Damn Amazon and their white backgrounds. Silent movie books should always be taken with a grain of salt to begin with. Several go all Kenneth Anger (I'm looking at you Michelle Vogel...Graham Russell Hodges) and can barely get their facts straight. Coffee table books are usually worse...with lots of prettiness but little meat which is how I'm sure they like it. For example, "Silent Movies: The Birth of Film and Triumph of Movie Culture" by Peter Kobel had gorgeous pics...but too few words about the stars he wrote about...or time periods for that matter (example: June Mathis got half a paragraph and to my memory Charlie, Mary, and Doug barely had a page as did Valentino).
Much to my delight I found the newly released "Glamour of the Gods" which consists of portraits done by the legendary John Kobal. I was surprised to find many Silent era shots...with at least 40 pages or so dedicated to pre 1930s stars. And they were BEAUTIFUL! There is a lovely shot of Mary Pickford, as well as several gorgeous Greta Garbo photos (she had freckles? Who knew!)
I'm not going to even pretend I read the forced introduction which I'm willing to guess had some disinformation towards silents somewhere. Most all of the photos were correctly dated and named...except one. One of the first ones. One of the KEY ones. It was a photo of Valentino in full Four Horsemen regalia...posing with Natacha. The caption reads something along the lines of, "1921: Rudolph Valentino and his wife Natacha Rambova star in the movie Four Horsemen". Close but not quite. Rudy didn't even know Natacha when Four Horsemen was shot. Yes he was in that costume, but it was for the Minervala tour and likely in 1923 or 1924. And added thought: they weren't married until 1922 and after that whole bigamy thing 1923. Surely that couldn't have been THAT hard to research! Thankfully this was the only glaring oversight...which for a book with a meaty section on Silent stars is rare. Kudos John Kobal Foundation.
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