Joseph White Farnham was an American playwright, film writer, and film editor of the silent movie era in the 1920s. He was also a founding member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Susan Essman is an American stand-up comedian, actress, writer and television producer, best known for her role as Susie Greene on Curb Your Enthusiasm, Bobbi Wexler on Broad City, and the voice of Mittens in Bolt.
Ernest Torrence was a Scottish film character actor who appeared in many Hollywood films, including Broken Chains (1922) with Colleen Moore, Mantrap (1926) with Clara Bow and Fighting Caravans (1931) with Gary Cooper and Lili Damita. A towering figure, Torrence frequently played cold-eyed and imposing villains.
Chester Cooper Conklin was an early American film comedian who started at Keystone Studios as one of Mack Sennett’s Keystone Cops, often paired with Mack Swain. He appeared in a series of films with Mabel Normand and worked closely with Charlie Chaplin, both in silent and sound films.
Myrtle Stedman was an American leading lady and later character actress in motion pictures who began in silent films in 1910.
Laugh, Clown, Laugh is a 1928 American silent drama film starring Lon Chaney and Loretta Young. The movie was directed by Herbert Brenon and produced by Irving G. Thalberg for MGM Pictures. The film was written by Elizabeth Meehan, based on the 1923 Broadway stage production Laugh, Clown, Laugh, by David Belasco and Tom Cushing, which in turn was based on a 1919 play Ridi, Pagliaccio by Fausto Maria Martini. The theme song "Laugh, Clown, Laugh" was composed by Ted Fiorito (music) and Lewis and Young (lyrics).
The Man Who Laughs is a 1928 American romantic drama silent film directed by the German Expressionist filmmaker Paul Leni. The film is an adaptation of Victor Hugo's 1869 novel of the same name, and stars Mary Philbin as the blind Dea and Conrad Veidt as Gwynplaine. The film is known for the grim carnival freak-like grin on the character Gwynplaine's face which often leads it to be classified as a horror film. Film critic Roger Ebert stated "The Man Who Laughs is a melodrama at times even a swashbuckler, but so steeped in expressionist gloom that it plays like a horror film."
Nikita F. Balieff, was a Russian Armenian born vaudevillian, stage performer, writer, impresario, and director. He is best known as the creator and master of ceremonies of La Chauve-Souris theater group.
June Preston was an American child actress in the 1930s and early 1940s, who began her film career at RKO Pictures, with a minor role as Mrs. Blewett's daughter in the 1934 film Anne of Green Gables.
Joseph W. Girard was an American film actor. He appeared in more than 280 films between 1911 and 1944. He was born in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, and died in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles.
Dorothy Dwan was an American film actress.
Brandon Hurst was an English stage and film actor.
William Herbert "Bert" Woodruff was an American actor of the silent era.
Cesare Gravina was an Italian actor of the silent era who appeared in more than 70 films between 1911 and 1929.
Bernardo De Pace was an actor, musician and comedic vaudeville entertainer of the 1910s and 1920s, billed as "the Wizard of the Mandolin". He learned to play mandolin in the Italian tradition under Francesco Della Rosa. De Pace's repertoire and technique was described in the Brooklyn Life as involving "the most difficult violin and piano compositions, executed at inconceivably rapid tempi demanding an uncanny technique seldom heard on fretted instruments". In 1927 the Minneapolis Star said that he had been recognized as one of the best mandolinists in the United States. It added that he was more than a mandolinist, that his skill was in playing on human emotions as few musicians were able.
Vladimir Sergeyevich Rosing, also known as Val Rosing, was a Russian-born operatic tenor and stage director who spent most of his professional career in the United Kingdom and the United States. In his formative years he experienced the last years of the "golden age" of opera, and he dedicated himself through his singing and directing into breathing new life into opera's outworn mannerisms and methods.
Cissy Fitzgerald was an English-American vaudeville actress, dancer, and singer who appeared in numerous silent and sound films. Fitzgerald acted in a popular Gaiety Girl show beginning in 1894 and was filmed in the role in 1896 in a self-titled short film shot by Thomas Edison's film company. She did not appear in films again until 1914 where she signed with the Vitagraph company and was quite popular in feature films and her own series of Cissy short films. Very little of Fitzgerald's silent material survives except her comic backup role in the 1928 Lon Chaney vehicle Laugh, Clown, Laugh.
Rudolph Schildkraut (27 April 1862 – 15 July 1930) was an Austrian film and theatre actor.
Hans May was an Austrian-born composer who went into exile in Britain in 1936 after the Nazis came to power in his homeland, being of Jewish descent.
Astaman was an Indonesian actor active from the 1910s until the mid-1970s. He was a leading actor in the influential theatre company Dardanella and, after entering the film industry with 1940s Kartinah, acted in 43 films.
