Secrets of the Night

Secrets of the Night (1924)

At a lavish house party, bank president Robert Andrews stages his own “murder” to distract a visiting bank examiner from uncovering a shortage, setting off a whodunit where nearly everyone has a motive. The investigation spirals until Andrews is found alive and admits the frame-up—after the deficit is repaid. A silent black-and-white Universal mystery-melodrama-comedy directed by Herbert Blaché; long thought lost, a print resurfaced in 2017.

Date of release
1924-11-12
TMDB
6.7 / 10 (3)
Runtime
1h 4m
Genres
Drama, Mystery, Comedy
Director
Herbert Blaché

Casting

Interesting facts

Secrets of the Night is a 1924 American silent film directed by Herbert Blaché and made at Universal Pictures. The black-and-white "murder mystery-melodrama comedy" stars James Kirkwood Sr., Madge Bellamy, and ZaSu Pitts. It was adapted from the play The Nightcap written by Guy Bolton and Max Marcin. The film was thought lost until a print of the film was rediscovered in a basement in Mississauga, Ontario, in 2017.

Production

Consistent with the practice at that time, the comic role of the butler Thomas Jefferson White was played by Wilson in blackface. The use of white actors in blackface for black character roles in Hollywood films did not begin to decline until the late 1930s, and is now considered highly offensive, disrespectful, and racist.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended