The Silent Type: John Gilbert

Each month, Visual Film Diary profiles the lives of five actors, directors, producers, and/or major players in film history to chronicle foremost contributions to cinema. This month we will be profiling five men who rose to legendary status during the silent film period and helped to define key aspects of performance, cinematic technique, and modern celebrity that are still celebrated today. Join us for the fourth installment of our July theme, The Silent Type.

Today we will be focusing on a silent star known for his sex appeal, a man whose persona virtually created the mold for a romantic leading man in silent melodramas. At the height of his career he was making $250,000 a film, an unprecedented sum, becoming the highest paid actor in history. Just ten years later he was dead, having succumbed to the depressive alcoholism that had held him hostage for most of his life. What happened to John Gilbert? How did an actor beloved by women and envied by men all around the world sink to such pitifully low status? Join us for our second-to-last edition of July's theme, The Silent Type, as we discuss the rise and fall of silent king John Gilbert, from his fateful pairing with a young Greta Garbo to his disastrous rivalry with Louis B. Mayer to his untimely death at the age of 38.

John Cecil Pringle was born on July 10th, 1899 in Logan, Utah. His family life was tumultuous; growing up a mostly absent father, he would often be awoken in the night by his mother to be introduced to her new male friends, each one of whom he was instructed to call "Daddy." When his mother finally remarried it was to a man with the last name Gilbert, a surname that young John adopted. Gilbert was born into a family of stock actors who moved frequently, and his childhood was spent enduring abuse and neglect. When he moved to California with his mother as a teenager, he enrolled in a military school and began seeking small screen parts.

In the late 1910s, Gilbert began working as an extra for Thomas Ince Studios. It was here that he met and befriended the French director Maurice Tourneur, who immediately recognized his star potential and hired him to act and direct several films. It didn't take long for Gilbert to trade in his nickname, Jackie Gilbert, for the more polished John Gilbert and rise through the ranks into stardom.

His first major picture was 1919's Heart of the Hills with "Queen of the Movies" Mary Pickford, one of the most famous and highly regarded silent film actors of the day (and, for that matter, of all time). This film was a success and helped to bolster Gilbert's reputation as a strong romantic lead. In 1921 he signed his first studio contract with Fox Film Corporation. He would go on to make several films for Fox before signing a contract that would seal his fate forever- in 1924 he signed to MGM, and effectively sold his soul to Louis B. Mayer. This decision would prove to be both his best and his worst.

MGM is a studio infamous for its star-making power, and when a young, handsome John Gilbert found his way onto the lot, the powers that be set to work. He was branded as an impossibly romantic hero, a sex symbol whose love and devotion could be uniquely experienced by any woman who saw him. Because this was the era of the period melodrama, Gilbert's brand of romantic excess was usually depicted through the medium of a highly-stylized 18th-century love story with ridiculously frilly costumes and obviously staged sword fights. If you have never seen a John Gilbert movie, imagine Gene Kelly's thinly-veiled parody in the film Singin' in the Rain, in which he plays an actor tasked with portraying a stock Gilbert leading man, complete with powdered wig and stockings.

Here's the rub: Gilbert's theatrical, flamboyant style was not exactly a paragon of the kind of manliness that Hollywood would soon find in men like Clark Gable. Much like his contemporary Rudolph Valentino, Gilbert was fawned over by women who appreciated his romantic sensitivity, and thought to be an un-masculine pansy by men. In a moment we'll get to one particular feud within Gilbert's studio contract that would go on to use his reputation among men as being a little too flamboyant as a form of blackmail, but for now we should discuss what Gilbert was most well known for: his partnership with Greta Garbo.

Garbo and Gilbert

Greta Garbo was discovered by Louis B. Mayer while he was scouting in Berlin, and soon became one of the most famous cases of MGM's star-making power. After receiving an extensive makeover that included significant weight loss and excessive hair straightening, Garbo was marketed by MGM as a thrillingly exotic (but not too exotic) female lead, and immediately paired with John Gilbert, who had spent the past several years at MGM building up his credentials (as well as his bank account). Their first film together was 1926's Flesh and Devil, and shortly after the film's release Garbo and Gilbert began a romantic relationship that may or may not have been an invention of MGM, but definitely got their fans excited to the point of hysteria.

Garbo and Gilbert would go on to make several films together, and the chemistry between the two is unmistakably rare and genuine. Whether or not Garbo, who was said by many Hollywood insiders to be a lesbian, and Gilbert, who had his own share of relationship problems, were ever actually in love remains a point of controversy to this day. However, there is a well-recounted story of their relationship that has survived, and may account for why Gilbert's career ended tragically. According to several sources, Gilbert and Garbo decided shortly after their first film that they were to be married, and chose to have a joint wedding with Gilbert's frequent director, King Vidor, and actress Eleanor Boardman. On the day of the wedding, however, Garbo was a no-show, and a depressed Gilbert began to sob hysterically in his bedroom. Louis B. Mayer found this behavior appalling and, more than anything, annoying, and came into the man's room. "John," he supposedly said, "you don't have to marry her. Just sleep with her." This comment made Gilbert so furious that he punched Mayer in the face, knocking him to the ground. A horrified Mayer jumped to his feet and pointed at Gilbert menacingly. "I will destroy you." He told him.

This may or may not have ever actually happened. However, whether or not the Mayer-Gilbert feud began after the studio mogul was given a shiner by the actor, there is no question that Mayer wanted desperately to find a way to get rid of his leading man. At the height of his career in the late 1920s, Gilbert was making $250,000 a film, roughly $3.5 million in today's money. This was a ridiculous amount of money for an actor to be paid, and Mayer was unhappy having to do it. The way he saw it, Mayer had seemingly three options on his plate: he could fire Gilbert, which would have been costly to his wallet and his public image; he could make things increasingly difficult and inconvenient for Gilbert and hope to have him terminate his own contract; or he could simply let the alcoholic and notoriously irresponsible Gilbert drink himself to death. Mayer decided to employ several of these possibilities.

In the late 1920s, studios began the arduous process of transitioning into sound motion pictures. This was Mayer's chance to severely compromise Gilbert's stardom. While we can't say for certain whether or not Louis B. Mayer actually manipulated Gilbert's career for personal revenge, many historians and several prominent actors and friends of John Gilbert, such as Louise Brooks, have voiced their own belief in the Mayer-Revenge Plot. What we do know is that Gilbert mysteriously never had any of the assistance given to actors while transitioning into sound film, such as voice coaching. In addition to this, many have speculated that Mayer ordered Gilbert's recorded voice to tampered with, and had studio engineers remove all of the bass notes from his voice to make him sound more cartoonish and feminine. Obviously this is speculation, but listening to Gilbert's recorded voice, it does sound like something's not quite right.

It has also been speculated that Mayer purposefully incited gossip about the poor quality of Gilbert's voice, so that by the time audiences actually heard him speak, they possessed preconceived notions about its inferior quality. In fact, many reviews of Gilbert's sound films praise the actor's voice in a surprised tone, musing as if to their amazement that "it isn't bad at all!" What really seems to be the issue was not necessarily Gilbert's voice, but the lines he had to deliver, lines so terribly melodramatic and overwritten that all sincere romance was lost. John Gilbert was horribly embarrassed by all of this, and began to drink so heavily that he threw up blood on a regular basis. He began to feel paranoid, and though he was always well-liked by other actors, he felt like people only spent time with him to be nice. He began driving with his convertible top up, windows rolled up, in sunglasses and disguises, afraid that if he ran into anyone who recognized him they would simply laugh.

While all of this was going on, Louis B. Mayer had slowed down the pace of Gilbert's acting jobs, and only offered him parts that the actor would obviously not accept. It got so bad for Gilbert that he actually went so far as to take out a full page advertisement in a Hollywood magazine that openly criticized MGM for not offering him parts. During this period of decline, Gilbert had two guiding lights: Irving Thalberg, MGM's production chief, offered him several parts either out of sympathy or genuine belief in his abilities, and Marlene Dietrich became a close friend, hearing of his misfortunes and seeking to help revitalize his career with her own connections. Unfortunately, both of these attempts failed. Gilbert simply could not stop drinking, and was unable to work effectively.

Gilbert, Dietrich, and Clark Gable

Gilbert's health had begun to significantly decline by at least 1934. Unable to work, he sat at home all day in his Beverly Hills mansion and drank. His personal life was no beacon of hope, either; having been married and divorced four times, he had never found the kind of relationship he had hoped to foster with Garbo, and apparently remained dedicated to her for his whole life. He completed his final film, The Captain Hates the Sea, in 1934, and then effectively retired from the screen. In 1935 he suffered a massive heart attack, leaving him in very poor health, and he finally suffered a second heart attack on January 9th, 1936, that proved fatal. He was 38 years old.

John Gilbert was unquestionably a fascinating figure; today he is recognized as one of the most famous examples of a silent film star whose career dried up once the movies turned to sound. Impressively though, Gilbert never lost his fortune, and died a very rich man. He remained good friends with many celebrities and his funeral was attended by some of the most prominent names in Hollywood. Whatever his legacy as an actor, it's undisputed that Gilbert left a cinematic mark larger than his own filmography: his story can be seen played out in two major films, Gene Kelly's Singin' in the Rain (1952) and the 2009 Best Picture Oscar Winner, The Artist. Damned if he didn't try, but it seems like Louis B. Mayer couldn't "destroy" his enemy's legacy.