Silent Stars

From one of America''s most renowned film scholars: a revelatory, perceptive, and highly readable look at the greatest silent film stars -- not those few who are fully appreciated and understood, like Chaplin, Keaton, Gish, and Garbo, but those who have been misperceived, unfairly dismissed, or forgotten.

Here is Valentino, "the Sheik," who was hardly the effeminate lounge lizard he''s been brande...