April 10

Ramón Novarro & Joan Crawford
Silent Film Stars

Many do not know that Joan Crawford made dozens of silent films -- or that she was also a singer and dancer. And, if most people know of Ramón Novarro at all, it is by the scandalous investigation of his murder in the late 1960s that outed him as a gay man. His most famous film role was the 1925 silent version of Ben Hur, but this clip from a so-so silent film from 1928 shows him at his most charming, in a comic scene from Across to Singapore. Impishly handsome, he acts circles around a young Joan Crawford, who is miscast here, not to mention done up in ring curls and a hoop skirt.

Photo of Novarro by legendary Hollywood photographer George Hurrell ("The New Orpheus" c. 1928).