The Mad Genius

“Cruel passions! Mad longings! A monster playing with the souls of his fellow beings!”

Vladimar Ivan Tsarakov (John Barrymore), a crippled puppeteer, takes in an abused young boy and wants to make him a great ballet dancer. Years later Fedor Ivanoff (Donald Cook) is a young man and a star, and Michael Curtiz follows him into a love for Nana Carlova (Marian Marsh), the same young woman Tsarakov loves. The man who made Fedor and the man he has become now stand on either side of her.