In a circus tale by author Tod Robbins—a setting familiar to Browning—a trio of criminal ex-carnies and a pickpocket form a jewelry theft ring. Their activities lead to a murder and an attempt to frame an innocent bookkeeper. Two of the criminal quartet reveal their humanity and are redeemed; two perish through violent justice.
The Unholy Three is an example of Browning’s fascination of the “bizarre” melodrama and its perverse characterizations, which anticipate the director-actor’s subsequent collaborations.
Lon Chaney doubles as Professor Echo, a sideshow ventriloquist, and as Mrs. “Granny” O’Grady (cross-dressing Echo), the mastermind of the gang. Granny-Echo operates a talking parrot pet shop as front for the operation.
Chaney renders the drag persona with depth of feeling, never camping it up and delivers a multifaceted performance.
Harry Earles, a member of The Doll Family midget performers plays the violent and wicked Tweedledee who poses as Granny’s infant grandchild, Little Willie.
Victor McLagen is cast as weak-minded Hercules, the circus strongman who constantly seeks to assert his physical primacy over his cohorts. Hercules detests Granny/Echo, but is terrified by the ventriloquist’s “pet” gorilla. He doubles as Granny O’Grady’s son-in-law and father to Little Willie.
The pickpocket Rosie, played by Mae Busch, is the object of Echo’s affection, and they share a mutual admiration as fellow larcenists. She postures as the daughter to Granny/Echo and as the mother of Little Willie.
The pet shop employs the diffident bookkeeper, Hector “The Boob” MacDonald (Matt Moore) who is wholly ignorant of the criminal proceedings. Rosie finds this “weak, gentle, upright, hardworking” man attractive.
When Granny O’Malley assembles her faux-“family” in her parlor to deceive police investigators, the movie audience knows that “the grandmother is the head of a gang and a ventriloquist, the father a stupid Hercules, the mother a thief, the baby a libidinous, greedy [midget], and the pet…an enormous gorilla.” Browning’s portrait is a “sarcastic distortion” that subverts a cliched American wholesomeness and serves to deliver “a harsh indictment…of the bourgeois family.”
Historian Stuart Rosenthal identifies the ability to control another being as central theme in The Unholy Three. The deceptive scheme through which the thieves manipulate wealthy clients, demonstrates a control over “the suckers” who are stripped of their wealth, much as circus sideshow patrons are deceived: Professor Echo and his ventriloquist’s dummy distract a “hopelessly naive and novelty-loving” audience as pickpocket Rosie relieves them of their wallets.[81][82] Browning ultimately turns the application of “mental control” to serve justice. When bookkeeper Hector takes the stand in court, testifying in his defense against a false charge of murder, the reformed Echo applies his willpower to silence the defendant, and uses his voice throwing power to provide the exonerating testimony. When Hector descends from the stand, he tells his attorney “That wasn’t me talking. I didn’t say a word.” Browning employs a set of dissolves to make the ventriloquists role perfectly clear.
The significance of Echo’s courtroom confession: Professor Echo’s [moral] conversion represents one of the final judgements on the conversion of the cinema of sound attractions to a sound-based narrative cinema disciplined to the demands of realism. Echo’s decision to interrupt the proceedings and confess, rather than ‘throwing voices’ at the judge or the jury, conveys the extent to which the realist mode had become the reigning aesthetic law. Moreover, in refusing his illusionist gift, Echo relinquishes ventriloquism as an outmoded and ineffective art…
a huge box-office and critical success.
