Lon Chaney

• Born: April 1, 1883
• Birthplace: Colorado Springs, Colorado
• Died: August 26, 1930
• Place of death: Los Angeles, California

Identification: American silent film star

Also known as: Leonidas Frank Chaney; the Man of a Thousand Faces

During the 1920s, Lon Chaney dominated the American horror/gothic film industry and created some of the most bizarre and fantastic makeup effects seen to that time. His portrayals of the title characters in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera assured his legacy in film history.

Born Leonidas Frank Chaney, Lon Chaney would go on to achieve fame as the iconic horror film star of the 1920s. As a child, Chaney developed a talent for pantomime in order to better communicate with his parents, who could not hear or speak. He made good use of this talent in his stage work, including comedy and song-and-dance routines, before turning to film. He acted in a vast number of films, 40 in the 1920s alone, and over 150 altogether, including short films and some that are incomplete.

In 1905, Chaney married singer Cleva Creighton, with whom he had a son, Creighton Tull Chaney, the following year. Chaney and Creighton’s marriage deteriorated, and in 1913, Creighton attempted suicide by drinking poison in the theater where Chaney was performing. She lived, but the poison irreparably damaged her vocal cords, ending her singing career. Chaney divorced Creighton and gained custody of their son. He later married a woman named Hazel Hastings, with whom he had previously acted onstage.

Makeup Pioneer

Chaney was a fine actor, well liked and respected by those with whom he worked, including actress Joan Crawford. However, his performances were all the more memorable because of the astounding makeup effects he devised himself, often suffering excruciating pain in the process. For example, in The Penalty (1920), Chaney played a legless criminal. Rather than resort to trick photography, he devised an agonizing contraption to hide his legs. He created a similar device to play a man who has both arms amputated in The Unknown (1927). An observer on the set of London After Midnight (1927), in which Chaney used wires to distend his eyes, could hardly believe the physical torture he put himself through for the role.

Immortality on Screen

Even more extreme was the makeup Chaney designed for his two most famous roles. The first, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), was a sweeping historical romance based on the novel by Victor Hugo. Chaney played Quasimodo, the hunchbacked, grossly deformed bell ringer of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. He wore a seventy-two-pound hump strapped to his back and a skintight body suit covered with animal fur. Under this costume, and through the makeup conveying his grotesque facial disfigurement, Chaney was able to make audiences see the humanity within Quasimodo and sympathize with his yearning for the beautiful gypsy woman Esmeralda.

Perhaps the role Chaney is best remembered for is as the titular Phantom of the Opera (1925), yet another epic production, based on Gaston Leroux’s novel. The foyer and auditorium of the Paris Opera were faithfully recreated on Universal Studios’ stages, as was the phantom’s subterranean lair. Chaney played Erik, the phantom, a disfigured composer whose face resembled a living skull, with false rotten teeth, a deathly pallor, and his nose pulled back by invisible wires to appear as fleshless as possible. Once again, Chaney’s character was stricken by hopeless love, this time for young opera singer Christine. The scene in which Christine unmasks the phantom, revealing his horrific visage for the first time, is widely regarded as one of the all-time great shocking moments in the history of horror films. The film also features a striking two-color Technicolor scene in which Chaney, dressed in red and wearing a skull mask, appears at a masked ball as the Red Death.

In 1927, Cheney made London After Midnight, of which no surviving copies are known to exist, for director Tod Browning. Chaney played a police inspector attempting to solve a murder by convincing the guilty party that the estate was infested with vampires. Surviving stills show Chaney as an animalistic vampire, with crazed eyes, a mouthful of razor-sharp teeth, a shock of wild hair sticking out from beneath a top hat, and a cape spread like bat wings over his cowering victims. On the strength of this performance and his one sound film, The Unholy Three (1930; a remake of a 1925 film of the same name), plans were made for Browning to direct Chaney in a production of Dracula. By this time, however, Chaney was terminally ill with throat cancer. He died in August 1930.

Impact

Known as the “Man of a Thousand Faces,” Lon Chaney was the single greatest horror film star of the 1920s, though he worked in other genres as well. His films advanced the art of special effects makeup to a degree that would not be seen again for decades. His son carried on his father’s legacy, becoming a horror film star himself under the name Lon Chaney, Jr.

Bibliography

Brosnan, John. The Horror People. New York: New American Library, 1976. Discusses Chaney’s life and influences on his career.

Guttmacher, Peter. Legendary Horror Films. New York: MetroBooks, 1995. Presents a concise overview of Chaney’s life and career.

Moss, Robert F. Karloff and Company: The Horror Film. New York: Pyramid, 1974. Contextualizes Chaney’s work in the history of the horror genre.

Osborne, Jennifer, ed. Monsters: A Celebration of the Classics from Universal Studios. New York: Del Rey, 2006. Includes a chapter on Phantom of the Opera, with stills and an essay written by Chaney’s great-grandson Ron Chaney.

Skal, David J. The Monster Show: A Cultural History of Horror. New York: W.W. Norton, 1993. Analyzes Chaney’s works as products of a post–World War I cultural milieu.