Don’t miss the third episode of Moguls and Movie Stars: A History of Hollywood, The Dream Merchants (1920-1928), premiering on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) at 8 pm (ET/PT) on Monday, Nov 15. Covering the movies’ silent era, from Rudolph Valentino and Greta Garbo to Gloria Swanson and the Fatty Arbuckle scandal, The Dream Merchants, with Christopher Plummer’s crisp and elegant narrative, keeps the focus on making art and money as Hollywood truly became a glamorous Tinseltown. Topics packed into this 60-minute program are spread too thin, and we lose track of the titans of movies as several factors come into play, but the production, including film footage, is amazing. One gets a strong sense of what is essential about each major player and creator.
Watch short scenes from Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, D.W. Griffith’s Orphans of the Storm, of Valentino dancing in Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and Chaplin, Lloyd, Bow, and Garbo, among others (too much Joseph Kennedy, not nearly enough of Buster Keaton), doing what made them legendary. By the 1920s, businessmen had made motion pictures into a hugely profitable industry, the fifth largest in the country, and had achieved real artistry, despite the claims of one of the more idiotic talking heads here (an Ivy League academic, author and former television writer). The night’s films include Sunrise (1927), Flesh and the Devil (1926), The Iron Horse (1924), and Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921). The Wednesday, Nov. 17, repeat will be featured with Chaplin’s comedy classics The Immigrant (1917), The Kid (1921), Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928) and Safety Last (1923).