Dorothy Janis, silent star

[typhooforme]

Dorothy Janis had a very brief career and she did no genre films.  Why note her passing, some will say.  Miss Janis was one of a very small handful of performers left in this country--a silent actress, one of the thousands who helped bring motion pictures before the American public eye.  Some 30-40 years ago, I wrote to many silent performers to get their autographs.  Today very few are left.  With the passing of Dorothy Janis, I can come up with only a couple now--Miriam Seegar, and I think Barbara Kent is still living (she would be about 103!).  Every time one of these pioneer actresses leaves us, we owe them a tip of the hat for being a part of an art, a technology, a world that brought us so much happiness in the films of the 1920s and '30s and '40s and on and on to this day.

Dorothy Janis acted in a few Westerns in the late 1920s (one directed by Lambert Hillyer, whom we know best for DRACULA'S DAUGHTER and THE INVISIBLE RAY) and a South Sea island drama called THE PAGAN.  The photo above shows her in that movie, with co-star Ramon Novarro.

Miss Janis was 100 years old (some sources say 98).  Rest in peace, beautiful lady!

[Scatter]

It saddens me too Robert...........I'm a huge fan of silent film and an early Hollywood buff, so it hurts to see it almost entirely gone.

[Monster Kid]

It's not gone at all.. in fact, I think it is experiencing a rebirth because of DVD and film festivals.  I just screened a silent film (The Night Cry) last weekend at a Western movie convention and the audience cheered at the exciting climax! 

I think silent films were falling into dangerous obscurity in the 1950s and 1960s because they were not shown on TV very often if at all and they were not readily available in any form.

We can keep them going.

[Wich2]

Thanks for that, Elder.

The same thing is happening in the field of OTR - the real Vets are going to their well deserved rewards.

And yes, it is up to US to remember these folk and their work.

-Craig

[Scatter]

It's not gone at all.. in fact, I think it is experiencing a rebirth because of DVD and film festivals.  I just screened a silent film (The Night Cry) last weekend at a Western movie convention and the audience cheered at the exciting climax!  

I think silent films were falling into dangerous obscurity in the 1950s and 1960s because they were not shown on TV very often if at all and they were not readily available in any form.

We can keep them going.

The VAST majority of silent films are no more........lost to the ravages of time and nitrate. We have a tiny fraction left to enjoy (and I'm IMMENSELY grateful for what we do have left). But more than the films themselves is the erosion of old Hollywood the city, as its subsumed in urban "renewal", and even more importantly the accelerating loss of the PEOPLE who made the Golden Age of Hollywood golden. I love going to the West Coast and haunting what remains though.