Unlike the Joker, the original character was far from being a villain driven by evil. Find out!
The Joker is one of the characters whose main features are his extremely frightening face. The inspiration for this striking feature did not come from nowhere, but from a film released in 1928, entitled The Man Who Laughs — based on a short story written by the same creator of the classic musical Les Misérables. Victor Hugo — which ended up becoming extremely important for the history of cinema.
It tells the bizarre story of a lord named Gwynplaine, who has his mouth deformed by a man who allegedly bought him after his father’s death, forcing him to smile the whole time so that he would “laugh at his foolish father.” After the torture, the man ends up being abandoned with a blind girl in the middle of the snow, but manages to save them and earn some money by entering a kind of circus of horrors, where he receives the name of the Laughing Man.
Unlike the classic DC Comics clown, at no point did the character go crazy due to his deformity. In the film, Gwynplaine becomes the main attraction of the circus and ends up falling in love with the blind girl who accompanied him. Even after being recognized by Queen Anne, who calls him back to his position, he decides to abandon the life of a lord to continue with his beloved.
During an interview in 1994, Bob Kaneone of those responsible for creating the villain who debuted in 1940, commented on how the reference for the character came about. “Bill [Finger] and I created the Joker. Bill was the writer. Jerry Robinson came to me with a Joker playing card. That’s how I sum it up. But he looked Conrad Veidt. Then Bill had a book with a photograph of Conrad Veidthe showed it to me and said, ‘Here’s the Joker,'” he commented.
In addition to his huge smile, his slicked-back hair and striking gaze were also some of the aspects of Gwynplaine that were adopted for the Joker. In the cinemas, in Batman: The Dark Knight, it is also revealed that, just like in the 1928 film, the villain’s laughter was caused by mutilation. However, unlike the Man Who Laughs, the Clown Prince of Crime’s gaze was not tragic, but rather motivated by great evil caused by his madness.
Source: Recreio
