No one will ever forget the scene in D. W. Griffith’s Way Down East where Richard Barthelmess as David rescued Anna Moore from certain death on an ice floe as it was about to plummet over a waterfall. The actor risked his life for that stunt, and the exciting sequence still thrills audiences to this day. His effort to fight back and live on became more than the stuff of Hollywood legend. Richard went on to be nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actor for The Noose and The Patent Leather Kid, and he won an Academy Award Citation for Special Achievement in Producing The Patent Leather Kid.
His signature roles are in many of D. W. Griffith’s silent films including Broken Blossoms, Scarlet Days, The Love Flower, and The Idol Dancer. Few people are aware that he was nearly felled by the chaos of Hollywood’s transition from silent to talking pictures when he used a voice double to sing for him in Weary River. Despite the setback, his transition to talking pictures and work in The Dawn Patrol, Cabin in the Cotton, and Only Angel’s Have Wings proved that his talent was enduring.
For the first time, the story is fully told how Alla Nazimova, a famous Russian star, plucked him from obscurity to play in her first film, and how his worldwide fame was nearly snuffed out when he followed America’s call to arms and gave up his movie career to assist in the fight against Nazi aggression in World War Two. By the time he returned to civilian life, a new generation had grown up never seeing his work, but he continued to live happily until retiring as a senior citizen. Richard appeared in more than 80 films, and this book reveals them with a richly researched biography, an extensive Filmography, and hundreds of rare portraits, posters, and lobby cards that capture the glamour of Hollywood’s Golden Era.