Riddle Gawne

Riddle Gawne (1918)

When Gawne finds his brother dying and hears that the killer has run off with his brother's wife, he swears revenge.

Date of release
1918-08-03
Runtime
50m
Genres
Action, Western
Director
Lambert Hillyer, William S. Hart

Casting

Interesting facts

Riddle Gawne is a 1918 American silent Western film directed by William S. Hart and Lambert Hillyer, and featuring Hart, Katherine MacDonald and Lon Chaney. The film was co-produced by Hart and Thomas H. Ince. The screenplay was written by Charles Alden Seltzer from his earlier novel The Vengeance of Jefferson Gawne. Chaney historian Jon C. Mirsalis claims that Hart contributed greatly to the screenplay but all other sources credit the writing of the screenplay solely to Seltzer.

Production

Lon Chaney had just left Universal Pictures over a salary dispute before getting hired to appear in Riddle Gawne (at the much higher salary of $125 per week). William S. Hart did not initially want Chaney to play the villain because he felt Chaney was too short to be imposing. It was Lambert Hillyer who talked Hart into using Chaney for the role.

Parts of the film were shot on location in the Santa Monica Mountains and in Chatsworth, California, from June 14 to early July. A western ranch house was built on a dairy farm for the production and later burned to the ground for a scene in the film.

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

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