Golden Silents

At first glance, Golden Silents looks like a great site for silent-movie fans. It's got a wealth of information about dozens of silent stars, from Theda Bara to Rudolph Valentino. Each entry has a nice essay outlining the star's career, along with some screenshots from their films. But whose idea was it to use colorized photos? This strikes me as a bad idea. They look like Hallmark greeting cards.

I guess it's possible that they're original colorized greeting cards, which were introduced in 1893. But still, it's off-putting. The colorized photo is not representative of what they looked like in their films (although many silent films were tinted, it was a monochrome tint), and the weird colors in the pictures are likely not representative of what the person looked like in real life.

It is likely that I am peeved by the colorization because I would have liked to use the ZaSu Pitts photo as my desktop wallpaper, if not for the color.