Albert Warner officially marking the beginning of The Great Depression, Albert saw that the studio was in need of additional star power in order to survive. Following Albert's advice, Jack and Harry Warner acquired three Paramount stars (William Powell, Kay Francis, and Ruth Chatterton) for studio salaries doubled from their previous ones. This move proved to be a success, and stockholders maintained confident in the Warners. In late 1929, Jack Warner would hire sixty-one-year-old actor George Arliss to star in the studio's film "Disraeli". To everybody's surprise, the film "Disraeli" was a success, and Arliss would win an Oscar for Best Actor
The Pilgrim (1923 film) USA and Mexico. In the 1952 "Sight & Sound" poll, the great French film critic Andre Bazin picked "The Pilgrim" as one of the ten greatest movies of all time. The Pilgrim (1923 film) The Pilgrim is a 1923 American silent film made by Charlie Chaplin for the First National Film Company, starring Chaplin and Edna Purviance. The film marks the last time Edna Purviance would co-star with Chaplin and the last film he made for First National. Purviance also starred in Chaplin's "A Woman of Paris" (1923), in which Chaplin had a brief cameo. It was Chaplin's second-shortest feature