[Members of the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation: left to right: Jesse L. Lasky, Adolph Zukor, Samuel Goldwyn, Cecil B. DeMlle and Al Kaufman]

The New York World-Telegram, later known as the New York World-Telegram and The Sun, was a New York City newspaper from 1931 to 1967. The Library of Congress collection includes about 1 million photographs that the New York World-Telegram & Sun Newspaper assembled mostly 1890 and 1967, the year in which the newspaper closed. This newspaper photo morgue is typical of the files that newspapers maintain of images that either were published or were believed to have some future publication potential. Such files were periodically "weeded" by newspaper staff members. Much of the photography used by newspapers is "quick copy," and many images have been cropped, retouched, or highlighted for publication. Some images were taken by the newspaper's staff photographers while others came from wire press services, studios, or amateur photographers.

The height of the silent movie era (the 1910s-1920s) was a period of artistic innovation. Silent film stars had to use their faces to express every emotion — a skill that was lost on most actors when talkies replaced silent movies. Several silent stars including Wallace Beery, Shearer, Laurel and Hardy, Greta Garbo, and Janet Gaynor made a successful transition to talkies.

By 1908 there were 10,000 permanent movie theaters in the U.S. alone. For the first thirty years, movies were silent, accompanied by live musicians, sound effects, and narration. Until World War I, movie screens were dominated by French and Italian studios. During Great War, the American movie industry center, "Hollywood," became the number one in the world. By the 1920s, the U.S. was producing an average of 800 feature films annually, or 82% of the global total. Hollywood's system and its publicity method, the glamourous star system provided models for all movie industries. Efficient production organization enabled mass movie production and technical sophistication but not artistic expression. In 1915, in France, a group of filmmakers began experimenting with optical and pictorial effects as well as rhythmic editing which became known as French Impressionist Cinema. In Germany, dark, hallucinatory German Expressionism put internal states of mind onscreen and influenced the emerging horror genre. The Soviet cinema was the most radically innovative. In Spain, Luis Buñuel embraced abstract surrealism and pure aestheticism. And, just like that, at about its peak time, the silent cinema era ended in 1926-1928.