Lois Moran |
The majority of the text of this Website originally appeared in
Films of the Golden Age
magazine,
Volume 1, Number 1,
Summer, 1995,
and is reproduced here with permission.
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From 1924 to 1931, film actress Lois Moran appeared in over 30 motion
pictures, including three of the best-known titles of the day: Stella
Dallas, The Road to Mandalay, and Mammy. Ironically, she is
better remembered currently not by aficionados of movies but by those of popular
music and of Jazz Age literature, for she starred on Broadway in two famous
George and Ira Gershwin satires and was a personal inspiration to novelist F.
Scott Fitzgerald. Indeed, her involvements with the Gershwins and with
Fitzgerald would qualify her for renown had she never made a film. 
However, make films she did. An intelligent, resourceful, and
elegant performer, she achieved a scintillating Hollywood debut under the
auspices of Samuel Goldwyn and in a brief but colorful career went on to act,
often quite effectively, in both silents and early talkies with many noteworthy
actors including Lon Chaney, Al Jolson, Ronald Colman, John Gilbert, Richard
Barthelmess, Warner Baxter, and a young Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. To discredit her
contributions to the screen, then, would be a disservice to film history.
In a 1926 cover feature, Photoplay praised Lois Moran, stating
that she "belongs to the illustrious ranks of the screen's younger stars, those
remarkable youngsters who are making mature actors and actresses watch them with
amazement." A year later, in a 1927 photo caption, the magazine elaborated upon
its earlier assessment: "Lois Moran staged a successful little revolt from
flapperdom. The secret of her charm lies in her suggestion of poised and
well-mannered youth. [That] is a big relief in these days of flaming youth and
sophisticated sophomores." And more recently, as quoted by Richard Lamparski in
the Tenth Series of Whatever Became of?, film historian Don Miller
observed that she had "a freshness, a naturalness that most young actresses
lacked." 
This
Website is devoted to the memory of this extraordinary woman, who died in 1990,
and is dedicated to her son Timothy Young, who has been instrumental in
researching the legacy of his mother's work. The Website has been organized as
follows:
Lois Moran enacted one of her most
memorable roles portraying Lon Chaney's
daughter in Tod Browning's 1926 MGM film,
The Road to Mandalay.
For an excellent Website devoted to Lon Chaney,
click on his image in the above still from the film
(Chaney is the figure at the left of the photograph).
This Website is dedicated to the memory
of my late friend
Mary Anne Styburski,
June 23, 1955 to April 11, 1999.
Her passion for the history of silent film
was an inspiration to all who knew her.
Bless you, Mary Anne!
You are missed!
Please follow these links to
sites of related interest:
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