Mary Pickford in The Little American, 1917.

Death before dishonor. Robert Harron prepares to shoot his sweetheart, Lillian Gish, rather than allow her to fall into the hands of the Huns, in D.W. Griffith’s Hearts of the World, 1918.

Corinne Griffith

treadmill-to-oblivion:

On this date (June 7, 1937) Jean Harlow passed away. In the 1930’s there were no antibiotics, kidney dialysis or transplants. She was just 26 years old…

Carmel Myers as Iras, Francis X. Bushman as Messala.

The virtuous Ben Hur maddened by the lure of the siren. Carmel Myers and Ramon Novarro.

A symbolic scene depicting the sacrifice of Mae Murray on the Altar of Dollars in The Right to Love, 1920.

Why Worry?, 1923. In giant’s shoes, and with his “slave of the lamp,” Harold Lloyd breezes through a Central American revolution.

Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks “dedicate” a new link of the Pacific Highway. The crowned heads of Hollywood, always called out to officiate at cornerstone layings, their popularity toward the end of the Twenties was perhaps more official than real, but none challenged their royal status as long as silence lasted.

Pedro de Cordoba and Marion Davies in Young Diana, 1922. Miss Davies’ popularity as a romantic heroine was long a figment of William Randolph Hearst’s imagination, but she eventually won a following as a comedienne.