It would have been fascinating, too, to see what Lon Chaney would
have done with this role, as well.
Carl Laemmle wanted Chaney for the role but Chaney was under a long
term contract with MGM at the time.
Jeff
On Apr 18, 2010, at 2:54 PM, Bruce Hershenson wrote:
Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal saw the great German
impressionist movies of the 1910s and 1920s and decided Universal
needed to have one of its own, and he hired director Paul Leni to
adapt Victor Hugo's The Man Who Laughs, starring the magnificent
German actor, Conrad Veidt, who had of course starred in the first
of these, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
Apparently Laemmle panicked when he saw the advances, because
Universal devised one of the oddest ad campaigns from a major
studio (maybe only equaled by MGM's Freaks campaign a few years
later).
The ad showed a sexy image of Olga Baclanova, with an
unrecognizable back shot of a man crouching before her, and the
immortal tagline, "Why do alluring women love homely men?"!
Bruce
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