Sound of Silent Star -- Sound of Silents

By Bob Mondello

Published August 5, 2005 at 11:00 PM CDT

Buster Keaton, silent film star, circa 1923

Part 1: Buster Keaton and the Ukelele

Quest for Sound Curator Jay Allison and Lost and Found Sound brings us Buster Keaton. Listener Bob Borgen has a tape of the silent film star at a party in 1962. Some friends gave him a ukelele and recorded his songs, stories and memories of Vaudeville.

Part 2: Sound from the Silent Film Era

Film critic Bob Mondello reviews the days of silent films and how the introduction of sound forever changed the beauty and benefit of silence.

Bob Mondello

Bob Mondello, who jokes that he was a jinx at the beginning of his critical career — hired to write for every small paper that ever folded in Washington, just as it was about to collapse — saw that jinx broken in 1984 when he came to NPR.

See stories by Bob Mondello