Joan Crawford always considered "L'inconnu (1927)" a big turning point for her. She said it wasn't until working with Lon Chaney in this film that she learned the difference between standing in front of a camera and acting in front of a camera. She said that was all due to Chaney and his intense concentration, and after that experience she said she worked much harder to become a better actress.
Chaney's performance certainly inspired co-star Crawford who wrote "Lon Chaney was my introduction to acting. The concentration, the complete absorption he gave to his characterization filled me with such awe I could scarcely speak to him...watching him have me the desire to be a real actress."
Chaney's performance certainly inspired co-star Crawford who wrote "Lon Chaney was my introduction to acting. The concentration, the complete absorption he gave to his characterization filled me with such awe I could scarcely speak to him...watching him have me the desire to be a real actress."
As Paul Desmuke was born armless, he doubled for some shots of Lon Chaney where Desmuke used his feet for smoking or playing a fiddle.
Director Tod Browning loosely based the story on a real event of his circus days, where a man masqueraded as an acrobat to evade the police.
For many years this film only existed in murky 9.5mm dupes on the black market. In March 1973, at a screening of this film at George Eastman House, archivist James Card said that Henri Langlois and his staff at the Cinémathèque Française discovered a copy of it in 1968 among other miscellaneous cans of film marked "l'inconnu" (films "unknown" due to missing titles, etc.). L'Inconnu is the literally translated French title of this film.
The only known surviving prints are missing about 14 minutes of footage, mainly from the film's first half and depicting Alonzo's criminal career.