Elmo Lincoln passed away today back in 1952. He was the first Tarzan and appeared in the first Tarzan movie back in 1918. It was a silent film "Tarzan of the Apes". This film brings back memories because it was the first feature film we rented and showed on our old keystone projector it was a Saturday movie night with family and friends, it included the popcorn. I remember the next feature we showed was a silent film with Wallace Beery "The Lost World". I watched a lot of silent films back then Douglas Fairbanks as "Zorro", Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Clara Bow,....... The last surviving silent film movie star was Baby Peggy she past in 2020 at 101 years old.
My dad had an 8mm camera and projector, but I don't recall us ever renting anything. I'm not certain I've ever watched a silent movie all the way through unless it was some short thing on TV in between the main stuff. I looked up Baby Peggy. She was "discovered" at 19 months old. Hmmmm...
This was a 16 mm projector. Later we got the 8mm then Super8. There were two companies back then where you could buy film, Castle film and Offical film. They would take an original sound film like Woody Woodpecker and make a silent subtitle version usually in 2 lengths 100ft and 400ft reels. I Loved looking through there catalogs. Later we had an 16mm optical sound projector which had reels up to 2000ft. I still have a collection of films in my attic, probably getting ruined. I would trade my films for different ones to have something new to watch. I remember having some old tv shows like The millionaire, Harbor Command, Sky King, End of the year News review hosted by Edward R. Murrow and all the main newsman of that station, plus many others films. I keep thinking I'd like to set up the old projector, but it's too much of an effort.
I don't know anything about the silent films movies except what momma told me. And that was just that theatres cost 5 cents.