After losing his stage job in 1915, Gilbert decided to try screen acting, and quickly gained work as a film extra through
Herschell Mayall. Gilbert first appeared in
The Mother Instinct (1915), a
short directed by
Wilfred Lucas. He then found work as an extra with the
Thomas Ince Studios in productions such as
The Coward (1915),
Aloha Oe (1915),
Civilization (1915),
The Last Act (1916), and
William Hart's ''
Hell's Hinges (1916). Gilbert continued to get more substantial parts at Kay-Bee, which billed him as "Jack Gilbert" in The Aryan (1916), The Phantom
(1916), Shell 43
(1916), The Sin Ye Do
(1917), The Weaker Sex
(1917), and The Bride of Hate
(1917). His first true leading role was in Princess of the Dark
(1917) with Enid Bennett, but the film was not a big success and he went back to supporting roles in The Dark Road
(1917), Happiness
(1917), The Millionaire Vagrant
(1917), and The Hater of Men'' (1917).
Triangle Films and other studios Gilbert went over to Triangle Films where he was in
The Mother Instinct (1917),
Golden Rule Kate (1917),
The Devil Dodger (1917) (second billed),
Up or Down? (1917), and
Nancy Comes Home (1918). For Paralta Plays, Gilbert did
Shackled (1918),
One Dollar Bid (1918), and
Wedlock (1918) and
More Trouble (1918) for Anderson, but the company went bankrupt.
Actor, screenwriter and director for Tourneur Maurice Tourneur signed him to a contract to both write and act in films. Gilbert performed in and co-wrote
The White Circle (1920),
The Great Redeemer (1921), and
Deep Waters (1921). As a writer only, he worked on
The Bait (1921), which starred and was produced by Hope Hampton. For Hampton, Gilbert wrote and directed as well, but he did not appear in ''
Love's Penalty'' (1921).
Fox and stardom and unidentified actor in ''Gleam O'Dawn'' (1922) In 1921, Gilbert signed a three-year contract with
Fox Film Corporation, which subsequently cast him in romantic leading roles and promoted him now as "John Gilbert". The actor's first starring part for the studio was in
Shame (1921). He followed it with leading roles in
Arabian Love (1922), ''Gleam O'Dawn
(1922), The Yellow Stain (1922), Honor First
(1922), Monte Cristo (1922), Calvert's Valley
(1922), The Love Gambler (1922), and A California Romance'' (1922). Many of the scenarios for these films were written by
Jules Furthman. Gilbert returned temporarily to Tourneur to costar with
Lon Chaney in
While Paris Sleeps (1923). Back at Fox, he starred in
Truxton King (1923),
Madness of Youth (1923),
St. Elmo (1923), and
The Exiles (1923). The same year he starred in
Cameo Kirby (1923), directed by
John Ford, co starring
Jean Arthur. He went into
The Wolf Man (1923) with
Norma Shearer, not a horror film, but the story of a man who believes he murdered his fiancée's brother while drunk. Gilbert also performed in his last films for Fox in 1924, including
Just Off Broadway, ''
A Man's Mate, The Lone Chance, and Romance Ranch''.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Under the auspices of movie producer
Irving Thalberg, Gilbert obtained a release from his Fox contract and moved to
MGM, where he became a full-fledged star cast in major productions. First starring in
His Hour (1924) directed by
King Vidor and written by
Elinor Glyn his film career entered its ascendancy. He followed this success with
He Who Gets Slapped (1924) co-starring Chaney and Shearer and directed by Victor Sjöström;
The Snob (1924) with Shearer;
The Wife of the Centaur (1924) for Vidor. The next year, Gilbert would star in two of MGM's most critically acclaimed and popular film productions of the silent era:
Erich von Stroheim's
The Merry Widow and King Vidor's
The Big Parade.
The Merry Widow (1925) Gilbert was assigned to star in
Erich von Stroheim's
The Merry Widow by
Irving Thalberg, over the objections of the Austrian-American director. Von Stroheim expressed his displeasure bluntly to his leading man: "Gilbert, I am forced to use you in my picture. I do not want you, but the decision was not in my hands. I assure you I will do everything in my power to make you comfortable." Gilbert, mortified, soon stalked off the set in a rage, tearing off his costume. Von Stroheim followed him to his dressing room and apologized. The two agreed to share a drink. Then Gilbert apologized and they had another drink. The tempest subsided and was resolved amicably. According to Gilbert, the contretemps served to "cement a relationship which for my part will never end." The public adulation that Gilbert experienced with his growing celebrity astounded him: "Everywhere I hear whispers and gasps in acknowledgment of my presence...[t]he whole thing became too fantastic for me to comprehend. Acting, the very thing I had been fighting and ridiculing for seven years, had brought me success, riches and renown. I was a great motion picture artist. Well, I'll be damned!"
The Big Parade (1925) Gilbert was next cast by Thalberg to star in King Vidor's war-romance
The Big Parade (1925), which became the second-highest grossing silent film and the most profitable film of the silent era. Gilbert's "inspired performance" as an American
doughboy in France during World War I was the high point of his acting career. He fully immersed himself in the role of Jim Apperson, a Southern gentleman who, with two working class comrades, experiences the horrors of
trench warfare. Gilbert declared: "No love has ever enthralled me as did the making of this picture...All that has followed is balderdash." Gilbert "gave a performance that ranks as one of the finest of the entire silent period"; according to Vidor, he "never had dirty fingernails before, and he’d never done a part without makeup before. Then he found that he liked it." The following year, Vidor reunited Gilbert with two of his co-stars from that picture,
Renée Adorée and
Karl Dane, for the film
La Bohème (1926) which also starred
Lillian Gish. He then did another with Vidor,
Bardelys the Magnificent (1926).
Greta Garbo In 1926, Gilbert made
Flesh and the Devil, his first film with
Greta Garbo. Gilbert first encountered Garbo on the set during filming of the railway station scene, and the chemistry between the two was evidently instantaneous. Director
Clarence Brown remarked approvingly that he "had a love affair going for me that you couldn't beat, any way you tried." Garbo and Gilbert soon began a highly publicized romance, much to the delight of their fans and to MGM. '' (1927) He made
The Show (1927) with Adoree for
Tod Browning then did
Twelve Miles Out (1927) with
Joan Crawford and
Man, Woman and Sin (1927) with
Jeanne Eagels. Gilbert was reunited with Garbo in a modern adaptation of
Tolstoy's 19th-century novel,
Anna Karenina. The title was changed to
Love (1927) to capitalize on the real life love affair of the stars and advertised by MGM as "Garbo and Gilbert in Love." Though officially directed by
Edmund Goulding, Gilbert, though uncredited, was responsible for directing the love scenes involving Garbo. He was perhaps the only person in the industry whose "artistic judgment" she fully respected. As such, MGM approved of this arrangement. Garbo "looked for approval from Gilbert after every scene. If he failed to nod, Garbo refused to continue, so MGM found it simpler to let Gilbert direct...over half the production." '' (1928) Gilbert made
The Cossacks (1928) with Adoree;
Four Walls (1928) with Crawford;
Show People (1928) with
Marion Davies for Vidor, in which Gilbert only had a cameo; and
The Masks of the Devil (1928) for
Victor Sjöström. Gilbert and Garbo were teamed for a third time in
A Woman of Affairs (1928). His last silent film was
Desert Nights (1929).
Sound era With the coming of sound, Gilbert's vocal talents made a good first impression, although the studio had failed to conduct a voice test. The conventional wisdom of the day dictated that actors in the new talkies should emulate the "pear-shaped tones" of stage acting. Gilbert's strict adherence to that method produced an affected delivery that made audiences giggle, rather than any particularity in Gilbert's natural speech. Gilbert signed an immensely lucrative multi-picture contract with MGM in 1928 that totaled $1,500,000. The terms of the agreement positioned MGM executives
Irving Thalberg and
Nicholas Schenck, both sympathetic to the star, to supervise his career. According to
Kevin Brownlow, the contract was designed to protect Gilbert from studio head
Louis B. Mayer, who Schenck was himself in a feud with, but instead drew Mayer's ire. Gilbert frequently clashed with Mayer over creative, social and financial matters. A confrontation between the two men, which became physical, occurred at the planned double-wedding of Garbo and Gilbert and director King Vidor and actress
Eleanor Boardman. Mayer reportedly made a crude remark to Gilbert about Garbo, and Gilbert reacted by knocking Mayer to the floor with his fist. While that story has been disputed or dismissed as
hearsay by some historians, Vidor's bride, Eleanor Boardman, insisted that she personally witnessed the altercation. In the all-star musical comedy
The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929), Gilbert and
Norma Shearer played the balcony scene from Shakespeare's
Romeo and Juliet, first as written, then followed with a slang rendition of the scene. The comic effect served to mitigate any negative reaction to Gilbert's initial delivery.
His Glorious Night Audiences awaited further romantic roles from Gilbert on the talking screen. The next vehicle was the
Ruritanian romance
His Glorious Night (1929), directed by Lionel Barrymore. According to reviewers, audiences laughed nervously at Gilbert's performance. The offense was not Gilbert's voice, but the awkward scenario along with the overly ardent love scenes. In one, Gilbert keeps kissing his leading lady, (
Catherine Dale Owen), while saying "I love you" over and over again. The scene was parodied in the MGM musical ''
Singin' in the Rain (1952), in which a preview of the fictional The Dueling Cavalier
flops disastrously, and again in Babylon'' (2022). Director King Vidor speculated that, had he lived, the late Rudolph Valentino, Gilbert's main rival for romantic leads in the silent era, probably would have suffered the same fate in the talkie era. It was Gilbert's inept phrasing, his "dreadful enunciation" and the "inane" script as the genuine sources of his poor performance, that drew "titters" from audiences.
"Squeaky voice" myth The persistent myth that John Gilbert had a "squeaky voice" that doomed his career in sound films, first emerged from his 1929 performance in
His Glorious Night. According to Brownlow, Gilbert "experienced a humiliating plunge from popularity". He reports that Gilbert's sound recordings for
His Glorious Night were marred by his "dreadful enunciation" of his lines, a matter of that could have been corrected with elocution coaching and a better script, and not his natural voice which "was quite low". Brownlow also asserts that "the quality of [Gilbert's voice]...compared well with that of co-star
Conrad Nagel, regarded as having one of the best voices for sound." Meanwhile, Gilbert's relationship with MGM deteriorated. He was "subjected to one poor picture after another" and suffered "attempts at [his] humiliation, aimed at forcing him to quit" so as to breach his lucrative contract. It was even rumored that Louis B. Mayer ordered Gilbert's voice to be
gelded, by manipulating the sound track, to give it a higher, less masculine pitch. Later, after analyzing the film's sound track, Brownlow found that the timbre and frequency of Gilbert's speaking scenes in
His Glorious Night were no different than in his subsequent talkies. From that analysis, Brownlow also reported that Gilbert's voice, overall, was "quite low". With regard to the alleged manipulation of Gilbert's footage by Mayer or by anyone else, television technicians in the 1960s determined that the actor's voice was consistent with those of other performers on the same print, casting doubt that any targeted "sabotaging" of Gilbert's voice had occurred. Film critic
John Baxter described Gilbert as having "a light speaking voice", a minor defect that both MGM and the star "magnified into an obsession." Despite any conflicting opinions or myths surrounding the actor's voice, Mayer's lingering resentment and hostility toward Gilbert remained apparent, especially after MGM's star signed a new contract for six pictures at $250,000 each. Those ill feelings fueled additional speculation that Mayer deliberately assigned Gilbert bad scripts and ineffective directors in an effort to void the contract.
Decline Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cast Gilbert in a film adaptation of
The Living Corpse by Tolstoy re-titled as
Redemption (1929). The bleak atmosphere and maudlin dialogue presaged the disaster looming in the star's personal life and career. Gilbert's confident screen presence had vanished, while his use of the exaggerated stage diction that elicited laughs from the audience persisted. MGM put him in a more rugged film,
Way for a Sailor (1930) with
Wallace Beery. He followed it with ''Gentleman's Fate'' (1931). Gilbert became increasingly depressed by progressively inferior films and idle stretches between productions. Despite efforts by studio executives at MGM to cancel his contract, Gilbert refused to walk out on his MGM contract despite "harassment" and being "no longer on speaking terms with Louis B, Mayer". Gilbert was "subjected to one poor picture after another" and suffered "attempts at [his] humiliation, aimed at forcing him to quit" so as to breach his lucrative contract. Gilbert's fortunes were temporarily restored when MGM's production chief Irving Thalberg gave him two projects that were character studies, giving Gilbert an excellent showcase for his versatility.
The Phantom of Paris (1931), originally intended for
Lon Chaney (who died from cancer in 1930), cast Gilbert as a debonair magician and showman who is falsely accused of murder and uses his mastery of disguise to unmask the real killer.
Downstairs (1932) was based on Gilbert's original story, with the actor playing against type as a scheming, blackmailing chauffeur. The films were well received by critics and fans but failed to revive his career. In between, he appeared in
West of Broadway (1931). Shortly after making
Downstairs, he married co-star
Virginia Bruce; the couple divorced in 1934. Gilbert fulfilled his contract with MGM with a perfunctory "B" picture –
Fast Workers (1933) directed by Browning. He left the studio in 1933, terminating his $10,000 a week contract. Exhausted and demoralized by his humiliations at MGM and his declining success at the box office, Gilbert began to drink heavily, contributing to his declining physical and mental health.
Queen Christina (1933) Gilbert announced his retirement from acting and was working at Fox as an "honorary" director when, in August 1933, he announced he had signed a seven-year contract with MGM at $75–100,000 a picture. The reason was Greta Garbo insisted that Gilbert return to MGM to play her leading man in
Queen Christina (1933), directed by
Rouben Mamoulian. Garbo was top-billed, with Gilbert's name beneath the title.
Queen Christina, though a critical success, did not revive Gilbert's poor self-image or his career. Garbo was reported to have dropped the young
Laurence Olivier scheduled to play the part, but Mamoulian recalled that Olivier's screen tests had already eliminated him from consideration. ==Comeback==