He Who Gets Slapped

"Paulette Duval — Zinida"

"What is it in human nature that makes people quick to laugh when someone else gets slapped - whether the slap be spiritual, mental, or physical?"

"Victor Seastrom's production of the famous stage play by Leonid Andreyev."

"Lon Chaney — Paul Beaumont"

"Norma Shearer — Consuelo"

"John Gilbert — Bezano"

"Tully Marshall — Count Mancini"

"Marc McDermott — Baron Regnard"

"Ford Sterling — Tricaud"

"Harvey Clark — Briquet"

"Paul Beaumont lived - to laugh at life. He laughed at his wife and the Baron - and left them to the doubtful joy of each other's society."

"You forget, gentlemen - this is a circus - love must wait - - the performance must go on!"

"I say serious things - and people laugh at me!"

"How stupid people are - to laugh at a clown who lets himself be slapped."

"Over a hundred slaps last night, HE - you lucky fellow! Soon you'll be getting famous! But you know what they like - there's nothing makes people laugh so hard as seeing someone else get slapped!"

"In the grim comedy of life, it has been wisely said that the last laugh is the best..."

"Laughter - the bitterest and most subtle death to hope..."

"A strange thing, the heart of a man - that loves, suffers, and despairs - yet has courage to hope, believe - and love - again."

"Years had passed - Paul Beaumont was forgotten - but the laugh was still his. For the brilliant scientist had, with a supreme gesture of contempt, made himself a common clown - In a little circus near Paris, he amused the idle, the ignorant and vicious, with an act of his own fancy - under the expressive name of "HE - Who Gets Slapped" - Five years before, Tricaud had hired the strange clown who desired only to be slapped - and now each night he proudly counted his slaps - and the laughs..."

"He slapped me, Marie. I would have killed him, but they laughed - laughed as if I were a clown."