The Unholy Three (1930)
The Unholy Three (US 1930)
Director: Jack Conway
Producer: Irving G. Thalberg
Scenario: J. C. Nugent and Elliott Nugent, from the novel by Clarence A. Robbins
Cinematographer: Percy Hilburn
Art director: Cedric Gibbons
Cast: Lon Chaney, Lila Lee, Elliott Nugent, Harry Earles, Ivan Linow, John Miljan, Clarence Burton, Crawford Kent
Production company: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Corp.
Sound, b/w, 73 min.
English language
Print source: Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY
“Lon Chaney talks!” declared Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s press release. The chance for audiences to hear one of the studio’s biggest stars speak was reason enough to remake one of Chaney's biggest silents, Tod Browning’s 1925 wild carny crime thriller, The Unholy Three. With tragic irony, Chaney’s first talkie would be his final film: when production began in March 1930, he was seriously ill with throat cancer, and would die just two months after the film’s premiere. Nevertheless, this new Unholy Three was a success. Sound allowed the stage-trained Chaney to display a striking range of voices (including his own basso)—something which might have assured him a future in sound pictures. Instead, The Unholy Three would serve as a fitting coda to a remarkable career.
For the remake, MGM reunited Chaney with the diminutive Harry Earles as a pair of ex-carnies, Professor Echo and Tweedledee, who now put their sideshow skills to criminal use. Disguising himself as the elderly Mrs. O’Grady, purveyor of exotic birds, Echo, an adept ventriloquist, attracts wealthy patrons by fooling them into believing his voiceless parrots can speak. “Mrs. O’Grady” then loots their homes with the help of her wee grandbaby Willie—in reality the chain-smoking and dangerously temperamental Tweedledee. Rounding out this band of thieves is strongman Hercules (wrestler Ivan Linow, in the role originated by Victor McLaglen), the brawn to Echo’s brain. It’s a bizarre premise that gets even stranger once a murder is committed and Echo’s jealousy over Mrs. O’Grady’s “granddaughter” Rosie (the wonderful Lila Lee) and a smitten shop clerk (Elliott Nugent, who cowrote the sound adaptation with his father) threaten the racket.
Director Jack Conway may lack Browning’s flair for the grotesque, but this close remake (only the climax has been significantly changed) is hardly the nattering, static bore often associated with films of the early sound era. Like its silent predecessor, The Unholy Three is fast and suspenseful, and the Nugents’ dialogue crackles with carny slang and pre-Code innuendo.
While the George Eastman Museum holds the original 1930 camera negative, this 1936 nitrate print is from the Museum of Modern Art, which acquired it directly from MGM shortly after the founding of MoMA’s Film Library in 1935. With a shrinkage rate of 1.025%, the print is in otherwise good condition and projectable. —Ken Fox