The Movie: The Man Who Laughs (1928)
What Is It?: Not
quite a horror film, this adaptation of Victor Hugo’s novel still boasts a
horror-pedigree few other films share. It came from Universal Pictures and had
director Paul Leni (The Cat and the Canary),
actresses Mary Philbin (Phantom of the
Opera) and Olga Baklanova (Freaks),
and Conrad Veidt (The Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari) as a sympathetically grotesque lead character very much in the
tradition of the Phantom or the Frankenstein Monster.
Why Today?: On
this day in 1893, Conrad Veidt is
born.
