Where East Is East (1929)

Director:

Tod Browning

Writers:

Tod Browning (story)
Harry Sinclair Drago (story)

Release Date:

4 May 1929 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

"Tiger" Haynes (Chaney) is a animal trapper in China who lives with his beautiful daughter, Toyo (Velez)...

Plot Keywords:

Circus

Cast

Lon Chaney	...	Tiger Haynes
Lupe Velez	...	Toyo Haynes
Estelle Taylor	...	Mme. de Sylva
Lloyd Hughes	...	Bobby Bailey
Louis Stern	...	Padré
Mrs. Wong Wing	...	Ming

Runtime:

65 min

Country:

USA

Color:

Black and White

Sound Mix:

Silent

Company:

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM)

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Man of a Thousand Faces (1957)

Mother and child reunion

This is a nice little silent film - years ago TCM UK showed a 1930's re-issue print with ridiculous sound effects over an energetic orchestra at 63 minutes long that I taped. Lon Chaney only had 2 more films to make before his death the following year, while Lupe Velez had more than 30 to go before her strange death in 1944, here the pair played a rather close father and daughter (Tiger and Toyo) in steamy pre-chopper Vietnam.

The storyline's been completely given away in a previous post, all I would add is that this film is most definitely worth watching if only to gawp at Estelle Taylor playing Madame De Sylva, Toyo's prodigal mother. She was light-years more alluring than Velez in this mainly owing to her incredible eye make-up and hair style, but the daughter didn't seem to mind being overshadowed at all. And her boyfriend Booby was torn - what was there to choose?! Throughout the ensuing emotional roller-coaster Chaney snarls and generally lives up to his name, but unfortunately is guilty of a heavily contrived heinous crime against his immoral ex-wife and by the end has to pay the censor's price - literally in the last second.

All in all not fantastic, but with a realistic atmosphere generated by some intelligent photography and the usual high standard of scenic detail from Cedric Gibbons it's always a pleasant hour-filler for me.