[MGSA-L] Greeks in the early years of Hollywood

[June Samaras]

Lhttp://
www.ekathimerini.com/204857/article/ekathimerini/life/one-of-the-first-greeks-to-make-good-in-hollywood

One of the first Greeks to make good in Hollywood
EMILIOS HARBIS

What does the phrase “Hollywood Greeks” bring to mind? For most, it’s
probably Greek-American film stars such as Olympia Dukakis or Zach
Galifianakis or directors such as Alexander Payne.

That’s today. About a century ago, however, when Greeks left for America
simply in hopes of making a living, things were much different. Usually
farmers or fortune hunters, the emigrants of the early 20th century ended
up doing all sorts of odd jobs and some of them managed to make it into the
then-newly established capital of the film industry. Today, poet, writer
and researcher Fontas Landis is ready to present the untold tale of the
Greeks in the exciting early days of Hollywood using photographs from the
archive of one of those pioneers.

Thanasis Lyberis set out at the start of the 1900s from Vasilitsi, a very
poor village in the southern part of Messinia in the Peloponnese, and went
through hell and high water to reach America. There, like thousands of
other Greeks, he went from job to job, struggling to make a living.
Eventually, however, he managed not just to survive, but also to amass the
experience of three or four lifetimes. His glory days were undoubtedly
those he spent working in Hollywood.

Starting out as a stunt man and extra, the intrepid Greek played roles –
including female parts – in dozens of films, working with some of the
greats of the time, such as Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Rudolph
Valentino, Charlie Chaplin, John Gilbert, Ramon Novarro and many, many
more. Lyberis also got the opportunity to rub shoulders with other
prominent figures of the time, among them Albert Einstein, William Saroyan,
Bernard Shaw and Walt Disney.

The photographic archive Lyberis compiled, in combination with Landis’s
recordings of conversations with him shortly before his death, are
significant not just because of these personages but also because they give
us images of and information about other Greeks who were working in
Hollywood at the time and whose names have been more or less forgotten
today. William Nickle (Nikolopoulos) from Aigio, Giorgos Stamatopoulos, or
George Stam, from Galaxidi, and Giorgos Koundouros from Crete were all
friends of Lyberis.

Their signed photographs are moving because they bring to life the people
of a heroic age, people who struggled, together with so many others, to
achieve the American dream.

Landis is working with the nonprofit organization Mnimes (Memories), which
manages the archive, to publish as much of the material as possible. This
effort will start with the publication of a coffee-table book in 2016 on
the Greeks of Hollywood. There are also efforts under way to create a small
museum to display the material, which were initiated by Landis during a
recent trip to Los Angeles, where he mobilized a number of Greeks to form a
committee headed by the director of the Hellenic Library of Southern
California, Philip Trevezas.

The final project in this ambitious campaign to showcase Greek talent on
and behind the silver screen is a documentary in which director Costas
Vakas will follow in Lyberis’s footsteps from the small Peloponnesian
village to Tinseltown.

“Almost all of these Greeks are practically unknown – in America at least,
nobody knows who they are. Their portraits and the photographs from the
films in which they acted are alone important testimonials that show, if
nothing else, that these people existed,” says Landis.

The researcher hopes that the book will encourage more research into this
fascinating chapter of the Greek diaspora. It would be an interesting
challenge, for example, for someone to try locate the films they appeared
in, even though it appears unlikely given that old film was often destroyed
due to fire risk and the lack of storage space.

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June Samaras
2020 Old Station Rd
Streetsville,Ontario
Canada L5M 2V1
Tel : 905-542-1877
E-mail : june.samaras at gmail.com
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