John Gilbert

The Last of the Silent Film Stars (Screen Classics)

By: Eve Golden

Narrated by: Hugh Munro Neely

Charming and classically handsome, John Gilbert (1897-1936) was among the world's most recognizable actors during the silent era. He was a wild, swashbuckling figure on screen and off, and accounts of his life have focused on his high-profile romances with Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich, his legendary conflicts with Louis B. Mayer, his four tumultuous marriages, and his swift decline after the introduction of talkies. A dramatic and interesting personality, Gilbert served as one of the primary inspirations for the character of George Valentin in the Academy Award - winning movie The Artist (2011). Many myths have developed around the larger-than-life star in the eighty years since his untimely death, but this definitive biography sets the record straight.

Eve Golden separates fact from fiction in John Gilbert: The Last of the Silent Film Stars, tracing the actor's life from his youth spent traveling with his mother in acting troupes to the peak of fame at MGM, where he starred opposite Mae Murray, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Greta Garbo, and other actresses in popular films such as The Merry Widow (1925), The Big Parade (1925), Flesh and the Devil (1926), and Love (1927). Golden debunks some of the most pernicious rumors about the actor, including the oft-repeated myth that he had a high-pitched, squeaky voice that ruined his career. Meticulous, comprehensive, this audiobook provides a behind-the-scenes look at one of the silent era's greatest stars and the glamorous yet brutal world in which he lived.

©2013 University Press of Kentucky (P)2013 Northern Road / Timeline Films

Solid memoir about an actor in old Hollywood.

This was overall a very good book with solid research. It didn’t read like a gossip column, like some of these types of memoirs tend to do, and I felt like I really understood who John Gilbert was. The only criticism I have is that the narrator didn’t differentiate his voices enough, so that he always sounded pretty much the same. Also, the audio quality dipped a little every once in a while in the recording. But other than that, this was a very entertaining and informative read.