The Way of All Flesh
The lost 1927 film
The first Best Actor Oscar honored a performance that can now be seen only in fragments.
Quick facts
- Existence state
- Officially Gone
- Peak stage
- general availability
- Research confidence
- high
- Last verified
What it was
A Paramount silent drama directed by Victor Fleming and starring Emil Jannings as a bank clerk who loses his identity and family.
The film received a full theatrical release and contemporary acclaim. Jannings' performance, considered together with The Last Command under the first Academy rules, helped earn the inaugural Best Actor award.
Existence timeline
Paramount distributes the nine-reel drama.
Emil Jannings receives the inaugural award for this film and The Last Command.
Paramount produces a new sound version of the story.
Two short sections are known to survive from the original.
Paramount completes the nine-reel silent drama starring Emil Jannings.
Why it ended
No complete print is known. Only two fragments from late in the film survive, leaving most of the award-winning performance unavailable.
Last confirmed trace
The fragments, studio stills, the AFI catalogue entry, reviews and the 1940 remake preserve elements of the story but not Fleming's complete film.
What it left behind
Its loss is a concise reminder that prizes and commercial release did not protect nitrate-era works from disappearance.
How we classified it
The archive unit reached normal public release or operation and is no longer available in its original public form.
The archive unit reached normal public availability, so Arrival Score V1 assigns 100.
Sources & verification
Last reviewed 2026-08-01. Sources are linked so readers can inspect the evidence directly.