Greatest silent movie actress?
by yrnej | created - 03 Nov 2014 | updated - 27 Feb 2015 | PublicTo quote Norma Desmond, "We didn't need dialogue. We had faces!"
Discuss the list here
1. Theda Bara
Actress | A Fool There Was
Theda Bara was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, as Theodosia Goodman, on July 29, 1885. She was the daughter of a local tailor and his wife. As a teenager Theda was interested in the theatrical arts and once she finished high school, she dyed her blond hair black and went in pursuit of her dream. By 1908 ...
2. Lyda Borelli
Actress | Malombra
Lyda Borelli was born on March 22, 1884 in Rivarolo Ligure, Genoa, Liguria, Italy. She was an actress, known for Malombra (1917), Madame Tallien (1916) and Rapsodia satanica (1917). She was married to Vittorio Cini di Monselice. She died on June 1, 1959 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.
3. Clara Bow
Actress | Wings
Clara Gordon Bow, destined to become "The It Girl", was born on July 29, 1905 in Brooklyn, New York, and was raised in poverty and violence. Her often absentee and brutish father could not or did not provide and her schizophrenic mother tried to slit Clara's throat when the girl spoke of becoming ...
4. Louise Brooks
Actress | Die Büchse der Pandora
Mary Louise Brooks, also known by her childhood name of Brooksie, was born in the midwestern town of Cherryvale, Kansas, on November 14, 1906. She began dancing at an early age with the Denishawn Dancers (which was how she left Kansas and went to New York) and then with George White's Scandals ...
5. Betty Compson
Actress | Mr. & Mrs. Smith
A mining engineer's daughter, blond, blue-eyed Betty Compson began in show business playing violin in a Salt Lake City vaudeville establishment for $15 a week. Following that, she went on tour, accompanied by her mother, with an act called 'the Vagabond Violinist'. Aged eighteen, she appeared on ...
6. Marion Davies
Actress | Not So Dumb
Marion Cecelia Douras was born in the borough of Brooklyn, New York on January 3, 1897. She had been bitten by the show biz bug early as she watched her sisters perform in local stage productions. She wanted to do the same. As Marion got older, she tried out for various school plays and did fairly ...
7. Pauline Frederick
Actress | Bonds of Love
Pauline Frederick was born Pauline Beatrice Libby in Boston, Massachusetts on August 12, 1883. She was fascinated with show business from an early age and throughout her childhood, she was bred for a career in music. It has been said she had a terrific soprano voice, but Pauline also dabbled a bit ...
8. Greta Garbo
Actress | Ninotchka
Greta Garbo was born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson on September 18, 1905, in Stockholm, Sweden, to Anna Lovisa (Johansdotter), who worked at a jam factory, and Karl Alfred Gustafsson, a laborer. She was fourteen when her father died, which left the family destitute. Greta was forced to leave school and ...
9. Janet Gaynor
Actress | A Star Is Born
Janet Gaynor was born Laura Gainor on October 6, 1906, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a child, she & her parents moved to San Francisco, California, where she graduated from high school in 1923. She then moved to Los Angeles where she enrolled in a secretarial school. She got a job at a shoe ...
10. Dorothy Gish
Actress | Gretchen the Greenhorn
Dorothy Gish was born into a broken family where her restless father James Lee Gish was frequently absent. Mary Robinson McConnell a.k.a. Mary Gish, her mother, had entered into acting to make money to support the family. As soon as Dorothy and her sister Lillian Gish were old enough, they became ...
11. Lillian Gish
Actress | The Night of the Hunter
Lillian Diana Gish was born on October 14, 1893, in Springfield, Ohio. Her father, James Lee Gish, was an alcoholic who caroused around, was rarely at home and left the family to more or less fend for themselves. To help make ends meet, Lillian, her sister Dorothy Gish and their mother, Mary Gish ...
12. Brigitte Helm
Actress | Metropolis
After her role in Metropolis (1927) she made a string of movies in which she almost always had the starring role, easily making the transition to sound films. Her last film was Ein idealer Gatte (1935) (An Ideal Spouse) in 1935.
13. Vera Kholodnaya
Actress | Zhizn za zhizn
Vera Kholodnaya was born on August 5, 1893 in Poltava, Russian Empire as Vera Vasilyevna Levchenko. She was an actress, known for Zhizn za zhizn (1916), U kamina (1917) and Chelovek - zver (1917). She was married to Vladimir Kholodny. She died on February 17, 1919 in Odessa, Ukraine.
14. Barbara La Marr
Actress | The Three Musketeers
Reatha Watson (Barbara La Marr) is possibly most famous as supposedly being one of the first drug-related deaths in Hollywood, but while she had a serious drinking problem she in fact died of tuberculosis with complications of nephritis. She is notable for other reasons, among them her successes as...
15. Lingyu Ruan
Actress | Tao hua qi xue ji
Ruan Lingyu was born Ruan Fenggen on April 26, 1910 in Shanghai, China. Her father died when she was a child and her mother worked as a maid to support them. When she was sixteen Ruan started acting as a way to earn money. She made her film debut in the 1927 Chinese language film A Married Couple ...
16. Pina Menichelli
Actress | La dama de Chez Maxim's
Pina Menichelli was born on January 10, 1890 in Castroreale, Sicily, Italy as Giuseppina Menichelli. She was an actress, known for La dama de Chez Maxim's (1923), Il fuoco (la favilla - la vampa - la cenere) (1916) and A sipario calato (1913). She died on August 29, 1984 in Milan, Lombardy, Italy.
17. Mary Miles Minter
Actress | Nurse Marjorie
Little Mary Miles Minter was a child star who was dominated by her mother. At the age of 5 she first appeared on the stage in the play "Cameo Kirby". From that time on she worked steadily without a single vacation. Her greatest stage success was in "The Littlest Rebel", with William Farnum and ...
18. Colleen Moore
Actress | Why Be Good?
Colleen Moore was born Kathleen Morrison in Port Huron, Michigan. Her father was an irrigation engineer and his job was good enough to provide the family a middle-class environment. She was educated in parochial schools and studied at the famed Detroit Conservatory. Colleen's family moved to ...
19. Mae Murray
Actress | Peacock Alley
Dubbed "The Girl with the Bee Stung Lips", silent-era screen star Mae Murray began her career on stage partnered with ballroom dancing extraordinaire Vernon Castle in the 1906 Broadway show "About Town." Born the daughter of émigrés, she began studying dance at a young age. Two years later she ...
20. Nita Naldi
Actress | What Price Beauty?
Nonna Dooley, the future silent screen star, began her career as a showgirl in a Shubert revue in the Winter Garden, later went on to the famed Ziegfeld Follies.
After a successful career on the stage with the Follies, Nita decided to try her hand with films in Hollywood. Her rise to fame was very ...
21. Alla Nazimova
Actress | Salomé
The grand, highly flamboyant Russian star Alla Nazimova of Hollywood silent films lived an equally grand, flamboyant life off-camera, though her legendary status has not held up as firmly as that of a Rudolph Valentino today.
Alla Nazimova was born Miriam Edez Adelaida Leventon in 1879, in Yalta, ...
22. Pola Negri
Actress | Die Bergkatze
Pola Negri was born in Lipno, Poland, and moved to Warsaw as a child. Living in poverty with her mother, a teenage Pola auditioned and was accepted to the Imperial Ballet. Due to an illness that ended her dancing career, she soon switched to the Warsaw Imperial Academy of Dramatic Arts and became ...
23. Asta Nielsen
Actress | Hamlet
Danish leading woman of German films who became one of the greatest stars of the silent era. A native of the Copenhagen suburb of Vesterbro, Nielsen was the daughter of a coppersmith and a washerwoman, both of whom died before Nielsen was fifteen. Her stage debut came as a child in the chorus of ...
24. Mabel Normand
Actress | Mickey
Mabel Normand was one of the comedy greats of early film. In an era when women are deemed 'not funny enough' it seems film history has forgotten her contributions. Her films debuted the Keystone Cops, Charlie Chaplin's tramp and the pie in the face gag. She co-starred with both Chaplin and Roscoe "...
25. Mary Pickford
Actress | Coquette
Mary Pickford was born Gladys Louise Smith in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to Elsie Charlotte (Hennessy) and John Charles Smith. She was of English and Irish descent. Pickford began in the theater at age seven. Then known as "Baby Gladys Smith", she toured with her family in a number of theater ...
26. Edna Purviance
Actress | A Woman of Paris: A Drama of Fate
Edna Purviance began working as a stenographer in San Francisco. Charles Chaplin invited her to join him at Essanay Studio in 1915, the year of her film debut in Chaplin's His Night Out. Over the next seven years she appeared as his leading lady in over 20 Chaplin films made by Essanay, Mutual, and...
27. Gloria Swanson
Actress | Sunset Blvd.
Gloria Swanson went to public schools in Chicago; Key West, Florida; and San Juan, Puerto Rico. Her film debut was as an extra in The Fable of Elvira and Farina and the Meal Ticket (1915). From the following year on, she had leading roles in pictures for Keystone, then a year with Triangle, and, in...
28. Constance Talmadge
Actress | Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages
Constance was blonde; star sister Norma Talmadge was brunette. She was buoyant and a comedienne; Norma was introspective and a tragedienne. Nicknamed "Dutch" by her stage mother Peg as she looked like a cherubic Little Dutch Boy, silver screen star Constance Talmadge was one of silent pictures' ...
29. Olive Thomas
Actress | Beatrice Fairfax
Oliva R. Duffy was born on October 20, 1894, in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, the eldest of three children, with two younger brothers. Olive or Ollie, as she was known to family and friends, did not have much of a childhood. Life in industrial Pittsburgh was depressing and grim with its smoky factories ...
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