Silent Film Fans: Colleen Moore rave [View All]

Last weekend we held our annual silent film festival in Topeka, KS. A night and a day of nothing but silent movies. Since I was working the festival I only got to see two films: The Marriage Circle, directed by Ernst Lubitsch and Colleen Moore and Gary Cooper in Lilac Time.

I hadn't seen many Colleen Moore films despite the fact that she was one of the biggest stars in the late silent era. Suffice it to say that Ms. Moore can now count me in as one of her fans! All I can say is, when Norma Desmond said, "We had faces then!" she was definitely talking about Colleen Moore! This woman spoke sentences with her eyes in Lilac Time. One of my favorite scenes was where she does something naughty to Gary Cooper (whom she dislikes at first) and her face then runs the gauntlet of expressions from teasing to pious in about 5 seconds. It got a great laugh from the audience because it was so smoothly done you don't really think about it; but you know it must have taken some kind of work to be able to do it in such a fashion.

BTW, for those of you who know not of whom I speak, look at Flaming Youth's sig pic. That's Colleen. I wish I could tell you Lilac Time was available on video, but it's not. We got our print from a big Moore fan in NYC who was kind enough to loan it to us. He was also a friend of Moore later on in her life.