Dan Navarro
Navarro’s Guide to Silent Films is an exhaustive directory listing every silent feature film (5 reels or more) produced in the United States, 9,000 titles in all! Each of the entries includes title, year of release, director, and/or production company, cast list, and a synopsis. The volume totals 641 pages, with 587 pages of film entries, 40 pages of photographs, and an index of 38 pages. Its target audience includes film buffs, students, and researchers. Chronicling the world of film before the appearance of talkies, the book includes every genre, including comedy, western, gangster, spectacle, and romance. It is organized alphabetically by film title, but also allows the reader to search by actor or director using the extensive index. The author’s selection of film stills and publicity photos pays tribute to such classic films as D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (starring John Barrymore), and Cecil B. DeMille’s Cleopatra. Publicity photos from the period include icons such as Lon Chaney, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Charles Farrell, Janet Gaynor, Dorothy Gish, Rudolph Valentino and Mary Pickford, among many others.
