Bevan's show-business career began in his native Australia, with the Pollard theatrical organization. The company had two theater troupes, one which toured Asia and the other traveling to North America. Bevan wound up in the latter, performing in skits and plays all over Canada and Alaska ...

82. Betty Bronson

Actress | Peter Pan

Betty Bronson's discovery reads like a Hollywood dream. As a New Jersey teenage bit-player, she was rocketed from obscurity when she was chosen to play the part of Peter Pan in 1924's Peter Pan (1924). She was hand-selected by author J.M. Barrie and beat several Hollywood superstars to the part, ...

83. Chester Conklin

Actor | Modern Times

Iowa-born Chester Conklin was raised in a coal-mining area by a devoutly religious father who hoped that his son would go into the ministry. However, Chester got the performing bug one day when he gave a recitation at a community singing festival and won first prize. Knowing his father would never ...

84. Jackie Coogan

Actor | Oliver Twist

Jackie Coogan was born into a family of vaudevillians; his father was a dancer and his mother had been a child star. On the stage by age 4, Jackie was touring at age 5 with his family in Los Angeles, California.

While performing on the stage, he was spotted by Charles Chaplin, who then and there ...

85. Marie Dressler

Actress | Dinner at Eight

Once you saw her, you would not forget her. Despite her age and weight, she became one of the top box office draws of the sound era. She was 14 when she joined a theater group and she went on to work on stage and in light opera. By 1892, she was on Broadway and she later became a star comedienne on...

86. Geraldine Farrar

Actress | Carmen

Famed singer and author Geraldine Farrar was educated in public schools and then became a music student of Mrs. J.H. Long, Trabadello, Emma Thursby, Lilli Lehman and Graziani. Her 1901 debut was at the Royal Opera House in Berlin, in the role of Marguerite in "Faust". From 1906-22 she was a member ...

87. W.C. Fields

Actor | It's a Gift

William Claude Dukenfield was the eldest of five children born to Cockney immigrant James Dukenfield and Philadelphia native Kate Felton. He went to school for four years, then quit to work with his father selling vegetables from a horse cart. At eleven, after many fights with his alcoholic father ...

88. Neil Hamilton

Actor | Batman: The Movie

Neil Hamilton's show business career began when he secured a job as a shirt model in magazine ads. He became interested in acting and joined several stock companies. He got his first film role in 1918, but received his big break from D.W. Griffith in The White Rose (1923).

After performing in ...

89. Jean Hersholt

Actor | Greed

If ever there was a Great Dane in Hollywood it was Jean Hersholt - and one of its great hearts as well. He was from a well-known Danish stage and entertainment family that had toured throughout Europe performing with young Jean as an essential cast member. He graduated from the Copenhagen Art ...

90. Antonio Moreno

Actor | Creature from the Black Lagoon

A serious rival to Rudolph Valentino as the suave, smouldering 'Latin Lover' type was black-haired Spanish-born Antonio Moreno. One of the most prominent screen stars of the 1920s, he was equally adept at romance, melodrama or comedy and appeared opposite most of the legendary movie queens of the ...

91. Jobyna Ralston

Actress | Lightning

Curly-locked, cherubic knockabout comedienne of the silent cinema. Her mother, portrait photographer Mrs. Kemp Raulston, named her after her favorite actress, Jobyna Howland. She harbored ambitions for her daughter to achieve similar fame and trained her to that end. After a failed teenage marriage...

92. Ben Turpin

Actor | Yankee Doodle in Berlin

First of all, the cross-eyed comedian of silent days was not born that way. Supposedly his right eye slipped out of alignment while playing the role of the similarly afflicted Happy Hooligan in vaudeville and it never adjusted. Ironically, it was this disability that would enhance his comic value ...

93. Sarah Bernhardt

Actress | La dame aux camélias

This celebrated star of the French stage had a sporadic love-hate affair with early cinema. After her film debut in Le duel d'Hamlet (1900) she declared she detested the medium; yet she consented to appear in another film, La Tosca (1909). Upon seeing the results, she reportedly recoiled in horror,...

94. Barbara La Marr

Actress | The Eternal City

Barbara La Marr was born in Yakima, Washington, on July 28, 1896, as Reatha Watson. Her childhood was mostly uneventful, mainly because Yakima--today a medium-sized city with a population of over 50, 000-wasn't exactly a beehive of activity. Her parents eventually moved to the Los Angeles area, ...

95. Richard Dix

Actor | Cimarron

Richard Dix was a major leading man at RKO Radio Pictures from 1929 through 1943. He was born Ernest Carlton Brimmer July 18, 1893, in St. Paul, Minnesota. There he was educated, and at the desires of his father, studied to be a surgeon. His obvious acting talent in his school dramatic club led him...

96. Anna Q. Nilsson

Actress | The Greater Glory

Anna Quirentia Nilsson, popularly known as "Anna Q", who was born on March 30th, 1888, in Ystad, Sweden, emigrated to the United States in 1905. The 5'7" Nilsson used her blonde beauty to become a famous model for well-known fashion photographers and fine artists. In 1907 she was chosen the most ...

97. Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle

Actor | Coney Island

Roscoe Arbuckle, the youngest of nine children, reportedly weighed 16 pounds at birth in Smith Center, Kansas on March 24, 1887. His family moved to California when he was one year old. At age 8 he first appeared on the stage. His first part was with the Webster-Brown stock company. From then until...