A Genuine Black Eye
Dateline: February 1923
Things got kind of rough during the filming of a silent movie called The Isle of Lost Ships that was taking place on a ship near Santa Catalina Island, CA. Here's the story for the movie: A small group of passengers on a ship is stranded in the middle of the Sargasso Sea when their ship collides with a shipwreck floating amidst the seaweed. One of the group is a nasty guy who is mean to everyone, including the only young woman in the group.
When the hero steps in to save the folks, he has to battle the nasty guy, and the fight got pretty realistic. (Sometimes actors in silent films used a movie fight as a way to settle an old score.) Somehow, the actor playing the hero got an honest-to-goodness injury. "[The actor] is wearing a 'beautiful' black eye, the result of an honest-to-goodness battle . . . one of the most thrilling scenes in the big melodrama." – Camera, February 3, 1923