The Auditorium at Northeastern Illinois University – Building E, 3701 W. Bryn Mawr Ave
General Admission: $7 • NEIU Students: $3
Wednesday, February 20 @ 7:30 PM
FALSE FACES
Directed by Lowell Sherman • 1932
The actor-director Lowell Sherman enjoyed a fascinating stage and screen career; he portrayed the villainous Lennox Sanderson in Griffith’s Way Down East, guided Mae West through her breakthrough role in She Done Him Wrong, and directed Katharine Hepburn to her first Academy Award in Morning Glory. Sherman reached his self-effacing apotheosis in False Faces, a Poverty Row quickie as shameless and viperous as its subject. Based on the infamous career of quack plastic surgeon Henry Schireson, False Faces follows Dr. Silas Brenton (Sherman) as he flees a free clinic in New York for the greener pastures and comparative anonymity of Chicago, where he sets up a boutique nip-and-tuck operation. Brenton throws over society women (Lila Lee, Peggy Shannon) like excess cellulite but worry not—the bad doctor can stay ahead of his destiny only so long, even in a gleefully amoral pre-Code spectacle that plays to the cheap seats. Dismissed upon its initial release by the New York Times as “a forlorn little item,” singling out Sherman for a “performance that is at least as insincere as it is unsympathetic,” False Faces has been resurrected as a grotesque, scab-picking exposé that must be seen to be believed. Restored by UCLA Film & Television Archive with funding provided by The Packard Humanities Institute (KW)
81 min • KBS Productions • 35mm from UCLA Film & Television Archive
Cartoon: “Northwest Hounded Police” (Tex Avery, 1946) – 8 min – 16mm
