Loading
Tod Browning, Universal, February 1919: the first of the ten pictures he made with Lon Chaney. Priscilla Dean is Mary Stevens, pickpocket, the Gutter Rose. Chaney is Stoop Connors, her partner, who does not want her leaving the racket for Kent Mortimer, the man whose wallet she lifted. Harvey Gates from an Evelyn Campbell story. Six reels, shot December 1918 into January. Chaney is not yet in appliances; the menace is the walk and the face. A battered print is how it survives. Dean was Browning’s star before Chaney was.
In two programmes
The first of ten with Chaney, and he is not yet in appliances. Stoop Connors is a walk, a face, and a grip on Priscilla Dean's arm. A pickpocket called the Gutter Rose, a lifted wallet, a decision to leave the racket. The print is battered. The partnership is not.
Lon Chaney: The Man of a Thousand Faces
Before the appliances. Stoop Connors is a walk, a stare, and a hand on Priscilla Dean's arm, and Browning already knows what to do with all three. The print is battered. Watch what Chaney does with his shoulders when the scene is not his.
Cast & crew
Further reading
Loading films
