Parade's Gone By...

By Kevin Brownlow
 
They speak in this book--the pioneering directors (Henry King, Clarence Brown, William Wellman), the stars and producer-stars (Harold Lloyd, Mary Pickford, Geraldine Farrar, Gloria Swanson), the cameramen, the film editors, the creative giants of the silent screen who, flying by the seat of their pants, improvised their films on location, evolved--indeed invented--the techniques and concepts that we take for granted today. With frames and photographs you've never seen before, with pungently alive firsthand recollections, The Parade's Gone By... re-creates the earliest days of the movies, how the first moving pictures were actually shot, how the first film makers responded to the new medium untrammeled by rules and conventions--and turned a crude, fumbling gimmick into art.