D. W. Griffith’s classic “Intolerance,” was released on Sept. 5, 1916.
Compiled by Kevin Dayhoff September 12-15, 2023.
I was originally researching the life and accomplishments of Bessie Love, an early silent film star who was born September 10, 1898. One of her early movies was “Intolerance:” released Sept. 5, 1916, "Intolerance is a 1916 epic silent film directed by D. W. Griffith and considered one of the great masterpieces of the Silent Era. It is perhaps one of the top ten movies ever made.
Bessie Love appeared in the movie along with the likes of Lilian Gish, Vera Lewis, Ralph Lewis, Mae Marsh, Robert Harron, Constance Talmadge, Josephine Crowell, Margery Wilson, Frank Bennett, Elmer Clifton, Miriam Cooper, and Alfred Paget.
The three-and-a-half hour epic intercuts four parallel storylines, each separated by several centuries: (1) a contemporary melodrama of crime and redemption, (2) a Judean story: Christ's mission and death, (3) a French story: the events surrounding the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572, and (4) a Babylonian story: the fall of the Babylonian Empire to Persia in 539 BC. Each story had its own distinctive color tint in the original print. The scenes are linked by shots of a figure representing Eternal Motherhood, rocking a cradle."
Bessie Love played the role of ‘The Bride,’ in the ‘Wedding at Cana’ scene in Intolerance. It was a complex scene in which Christ attends the wedding at Cana with Howard Gaye as Christ, and with Bessie Love and George Walsh as the bride and groom. Bessie Love was born on September 10, 1898. She was discovered in 1915 when she began working in silent pictures directed by D.W. Griffith. Following her small role in ‘Intolerance’, Love gained her first prominent role in ‘The Flying Torpedo’ in 1916.
One media source explained, “In 1929, when sound made its way to films, Love was one of the few actors who found the transition from silent films to early talkies smooth. She won an Academy Award nomination for her stellar performance in ‘The Broadway Melody’. She moved to Britain in 1935 where she resumed her acting career…” Her acting career ended in 1983.
An interesting sidenote is that she worked for the American red Cross during World War II in England.
According to a story in Los Angeles Times at the time of her death in London England on April 26, 1986 at the age of 88, “She was born Juanita Horton in Midland, Tex., the daughter of an itinerant bartender father who moved his family through Arizona, New Mexico and finally to Los Angeles, where his 16-year-old daughter talked her way onto the set of ‘Intolerance.’”
Throughout her career she Bessie Love made 141 films, including the Oscar-nominated Broadway Melody (1929), making appearances in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961), Isadora (1968), Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), Ragtime (1981), Reds (1981) and The Hunger (1983). She wrote her autobiography, From Hollywood with Love, in 1977.
The Los Angeles Times reported, “She was cast in a series of parts she once described as “sunbonnet girl next door” in “Nina the Flower Girl,” “The Great Adventure,” “The Yankee Princess,” “Human Wreckage” and three dozen more before becoming a self-professed “sequined and spangled showgirl” in “The Broadway Melody.” That 1928 production was the first talking picture ventured by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The film, also believed the industry’s first sound musical, brought her an Academy Award nomination.”
This information has been compiled and assembled from multiple documented and undocumented sources over many years – all of which I have been very careful to cite and no claim to original authorship is either claimed or implied.
