Herbert Brenon: Hollywood’s Forgotten Filmmaker
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Please join the Westminster Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI) for a research seminar with Dr Alexander Sergeant, resurfacing some hidden Hollywood history.
Details
Herbert Brenon (1880-1958) is one of silent Hollywood’s most important and forgotten figures. Born in Dublin and raised in London, Brenon emigrated to the United States at the age of sixteen, where he became a touring actor working in quality theatre and vaudeville. By his mid-thirties, he had become one of the nation’s most popular filmmakers. He worked for Paramount, MGM, United Artists and RKO at the height of Hollywood’s silent golden age, and was responsible for some of the era’s greatest commercial successes of the 1920s, including lavish fantasies like A Daughter of the Gods (1916) and adaptations of Peter Pan (1924) and Beau Geste (1926). His films pioneered new production methods and served as star-making vehicles for several female producers/actors including Alla Nazimova, Theda Bara, Louise Brooks and Pola Negri. Yet, today, Brenon’s story is largely forgotten. In this talk, Dr. Alexander Sergeant tells the story of Brenon’s life and career, and argues the case for why Brenon’s name deserves to be better remembered by cinema’s aficionados and fans.
Biography
Dr. Alexander Sergeant is a film theorist and historian specialising in popular media. His first monograph, Encountering the Impossible: The Fantastic in Hollywood Fantasy Cinema (SUNY Press, 2021) was nominated for several scholarly awards, including the BAFTSS award for Best First Book. He is the co-founder of Fantasy-Animation.org and co-host of the Fantasy/Animation podcast, a popular blog/podcast providing weekly discussion of the intertwining worlds of fantasy storytelling and the medium of animation. He is a Lecturer in Digital Media Production at the University of Westminster.
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