Sherbrooke writes:

This is silent star/comedienne Colleen Moore. I’ve never seen anyone remotely like her; she looked like a rag doll and moved like a loose-limbed marionette.  But unless they’re very much into silents, few people know her name today. When she is discussed, it is usually in an argument about whether she or Louise Brooks was the first to cut her hair into a smooth, black bob. That whole discussion seems pointless to me. … but to split two hairs, Brooks entered movies in 1925,  and then in only a minor way, so her bob did not affect moviegoers or fads. Moore, on the other hand, cut her hair before 1923.

Moore starred in 1923’s flapper film, Flaming Youth. (Only a reel survives. Its publicity used the phrase “neckers, petters, white kisses, red kisses, pleasure mad daughters, … sensation craving mothers.” It didn’t refer to the many laughs.)

F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said, “I was the spark that lit up Flaming Youth and Colleen Moore was the torch. What little things we are to have caused that conflagration.” Unfortunately, in the early 30s, Fitzgerald’s introduction to his book “The Crack-Up” referred to the movie’s star as Clara Bow. That is Moore’s fate–to be confused with Brooks and Bow, though the three women are distinctly different. Moore needs a retrospective–and a DVD set. Many of her films are lost, but enough are still out there to make it happen.