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Tod Browning's UnderworldFilm 7 of 10
The Show
John Gilbert is Cock Robin, barker and John the Baptist in a Budapest Palace of Illusions; Renée Adorée is the Salome who works with him; Lionel Barrymore is The Greek, who would like Robin dead during the act.
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Overview
Tod Browning, MGM, January 1927, from Charles Tenney Jackson’s The Day of Souls. John Gilbert is Cock Robin, barker and John the Baptist in a Budapest Palace of Illusions; Renée Adorée is the Salome who works with him; Lionel Barrymore is The Greek, who would like Robin dead during the act. A lizard, a sheep merchant, a blind soldier’s letters. Film Daily had announced the novel title; the studio shortened it. Seventy-six minutes. Gilbert without the war medals, in tights, which the fan magazines noted. Browning’s carnival again, with a star borrowed from The Big Parade.
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In one collection
Tod Browning's Underworld
Gilbert in tights as a Budapest barker doing John the Baptist nightly, with Barrymore hoping the sword slips. Adorée is the Salome. Browning fills the Palace of Illusions with the trades he knew: the lizard, the blind soldier's letters, the act that could go wrong. The disguise here is a whole profession.
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