Silent film actress Pola Negri (real name Apolonia Chalupec)
The first movie stars to appear were not the glamourous creatures of today. They were experimental subjects, warm bodies whose only requirement was to do what the operator of the camera told them to. They were anonymous for the most part. Some of the earliest experimenters in film, like Georges Melies, used themselves as the stars. When films began to be developed commercially, the need came for named actors and actresses the audiences could relate to. Many of them came from Vaudeville and Broadway. Others were models and dancers — men and women who knew how to project themselves, create a presence.
Then, as now, the star-making machinery made them over, giving them new names and identities. A Jewish girl from Cincinnati named Theodosia Goodman became the vampy man-eater Theda Bara. A young man from Italy with the lengthy name of Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d’Antonguella became hearthrob Rudolph Valentino. Star names back then were required to be easy to spell and say, and also easy to read, as many in the U.S. still never made it beyond grade school. They also had to be of the era. While some 1920s names like Rose and Violet have come full circle and made it back into style, others, like Ira and Blanche, have not.
Some randomly generated names if you need to create your own silent film star, or someone from the 1910s – 1920s in general.
Randomly generated silent movie stars
| Female
Pearl Bold Rumor Grayson Olive May Violet Aster Stella St. Pierre Emeline LaCroix Chloe Sweet Rose Blythe Vera Hunter Odile Gracille Trudy Farthing Blanche Valentine Irene Swan Thelma Lawshe Mabel Reese Nola York Nellie Angel Mae Summers Dolores Radnor Tessie True Fanny Rivers Irene Coronet Zora Gray |
Male
Rudolf Sands Ira Hanover Miles Blair Julian Stanhope William Swain Oscar Knight Gardner Perry Dudley Cross Reuben Carlyle Victor Knightsbridge Renton Cross Paul Adler Fredrick Bynes Glen Downs Leon Bakshi Maurice Hunter Owen Nestor Boris Ostrov Simon Valentine Ramon Silva Henry Stewart Oran Rich Chick Toth |
