sometimes there's nothing to watch. photo by william gedney
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
her 'most beautiful man'
when i was reading about silent screen wonder, actress lillian gish, she claimed that richard barthelmess was the most beautiful actor she ever knew. i had never heard of him and had to do some research. here are my happy results.
just an observation....but in today's film standards, mr. barthelmess would be type-cast as a non-threatening 'pretty' male actor who starts out with the pretty girl but loses her to the macho supporting actor in a light comedic retro date movie along the lines of a shakespearean comedy of errors theme.
I'm very happy that you included Richard Barthelmess in your blog. He was a very handsome actor, but oftentimes you can't tell from just the pictures. I really agree with this quote: "It is improbable that many people, looking at a photograph of him, would agree that Richard Barthelmess 'had the most beautiful face of any man who ever went before the camera,' as Lillian Gish asserts in her memoirs. His face is round, pasty, and undistinguished, though he had large, sombre eyes and good blunt features . . . . at least he was and is unprepossessing in stills. But the motion-picture camera caught the beauty, an inner beauty, spiritual; not always, but certainly in TOL'ABLE DAVID and BROKEN BLOSSOMS, Barthelmess gave startingly beautiful performances: he was PURE." That quote came from this site: http://www.silentsaregolden.com/featurefolder2/tolabledavidfeature.html
Btw, I highly recommend "Tol'able David" if you haven't seen it yet. Take care.
2 comments:
just an observation....but in today's film standards, mr. barthelmess would be type-cast as a non-threatening 'pretty' male actor who starts out with the pretty girl but loses her to the macho supporting actor in a light comedic retro date movie along the lines of a shakespearean comedy of errors theme.
I'm very happy that you included Richard Barthelmess in your blog. He was a very handsome actor, but oftentimes you can't tell from just the pictures. I really agree with this quote: "It is improbable that many people, looking at a photograph of him, would agree that Richard Barthelmess 'had the most beautiful face of any man who ever went before the camera,' as Lillian Gish asserts in her memoirs. His face is round, pasty, and undistinguished, though he had large, sombre eyes and good blunt features . . . . at least he was and is unprepossessing in stills. But the motion-picture camera caught the beauty, an inner beauty, spiritual; not always, but certainly in TOL'ABLE DAVID and BROKEN BLOSSOMS, Barthelmess gave startingly beautiful performances: he was PURE." That quote came from this site: http://www.silentsaregolden.com/featurefolder2/tolabledavidfeature.html
Btw, I highly recommend "Tol'able David" if you haven't seen it yet. Take care.
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