Host/narrator Gene Kelly takes a nostalgic look at silent films from their earliest beginnings in New York and New Jersey with primitive features like "The Great Train Robbery" to the migration of the independent filmmakers like Cecil B. DeMille to the sleepy suburb of Los Angeles called Hollywood to avoid lawsuits from the film trust controlled by Thomas Edison. There the industry flourished when they created the star system with personalities like Maurice Costello, Florence Lawrence, Theda Bara, Clara Kimble Young, and Francis X. Bushman, movies' first matinée idol. The industry grew in stature in the Teens and Twenties led by the technically innovative D.W. Griffith with epics like "The Birth of a Nation" and Intolerance" and blossomed with such superstars like Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and Charles Chaplin. Scenes from some of the great silent classics like "The Big Parade, "King of Kings" and "Wings" are shown. The silent era comes to an end with Warner Bros. historic experiments with the Vitaphone sound process with their "Don Juan" and "The Jazz Singer."