The Destroying Angel
1923 silent film
The Destroying Angel is a 1923 American silent comedy film directed by W.S. Van Dyke and starring Leah Baird, John Bowers and Noah Beery.
The film is based on Louis Joseph Vance's 1912 novel of the same name.
Plot
Cast
Leah Baird as Mary Miller / Saraa Law
John Bowers as Hugh Miller Whittaker
Noah Beery as Curtis Drummond
Ford Sterling as Max Weil
Mitchell Lewis as 'Strangler' Olsen
Philip Sleeman as Kidnapper
Preservation
With no prints of The Destroying Angel located in any film archives, it is considered a lost film.
References
Bibliography
Munden, Kenneth White. The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States, Part 1. University of California Press, 1997.
The public source identifies “The Destroying Angel” as 1923 silent film. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Destroying, Angel and silent.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “The Destroying Angel”, the useful work is to connect “1923 silent film” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q106589931. The first chronological checks are 1923, 1912 and 1997.
Later fame can flatten the distinction between original context, subsequent adaptation and institutional collecting history. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Destroying Angel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.