See the First (Silent) Movie Version of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, Love (1927), Starring Garbo and Gilbert, Complete, for Free, and Without Commercial Interruption, at the WEJB/NSU Theater!

Re-posted by Nicholas Stix

“293 views Jan 12, 2024
“Love is a 1927 American silent drama film directed by Edmund Goulding and released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. A sound version of the film was released in 1928 with a synchronized musical score with sound effects. MGM made the film to capitalize on its winning romantic team of Greta Garbo and John Gilbert who had starred in the 1926 blockbuster Flesh and the Devil.”

N.S.: Jack Gilbert (1897-1936) and Greta Garbo (1905-1990) fell in love while working together (they co-starred in four pictures), he proposed marriage, she accepted, and then she left him standing at the altar. MGM co-founder and president, Louis B. Mayer (Gilbert and Garbo’s boss; 1884-1957), who was present at the aborted nuptials, made a sarcastic remark to Gilbert, who slugged him.

Said punch has been offered by some observers as the reason Mayer destroyed Gilbert’s career. Another claim has been that Gilbert’s voice was no good for talkies. I believe, however, Scott Eyman’s explanation, in his monumental biography of Mayer, Lion of Hollywood (2005). After the success of The Big Parade (1924), Gilbert negotiated a new contract, which paid him enormous sums ($10,000 per week, according to Ben Hecht), and which required that each picture be a huge hit. Mayer sabotaged the pictures, so that he could rid himself of Gilbert.

Gilbert drank himself to death at the age of 38.

I’m far from done with Jack Gilbert, who was a tragic giant of the pioneer age of pictures. Nobody made, to my knowledge, any movies about him, but he affected everyone who had the power to be affected.

If you’ve seen the Stanley Donen, Gene Kelly, Betty Comden and Adolph Green musical comedy masterpiece, Singin’ in the Rain (1952), you know that a pivotal role was that of Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen), a nasty silent star who had a terrible voice, and thus could not transition to talkies without a stage voice (Debbie Reynolds).

There was no “Lina Lamont”; however, in writing her role, Betty Comden and Adolph Green may have been influenced by Jack Gilbert’s trials and tribulations. But Gilbert was a prince of a man.

(Jean Hagen was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for Singin’ in the Rain.)





The WEJB/NSU Theater, 1902-1981:

The Haunted Castle: George Melies (1896)

Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon (1902);

The Great Train Robbery (1903);

The Wizard of Oz (1910);

C.B. DeMille’s The Squaw Man (1914);

D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915);

D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Through the Ages (1916);

Harry Carey and John “Jack” Ford’s Straight Shooting (1917), the First Feature-Length, “Cheyenne Harry” Western;

Charlie Chaplin’s Shoulder Arms (1918);

The Outlaw and His Wife (1918), Starring and Directed by Victor Sjöström (Seastrom);

Starring “Jack”: See the 1920 Silent Picture Classic of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde;

Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920);

Buster Keaton’s One Week (1920);

D. W. Griffith’s Way Down East (1920);

F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1921);

The Kid (1921), Charlie Chaplin’s First Feature as Director;

Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou’s First Pictures Featuring the Evil Genius, Dr. Mabuse: Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler, Teil I (Dr. Mabuse, the Player, Part I); and

Dr. Mabuse, Teil II: Inferno (Dr. Mabuse, Inferno, Part II, both 1922, released one month apart) with English subtitles;

James Cruze’s The Covered Wagon (1923);

John Ford’s The Iron Horse (1924);

Charlie, in The Gold Rush (1925);

Lon Chaney, in The Phantom of the Opera (1925);

King Vidor, Laurence Stallings, and Harry Behn’s The Big Parade (1925), Starring Gilbert and Adore!

Buster Keaton’s The General (1926);

John Ford’s 1926 Western, 3 Bad Men;

Barrymore and Astor in Don Juan (1926);

When a Man Loves (1927), Starring “Jack” and Dolores Costello;

Josef von Sternberg and Ben Hecht’s Underworld (1927), the First American Gangster Picture;

Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger (1927);

“Wild Bill” Wellman’s Restored, Classic Silent Picture, Wings (1927), One of the First Two Best Picture Oscar Winners;

F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927, One of the First Two Best Picture Oscar Winners);

Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou’s Dystopian Science Fiction Epic, Metropolis (1927), the Greatest S/F Picture Ever, Plus Its Soundtrack Suite;

Frank Borzage and Austin Strong’s Seventh Heaven (1927);

Garbo and Gilbert in Love (1927);

Samson Raphaelson, Alfred A. Cohn, Jack Jarmuth and Alan Crosland’s The Jazz Singer (1927), the First-Ever Talkie, Starring Al Jolson, by Warner Brothers;

King Vidor’s The Crowd 1928;

Bessie Smith in St. Louis Blues (talkie, short, 1929);

John Wayne, in His First Starring Role in an “A” Picture, Raoul Walsh’s Western Epic Talky, The Big Trail (1930)”;

Fritz Lang & Thea von Harbou’s First Talkie: M: Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (1931) (M: A City Searches for a Murderer);

Paul Robeson in Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones (talkie, 1933);

"John Wayne Movie: See over 3 Hours of Foreign Legion Action! Classic Early 1930s Serial, The Three Musketeers;

The Man Who Knew too Much (1934): The Original Version of the Early Hitchcock Classic;

John Ford’s Judge Priest (1934), Starring Will Rogers, with Hattie McDaniel;

The Fighting Westerner (1935);

Kate Hepburn in the Super Chief’s Quality Street (1937);

Cary Grant and Roz Russell in Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur, and Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday (1940);

Zero’s Since You Went Away (1944);

Orson Welles’ The Stranger (1946);

The Lethal Lure (1946);

William Dieterle’s A Portrait of Jennie (1948);

Jules Dassin, Albert Malz, and Malvin Wald’s The Naked City (1948), Plus Music;

Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966);

Lee Marvin as Sergeant Ryker (1963/1968); and

Paul Newman, in Fort Apache, the Bronx (1981).