Date and Time
- Saturday, Nov 8, 2025 12:15pm
Details
Special Features: Preceded by a Q&A with film historians Farran Smith Nehme and David Stenn
The major studios would not touch this incendiary exposé of a medical con man, so top actor-director Lowell Sherman (THE GREEKS HAD A WORD FOR THEM) turned to a Poverty Row studio to bring it to the screen. This thinly veiled biopic of the notorious Henry Schireson, the “King of the Quack Doctors,” offers a searing portrait of greed, manipulation and unchecked ego. Before becoming a top director, Sherman was known for playing scoundrels, and he delivers a chilling performance as Dr. Silas Brenton, a charismatic sociopath who seduces women into undergoing cosmetic surgery, despite having no real surgical skill — and no remorse for the consequences. Instead, he lives lavishly off his victims, until the lies and bodies pile up. Sherman’s own career was on the rise — he would soon go on to direct Katharine Hepburn, Mae West, Cary Grant and Loretta Young — but the same cannot be said for this film’s female cast. Their often-tragic fates will be revealed in the introduction by film historians David Stenn and Farran Smith Nehme.
