Laugh, Clown, Laugh

“What did he hide behind his painted smile?”

Tito Beppi (Lon Chaney) is a clown who spends his nights making crowds laugh and his days wanting someone to love him back. He takes in Simonetta (Loretta Young), a young girl he thinks of as a daughter, and meets Count Luigi Ravelli (Nils Asther), a wealthy man whose laughter comes on him without warning. Herbert Brenon builds the story around the three of them, and the longing that grows between them cannot be shared out evenly.