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Cesare Gravina

Cesare Gravina

Acting

Biography

From Wikipedia Cesare Gravina (23 January 1858 – 16 September 1954) was an Italian actor of the silent era. He appeared in 60 films between 1912 and 1929. He was born in Naples, Italy. Gravina was an orchestra conductor in his native Italy. As the conductor at La Scala, among the noted vocalists he worked with were Mary Garden and Enrico Caruso. At some point he left music to become a character actor, sharing his reasons for the career change with no one. As the owner of many theatres in South America, Gravina was financially secure enough to retire from motion pictures by 1924, but he preferred to remain in acting.

Known For

The Phantom of the Opera
7.1

The deformed Phantom who haunts the Paris Opera House causes murder and mayhem in an attempt to make the woman he loves a star.

The Phantom of the Opera

1925
The Man Who Laughs
7.3

When a proud noble refuses to kiss the hand of the despotic King James in 1690, he is cruelly executed and his son surgically disfigured.

The Man Who Laughs

1928
Greed
7.3

When housewife Trina wins the lottery, her comfortable life with her dentist husband John slowly deteriorates, in part by her own increasing paranoia and partly by the machinations of villainous acquaintance Marcus.

Greed

1924
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
6.5

In 15th century France, a gypsy girl is framed for murder by the infatuated Chief Justice, and only the deformed bellringer of Notre Dame Cathedral can save her.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

1923
Foolish Wives
6.5

A con artist masquerades as Russian nobility and attempts to seduce the wife of an American diplomat.

Foolish Wives

1922
The Penalty
7.0

Blizzard, deranged from a childhood operation in which both his legs were needlessly amputated after an accident, becomes a vicious criminal, and eventually mob leader of the San Francisco underworld.

The Penalty

1920
Monte Carlo
7.0

Three girls from a small town win a trip to Monte Carlo. The trip was sponsored by their local newspaper, which sends along its ace reporter Bancroft as their "chaperone".

Monte Carlo

1926
Marriage for Convenience
9.0

Barbara Rand is blinded when she leaps through a window to escape an assailant. Her sister, Natalie, reluctantly abandons her fiancé, Ned Gardiner, and marries Oliver Landis, who can provide the money needed for Barbara's operation. Unaware that Oliver was Barbara's attacker, Natalie blames his business partner, Howard Pollard, who was with Barbara on the night she was injured. Natalie holds Howard at gunpoint, but when her husband arrives, he promises to deal with the villain making sure Howard falls to his death. Upon Barbara’s release from the hospital, Oliver tries to blind her once. Natalie threatens him with a pistol, but Oliver wrests it away from her. He then realizes that he can no longer hide his guilt from Natalie or the police and shoots himself. Barbara has been avenged, and Natalie is free to marry Ned.

Marriage for Convenience

1919
The Wedding March
7.1

Against the backdrop of Vienna's hidebound caste system, aristocrat and army officer Nicki is attracted to peasant Mitzi, although he knows it cannot last. Acquiescing to familial pressure, he ultimately gives her up to marry the more socially acceptable – albeit crippled – heiress Cecelia. Mitzi, for her part, is heartbroken and must resign herself to marrying churlish butcher Schani Eberle.

The Wedding March

1928
Merry-Go-Round
6.3

A nobleman posing as a necktie salesman falls in love with the daughter of a circus puppeteer, although he's already wed to the daughter of his country's war minister.

Merry-Go-Round

1923
Contraband
8.0

After inheriting a newspaper in a small country town, Carmel Lee leaves her home in the city to take charge of it. She soon discovers that the town is terrorized by a band of bootleggers, who abduct and later kill the local sheriff. With the aid of Professor Pell, who has been recently fired as school superintendent, Carmel makes a public issue of the sheriff's murder, editorializing in her paper for justice and reform. Pell and Carmel are kidnapped by the bootleggers, but Carmel escapes and alerts the police. The bootleggers are arrested, the sheriff's murder in solved, and Abner Fownes, a politician and one of the town's leading citizens, is uncovered as the leader of the gang.

Contraband

1925
Mothers of Men
6.0

Young Austrian girl Marie Helmar, is left penniless by the death of her father and disgraced by Prussian officer Captain Von Pfaffen, she flees to the safety of her French cousins, the De La Mottes. There she falls in love with their eldest son Gerome. On the night before their wedding, Marie sends a letter to Gerome confessing her indiscretion with the Prussian, but the letter is returned unopened. Soon after, she recognizes a new household servant to be Von Pfaffen, who demands that Marie disclose war secrets in return for his silence about her past. Torn, she passes on false information, which disgraces the Prussian. In revenge, he attempts to kill Marie, but she shoots him in self-defense. Shaken by remorse, Marie presents Gerome with her confession, which, he then reveals, he had read the night of their wedding. Their life thus unclouded, Marie announces she is expecting Gerome's child.

Mothers of Men

1920
The Trail of '98
6.1

Fortune hunters from all over the country rushing to the Klondike in 1897 to seek their fortunes in the gold are tested by hardships of the journey.

The Trail of '98

1928
Burning the Wind
10.0

Two ranchers get together to fight a common enemy and fall in love.

Burning the Wind

1929
How to Handle Women
8.0

When Leonard Higgins, a cartoonist, meets Prince Hendryx, ruler of the small nation of Vulgaria, he offers to help save the country by advertising the nonexistent crop, the peanut.

How to Handle Women

1928
The Blonde Saint
10.0

Playboy novelist Sebastian Maure falls for Ghiirlaine Bellamy, a product of a wealthy--and puritanical--society family, a girl so prim and proper that she's known as "The Blonde Saint". One night at a dinner party, she informs Maure that she is engaged to young VIncent Pamfort and is leaving for England the next day to marry him. Maure tricks her into meeting him onboard a boat going to Palermo, and before they get there she suddenly grabs her and jumps overboard. They wind up in a fishing village on a small island and before long find themselves caught up in a cholera epidemic and a local criminal gang.

The Blonde Saint

1926
The Family Secret
6.4

The daughter of a wealthy man secretly marries a man below her station— one whom her father violently disapproves of. The father, in an excess of parental concern, separates the lovers by sending his daughter away so that she might forget her lover, unaware of their married state. During this time, she gives birth to a daughter. After some months, the young mother returns to her family manor and presents her father with his new granddaughter, which causes a most unfortunate scene. Unbeknownst to the young woman, her enraged father falsely accuses his son-in-law of theft and has him incarcerated in order to separate the lovers in an irrational attempt to force his daughter to forget this "unworthy" young man.

The Family Secret

1924
Daddy
7.0

Believing her husband to be unfaithful, Helene Savelli takes her son, Jackie, to the Holdens' farm and dies shortly afterward. The Holdens keep Jackie, but he eventually goes to the city when the elderly couple lose their farm and retire to the poorhouse. Jackie next is befriended by Cesare Gallo, a sidewalk musician who was also the teacher of Paul Savelli--now a famous violinist. A chance meeting with Savelli by Jackie reunites him with Gallo just before the old man dies. Savelli takes Jackie home with him, happily discovers the boy to be his son, and restores the farm to the Holdens.

Daddy

1923
The Divine Woman
7.2

[For 9 minute surviving fragment] Lucian, a soldier in Paris, is to ship out for Algiers at 9 that evening. He stops by for a last meal with his love, Marianne. He may be worried that when he leaves she will find another soldier to love. They argue then embrace and, when the clock strikes midnight, he is still in her arms. Is desertion in the cards? Can the relationship survive the military demands and a soldier's obligations? A lost film.

The Divine Woman

1928
Butterfly
9.0

A woman (Ruth Clifford) dedicates her life to her ungrateful younger sister (Laura La Plante), a brilliant violinist. “…a real gem of a photoplay…[Laura La Plante] does about the best work of her career in this role. She acts without showing she is acting, and she makes human and lovable the most trying character she has yet been called upon to essay.” – Moving Picture World.

Butterfly

1924