This movie must have tapped into something in the culture. The sheet music of the theme song is pretty common, which means they printed a lot of it. The copies I usually see show signs of having been used quite a bit.
Chaney's flaw as a performer was when he was allowed to descend into the maudlin, which he does here, and the film is not helped by centering itself on a man in his fifties and a man in his thirties both being in love with a 14-year-old Loretta Young.
Okay, so a little background. A really popular plot device in books and films was something TVTropes dubbed "wife husbandry" which is basically the guy raises a girl as his own child and then falls in love with her.
Grover Cleveland met his wife under such circumstances.
The Grover and Frances romance was widely seen as cute and aspirational.
By the 1920s, Hollywood liked to pair vivacious flappers with middle-aged leading men, which is a sister trope. "They're young and free-spirited, of course they need a stodgy older man to show them the way!"
And it's worth pointing out that the 2003 Peter Pan leaned into a sexy Hook to symbolize Wendy's sexual awakening. Not the spunky boy her own age, mind you. The guy who was traditionally played by the same actor as her father.
Yes, it was a very regular thing to have a heroine expressly described as just out of school/convent (so 18 or thereabouts) and the hero about 35. Just read one last weekend from 1913
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Lon Chaney circus/carnival pictures ONLY with murder on their mind, thx
Grover Cleveland met his wife under such circumstances.
Funny, they keep and even expand the age difference but drop that he was a socialist
By the 1920s, Hollywood liked to pair vivacious flappers with middle-aged leading men, which is a sister trope. "They're young and free-spirited, of course they need a stodgy older man to show them the way!"
Cyril Ritchard would never.
And yes. This trope has always been around but it was used HEAVILY during the Gilded Age and pre-WWI era. And the films reflected it.
But if I must have a circus picture from Chaney that's not THE UNKNOWN, I'll pick HE WHO GETS SLAPPED over this one.