Western Guy wrote:
Just incredible to watch Chaney do all those foot manipulations, such as smoking a cigarette with his toes.
I love THE UNKNOWN and watched it almost obsessively when I first discovered it. Although I believe Chaney did a few "foot manipulations" in a couple scenes, there was a body double by the name of Peter Dismuke/Paul Desmuke for this film:
Paul "Judge" Desmuke - Born in 1876, Desmuke was a sideshow performer, justice of the peace and occasional actor who was remarkable for the fact that he had no arms. Desmuke gained his nickname Judge because he became a justice of the peace in Jourdanton, Texas. He later learned to throw knives and worked with the A. G. Barnes Circus and Sideshow and with Zack Miller's Wild West Show. He worked as a double for Lon Chaney in the 1927 silent film The Unknown, in which Chaney played an armless knife thrower. Desmuke married a woman named Mae Dixon in 1926 and she worked with him as his target girl in an impalement act which featured in the Ripley's Odditorium at the "Century of Progress" International Exposition in Chicago in 1933. He is sometimes credited as Peter Dismuki.[29][36][37] Desmuke died in 1949.
My glasses' prescription is waaaaay higher than yours...and my eyes are usually blood shot on Fridays. 
