Examining the Life, Silent and Sound Filme Career of one of Hollywood's Most Important Actresses
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Colleen Moore: A Biography of the Silent Film Star
is now available for pre- ordering. 
 

Click the image at the right (the book's official bookmark)

 to go to McFarland's website! 

 

Also available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Links open in new windows.

Happy New Year!
I have the proofs for the biography now, and should be spending the next few weeks prrofreading and indexing. The book is scheduled to go to the printer at the end of February. The long ride is almost over!

About the photographs

Many are from my own collection, and so are noted "from the Jeff Codori Collection." Many others were found online and were saved well before this website was made. Where I am able to find information on a given image, I give credit to the original source and try to provide a link. If I cannot retrace the image to it's original online source, it is left blank, aside from the description of the image. Some images are available from other websites, and I use those images on my own site; for example, several movie posters are in the poster collection of the Margaret Herrick Library in Los Angeles. With their permission, I have used the thumbnails of the posters available online, and might eventually provide a link to the individual poster's page. Some images available through libraries have links back to the original. Some images are from newspapers.

View some of the remaining portions of Flaming Youth. Available at the Library of Congress, they've been posted online.  Additions are constantly being made to this site, so you may have to fish around to find it. Click on the image.

Welcome to the Colleen Moore Project!

For a time, Colleen Moore was one of the most popular and beloved stars of the American silent screen. Her ascendance to fame coincided with the popularity of the “flapper” type character on the screen, a popular characterization of the rebellious youth that came to prominence with the growing unpopularity of Prohibition. As a result, Colleen is remembered today primarily as a comedienne in such films as Ella Cinders (1926) and Orchids and Ermine (1927), and also as the actress who made the flapper into the girl next door to the larger American (and the world’s) audience. However, her career was also filled with dramatic roles which often reflected greater societal trends; in fact, she made her debut in comedy strictly as a means to sharpen her dramatic skills.

As a result of her versatility, her comedic roles were filled with touches of drama and pathos, and her comedies often tugged at the heart.

Click the image to go to the original Colleen Moore Project website.

Because she was a respected actress before she was known as a flapper, she made the flapper respectable.By removing the fear many held towards this new movement, she made it possible for a new generation of independent young woman to appear on the screen and to explore new degrees of independence in the real world.

She has since been overshadowed by the female stars that followed her notably Louise Brooks and Clara Bow—individuals that look more familiar to modern audiences because of their more frank sexuality and explosive personalities—but without Colleen her cinematic descendants would not have been possible.