The Wicked Darling
About The Wicked Darling
After Kent Mortimer (Wellington A. Playter) tells his fiancée Adele Hoyt that he is ruined, she drops his gifts and a pearl necklace on the pavement. Pickpocket Mary Stevens (Priscilla Dean) grabs the pearls, hides in Mortimer's house, and later sells two of them to the fence Fadem so Mortimer will not be put out of a cheap room. When he learns she was a thief he breaks with her, and she sends the rest of the pearls back. Fadem and Stoop Connors (Lon Chaney) kidnap her to find the pearls. Mortimer and a bartender from the café below fight them off. Mary and Mortimer buy a farm and hire the bartender.
Cast & crew
More about The Wicked Darling
Tod Browning directed. Harvey Gates wrote the screenplay from a story by Evelyn Campbell. Jon C. Mirsalis notes that Waldemar Young was first assigned the script and that Gates wrote it instead. Alfred Gosden photographed the film. Production ran from 7 December 1918 into early January 1919. It was released on 24 February 1919 in six reels.
Themes
Preservation
A complete print with Dutch intertitles is at the Nederlands Filmmuseum. Two key scenes show decomposition. The film was treated as lost until that copy surfaced in Europe in the 1990s. A DVD with English titles, issued in September 2005 together with Victory, uses that print.
Notes
- This is the first film in which Lon Chaney acted for Tod Browning.
- Chaney later appeared with Priscilla Dean in Paid in Advance and Outside the Law.
- Spottiswoode Aitken plays Fadem. Gertrude Astor plays Adele Hoyt. Kalla Pasha plays the bartender.
- A Dutch-titled print, found in Europe in the 1990s, was shown at a Tod Browning festival in 1996.
Scenes
- Adele drops the pearls as she gets into a cab, and Mary snatches them with the police behind her.
- Mary sells two pearls to Fadem and gives the money to Mortimer's landlady.
- Stoop and Fadem choke Mary until Mortimer and the bartender break in.
