A bit about my fandom

When the student is ready,
the teacher(s) will appear

I picked up a book that belongs to K., my grandfather. I have had it on semi-permanent loan for several years now and used to admire the Theda Bara pictures in it around 1999 but after that forgot all about it.
But now I started looking at it again and when I got to a certain page - ZAP !
I felt like something had hit me.
It was these pictures :

That kid.
I didn't stop to read his name or anything, just noted he had that certain something that very few people do. Then I went on reading the book but within minutes felt the irresistible urge to take a few more glimpses at that boy. I flipped back the pages and read out his name.

...click on the Read more-link to read the whole story



Jack Pickford.

I googled that name the following morning and that led me on a search to find some films he'd been in.

While hunting for Pickford visuals, I kept studying that book and found a striking picture of Lon Chaney as HE, from the film He Who Gets Slapped. And as it turned out, I found that film as a torrent and downloaded it.
Pow !
I fell for Mr Chaney faster than you can say "don't slap that clown".

The following night I found The Bat, a film with Jack in it. I was in awe, it was strange to see that beautiful being move on screen. That sealed the deal, I was truly converted to the world of Silent films.

And with each "new" film I manage to find and watch, the deeper I dive.
I want to see them all, yes, even the ones that are permanently lost.
I have discovered a whole new world within the past few weeks, a whole pantheon of long gone stars, peple I want to dust up and shine a light on.
It's like entering a secret garden.
I have my favorites (Pickford, Chaney and Conrad Veidt) but keep finding others who deserve similar respect.
Silent film fandom also gives people the chance to play detective. I enjoy running searches on obscure actors and actresses, excited to see what the search engines might know about their lives.
Being a sucker for sad stories, I seem to be drawn to those with short lives and careers.

Jack Pickford remains as my main interest.
There's a lot of negative opinions about him out there on the Internet.
I won't judge anyone without proof, but in this case it's quite hard to find any factual information.
I'm curious about the death of Olive Thomas, like most silent film buffs. But I'm also into knowing more about her husband, that baby-faced & troubled man whose life might not have been that spectacular, but who left an interesting legacy.
It's a shame his films are so hard to find, not to mention interviews and the like.

The films I list here are not the only silent films I've ever seen. When I was growing up there were a lot of Chaplin films on tv on weekend mornings, and I've been to cinemas to watch La Boheme and Aelita, but that was years ago, back when I wasn't ready yet.
One of the biggest obstacles that held me back was the music.
I get irritated by most silent film scores, so what I do is something that borders on disrespectful : as my other passion in life is sixties psychedelic and experimental music, I choose some of these albums to serve as my soundtrack while watching silent movies.
It works for me, however I must admit I have never seen a traditional silent film presentation and who knows, I might enjoy it.

My great grandmother told my mother (who in turn shared the information with me) about all the silent films she used to go see in her youth, in Europe.
By studying IMDB, I noticed that a lot of American films were distributed surprisingly fast and made the rounds in Scandinavia too.
I wonder how the technical side of things was arranged when foreign films were being shown, as very few people here knew how to read english at the time. I assume there was no way they could have translated the intertitles as those are a part of the actual film.
Perhaps it was left up to the accompanying organists to convey the mood of the films to the viewers. According to my great grandmother, those poor organists would sometimes get all weary from playing and fall asleep halway through, only to wake up and start hitting the keys frantically at some unexpected moment.
I wish I could have met my great gran, I would have loved to have known about all the films she saw and which stars she was into.