Lon ChaneyFilmography

The Unholy Three

Actors: Lila Lee, Elliott Nugent, Harry Earles, John Miljan

Synopsis: A remake of the 1925 Lon Chaney melodrama of the same name, 1930's The Unholy Three makes several concessions to the newly strengthened Hollywood censors, but is still quite entertaining in a macabre sort of way. Chaney reprises his role as Professor Echo, a sideshow ventriloquist who moonlights Read More

Where East Is East

Actors: Lon Chaney, Lupe Velez, Lloyd Hughes, Louis Stern

Synopsis: Star Lon Chaney Sr. and director Tod Browning bade adieu to the silent-movie era with 1929's Where East is East. His face covered with hideous scars (convincingly applied with nonflexible collodion), Chaney is cast as weather-beaten animal trapper Tiger Haynes, at present living and working in Read More

Thunder

Actors: Lon Chaney, Phyllis Haver, George Duryea

Synopsis: This melodrama is the last silent film of Lon Chaney. There is a soundtrack, but it only contains sound effects. The plot centers on a railroad engineer with an obsession for running his train on time. His slavishness to promptness causes several tragedies which alienate him from his family. Read More

While the City Sleeps

Actors: Lon Chaney, Anita Page, Carroll Nye, Wheeler Oakman, Mae Busch

Synopsis: Lon Chaney Sr. eschews his trademarked makeup in the MGM crime melodrama While the City Sleeps. The plot is sparked by the misbehavior of heroine Myrtle (Anita Page), who enjoys rubbing shoulders with gangsters like Skeeter (Wheeler Oakman). When she learns too much about Skeeter's set-up, Myrtle Read More

Laugh, Clown, Laugh

Actors: Lon Chaney, Bernard Siegel, Loretta Young, Cissy Fitzgerald, Nils Asther

Synopsis: Fifteen-year-old Loretta Young is 45-year-old Lon Chaney's winsome leading lady in Laugh, Clown, Laugh. Based on the war-horse stage piece by David Belasco and Tom Cushing, the film casts Chaney as (what else?) an aging circus clown, who adopts an orphaned girl and falls in love with her when she Read More

West of Zanzibar

Actors: Lon Chaney, Lionel Barrymore, Warner Baxter, Mary Nolan, Jacqueline Gadsdon

Synopsis: In this lurid Tod Browning melodrama, boasting a thoroughly creepy performance by Lon Chaney, Chaney plays Phroso, a limehouse magician who is thoroughly in love with his wife Anna (Jacquelin Gadsdon). Also in love with Phroso's wife is ivory-trader Crane (Lionel Barrymore). After a performance Read More

The Big City

Actors: James Murray, Lon Chaney, Marceline Day, Betty Compson, Matthew Betz

Synopsis: The Big City was perhaps the most "normal" of the Lon Chaney-Tod Browning collaborations. Minus makeup, Chaney plays gangster boss Chuck Collins, who despite his ruthlessness is a basically decent fellow. Collins is plagued by a rival gang, led by deceptively boyish Curly (James Murray), who has Read More

London After Midnight

Actors: Lon Chaney, Marceline Day, Henry B. Walthall, Percy Williams, Conrad Nagel

Synopsis: The most tantalizing of the "lost" Tod Browning films, London After Midnight has gained a near-legendary status in recent years, especially since so many critics of the 1930s considered the film as vastly superior to its 1935 remake, Mark of the Vampire. Clearly inspired by the stage version of Read More

The Unknown

Actors: Lon Chaney, Norman Kerry, Joan Crawford, Nick De Ruiz, John George

Synopsis: As a group, the silent-movie collaborations between director Tod Browning and star Lon Chaney hardly represent the best work of either man, though each film definitely has its moments. One of the best, and weirdest, of the batch is The Unknown. Chaney plays a carnival performer known as the Read More

Mockery

Actors: Lon Chaney, Ricardo Cortez, Barbara Bedford, Mack Swain, Emily Fitzroy

Synopsis: One of the rare American films directed by Danish auteur Benjamin Christensen, Mockery stars Lon Chaney Sr. as a half-witted Russian peasant. On the verge of starvation, Chaney is hired to guide a beautiful countess (Barbara Bedford) through the treacherous Siberian wastes. Once he arrives Read More

Mr. Wu

Actors: Lon Chaney, Louise Dresser, Renée Adorée, Holmes Herbert, Ralph Forbes

Synopsis: Previously filmed in England in 1919, the barnstorming Harry Maurice Vernon-Harold Owen play Mr.Wu re-emerged as a Lon Chaney Sr. vehicle in 1927. Chaney essays a dual role, as the titular Wu and Wu's honorable grandfather. After a lengthy prologue, it is established that Wu is a powerful Read More

The Road to Mandalay

Actors: Lon Chaney, Lois Moran, Owen Moore, Henry B. Walthall

Synopsis: Having nothing whatever to do with the Rudyard Kipling poem, The Road to Mandalay is a typically bizarre collaboration between star Lon Chaney Sr. and director Tod Browning. Chaney plays Singapore Joe, the one-eyed proprietor of a Mandalay bordello. Joe's convent-bred daughter Rosemary (Lois Read More

Tell It to the Marines

Actors: Lon Chaney, William Haines, Eleanor Boardman, Eddie Gribbon, Carmel Myers

Synopsis: A tough-as-nails Marine sergeant sets about training a rag-tag group of boys into men. Though sporting a rough and gruff exterior, the sergeant is really a caring, gentle sort. During training, he is especially rough on a smart-alecky young man, whom he hones into a first rate fighter. More Read More

The Black Bird

Actors: Lon Chaney, Renée Adorée, Owen Moore, Doris Lloyd, Andy McLennan

Synopsis: This characteristically grim Lon Chaney/Tod Browning collaboration stars "The Man of a Thousand Faces" in two distinct characterizations. By day, the crippled Bishop of Limehouse (Chaney) is a kindly, beneficent figure, ministering to the needs of the poor and destitute. But by night, the Bishop Read More

The Phantom of the Opera

Actors: Lon Chaney, Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry, Arthur Edmund Carewe, Gibson Gowland

Synopsis: Lon Chaney stars as Erik, the Phantom, in what is probably his most famous and certainly his most horrifying role. Produced by Universal, the film shot in 1923 and shelved for nearly two years, and was subjected to intensive studio tinkering. While many expected a disaster, the film turned out to Read More

Macabre Moments from "The Phantom of the Opera"

Synopsis: Although this is a silent production, it does include a color sequence. The story remains clear even in this condensed version. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

The Unholy Three

Actors: Lon Chaney, Mae Busch, Matt Moore, Victor McLaglen, Harry Earles

Synopsis: Although Lon Chaney and director Tod Browning had made a couple of films together earlier in their careers, this unique melodrama marked the beginning of a string of chilling, macabre silent films, which included West of Zanzibar, The Unknown, and The Black Bird. Chaney is Echo, a sideshow Read More

The Monster

Actors: Lon Chaney, Gertrude Olmstead, Hallam Cooley, Johnny Arthur, Charles Sellon

Synopsis: It's hard to tell at times whether director Roland West was aiming for laughs or thrills in The Monster, but this ambivalence is all part of the fun. Hallam Cooley and Johnny Arthur, two dumb clerks in Gertrude Olmstead's small-town general store, try to impress Olmstead by joining the sheriff's Read More

The Tower of Lies

Actors: Norma Shearer, Lon Chaney, Ian Keith, Claire McDowell, William Haines

Synopsis: Director Victor Sjostrom and stars Lon Chaney and Norma Shearer made an impressive team on He Who Gets Slapped. They came together again for this dour and less interesting film, based on the novel The Emperor of Portugallia by the Swedish author Selma Lagerlof. Jan (Chaney) is a farmer whose hard Read More

He Who Gets Slapped

Actors: Lon Chaney, Norma Shearer, John Gilbert, Tully Marshall

Synopsis: This compelling and exceptionally well-executed silent drama, from new MGM studio executives Irving Thalburg and producer Louis B. Mayer is based on a highly-regarded Russian play and features the studio's biggest stars, Lon Chaney, John Gilbert and Norma Shearer. Directed by noted Swedish Read More

Next Corner

Actors: Conway Tearle, Dorothy Mackaill, Lon Chaney, Ricardo Cortez, Louise Dresser

Synopsis: American engineer Robert Maury (Conway Tearle) travels to Paris with his wife, Elsie (Dorothy Mackaill). He leaves her there while he goes to Argentina on business. Elsie, like most neglected wives (at least in films), uses this opportunity to get into mischief -- she dresses exotically and draws Read More

The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Actors: Lon Chaney, Ernest Torrence, Patsy Ruth Miller, Norman Kerry, Kate Lester

Synopsis: This second film version of the Victor Hugo novel Notre Dame de Paris (the first was a Theda Bara vehicle, The Dancer of Paris) was a super-duper-spectacular as only Hollywood of the 1920s could make them, but it is never so large that it dwarfs the contribution of its star, Lon Chaney. As Read More

The Shock

Actors: Virginia Valli, Lon Chaney

Synopsis: This tale of a crook's reform takes place in the San Francisco of the early 1900s. Predictably, Lon Chaney plays a crook and a misshapen cripple (the type of role almost expected of him at this point in his career). Anne Vincent, better known as "Queen Anne" (Christine Mayo), sends Wilse Dilling (Chaney Read More

All the Brothers Were Valiant

Actors: Billie Dove, Lon Chaney, Malcolm McGregor

Synopsis: This tale of the high seas -- based on the novel by Ben Ames Williams -- is as much character study as it is adventure. It involves the rivalry between the two Shore brothers, Mark (Lon Chaney) and Joel (Malcolm McGregor). Mark is the captain of a whaling ship and he looks down on Joel, who has Read More

Flesh and Blood

Synopsis: Lon Chaney Sr. plays David Webster, an honest lawyer unjustly sentenced to a 15-year jail term. Upon his release, Webster adopts a disguise so that he can get even with Fletcher Burton (Ralph Lewis), the man who framed him. The ex-convict is compelled to alter his plans when Burton's son (Jack Mulhall Read More

Quincy Adams Sawyer

Actors: John Bowers, Blanche Sweet, Lon Chaney, Barbara La Marr, Elmo Lincoln

Synopsis: Based on the popular novel of rural life by Charles Felton Pidgin, this motion picture featured most of the star names that Paramount had in 1922. After meeting a pretty girl in the park, Quincy Adams Sawyer, a young, up-and-coming lawyer, is called to the village of Mason's Corners by his Read More

The Light in the Dark

Actors: Hope Hampton, E.K. Lincoln, Lon Chaney, Theresa Maxwell Conover, Dore Davidson

Synopsis: Actress Hope Hampton and her producer, Jules Brulatour, were sort of a low-rent Marion Davies and William Randolph Hearst -- Brulatour spent loads of money trying to make the woman he loved a star. Unfortunately, Hampton did not have Davies' talent, but she's pretty good in this picture. Brulatour Read More

A Blind Bargain

Actors: Lon Chaney, Raymond McKee, Jacqueline Logan, Fontaine La Rue, Virginia True Boardman

Synopsis: Not long before they collaborated on The Hunchback of Notre Dame, star Lon Chaney and director Wallace Worsley combined their talents on Blind Bargain. As was often his wont, Chaney plays two roles: mad scientist Arthur Lamb and Lamb's "experiment", known only as the Ape Man. This hideous creature Read More

Shadows

Actors: Lon Chaney, Marguerite de la Motte, Harrison Ford, John St. Polis, Walter Long

Synopsis: When it reviewed this simple little drama, the trade paper The Film Daily remarked (rather awkwardly), "Ben Schulberg has never achieved a reputation previously for desiring a place among the artistic producers, but...Shadows is one of the most artistically made pictures." Art was definitely not Read More

The Trap

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Lon Chaney, Alan Hale, Dagmar Godowsky, Stanley Goethals, Irene Rich

Synopsis: When he made this film, Lon Chaney's fame was already established, but he was only inches away from superstardom -- a few months later he would portray the title character in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Trapper Gaspard (Chaney) is a French-Canadian innocent; all this changes, however, when he Read More

Oliver Twist

Actors: Jackie Coogan, Lon Chaney, Gladys Brockwell, George Siegmann, Lionel Belmore

Synopsis: Ostensibly a vehicle for Jackie Coogan, the 1922 Oliver Twist refuses to realign the Charles Dickens novel to accommodate the personality of its star. This Frank Lloyd-directed silent film is one of the most faithful of all cinematic adaptations of the Dickens work. The orphaned Oliver, labelled a Read More

Outside the Law

Synopsis: One of the earliest of the "psychological" crime yarns, Outside the Law stars Priscilla Dean as "Silk Moll" Madden, daughter of ex-crook "Silent" Madden (Ralph Lewis). Moll has tried to remain honest, like her reformed father. But when Silent Madden is framed for a shooting and sent to jail, Moll Read More

For Those We Love

Synopsis: This drama was "personally produced" by film star Betty Compson. Berenice Arnold (Compson) spends her time trying to keep her family happy. This is easier said than done -- her brother, Jimmy (Richard Rosson, brother of the film's director, Arthur Rosson), is a gambler and he steals 80 dollars Read More

The Ace of Hearts

Synopsis: Based on a story by Gouverneur Morris, this drama involves a group of terrorists whose motive is to do away with capitalists of their choosing. To pick the assassin for their latest mark, they draw cards, and a pretty female member, Lillith (Leatrice Joy), offers to marry the man chosen. Forrest Read More

Night Rose

Actors: Leatrice Joy, Lon Chaney, John Bowers, Cullen Landis, Richard Tucker

Synopsis: Before he was known as "the man of a thousand faces," Lon Chaney had already become famous for portraying underworld characters. If he does not come off well in this Goldwyn picture, in which he plays a gang leader, it has nothing to do with his acting and everything to do with the editing. The Read More

Bits of Life

Synopsis: This film combines four short films under the title Bits Of Life. The Bad Samaritan is taken from a story in Popular Magazine in which the son of a Chinese father and a white mother is sold into slavery by his father. The boy becomes a criminal and a cunning but cruel thief. The one time he stops Read More

The Penalty

Synopsis: Among Lon Chaney's early villainous roles was Blizzard, the criminal mastermind of this melodrama set in San Francisco's Barbary Coast neighborhood. As a young man, Blizzard was the victim of an auto accident, and a quack doctor had mistakenly ordered his legs amputated at the knees. He grows up Read More

Daredevil Jack

Synopsis: Celebrated prize fighter Jack Dempsey was a natural for serials, and industry leader Pathé dutifully cast him in this 15-chapter Western adventure co-starring cowgirl Josie Sedgwick and directed by a young W.S. Van Dyke. The story was the usual chapterplay predicament: A dying father gives his Read More

Nomads of the North

Synopsis: Author James Oliver Curwood's tales of the Northwest were made into so many motion pictures that it seems like he alone is responsible for every Mountie cliché that was committed to cinema. Case in point is this picture: Raoul Challoner (Lon Chaney in a rare romantic role) is in love with Nanette Read More

While Paris Sleeps

Actors: Lon Chaney, Mildred Manning

Synopsis: This melodrama, made in 1920 but not released until 1923, was based on a novel, The Glory of Love, by "Pan." Henri Santados (Lon Chaney), a sculptor in the Latin Quarter of Paris, is in love with his model, Bebe Larvache (Mildred Manning). Bebe, however, has met and fallen in love with a young Read More

Treasure Island

Synopsis: Treasure Island was the third of Fox's "Sunshine Kiddies" series, a group of literary adaptations starring child actors in adult roles. Little Francis Carpenter was cast as Robert Louis Stevenson's youthful hero Jim Hawkins, who after coming into possession of a valuable map embarks upon a Read More

Gift Supreme

Synopsis: This melodrama boasts a solid cast, including Tully Marshall and Lon Chaney in supporting roles. After her father's death, Sylvia Alden (Seena Owen) goes to the slums to do mission work. There she encounters Bradford Vinton (Bernard J. Durning), and a romance blossoms. Neither of them realize that Read More

Victory

Synopsis: Axel Heyst (Jack Holt) is taught bitter lessons by his father -- that pity is contemptible and sympathy is useless. So the young man intends to exile himself to an island, but he winds up bringing along Alma (Seena Owen), who he has saved from unhappy circumstances. Even more complications arise Read More

A Man's Country

Synopsis: Kate Carewe (Alma Rubens) lords over the dancehall in a lawless gold rush town. When preacher Ralph Bowen (Albert Roscoe) shows up, no one is thrilled to see him, especially Kate. Bowen doesn't just preach -- he also uses his fists. The bad man of the town, Three Card Duncan (Lon Chaney), shoots Read More

Wicked Darling

Synopsis: Priscilla Dean has impressive support from Lon Chaney in this crime drama. Mary Stevens (Dean) is a thief of the slums. She is loved by Stoop (Chaney), a hoodlum. Mary happens on a society reception and makes off with a pearl necklace which has been dropped by Adele Hoyt (Gertrude Astor). She Read More

The Miracle Man

Synopsis: A group of crooks in New York City's Chinatown hear about an old hermit (Joseph J. Dowling) in a small upstate village who's performing miraculous cures. When they find out that the man is blind and deaf, they decide to pay him a visit. The leader, Tom Burke (Thomas Meighan), has his girlfriend Read More

Paid in Advance

Synopsis: During the silent era, the northwoods tales of James Oliver Curwood served as the basis for seemingly dozens upon dozens of films. Joan Gray (Dorothy Phillips) is the daughter of a Canadian fur trader (Joseph W. Girard). She has her choice of two men: one is named Batesse Le Blanc (Lon Chaney, not Read More

When Bearcat Went Dry

Synopsis: This tale of moonshiners in the Cumberland mountains was based on the novel by Charles Neville Buck. Turner Stacy, otherwise known as Bearcat (Bernard Durning), is the son of moonshiner Lone Stacy (Winter Hall). When he falls in love with Blossom (Vangie Valentine), the daughter of missionary Joel Read More

False Faces

Synopsis: This is yet another picture claiming to be something other than a war film in the days immediately post-World War I. Its makers preferred to think of it as a "spy melodrama" since interest in the war was decreasing practically by the hour. False Faces began life as a story in the Saturday Evening Read More

Grand Passion

Synopsis: By the mid-1920s, both Lon Chaney Sr. and Jack Mulhall were major film stars in their own right. Back in 1918, however, both men were still providing support to such lesser lights as Dorothy Phillips, a Lillian Gish look-alike. In The Grand Passion, Phillips plays a newcomer in Powderville, one of Read More

Broadway Love

Synopsis: Another of the popular Dorothy Phillips vehicles directed by Ida May Park, Broadway Love was based on a magazine story by W. Carey Wonderly. Phillips was cast as Midge O'Hara, a small-town lass who becomes a Broadway chorus girl. Midge's best pal Cherry Blow (Juanita Hansen) invites her to a Read More

Talk of the Town

Synopsis: Her strict upbringing is driving Genevra French (Dorothy Phillips) crazy, so when she gets her hand on a book called "How to Attract the Opposite Sex," she takes its advice to heart. She uses her newly found wiles on Lawrence Tabor (William Stowell) and gets him to marry her. Only after the Read More

Fast Company

Actors: Franklin Farnum

Synopsis: Booted out of his own home by his snobbish father, wealthy playboy Laurence Percival Van Huyler (Franklin Farnum) is forced to make his own way in the world. Accordingly, he trades in his fancy duds for a pair of faded overalls and takes a job as a construction worker. While tearing down an old Read More

Riddle Gawne

Synopsis: Cowboy star William S. Hart plays Jefferson "Riddle" Gawne, a man who really carries a grudge. When he finds his brother dying and hears that the killer has run off with his brother's wife, he swears revenge. Years pass and Riddle earns the enmity of cattle rustler Hame Bozzam (Lon Chaney). When Read More

That Devil, Bateese

Danger, Go Slow

Synopsis: Whenever she was directed by her husband Robert Z. Leonard, Mae Murray ceased behaving like a Movie Star and started acting like a human being. Such was the case in Danger! Go Slow!, in which Murray was cast as a tough, streetwise sneak thief. When the cops close in, she hops a freight to a small Read More

The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin

Synopsis: During World War I, Erich von Stroheim wasn't the only "man you loved to hate." Rupert Julian also proved pretty hateful as the title character in this picture, which he also directed. It's pure, black-and-white propaganda, with every German general a "von-something" and the Kaiser as evil as they Read More

Broadway Scandal

Synopsis: Having been misinformed that all French girls are morally suspect, American soldier David Kendall (Edwin August) is in for quite a shock when he's shipped Over There. After meeting several "nice" Frenchwomen, David returns to the states with a whole new perspective on things. It isn't long before Read More

A Doll's House

Synopsis: Film star Dorothy Phillips courageously tackled one of the most complex roles ever written when she starred in this 1917 adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's The Doll's House. That Phillips was not quite up to the challenge was readily apparent to the critics, but fans of the actress were willing to give Read More

The Scarlet Car

Synopsis: This drama was based on the then-popular novel by Richard Hardin Davis. Billy Winthrop (Franklyn Farnum) is the idle son of Samuel Winthrop (Al Filson). When Billy discovers that it's destroying his father financially to constantly get him out of trouble, he straightens up. Although Billy loves Read More

The Flashlight

Synopsis: Jack Lane (William Stowell) has made an invention for photographing wild animals. It consists of a camera with a trigger -- when the trigger is stepped on by a passing animal, a flash goes off and the camera shoots the picture. Lane goes up to the mountains to try out his new contraption. When a Read More

Triumph

Synopsis: Triumph was adapted from a story by Samuel Hopkins Adams, originally serialized in the pages of Collier's magazine. Arriving in New York in hopes of becoming an actress, country girl Nell Baxter (Dorothy Phillips) immediately catches the eye of rapacious theater manager Paul Nelhoff (Lon Chaney Read More

Girl in the Checkered Coat

Synopsis: Dorothy Phillips has a dual role in this picture, as pickpocket "Flash" Fan, and her sister, innocent shopgirl Mary Graham. The two live next door to each other in a boarding house, and when Mary collapses from starvation, Fan gives her a checkered coat. Unfortunately, the police have identified Read More

Pay Me

Synopsis: After several years of lending support to "bigger" Universal contract players, Lon Chaney Sr. was at last afforded star billing in Pay Me. Typically, however, Chaney's character, shiftless wanderer Joe Lawson, was secondary to the film's "official" star, Dorothy Phillips. The story concentrates on Read More

Hell Morgan's Girl

Synopsis: Roger Curwell (William Stowell) is disowned by his father (Joseph W. Girard) because of his desire to be an artist. But instead of making good as a painter, Roger finds himself drunk and on the skids in San Francisco's Barbary Coast. At a dive run by Hell Morgan (Alfred Allen), he meets Lola (Dorothy Phillips Read More

Anything Once

Actors: Franklin Farnum, Claire Du Brey, Marjory Lawrence, Mary St. John, Sam de Grasse

Synopsis: Playboy Franklyn Farnum inherits a Western ranch on the condition that he shall run it properly for 6 months. A villain (none other than Lon Chaney) makes an attempt to distract him from reaching the goal, but Farnum, no longer the wastrel of yore, persists and becomes full owner of the property. Read More

Fires of Rebellion

Synopsis: The drudgery of the working class is conveyed in this drama, directed by Ida May Park. Madge Garvey (Dorothy Phillips) works in a shoe factory. Her father Joe (Richard de la Reno) is a drunk who beats his wife (Alice May Youss), and her sister Helen (Belle Bennett) has repeated the pattern by Read More

Piper's Price

Synopsis: In the Dark Ages of the silent era, when female movie characters were expecting, their pregnancies never, ever showed -- the baby just miraculously appeared one day. While this seems ludicrous now, somehow audiences of the day were able to suspend disbelief, which is why they didn't laugh at this Read More

The Rescue

Synopsis: The successful star-director team of Dorothy Phillips and Ida May Park served up another box-office winner with The Rescue. Though she despises her ex-husband Kent (William Stowell), Anne Wetherell (Phillips) agrees to marry him again. The reason? Anne wants to spare Kent's latest sweetheart Nell Read More

The Price of Silence

Synopsis: We meet Helen (Dorothy Phillips) in the middle of creating the past that will haunt her for the rest of the film -- she and her lover, Ralph Kelton (Jack Mulhall), are caught in a rainstorm and they are forced to check into a hotel as husband and wife, since there is only one room available. Read More

The Gilded Spider

Synopsis: Louise Lovely stars in The Gilded Spider. The lovely Ms. Lovely plays a European dancing girl, driven to suicide by a callous American millionaire (Gilmore Hammond). Years later, the dancer's daughter (also played by Lovely) comes to America to seek vengeance. The girl is accompanied by her Read More

Place Beyond the Winds

Synopsis: Joseph DeGrasse both directed and acted in this Northwoods melodrama. Priscilla Glenn (Dorothy Phillips) lives in a remote trading post with her stern father (C. Norman Hammond). When Jerry Jo (a pre-stardom Lon Chaney) tricks Priscilla into staying out all night, Glenn kicks her out of the house Read More

Grip of Jealousy

Synopsis: Directed and written by husband-and-wife team Joseph de Grasse and Ida May Park, this Southern miscegenation melodrama featured Lon Chaney as Silas Lacey, a wicked slave owner who mistakenly believes a white-looking slave girl to be the daughter of a black woman he once raped. She isn't, of Read More

If My Country Should Call

Grasp of Greed

Synopsis: The Grasp of Greed was a Hollywoodization of H. Rider Haggard's novel John Meeson's Will. En route to Australia, beautiful authoress Alice Gordon (Louise Lovely) is shipwrecked on a desert island in the company of wealthy book publisher John Meeson (C.N. Hammond). Sensing that his days are Read More

Tangled Hearts

Synopsis: This confusing marital melodrama features Lon Chaney as a husband who mistakenly believes his wife (Marjorie Ellison) to be having an affair with a rich libertine (Haywood Mack). The irate husband attempts to kill the lover, but the bullet hits his innocent, if flirtatious, wife instead. The Read More

Bobbie of the Ballet

Synopsis: The improbably but colorfully named Louise Lovely played the title role in Bluebird's Bobbie of the Ballet. Wealthy Jack Stimson (Jay Belasco) falls in love with Broadway diva Velma Vrooman (Gretchen Lederer), and for her sake bankrolls the musical production in which she is currently starred. But Read More

Mark of Cain

Synopsis: Unbeknownst to his family, Temple (Mark Fenton) is a burglar. When the police come to arrest him, his son Dick (Lon Chaney) takes the blame and is sent to jail for five years. During that time his father dies and his mother (Lydia Y. Titus) disappears. When Dick is released, no one will hire him Read More

The Chimney's Secret

Crew: Director, Screenwriter

For Cash

Crew: Director

Synopsis: The second of six 2-reel melodramas directed by actor Lon Chaney for Universal's "Victor" brand in 1915, this film was yet another variation on the naive mountain girl succumbing to Big City wolves. J. Warren Kerrigan played an artist who eventually saves the girl (Vera Sisson) from a blackmailer. Read More

Father and the Boys

Synopsis: Staid Lemuel Morewood (Digby Bell) is frustrated because neither of his boys are interested in learning how to run his business -- Billy (Harry Ham) has turned into a society gadabout, and Tom (Colin Chase) only cares about sports. And even though Morewood has picked out two young ladies for his Read More

The Higher Law

Her Life's Story

Lie

Synopsis: Henry Arthur Jones' popular stage drama The Lie was brought to the screen as a vehicle for Elsie Ferguson. The star plays Elinor Shale, the eldest daughter of nobleman Sir Robert Shale (John L. Shine). When Elinor's sister Lucy (Betty Howe) marries in secret, she confides only in Elinor. And when Read More

The End of the Feud

Her Bounty

Her Grave Mistake

The Honor of the Mounted

The Forbidden Room

A Ranch Romance

The Pipes of Pan

The Lamb, the Woman, the Wolf

A Miner's Romance

The Old Cobbler

The Unlawful Trade

Richelieu

Synopsis: While most of Vitagraph's biographical films were released as multiple-parters, Richelieu told its entire story within the confines of a single, 1000-foot reel. The controversial Cardinal was depicted as a semi-villain, though his good points were duly emphasized. If contemporary reviews are to be Read More

The Tragedy of Whispering Creek

Oubliette

Remember Mary Magdalen

The Embezzler

Discord and Harmony

By the Sun's Rays

Actors: Agnes Vernon

Synopsis: The earliest surviving film featuring Lon Chaney in a major role, By the Sun's Ray's was but one of several westerns starring the florid Murdock MacQuarrie. MacQuarrie plays a detective investigating a series of gold shipment robberies. Along the way, he falls for a mine superintendent's pretty Read More

The Sea Urchin

Back to Life

The Blood Red Tape of Charity

Trap

Red Margaret, Moonshiner

Bloodhounds of the North

An Elephant on His Hands

Poor Jake's Demise

Shon the Piper

Almost an Actress