One of those folks who asked me to withhold their name sent me this…
What encounters, if any — even fleeting or from a distance — have you had with folks whose greatest show biz fame and/or achievements — however slight — came from their work in silent film? Which is to say not George Jessel or Mickey Rooney — both top-billed silent stars — but rather someone like Baby Peggy, or as obscure as Wyn Ritchie Evans (1900-2003), child of Billie Ritchie, wife of composer Ray Evans, and occasional Chaplin bit player from Pay Day (1922) to The Great Dictator (1940).
Well, the biggest star of silent movies I ever met was Harold Lloyd, who was a pretty big star. I told that story here. I also met his one-time partner, Hal Roach, who was a pretty important producer of silent movies. Both Mr. Lloyd and Mr. Roach did a lot in the talkie era but they distinguished themselves enough in the silent days that I think they qualify.
My time with Mr. Lloyd was brief and what I wrote about it pretty much tells you everything I got out of him. I spent more time with Mr. Roach and I wrote about it here and here. Mostly, we talked about Charley Chase and Our Gang because Mr. Roach was more loquacious about them and I got the feeling he'd been overinterviewed about Laurel and Hardy.
He also talked a lot about the studio he ran and about how everyone on the premises — the cameraguys, the prop men, the carpenters, everyone — knew comedy and it wasn't just the gagmen and the actors who put in the funny. I remember him saying (approximately), "Take a look at the films Stan and Babe made for me and then look at the films they made for other studios." (Do I have to explain that "Babe" was the common nickname for Oliver Hardy?)
Actually, what I remember most about my time with Hal Roach was him asking me about "these girls today." He'd been reading in Time or Newsweek these stories about how the young women of then-today were amazingly promiscuous. It was not "dirty old man" talk so much as honest curiosity about whether what he was reading was to be believed. And he must have used the phrase "When I was your age" a hundred times.
I may be missing someone but I'm thinking the only other person I can recall meeting who worked in silent movies was the film editor, Martin Bolger. I did spend about ten minutes once with Billy Gilbert who got into movies just when they were starting to talk and may have made a silent or two but I got nothing out of that conversation except being able to say I'd met Billy Gilbert.
I wish I'd met more of those folks. They were a number of them around when I became interested in silent films but I didn't really know how to contact them and was actually very shy about approaching strangers. From the few I did meet, I don't think I learned anything they didn't say in recorded interviews but it was great to "connect" with them in any way, no matter how superficial.
