How Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton & Harold Lloyd Pulled Off Their Spectacular Stunts During Silent Film’s Golden Age

It can be tempting to view the box office’s domination by visual-effects-laden Hollywood spectacle as a recent phenomenon. And indeed, there have been periods during which that wasn’t the case: the “New Hollywood” that began in the late nineteen sixties, for instance, when the old studio system handed the reins to inventive young guns like Peter Bogdanovich, Francis Ford Coppola, and Martin Scorsese. But lest we forget, that movement met its end in the face of competition from late-1970s blockbusters like Jaws and Star Wars...