Silents are Golden: What Were the Top Box Office Hits Of 1923?

Silents are Golden: What were the top box office hits of 1923?

I recently attended the Kansas Silent Film Festival (and yes, that’s my plug for this delightful – and free – event!) where the theme was the silent films of 1923. It made me think: What were the highest-grossing movies from exactly a century ago? I could make an educated guess about the top two or three, but could I put together a top ten list?

It’s a trickier task than you might think. Silent film box office statistics are notoriously difficult to pinpoint in detail, as the numerous theaters of the era were not required to report detailed accounting figures. Movie theaters typically paid a flat fee to rent a movie (often around 10 cents a foot) and then played it as many times as they wanted. Films tended to be distributed on the basis of state rights, which meant there were different companies that simply distributed finished films to different regions. Also, prestigious big-budget films were sometimes given a roadshow presentation, where they were given a limited release in the fancier theaters (with correspondingly higher ticket prices) before being given wider distribution. Most box office statistics from the 1910s and 1920s depend heavily on educated guesswork—and the admission, “Well, we can’t be sure.”

So let’s compare different numbers and see if we can make a list Perhaps pretty close to being on the right track. Just don’t take the numbers as gospel – and did I mention that sometimes “world gross income” is lumped together with “US and Canadian gross income”?

10 Our hospitality – $540,000

Buster Keaton’s second feature-length comedy and his first historical play was a popular and critical hit. Set in the American South in the 1830’s, it is based on the story of the Hatfields and McCoys. His success proved that Keaton was not only an exceptional comedian, but an exceptional filmmaker.

9. Main road – $550,000

This drama is based on the famous, somewhat humorless novel by Sinclair Lewis about a librarian who moves with her husband to the small, humble town where he grew up. It starred Florence Vidor and Monte Blue and was also the first film to be released by Warner Bros., having been picked up in April 1923. It is now considered a lost film.

8th. A woman from Paris – $630,000

This was sort of an oddity in Charlie Chaplin’s directorial canon as it was serious drama and he doesn’t even appear in it (except for a blink and you’ll miss it). It’s beautifully filmed and worked respectably well, but it’s not hard to guess that a lot of people watched it out of curiosity.

7. The white sister – $660,000

This romantic film starring the lovely Lillian Gish and the dashing Ronald Colman was shot on location in Rome and Naples. Ms. Gish had a say in the planning and production. She was also very drawn to accurately recreating the nuns’ Catholic “Removal of the Veil” ceremony, which had never before been shown on screen. The Catholic Church acted as advisors and ensured that these scenes would be reverently executed.

6. Scaramouche – 1 million dollars

Rex Ingram’s popular Swashbuckler was reportedly an expensive, difficult production with frequent delays. Luckily, its popularity helped make up for it, no doubt in part due to its good cast, which included Alice Terry, Lewis Stone and handsome Hispanic actor Ramon Novarro.

5. Safety last! – $1.4 million

This nerve-wracking comedy was a huge hit for Harold Lloyd, who is known to have done much of the stunt work himself (the main set for the climbing scene was actually on top of a building, although it was close enough to the edge to give the illusion that it would hang there space). Still a classic today everybody is I’ve seen the famous still of the bespectacled Harold dangling from a giant clock, if anything.

4. Little old New York – $2.4 million

Opinions differ as to exactly where this Marion Davies film should be placed on this list, but it was definitely a hit – enough for Hollywood to declare the talented Ms. Davies the #1 female star of 1923. It revolved around Marion’s character disguising herself as a boy to claim a rightful inheritance for her family.

3. The Hunchback of Notre Dame – $3.5 million

Lon Chaney was a shoo-in for the role of Quasimodo, which featured a fair amount of the grotesque makeup, prosthetics, and difficult body language that he excelled at. The lavish sets, which recreate the exterior of Notre Dame and the surrounding medieval streets, took six months to complete. Luckily, the film was a smash hit and Chaney’s performance is still legendary to this day.

2. The covered wagon – 4 million dollars

A big hit at the time, this is considered the first major western epic. It followed the journey of a wagon train during the great western expansion of the 19th century, with all its adventures and hardships. Interestingly, the many covered wagons used in the filming were not replicas but genuine heirlooms belonging to the families of former pioneers.

1. The Ten Commandments – $4.2 million

And the number one blockbuster of 1923 is… Cecil B. DeMille First version of The Ten Commandments. Most people today are very familiar with the 1956 Charlton Heston version and know little about the silent original – if they know it even exists. Much of the Exodus story, which differs in many ways from the Heston version, is contained within a lengthy “prologue,” with a modern history taking center stage in the second half of the film. The Exodus scenes were filmed in the Santa Barbara County sand dunes, where DeMille built the giant Gates of Ramses. It is rumored that he had the sets destroyed and buried after filming to prevent competitors from using them for other films. Decades later, remains of the sets were actually discovered in the sand.

I hope you enjoyed this breakdown of some 1923 blockbusters! It might be an educated guess – aside from the undeniable popularity of the top three – but it sure is interesting to see what had audiences flocking to theaters a full century ago.

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–Lea Stans for Classic Movie Hub

You can read all Lea’s Silents are Golden articles here.

Lea Stans is a born and raised Minnesotan with a degree in English and an obsessive interest in the silent film era (which she largely credits to Buster Keaton). In addition to blogging about her passion on her website, Silent-ology, she is a columnist for the Silent Film Quarterly and has also written for The Keaton Chronicle.