October 7: A Blind Bargain (1922)

 

Tod Browning's London After Midnight is not the only lost Lon Chaney horror silent from the 1920's that would cause a stir if a copy where ever found. Goldwyn's 1922 A Blind Bargain was directed by Wallace Worsley, who had previously directed Chaney in The Penalty (1920) and would direct him the following year in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, one of the most famous surviving films of the 1920's. A Blind Bargain was based on a story that had similar premise as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein with a little H.G. Wells thrown in. It was based on a novel by British writer/humorist Barry Pain.  The film sported your standard mad scientist, complete with a hunchback assistant (who is one of Dr. Lamb's failed experiments); both of these parts were played by Chaney (applying, as was his custom, his own makeup). The main protagonist of the film is a down-on-his-luck writer and desperate for money; the part of Robert Sandell was played by Raymond McKee, whose performance was over-shadowed in the reviews by Chaney's dual monster performances. Sandell winds up under the sway of the mad surgeon Lamb after agreeing to an unspecified "bargain" that the doctor will operate on his sickly mother. Turns out that "blind bargain" is an agreement to be experimented on. The film also featured a full ape man--who was likely NOT Chaney. There are been persistent rumours that the man in ape suit was in fact Wallace Beery, but there is a high likelihood that this will never be proven one way or the other. The film had trouble overing the censors of the time delaying it's release for more than a year.  In the end, the film was cut from six reels to five over objections to the subject matter of creating life aka playing god. But nevertheless, it received a standing ovation on it's eventual opening night.  We know that the film was tinted throughout and one section was colored using a hand stenciling process. The last known print perished in the same fire in the mid-1960s that burned the last print of London After Midnight. Now all that remains of it (for now) are a few stills and some beautifully produced lobby cards.