He Who Gets Slapped

Victor Seastrom, MGM, 1924, from Leonid Andreyev’s play. The first feature the new Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer put its lion on. Lon Chaney is a scientist whose work and wife are stolen; he becomes a clown whose act is being slapped while the house laughs. Norma Shearer is the bareback rider; John Gilbert the rider she loves; Marc McDermott the baron who already ruined him. Chaney does it with the face, not a hump. The circus is a machine for turning private shame into a number. Seastrom had just come from Sweden.