Scott Lord Silent Film: Lon Chaney in Where East is East (Tod Browning, 1929)

Journalist Ruth Biery, perhaps most renown for her having written a series of articles on Greta Garbo for Photoplay Magazine (she in fact published the article Greta Garbo Goes Home in Screen Secrets Magazine), interviewed Lon Chaney for her article The Man Behind the Mask on the set of the film "Where East Is East" (Tod Browning, 1929 seven reels). " 'My mystery is a matter of good business,' he continued. 'Why let the people know what I look like? It kills the illusion. People want what they can't get and they can't get Lon Chaney.' I looked at him in amazement."

Author Robert Gordon Andersson, in his volume Faces, Forms Films, the artistry of Lon Chaney, describes the lackluster audience reception of the film Where East is East and how it was situated within the commodity of Tod Browning-Lon Chaney productions. "Where East is East is one of the least successful of the collaborative efforts of the star and director writer. The formula was wearing thin. If the film had been made three years earlier it might have had more vitality and been accepted by an audience, which whether the had realized it or not, had been exposed to a new Chaney, an actor whose ability and subtlety of characterization could be demonstrated without contrived situations and story twists."

The photographer of the film was Henry Sharp, the photoplay adapted from a story by Tod Browning by Waldemar Young.
Lon Chaney Silent Film: Lon Chaney Silent Film Lon Chaney