RetroClips

He Who Gets Slapped was the very first film released by the newly formed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and it made Lon Chaney one of the studio's defining stars before he ever put on the makeup he's best remembered for. Chaney plays a humiliated scientist who reinvents himself as a circus clown whose entire act is being slapped in the face by his fellow performers while the audience howls, a running bit that Chaney plays as pure showmanship on the surface and quiet devastation underneath. The image of the laughing-on-the-outside tragic clown, endlessly reproduced since, traces directly back to this performance.