Silent Photoplay Forum

This poem echoes the exact sentiment I have toward learning about these people who entertained so many, and which are often forgotten now. This poem is talking about play-actors, but it goes perfectly for anything else, really.

That poem brings out so many thoughts and emotions...

I often think of the sentiment expressed in those lines "Would I could in song or story,/ Tell the new ones what they were;" That's one of the things of life that is most disheartening, not being able to express to someone what something was once like. I can imagine so many others besides this writer thought the same thing about the old Vaudeville days—but there was no way to really give a younger person the feeling of what it was like. And the words "Unique, every one of them" I'm sure would have especially been true back in those days before mass media, before we all became homogenous, so to speak.

That's one of the great things about the films—at least we have those to see and get some idea of the "Old Timers".