West of Zanzibar

Phroso is a stage magician in London. His wife leaves him for a man named Crane. In the fight Phroso falls from a balcony and loses the use of his legs. A year later he finds his wife dead with a baby beside her. He takes the child and goes to Africa. Years on he is sitting west of Zanzibar in an ivory-smuggling outpost, ruling the local people by frightening them with his tricks. He has raised the girl, Maizie, in a dive. The whole arrangement exists to draw Crane there. Tod Browning directs the silent film; seventy minutes, with Lon Chaney as Phroso and Lionel Barrymore as Crane. It is one of the pictures Chaney and Browning made together. The same story was remade with sound in 1932 as Kongo.