Tod Browning | The Unholy Three / 1925

a little laughter, a little tear

by Douglas Messerli

 

Waldemar Young (screenplay, based on the novel by Tod Robbins), Tod Browning (director) The Unholy Three / 1925

 

One of the biggest surprises for me in a long while was seeing Tod Browning’s silent film of 1925, The Unholy Three. A mystery, detective story, and courtroom drama, as well as a romance and a tale of criminal perversity all in one, Browning wields his camera as if traveling through a rat maze, easily rounding corners before darting off into new spaces of horror and delight.

 

    Like so many of Browning’s works of cinema, this begins in a sideshow, featuring Professor Echo (Lon Chaney) as a ventriloquist with a dummy who agrees to join him at a local bar, a muscle man who bends rings of steel, Hercules (Victor McLaglen), and a “midget” performer Tweedledee (Harry Earles) who has such a short temper that at one point he attacks a child who heckles him, turning the crowd against all the performers so that the three and their picket pocket friend Rosie O’Grady (Mae Busch) are forced to run for their lives.

    But as they regroup, Echo has an idea that is so strange and unthinkable that they all agree to join him in an “unholy” trio in which he is determined to play the role of a kindly grandmother with their little friend performing as her young grandson, the strongman as the child’s father and her son-in-law, and Rosie as her granddaughter. With a hired man, Hector McDonald (Matt Moore) they open a pet bird shop using it as a cover to enter wealthy homes which they then rob.

 

    Although one can’t precisely describe Echo’s determination to dress in drag for most of this movie to be LGBTQ-related, one has to wonder why he—or more importantly perhaps, why the original novelist and screenplay writer Waldemar Young—chose a transgender figure for their central figure’s undercover identity. Chaney’s crossdressing is not only convincing, but contributes, along with Earles’ very realist portrayal of the infant whom Mrs. O’Grady often pushes around the city in a baby carriage, to the sense of the complete oddity of this group’s behavior and draws the film into a stranger territory than if they were simply a band of thieving thugs.

   Things are made even more complicated by Echo’s love for Rosie, who herself falls for the “straight” and almost nerdy clerk Hector. The constant plot machinations of the intelligent Tweedledee along with Hercules’ penchant for violence and the nearly inexplicable affection Echo has for his pet gorilla of whom Hercules is terrified further shift this film into a slightly surrealist world that reminds one a bit of later satires of such hothouse groupings such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Little Shop of Horrors, turning even a benign small town pet shop into a kind of sideshow.

      By the time the story catches up with their actions, they have already made several robberies whose treasures they keep in a safe. And the central heist they plan in the story is the robbery of a ruby necklace, just purchased by the local socialite Mr. Arlington. One of the ways they gain entry to the houses to stake them out, evidently, is to sell talking parrots using a breed of the bird that doesn’t actually speak, the ventriloquist granny doing the talking for them. When Mrs. Arlington comes home with the bird, of course, it has not a word to say, and her husband wants his money back. Mrs. O’Grady with her grandson in his carriage comes to the rescue, of course, childing the naughty bird for refusing to speak as baby Tweedledee cases the place.

      He doesn’t have to go far as Arlington’s effeminate assistant holds up the ruby necklace his boss intends to give his wife for Christmas, lovingly examining it as if he himself might at any moment put it around his neck. Seeing the baby reaching out for it, he takes it over to the carriage and dangles it almost as a toy just out of the baby’s reach. But suddenly Tweedledee succeeds in grabbing it, and it is only Mrs. Grady, returning from successfully coaxing the parrot to once more speak, who can retrieve it, promising her grandson some beads just like it for Christmas.

      As Christmas Eve arrives, the gang is almost out the door to collect the “beads” when Rosie and Hector return from shopping, gifts and a tree in hand, planning to decorate it in the shop. Echo quickly sends Hercules and Tweedledee into the kitchen to wait, while he gets back into drag, both angry about the intrusion and jealous for Rosie’s attentions to the clerk.

     While Echo as Mrs. Grady attempts to deal with the couple, Tweedledee suggests that he and Hercules pull the caper, sharing the money they get for the necklace. And off they go before Echo can prevent their acts.

      Upon their return, the news has already reached the papers: Hercules has killed Mr. Arlington and severely injured their child. The dumb Hercules and the mean-spirited Tweedledee are almost delighted with their torture and murder, but Echo knows that their cover will soon be blown. When the police come to question them, they determine to place the necklace in Hector’s room, placing him under suspicion for both the robbery and the murder. 

    It works, and the poor innocent clerk is taken off for examination. Yet Echo knows they will be back for more questions and also that Rosie, now in love with the jerk, might well let the cops know that Hector was framed. He kidnaps Rosie, accordingly, traveling with the other two members of his “unholy three” to a cabin in the country where they hideout.

     Eventually, Hector’s trial comes up for hearing, Rosie growing more and more worried about saving his life. After promising to stay with Echo if he will only get Hector out of the bind, Echo suddenly regains a conscience, attending the trial in male attire and attempting, during the final summation, to provide some evidence, without incriminating himself, that Hector is innocent. At one point he even manages to get Hector back on the stand, speaking for him through his ventriloquy. But when no one will believe what Hector seems to say or his lawyer believe that he actually didn’t say anything, Echo has no choice but confess to the crimes.

      While he has been in town, Tweedledee again attempts to get Hercules to split the money and escape the clutches of Echo. When Hercules bulks, the little man looses Echo’s gorilla on him, the beast suddenly attacking and, presumably, killing them both, allowing Rosie to run away.

       In what seems to me an illogical plot development, but one that surely fits the logic of Browning’s outsider heroes, the court decides to let Echo free as reward for his confession. Rosie returns to him as promised, but now a redeemed man, he lies to her, suggesting that he was only joking about his love for her, permitting her to return to Hector, while a tear falls from his eye.

       In the very last scene, we once again see Echo, the dummy on his knee, performing in the sideshow, repeating the lines he spoke early in the film: “That's all there is to life, friends, ... a little laughter ... a little tear." Like the mythical Echo, this ventriloquist can only repeat what has previously been said, while losing his imaginary lover in the process.

       As in so many Browning films, we observe in this work his fascination with societal outsiders struggling with issues of identity, gender, deformity, and a double life involving imitation. Focusing on their world, rather than the normative society, the director demonstrates even more purely the moral differences of individuals, and the ability of some, like Rosie and Echo, to be redeemed. Basically, however, the outsiders of Browning’s world remain just that, permanently separated from the normal society that surrounds them, but perhaps more pure and morally exemplary for that very reason. One might describe Browning’s films as early exemplars of the kinds of issues pursued later by filmmakers such as Tim Burton and John Waters, moral fabulists with a fascination for the perverse.

 

Los Angeles, February 5, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (February 2024).