The Shock (1923)

Director:

Lambert Hillyer

Writers:

Charles Kenyon (writer)
William Dudley Pelley (story)

Release Date:

10 June 1923 (USA)

Genre:

Crime | Drama

Plot:

A gang of blackmailers sends a cripple to San Francisco to expose a banker they have been blackmailing. However, the cripple meets and falls in love with the banker's daughter.

Plot Keywords:

Melodrama | Earthquake | San Francisco California

Cast

Lon Chaney	...	Wilse Dilling
Virginia Valli	...	Gertrude Hadley
Jack Mower	...	Jack Cooper
William Welsh	...	Mischa Hadley
Henry A. Barrows	...	John Cooper, Sr. (as Henry Barrows)
Christine Mayo	...	Ann Cardington
Harry De Vere	...	Olaf Wismer (as Harry Devere)
John Beck	...	Bill
Walter Long	...	The Captain

Also Known As:

Bittersweet (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

96 min | 69 min (DVD)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White | Color (tinted)

Aspect Ratio:

1.33 : 1

Sound Mix:

Silent

Company:

Universal Pictures

Trivia:

A Jewel Production. Universal, lacking a proprietary theater chain, devised a 3-tiered branding system to enable it to market its feature product to independent theater owners: Red Feather (low budget programmers), Bluebird (mainstream releases) and Jewel (prestige productions capable of drawing higher roadshow ticket prices). This branding system ended in late 1929.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Lon Chaney: A Thousand Faces (2000) (TV)

One of my favorites

Lon Chaney is brilliant (as always) in this very moving and uplifting drama about a crippled thug with a heart of gold. As Wilse Dilling, Chaney is immensely likeable and we root for him all the way. He is sent to San Francisco by the evil crime boss Queen Ann as part of a scheme to expose a banker who has been blackmailed into robbing his own bank. However, he falls in love with the daughter of the person he's supposed to expose. I think a title card says it best; he is 'torn between to woman he loved and the woman he feared.' What will he do? See this movie to find out; it is highly recommended.