Secrets of the Night (Silent)

Robert Andrews is faced with jail after being framed for embezzlement by his former partner. To avoid imprisonment, he decides to fake his own murder during a party at his luxurious mansion. But when the guests start mysteriously dying one by one, Andrews realizes that there actually is a killer on the loose...one that may hold the key to proving his innocence...

A "Universal Jewel Production", Secrets of the Night is a spooky murder mystery that in many ways prefigures the horror films the studio would be making in a few short years. Leading man James Kirkwood began his career in D.W. Griffith pictures such as A Corner in Wheat (1909) and Home, Sweet Home (1914). Moving behind the camera, he became a favorite of Mary Pickford's, directing her in Cinderella (1914) and Fanchon the Cricket (1915). Despite this, he would continue acting well into the 1950s. His son, James Kirkwood, Jr., was the Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Chorus Line. Considered "the greatest dramatic actress" by Erich von Stroheim, ZaSu Pitts would star in the director's epic Greed (1924) after completing this film. Finding the transition to talkies difficult (her scenes in All Quiet on the Western Front in 1930 were deleted), Pitts developed a spinster persona that served her well in comedy roles for decades in everything from Life with Father (1947) to The Gale Storm Show (1956-1960). Madge Bellamy is best known for the Bela Lugosi horror picture White Zombie (1932). Big-budget films like Secrets of the Night were called "Universal Jewel Productions" in hopes of justifying higher ticket prices. This ploy actually proved to discourage audiences, and Carl Laemmle did away with the practice in 1929.

• silent