He Who Gets Slapped (1924)

A poor, young scientist (Lon Chaney) finds the support of a wealthy Barron who steals his research and his wife. When he protests, he is slapped in front of bearded academic-types, who laugh at him. Laugh at him, I tell you! At which point he becomes a circus clown whose only shtick is to be slapped while people laugh at him.

Yes, this is another tragic film where Chaney is a carnival or circus performer who falls for a woman way too young and way out of his league. In this case it was Norma Shearer who for the duration of the film I mistook for Moira Shearer. Which would be weird as Moira wasn’t born yet. I know Chaney liked them young (on screen - he was no Charlie Chaplin) but that’s a bit too far.

Speaking of Norma, she was an almost big star and wife of producer Irving Thalberg. The workaholic (Irving, that is) produced ninety titles before dying of pneumonia at thirty seven. Five years into her career (Norma, that is), Slapped was her twenty third feature film. Norma would star in a great many films I've never seen and fall just short of Hollywood greatness because apparently she was cross-eyed. She would retire at 40 and live to a ripe old age of 80.

Not many on this film had that luxury. Chaney famously died at forty seven only six years later, but the evil Baron would match the age dying a year earlier. Chaney’s duplicitous wife would also die at forty seven, but that was over twenty years later. Her career would die much sooner. But let’s talk about John Gilbert.

Dashing John Gilbert was a silent matinee idol at the level of Rudolph Valentino, but come the advent of talkies, his star faded quickly. There are stories that his voice was wrong for leading roles, but that wasn’t true. The problem was his drinking and sudden lack of sizzle on screen. Jilted at the altar by Greta Garbo, he was never the same. He made ten or so talkies but only Garbo’s Queen Christina stands out. He would die of a heart attack a couple years later, at thirty eight. And so it goes.

The big news here is that a youngish Bela Lugosi is an extra somewhere in the background. I didn’t notice him but he was either wearing clown makeup or an academic-type beard. And, obviously, you don’t hear his voice. So, maybe BIG news was overselling it a bit.

There are some interesting things here. The score gave the clown performances a surreal feeling, and Chaney was at his prime. This, according to IMDb, is his second highest rated films behind The Unknown, my personal favorite. I thought it was well worth watching. AMRU 3.5.

“Laughter - the bitterest and most subtle death to hope…”