As they did almost a hundred years ago, today’s film goers and film aficionados still love movies and movie stars, and flock to theaters across the globe to be entertained by the Silver Screen.  Perhaps movie icons and Hollywood Royalty never had it so good, or by today’s celebrity pomp and circumstance it may seem so.  But back in its heyday and at its inception, back before sound films or sound pictures (also called talking pictures, talking films or “talkies”) came on the scene, Hollywood and the film industry were rife with its quota of famous movie stars and celebrity icons. 

During the height of silent films (the “silent era”) and The Golden Age of Hollywood (also called Hollywood’s Golden Age and The Golden Age of Film) and when Broadway plays and vaudeville were more in vogue, movie actors and movie stars were no less admired and revered than today’s often less-dignified Hollywood Royalty.  Now there is an amazing book written and published for movie icon lovers and film history buffs everywhere to enjoy and to hone their Trivia Pursuit skills.  It’s called “Playbills to Photoplays: Stage Performers Who Pioneered the Talkies”; and if you really appreciate Hollywood Royalty, movie stars, and the history of films and famous stage performers, then this is definitely a book of film royalty you need to own.

Authored, edited and compiled by Brenda Loew, Playbills to Photoplays: Stage Performers Who Pioneered the Talkies chronicles the lives and career paths of early vaudevillians, legitimate actors, character actors, stage performers and famous movie icons from the early twentieth century.   The true pioneers of Hollywood’s Golden Age and beyond, many of them were household names who transitioned from silent films and entertaining on stage (and on Broadway) before live audiences to acting and performing in the new technological medium of sound films, still fondly known as talkies, which began around 1930.

Who were these first true movie icons of stage and screen and Broadway and Hollywood’s Golden Age?  How’s this for a short list: Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Eddie Cantor, Al Jolson, Ruby Keeler, Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, John Barrymore, Lionel Barrymore, Mae West, Marie Dressler, Walter Huston, Jean Arthur, Billie Burke, Fred Astaire, Ginger Rodgers, Red Skelton, George Burns and Gracie Allen, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Ed Wynn, Groucho, Chico, Harpo and Zeppo Marx, Basil Rathbone, Harold Lloyd, Bob Hope, Frank Morgan, Ralph Morgan, Charley Grapewin, Lee Tracy, Warren William, Eddie Quillan, Charles Wagenheim, Conrad Veidt, Clifton Webb, Cary Grant, Laurel and Hardy, Gloria Swanson, Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, James Cagney and so many, many more!

Written in twenty-eight well-researched, informative essays and containing over one hundred rare and stimulating photographs, Playbills to Photoplays: Stage Performers Who Pioneered the Talkies thoroughly describes the social, political, economic, historical, and cultural issues and events that shaped each performer’s body of work, acting technique, persona, and public following during his or her career.  From vaudeville to silent films, off-Broadway stage work to sound films and talking films, and all points between, Brenda Loew’s book captures the ethos and zeitgeist of the silent era and Golden Age of Film as never before.  And she manages to cover both pictures and words the movie stars, character actors, stage performers, and movie icons of a bygone era as no other film or film history book ever has…or perhaps ever will again! 

Just glancing at the venerable time-capsule book cover of Playbills to Photoplays: Stage Performers Who Pioneered the Talkies and you immediately feel pulled back to The Golden Age of Hollywood and inexorably find yourself breathing the exalted air of that once inimitable era when stage performers and movie icons help create an artistic medium that is now a sacred part of American culture.  Playbills to Photoplays: Stage Performers Who Pioneered the Talkies is truly a must-have for film historians, old movie icon admirers and fans, classic film aficionados and serious film students and people who work in the film industry.  It is also an intricately written biography and photo legacy that people who care about film preservation will want to own.