The Show

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.