# White Tiger (1923 film)

White Tiger is a 1923 American silent crime film directed by Tod Browning starring Priscilla Dean and featuring Wallace Beery in a supporting role.

## Plot

As the film opens, Mike Donovan, a London criminal, is betrayed to the police by his associate, Hawkes. Donovan is shot by police and Hawkes flees to Paris with Donovan's young daughter Sylvia, leaving Donovan's young son Roy behind. Each sibling grows up believing the other is dead.
After some years, Hawkes and Sylvia return to London. There they encounter Roy, now known as "the Kid," who operates a bogus chess-playing automaton. Hawkes and Sylvia invite Roy to join forces with them. The three take the automaton to New York, where Hawkes calls himself "Count Donelli" and rents a mansion on Fifth Avenue. Sylvia poses as the Count's daughter and Roy as his secretary. The three plan to use the automaton to gain access to the houses of the wealthy in order to carry out jewel robberies. Meanwhile Sylvia has fallen for an admirer, the well-bred Dick Longworth, who takes them to visit his hunting cabin in the Catskills.
The trio exhibits the automaton at the home of Longworth's sister. After the chess match, Roy slips out of the automaton and steals pieces of jewelry from a safe. The butler recognizes that he is not one of the guests and has him brought downstairs. When interrogated he pretends to be deaf and dumb, then gives his captors the slip on the way to the police station. Hawkes and Sylvia realize that Longworth has recognized Roy and that they must flee. The trio decide to lie low in Longworth's cabin. Guessing where they have gone, Longworth arrives at the cabin and is taken prisoner.
At the cabin the trio grow increasingly mistrustful of one another. As Hawkes sows division between Sylvia and Roy, Longworth looks on in amusement. Finally Hawkes and Roy fight and Roy is badly injured. Sylvia and Roy realize that they are brother and sister and that it was Hawkes who betrayed Donovan. Hawkes flees and has a fatal accident in the woods. The police break into the cabin, but Longworth assures them that the robbery was "just an experiment" and the jewelry will be returned. He tells Sylvia that all four of them have been cat's-paws of fate.

## Cast

* Priscilla Dean as Sylvia Donovan
* Matt Moore as Dick Longworth
* Raymond Griffith as Roy Donovan
* Wallace Beery as Count Donelli / Hawkes
* Alfred Allen as Mike Donovan
* Emmett King as Bishop Vail, Chessplayer (uncredited)
* Lillian Langdon as Party Hostess (uncredited)
* Eric Mayne as Party Host (uncredited)
* Robert Page as Policeman at Mike Donovan shooting (uncredited)

## Theme

In White Tiger, Browning, a former magician, provides an exposé of the “mystifying mechanics” of the famous chess-playing automaton widely exhibited in late 18th and early 19th century Europe and America. The automaton fashioned to represent a Turkish chess master was an often convincing—though entirely fraudulent—representation of artificial intelligence: the device was actually operated by a human chess expert concealed within the cabinet below the chess board. Browning, a great admirer of Edgar Allan Poe, combined Poe’s famous 1836 essay on the hoax with the author’s fascination with tales of mystery and the macabre.
The protagonists in White Tiger use the “baffling” device to gain entrance to a wealthy estate and execute a jewel heist. In exposing the fraud, Browning violates a precept of the magician's code of ethics; to never reveal the mechanics of an illusion.

## Footnotes

* ↑ "Progressive Silent Film List: White Tiger". silentera.com. Retrieved May 6, 2008.
* ↑ The Library of Congress American Silent Feature Film Catalog: White Tiger Retrieved November 3, 2014
* ↑ The AFI Catalog of Feature Films: White Tiger Retrieved November 3, 2014 Sobchack, 2006 p. 24: “The White Tiger is essentially a remake of Outside the Law (1920).”
* ↑ Solomon, 2006 p. 50-51: “...prior to his career as a director, Browning was a magician...a 1914 movie fan magazine described him...as a sideshow artist...” And p. 51: “A number of Browning films of the 1920s contain striking reproductions of theatrical- or quasi-theatrical- illusions that are staged not only for spectators within the films, but for contemporaneous viewers of the films themselves.”
* ↑ Solomon, 2006 p. 55: Scenes from White Tiger provide “correspondences with Poe’s published expose (accent) Maelzel’s [automaton] chess-player.”
* ↑ Solomon, 2006 p. 56: “During his career as a director Browning was compared to Poe [by Joan Dickey in Motion Picture Magazine, March 1928, See footnotes]...In a studio biographical survey in the late 1930s Browning listed Poe as his ‘favorite classical author’”
* ↑ Eaker, 2016 : “In 1836, Poe wrote an expose of the touring “Mechanical Chess Player” Automaton. In the expose Poe revealed that inside this mechanical chess player was a concealed, quite human operator. Poe’s article was the seed for Browning’s film…”
* ↑ Solomon, 2006 p. 51: “In White Tiger (1923) it is the false chess-playing automaton which the protagonists use to gain entrance to-and burgle-high society homes.”
* ↑ Solomon, 2006 p. 52: “...Browning’s films explicitly violate the magician’s professional code, which stipulates that stage illusions [remain] concealed to the spectator...Browning did not hesitate to expose the methods of magic tricks on screen.” Eaker, 2016: “After a jewelry heist in a mansion, utilizing the Mechanical Chess Player, the trio hole up at a claustrophobic cabin in the mountains. The final quarter of the film casts a Poe-like eye on imagined (and real) enemies.”