Silent Star: Colleen Moore Talks About Her Hollywood (1968) is silent film star Colleen Moore's autobiography.
Overview
The book was written after the death of her third husband, Homer Hargrave. It was likely written with the help of Moore's friend Adela Rogers St. Johns. Moore is often either identified as "me" or "Colleen Moore," indicating more than one person wrote the captions in the book's photo captions. The book covered her life from birth until the point it was written, and was a "tell-all"[1] in that she shattered many myths that had developed around her during her film career. Among the admissions Moore made in the book was that her break in films came as a result of her uncle Walter Howey cashing in debt owed him by D. W. Griffith. She described her marriage to John McCormick (1893-1961) as rocky as a result of his alcoholism.[2]
Born in Port Huron, Michigan, Moore mentions that she had known she wanted to be a motion picture star from a very young age. She wrote that she kept a scrapbook of her favorite stars and left a few pages blank at the end for her own photographs. A year later, she would donate her own scrapbooks to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where they are currently available for viewing by researchers at the Academy's Margaret Herrick Library.
In the book, Moore gave her impressions on several of Hollywood’s biggest controversies, including: