There is a great deal of pleasure to be gained from the first thirty years of American movies_even without seeing the movies. The Silent Screen is dedicated to guiding readers through some of those pleasures. The book highlights the main events, the leading lights, and the films that mattered. It is a selective history for those who want to be informed without being overwhelmed, who would like to know enough about the silent era to feel at home there, respect its artists, and admire their work. Culled from the author's five previous anthologies, The First Tycoons, The First Film Makers, The Stars Appear, The Silent Comedians, and Films of the 1920s, The Silent Screen stands alone as an inclusive series of essays for general readers. An added value to the introductory text are eleven appendixes, which include information on silent film companies, early film executives, notable directors, and a listing of the titles and directors of films reviewed in the first five volumes.

Again Richard Dyer MacCann has brought his editorial skills to the task of presenting for the students and the general reader what movie making was like in the earliest days of America. This time he tells the stories of the lives, works, and fortunes of the most talented and prolific early American directors. Not only did they express themselves as artists, they also became popular, rich, and famous. Through autobiographical writings and the appraisals of contemporaries and more recent historians, Dr. MacCann provides the reader with a rich background for understanding how Thomas Ince, William S. Hart, D.W. Griffith, and Erich non Stroheim did their work. He also reveals some of the conflicts in critical views about them, past and present. Many teachers will agree that these hard-to-find selections are invaluable source materials to go along with more tradtional texts. From the latest scholarship on Edwin S. Porter and Alice Guy Blache to the little-known "realist-manifesto" of Thomas Ince and the latest judgements on the value of Griffith's later works as art the reader will find rewards and surprises here. Dr. MacCann's introductory essays also provide new ways of looking at the philosophy an dmotivations of these early creative titans. His view of Erich von Stroheim will cause some controversy among traditional supporters of that temperamental man, and his analysis of D.W. Griffiths's relationships with his associates, especially Lillian Gish, may give pause to pure auteurists.

'A splendid anthology' Kevin Brownlow, author of The Parade's Gone By and Hollywood: The Pioneers. This pathbreaking work will become our most valuable resource on the performers of the American silent screen. Hollywood was the new frontier of the 20th century. ('The last Klondike, ' Gary Cooper called it.) Here are brief biographies of 176 people who won leading roles plus more dramatic reports on 33 of them how they reached fame and fortune, 'some sad and happy endings, ' analyses of the images of America they presented. Two special chapters: Pickford and Fairbanks, Swanson and Valentino."