Aileen Pringle, Mitchell Lewis, Robert Ober and Stanton Heck -- have a good racket going, pretending to raise the spirits of the dead. Conway Tearle throws them $15,000 and tells them that they've got a future in America with him, so it's off to New York, intending to take orphaned heiress Gladys Hulette. They convince Miss Huilette that they can raise the spirit of her loving father.... until one day she says she can see him.
This combination of rackets, thieves falling out, and phony mysticism was just director Tod Browning's meat, and he had been doing very with it at Universal with a series o crime dramas starring Priscilla Dean, often with Lon Chaney. Now Browning was at Metro, and Chaney had just started working for the company, where they would renew their partnership. For the moment, Chaney was starring for Metro's newest hot director, Swedish import Victor Sjostrom, so Browning had retreated to his comfort zone, substituting the new company hot sex symbol, Miss Pringle, for Miss Dean. Soon, though, she would fade before Seastrom's protege, Greta Garbo, whom MGM had had to take to get the director.
It's a good example of the genre, given MGM's high production values without looking too expensive to make.
This combination of rackets, thieves falling out, and phony mysticism was just director Tod Browning's meat, and he had been doing very with it at Universal with a series o crime dramas starring Priscilla Dean, often with Lon Chaney. Now Browning was at Metro, and Chaney had just started working for the company, where they would renew their partnership. For the moment, Chaney was starring for Metro's newest hot director, Swedish import Victor Sjostrom, so Browning had retreated to his comfort zone, substituting the new company hot sex symbol, Miss Pringle, for Miss Dean. Soon, though, she would fade before Seastrom's protege, Greta Garbo, whom MGM had had to take to get the director.
It's a good example of the genre, given MGM's high production values without looking too expensive to make.