Today, audiences are going to the movies to watch Alexander Molony and Jude Law in the 2023 "Peter Pan and Wendy" released this week, but almost 100 years ago, audiences were flocking to the theaters to see the first big screen appearance of "Peter Pan."
"Peter Pan" is a 1924 silent movie, the first movie adaptation of the 1904 J.M. Barrie play and almost a century old, but it still delights.
The Paramount-produced silent movie stars Betty Bronson as Peter Pan, Ernest Torrence as Captain Hook, Mary Brian as Wendy and Anna May Wong as the Native American princess Tiger Lily.
Walt Disney himself was inspired by this original 1924 hit to create the animated version in 1953. Although to make his version a bit more tame, he took out any notion that Wendy has romantic feelings toward Peter and instead made their relationship more of a mother-son dynamic. The 1924 movie kept this nuance in.
The 1924 "Peter Pan" was considered a "lost film" for decades, but the George Eastman Museum (by way of film curator James Card) discovered and preserved the supposedly last known surviving print.
Watch the found full movie, complete with early special effects of Tinker Bell "talking" and Bronson as Peter Pan appealing to the audience to clap to help revive Tinker Bell.
Watch even more full movies at YouTube
Follow @ReelOldMovies for the latest classic movie news. On:
- Instagram | TikTok | Mastodon | YouTube | Google News
Popular on ReelOldMovies.com
