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

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

Recently I attended the Kansas Silent Film Festival (and yes, that is my plug for that delightful–and free–event!) where the theme was the silent films of 1923. It got me pondering: what were the highest-grossing films from exactly one 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 figure out in detail since the numerous  movie theaters of the time didn’t have to report detailed bookkeeping numbers. Theaters normally paid a flat fee to rent a film (often around 10 cents per foot) and then played it as many times as they liked. Films tended to be distributed on a state’s rights basis, meaning there were various companies that simply doled out completed films to different regions. Plus, prestigious, big-budget films were sometimes given a roadshow presentation, where they had a limited release in the fancier theaters (with higher ticket prices to match) before being distributed more widely. Most box office statistics from the 1910s and 1920s depend a lot on educated guesswork–and the admission, “Well, we can’t know for sure.”

So let’s compare different figures and see if we can come up with a list that’s maybe pretty close to being on the right track. Just don’t take the figures as gospel–and did I mention that sometimes “worldwide grosses” get lumped in with “U.S. and Canadian grosses”?

10. Our Hospitality – $540,000

Buster Keaton’s second feature-length comedy and first period piece was a popular and critical hit. It was set in the 1830s American South and based on the story of the Hatfields and McCoys. Its success proved that Keaton was not only an exceptional comedian, but an exceptional filmmaker too.

9. Main Street – $550,000

This drama was 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 released by Warner Bros. after it was incorporated in April of 1923. It’s now considered a lost film.

8. A Woman of Paris – $630,000

This was an oddity of sorts in the Charlie Chaplin directorial canon, being a serious drama where he doesn’t even appear (except for a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo). It’s beautifully filmed and did respectably well, but it’s not hard to suspect that many people saw it out of curiosity.

7. The White Sister – $660,000

Starring the lovely Lillian Gish and the dashing Ronald Colman, this romantic film was made on location in Rome and Naples. Ms. Gish had a say in much of its planning and production. She was also very drawn to accurately recreating the Catholic ceremony of nuns “taking the veil,” which had never been shown on screen before. The Catholic Church served as an advisor, ensuring these scenes would be done reverently.

6. Scaramouche – $1 million

Rex Ingram’s popular swashbuckler was reportedly an expensive, difficult production that had frequent delays. Fortunately its popularity helped make up for it, no doubt partly due to its fine cast, including Alice Terry, Lewis Stone and the handsome Hispanic actor, Ramon Novarro.

5. Safety Last! – $1.4 million

This nailbiter of a comedy was a big hit for Harold Lloyd, who famously performed much of the stunt work himself (the main set for the climbing scene was actually on a building’s roof, although close enough to the edge to give the illusion of hanging in space). Still a classic today, everyone’s seen that famous still of the bespectacled Harold dangling from a huge clock, if anything.

4. Little Old New York – $2.4 million

There’s differing opinions on where exactly this Marion Davies feature should be placed on this list, but it was definitely a high grosser–enough for Hollywood to declare the talented Ms. Davies the #1 female star of 1923. Set in 1800s New York City, it revolved around Marion’s character disguising herself as a boy in order 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 involved a sizable amount of the grotesque makeup, prosthetics, and difficult body language that he excelled at. The elaborate sets recreating the exterior of Notre Dame and its surrounding medieval streets took six months to build. Happily the film was a huge success, and Chaney’s performance is considered legendary even today.

2. The Covered Wagon – $4 million

A massive hit at the time, this is regarded as the first great Western epic. It followed the journey of a wagon train during the great westward expansion of the 19th century, with all its attendant adventures and hardships. Interestingly, the many covered wagons used in the filming weren’t replicas, but actual heirlooms owned by the families of former pioneers.

1. The Ten Commandments – $4.2 million

And the number one biggest blockbuster of 1923 is… Cecil B. DeMille’s first version of The Ten Commandments. Most people today are very familiar with the 1956 Charlton Heston version, and know little about the original silent – if they’re aware it exists at all. Differing in many ways from the Heston version, much of the Exodus story is contained in a long “prologue,” with a modern story being the focus of the second half of the film. The Exodus scenes were filmed in the sand dunes of Santa Barbara county where DeMille built the giant set of the gates of Rameses. Rumor had it that he had the sets destroyed and buried after filming, to keep rivals from using it for other films. Decades later, remains of the sets were indeed discovered in the sand.

I hope you enjoyed this breakdown of some of the blockbusters of 1923! It may be an educated guess – except for the undeniable popularity of the top three – but it’s sure interesting to see what made audiences flock to the theaters a full century ago.

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–Lea Stans for Classic Movie Hub

You can read all of 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 blames on Buster Keaton). In addition to blogging about her passion at her site Silent-ology, she is a columnist for the Silent Film Quarterly and has also written for The Keaton Chronicle.