As Michael F. Blake points out in his Lon Chaney biography, A
Thousand Faces, “Lon Chaney was never a
horror actor.” This long-held
misconception is due to the fact that only a handful of Chaney’s films survive,
the most notable being The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)
and The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
and number of macabre films that he made with director Todd Browning. However
Chaney’s films cover a wide variety of genres including Westerns comedies and
melodramas. Few of which survive today.
Chaney’s groundbreaking makeup techniques that he developed
earned him the nickname "The Man of a Thousand Faces." Although he is
often cited as America’s first horror star, he never acted in what could technically
be described as a horror film; the vast majority of his films had nothing to do
with the supernatural. In fact The
Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), The Phantom of the Opera (1925) and London
After Midnight (1927) three of his most popular “horror “ films could
be more accurately described as melodramas than horror films.
Lon Chaney (Leonidas Frank Chaney) was born on April 01,
1886 in Colorado Springs Colorado. He
was the second of four children, three boys and a girl. His father Frank
Chaney, a barber, had not been born deaf but lost his hearing at about the age
of two due to a childhood illness. Chaney’s mother, Emma Alice Chaney, was born
deaf and taught at a school for deaf children before marrying. The fact that
both of Chaney’s parents were hearing and speech impaired has been attributed
to the reason that he became such an expert pantomimist, which made him the
perfect actor for the silent films he would later star in.
Chaney’s mother was
diagnosed with inflammatory rheumatism when he was young. His formal education
came to an end during his fourth grade year so that he could tend to his
mother. Chaney took care of his mother
for the next three years as well as many of the household chores. During this
time Chaney would sit with his mother and draw sketches to entertain her and
would act out events taking place in the city or around the world and by
mimicking his friends and neighbors.
When he was old enough Chaney took a job as a guide at Pikes
Peak to help out with the household expenses. It was during this time he began
his lifelong love of trout fishing. It was also around that same time that he
began to work in the local opera house. His brother John helped Chaney secure a
position as a prop boy. It was there that Chaney began his long and illustrious
career in show business.
Chaney became a performer in 1902 traveling
with popular Vaudeville and theater acts. In 1905 he met and married a 16-year-old
singer Cleva Cleveland, and in 1906 their only child, Creighton Chaney (future
horror star known as Lon Chaney, Jr.) was born. The family of three settled in
California in 1910.
Marital troubles soon developed and Cleva went to the
Majestic Theater in downtown Los Angeles in April 1913, where Chaney was
working, and attempted suicide by swallowing mercuric chloride a chemical
compound of mercury and chlorine. The suicide attempt failed but ruined her
voice as well as her singing career. Chaney divorced Cleva and the scandal
brought an end to Chaney’s theatrical career. It has been reported that Lon Jr.
(Creighton) was told that his mother Cleva had died while he was a boy, and
later found that she had in fact lived sometime after Lon Chaney Sr.'s
death. True or not, Lon Chaney Jr. had
stated numerous times that he had a rough childhood living in various homes and
boarding houses until 1916 when Lon
Chaney married Hazel Hastings.
From 1912 to 1917, Chaney worked under contract for
Universal Studios doing mostly character and bit parts. His makeup skills soon gained him numerous small parts in several
films. During this time, Chaney met and became friends with Joe De Grasse and
Ida May Park, the husband-wife director team. They cast Chaney in a number of
roles in their films and encouraged him to play macabre characters. The
relationship would land Chaney one of his first leading roles in the drama The
Piper's Price (1917).
It was The Miracle Man (1919) based on a
1914 play by George M. Cohan, which in turn is based on the novel of the same
title by Frank L. Packard that put Chaney on the radar as a character actor.
This Paramount Pictures release was directed, produced, and written by George
Loane Tucker, and also stars Thomas Meighan and Betty Compson. This film in
which Chaney plays “The Frog" a
phony cripple, not only allowed
Chaney to showcase but his abilities as a makeup artist but as a
contortionist as well. Approximately three minutes of The Miracle Man
(1919) survives today but it is enough
to demonstrate Chaney’s talent. Chaney was paid $150 a week, a fraction of what
he would be earning by the end of the next decade.
Some of Chaney’s best known works came from his
collaboration with director Tod Browning. All together Chaney would appear in
10 films directed by Browning, often
portraying macabre and/or mutilated characters, such Alonzo the Armless,
the carnival knife-thrower in The
Unknown (1927) co-starring Joan Crawford. Crawford later stated that
she had learned more about acting
watching Chaney work than from anything else in her career. "It was
then," she said, "I became aware for the first time of the difference
between standing in front of a camera and acting.
Chaney was noted for being a demanding actor insisting that
his costars memorize their dialogue despite the fact that they were acting in
silent films. Chaney believed that speaking the actual dialogue made the scenes
more realistic. Is a matter of historical fact that Chaney went to great
strides to bring his characters to life sometimes at the risk of his personal
safety and health. For The Penalty (1920), in which he
played a legless hoodlum, he wore painful leg harnesses that enabled him to
walk on his knees with the aid of a pair of shorten crutches. He wore the
device long enough to inhibit the circulation in his legs and reportedly collapsed
on the set several times.
To prepare himself for the role of Quasimodo in the film The
Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)
Lon Chaney interviewed people who
suffered from various physical deformities. His make-up, which he developed
himself, for The Hunchback of Notre Dame
(1923) was unparalleled for its time, consisting of a knotted wig, nose putty on the cheeks, false
teeth, eye make-up, and made 15lb a plaster hump which, contrary to popular
myth did not cause Chaney any back problems.
As with The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923),
Chaney was granted the freedom to develop his own make-up for The Phantom of the Opera (1925). The makeup has been noted for being the most
accurate depiction of the Phantom, based on the description given in Gaston Leroux’s novel. To create the skull-like
appearance of the Phantom, Chaney
painted his eye sockets black, pulled the tip of his nose up and pinned it in
place with wire and enlarged his nostrils with black paint. Chaney went to
great strides to keep the appearance of the Phantom one of the closest guarded
Hollywood secrets. He would not allow any photographs of the makeup to be
published before the film’s release. It has been reported that when audiences
first saw The Phantom of the Opera (1925), they screamed or fainted at the
scene where Christine pulls the mask away, revealing the Phantom’s ghastly
face. 
In 1927 Chaney once
again teamed up with Tod Browning to make what would become one of the most
famous and sought of all lost films, London After Midnight (1927). The
last known copy of the film was destroyed in the 1967 MGM Vault fire. London
After Midnight (1927) was just as bizarre and macabre as the other
Chaney and Browning collaborations. In this film Chaney plays dual roles
of Inspector Edward C. Burke and The Man
in the Beaver Hat. It was the character “The Man in the Beaver Hat” a supposed
vampire that put Lon Chaney at the top of Universal’s short list for actors for
the leading role in Dracula which was at that time in preproduction. The film
would gross almost $500,000 at the box office, making it the most successful
collaborative film between Chaney and Browning.
Even with his success as an actor and the financial awards
that went with it Lon Chaney never seemed quite comfortable with his
newfound stardom. As Lon Chaney Jr. once related:
“His
ideal someone to look up to was the head teller of the bank. He wanted me to
become someone like that. Dad never seemed like a star or actor to me. He had a
curious suspicion of his newfound success. He always doubted it, always fearing
it would end. He kept up his membership in the stagehands union to his dying
day, just in case. He was so unassuming that when he died I suddenly realized I
didn’t have a single picture of him, didn’t own a single clipping of him or his
work. He wouldn’t leave any of the publicity stuff around. Somehow he always
feared it.”
The Unholy Three (1930) would be Chaney’s last film and first
and only talkie. This film, directed by Jack Conway, was a remake of the 1925 film of the same name
which had been directed by Tod Browning.
Chaney appears as Professor Echo / Mrs. O'Grady and used different
voices for the ventriloquist, the old woman, a parrot, the dummy, and the girl.
Chaney signed a legal affidavit declaring all the voices he performed in The
Unholy Three (1930) were actually his own.
During the filming of Thunder (1929) a particle of
artificial snow, made out of cornflakes, lodged in his throat and caused a very
serious infection. Chaney soon developed pneumonia and later that same year he
was diagnosed with bronchial lung cancer.
The actor’s condition gradually worsened and despite aggressive
treatment he died on August 26, 1930, just seven weeks after the release of his
final film The Unholy Three (1930).
Despite his association with the horror genre and crime
dramas Chaney often stated that of all of his films Tell It to the Marines (1926) was his favorite. Chaney refused to
wear any film makeup for this film, because - he reportedly reasoned –“ to have done so would have detracted from
the documentary reality and integrity of the picture.” For his role in the
film, Chaney became the first actor to become an honorary member of the United
States Marines. When Chaney died, Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler, who he
befriended during the making of Tell It to the Marines (1926),
arranged for a military chaplain and honor guard to participate at Chaney's
funeral. Thousands turned out to attend
the actor’s funeral and all the major studios in Hollywood shut down for five
minutes to pay homage to the great actor.
Following his death, Chaney's widow donated his makeup case
to the Los Angeles County Museum, where it is sometimes displayed for the
public. Makeup artist and Chaney biographer, Michael Blake asserts that
Chaney's makeup case is one of the most important artifacts in the history of
movie makeup.
Few silent film actors ever achieved the fame that Lon
Chaney had. Most are now forgotten;
their names are now merely a footnote in the pages of cinema history. Yet
nearly 100 years after his image first flickered onto the silver screen, Lon
Chaney is still a household name and will forever be remembered as one of the
greatest actors in cinema history.
