Buster Keaton's silent comedy The Haunted House was released February 21, 1921. Keaton plays a bank clerk that finds a house, reportedly haunted, that is actually a hideout for thieves, who disguise themselves as ghouls to keep people away.
How Scooby-doo!
It is full of Keaton's characteristic physical, slapstick humor, and very funny.
La Maison ensorcelee (The House of Ghosts or The Witch House), released February 9, 1906 in Denmark, is one of the first haunted house movies. Directed by Segundo de Chomon, it uses stop-motion animation and superimposition photography to ramp up the spooky activity.
Two men and a woman take refuge in a small house in the woods and experience paranormal activity such as disappearing furniture, a knife cuts food by itself, and a ghost.
Anna May Wong, born January 3, 1905 as Wong Liu Tsong in Los Angeles California, is the first Chinese American film star in Hollywood and the first Chinese American actress to gain international recognition. She began acting early and her first role (uncredited) was Dinty in 1920. She starred in The Toll of the Sea, a silent movie and one of the first to be filmed in color.
In the late 1920s, she traveled to Europe, becoming frustrated by the stereotypical roles she reluctantly played. In 1935, she was refused for the leading role in the movie adaption of Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth. She was also refused the role of the Asian blackmailer in W. Somerset Maugham's The Letter, in both the Bette Davis version and the television role in 1956.
She is the first Asian American to appear on US Currency.
She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in February 1960. Wong passed away in February 1961 from a heart attack.
The first adaption of Lew Wallace's 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, by Kalem Company made its debut December 7, 1907. It is also a landmark case of copyright infringement by an American studio.
Sidney Olcott was principal director with assistance from Frank Oakes Rose. Filming took place over 4 days in October 1907. William S. Hart starred as Messala, a role he had played in the Broadway production of Ben Hur, from November 1899 to May 1900.
Other actors who are listed as cast, but unverified, were Herman Rottjer as Ben-Hur(?), Gene Gauntier, and Harry T. Morey.
The estate of Lew Wallace, who passed away three years before the motion picture was released, sued Kalem Company since it was produced without the estate's permission. According to screenwriter Gauntier, it was common practice in the early silent era to ignore copyrights and dismiss proprietary rights of original authors of intellectual properties. The court ruled against Kalem in May 1908, and later the US Supreme Court upheld the ruling on appeal.
I enjoyed this 15 min short, but had to keep the imdb.com page open to understand what is going on, since there are no stills with words except when the scene changes. One thing I noticed is the camera is always stationary. It does not move from side to side or up and down. Whatever is directly in front of the camera is what gets filmed. During the chariot race, the viewer only sees the chariots when they pass in front of the camera. With the low quality of the film and the brief glimpses of the driver, the viewer cannot tell who the drivers are or what their placement in the race is.
The Daughter of Dawn, released in October 1920, is probably the first and only silent film to feature an entirely Native American cast. It was shown only a few times and then vanished from history in the 1920s.
In 2005, a private investigator offered the film to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art for $35,000. In 2007, the Oklahoma Historical Society purchased it for $5000. They digitized the film and re-released it in 2013.
The film took place in the Wichita Mountains in southern Oklahoma, and focuses on a love triangle between a Kiowa chief's daughter, a Kiowa and a Comanche, during conflicts between the Kiowa and Comanche tribes.
Over 300 people from the Kiowa and Comanche tribes acted in the film.
It starred Hunting Horse, Oscar Yellow Wolf, Esther LeBarre, White Parker, and Wanada Parker, both children of Quanah Parker.
In 2013, The Daughter of Dawn was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
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