White Tiger
About White Tiger
In London, criminal Mike Donovan is betrayed by his partner Hawkes and shot by the police. Hawkes flees to Paris with Donovan's daughter Sylvia and leaves the son Roy behind. Each child grows up thinking the other is dead. Years later Hawkes and Sylvia meet Roy, who runs a fake chess-playing automaton and is known as the Kid. The three take the machine to New York. Hawkes calls himself Count Donelli and rents a mansion on Fifth Avenue. They rob houses with the chess machine. Sylvia and Roy learn they are brother and sister, and that Hawkes killed their father. Detective Dick Longworth and Sylvia fall in love.
Cast & crew
More about White Tiger
Tod Browning directed and co-wrote with Charles Kenyon. The picture was still shooting in September 1922, when Universal changed the title to White Tiger. The company returned to Universal City in October 1922 for the last scenes, including a ballroom set. A May 7, 1923 release was announced and then pushed back. Wikipedia dates the release December 17, 1923. AFI lists a New York opening on November 20, 1923. Reviews ran in Film Daily on November 18, Variety on November 22, and Exhibitors Herald on December 15.
Themes
Look
William Fildew photographed the Universal crime film, including the Fifth Avenue mansion and the ballroom set.
Preservation
A print survives and has been transferred to Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- Priscilla Dean plays Sylvia Donovan. Raymond Griffith plays Roy. Wallace Beery plays Hawkes, later Count Donelli. Matt Moore plays Dick Longworth.
- Alfred Allen plays Mike Donovan. Emmett King plays Bishop Vail, a chess player, without credit.
- William Fildew, who had shot Outside the Law for Browning, photographed this one.
Scenes
- Hawkes leaves the boy and takes Sylvia to Paris after the police shoot Mike.
- The three work New York houses with a chess-playing machine.
- Sylvia and Roy learn who Hawkes is.
