Are There Any Surviving Silent Film Actors?
Are there any living actors who performed in silent films? You might be surprised to learn the answer. And you might learn something new about silent films.
Maybe you’re a serious student of the silent film era, studying movies like Battleship Potemkin and even Nanook of the North. Or maybe you’re a horror fan who has dipped into movies like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari or the Lon Chaney, Sr. version of The Phantom of the Opera. A comedy fan who watched Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. A fan of classic literature who saw the Lon Chaney, Sr. version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. An SF fan who indulged in the restored cut of Metropolis or one of the early Georges Méliès movies. A Hitchcock fan who watched his early film The Lodger. Or maybe you hate silent movies and have somehow managed to avoid watching any of them.
Whatever your interest in silent movies, you probably understand that the silent film era happened a long time ago. The first movies were silent, because it took several decades for film and sound technologies to catch up. The first “movies” as we understand it were shown in 1894. To put that into perspective, one of the first movies was a 21-second clip of Annie Oakley shooting a gun. Famous as a Wild West sharpshooter, Annie Oakley was born in 1860, started performing with Buffalo Bill in 1885, and died in 1926.
