Ramon Navarro and Flip the Frog

There are Hollywood stars of the 1920 and ‘30s who people associate with silent pictures or sound ones, and that’s that. In reality, seldom is there a firm dividing line. Many sound stars started in silents and many silent stars made the transition to sound.

Ramon Navarro is thought of as belonging to the silent era but he starred in a number of sound pictures into the mid-‘30s. A fair chunk of Depression cash was put out in October 1930 for the ad you see below.



As you can see, not only did Novarro speak, he sang.

This screening was accompanied by two shorts, “Bigger and Better,” a two-reel series produced by Hal Roach with Mickey Daniels and Mary Kornman (and Grady Sutton as comic relief), and the second of Ub Iwerks’ Flip the Frog cartoons, “Flying Fists,” which was released in two-strip Technicolor. But here’s a black and white version.