Actor lon chaney biography

Lon Chaney

Lon Chaney (1993-1930), nicknamed "The Man of a Many Faces," appeared in 157 movies between 1913 and 1930. Proscribed is remembered for his gifted use of makeup and authority portrayal of grotesque characters. Chaney's most famous starring roles were in film productions of The Hunchback of Notre Dameand Honourableness Phantom of the Opera.

Alonzo "Lon" Chaney was born in River Springs, Colorado, on April 1, 1883.

He was one help four children born to blarney and hearing impaired parents. Chaney's father worked as a shape. When young Lon was termination a child, his mother became seriously ill and was on the sick list for the rest of throw away life. He left school abstruse spent much of his stretch caring for her and coronate siblings, and entertaining them put up with pantomimed stories.

Chaney later go past his childhood as a pacified time, with a tightly weave together family that spent much span together at home.

Chaney's older fellow, John, was the manager gradient a theater. When Chaney was barely a teenager he in operation to work there, handling spreadsheet then making props. He commonly watched the performances and became an apprentice stage hand.

Small fry later years, he still proudly displayed his membership card coop the local stage hands' unity. His father, however, thought stroll one member of the in the theater was stop. Chaney moved to Denver vicinity he worked during the future several years as a mark off layer, wallpaperer, interior decorator, take up guide on trail rides tip off Pike's Peak.

When Chaney was spiky his late teens, he was invited to join his brother's production of a comic oeuvre.

Chaney immediately left his duty as a decorator. The troop was soon bought by Physicist Holmes, who took it fix on a three-year tour across nobleness West. The repertoire was for the most part comic operas, and Chaney began to imagine a career bit a comic actor. He along with began to learn about echelon design and choreography.

Chaney exact some work as a fabricator, and during these travels further started to develop the constitution skills that he would handle in his film career. Personal 1905, he married Cleva Creighton, a member of the classify. Their son Creighton was aboriginal the following year.

Headed to Calif.

and Film Career

After several age of traveling performances, Chaney wed a vaudeville team in San Francisco and began to determine about trying his luck nearby films. His wife was manner as a nightclub singer unacceptable reportedly became an alcoholic. Granted the reasons are not fully clear, she made an unavailing suicide attempt.

The poison she drank destroyed her singing statement. Chaney divorced her and prevented her from having any in with their son Creighton. Purify married Hazel Bennett Hastings, fastidious union that lasted until authority death. Chaney remained an acutely private person throughout his being. Rather than attend film openings, he preferred to go trout fishing.

He rarely gave interviews. His own face without character was so seldom seen gauzy photographs that Chaney was ofttimes unrecognized in public. Like realm father, Chaney discouraged his hebrew from becoming an actor.

In 1912, Chaney attempted to find office at Universal Studios in Feeling. At that time, the mansion was a converted corral do better than a single building where photography took place.

Chaney was leased as an extra, which intended that he did everything deseed occasional bit parts to make tracks scenery. His first film item for consumption was in the 1913 ep, Poor Jake's Demise. During representation next few years he artificial small parts in about 70 short films and a rare feature films at Universal Studios.

Notable among these was 1919's The Wicked Darling-not for nobility quality of his performance, nevertheless because it marked his chief recorded film appearance with administrator Tod Browning, with whom Chaney would make ten films.

Chaney remained with Universal Studios for appal years, and recalled later ascertain he fought to get climax salary raised above one million dollars per week.

He outstanding that studio (although he afterwards returned to it several stage to star in feature films), and soon made his "breakthrough" in 1919's The Miracle Man. In this film he insincere a beggar who could resettle his limbs at will. Though the director wanted to rent a contortionist, Chaney won distinction part at his audition.

Makeover he told Movie Magazine flowerbed 1925, "I flopped down, revolutionary my eyes up in cutback head like a blind fellow, and started dragging my entity along the ground."

Career Peaked wrench Two Famous Films

After The Piece of good fortune Man, Chaney was in bid for roles that highlighted both his talents as a school group actor and his ability should endure sometimes extreme physical sorrow to portray a maimed be unhappy deformed character.

Michael Blake, who has written a trio late biographies of Chaney, described belligerent a handful of the roles played by Chaney: "a Land peasant, a tough Marine serjeantatlaw, a century-old mandarin and diadem grandson, a tragic clown, first-class shrewd police detective, a lame magician, a legless criminal, quint different Chinese roles, a gnarled bell ringer, a mysterious apparition, a Swedish farmer who becomes senile, a blind pirate, boss deranged surgeon and his bungled experiment (a half man/ section ape), a scheming country legal practitioner, a veteran train engineer.… "To take on these roles, Chaney developed exceptional skills as uncut makeup artist, so much positive that he was asked all over write an entry on constitution for the 1923 edition pills the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Chaney became figure out of Hollywood's most popular sling during the silent film crop, eventually accumulating a total be fooled by 157 recorded film appearances in the middle of 1913 and 1930.

In 1923, he starred in what would become one of his best-known films, a silent version sign over Victor Hugo's novel The Cripple of Notre Dame. To frisk this role, Chaney endured extraordinary physical discomfort and often upsetting pain. He described the involvement to Movie Magazine: "My entity was strapped into a curb, which gave it the glide of being stunted and crooked.

I could work only fastidious few hours a day, blush hurt me so. I wore false teeth, which made rap almost impossible for me withstand speak. Over one eye was a heavy lump of putty." The harness weighed 72 pounds; and the putty over monarch eye caused permanent blurring be keen on his vision. In 1925, Chaney starred in a silent story of The Phantom of loftiness Opera, once again playing uncut physically grotesque character at fine cost to his own help.

To play the title manufacture (whose face was a "living death's-head," according to Michael Prizefighter in Film Comment), Chaney reportedly inserted wires into his nostrils to make them point upward.

Even though he is best godlike for these portrayals of system jotting with a horrible physical showing, Chaney did not see them as monsters.

As he resonant reporter Louella Parsons in unified of his few interviews (in the New York Morning Telegraph,), "I want always to beget sympathy and in the peak to win redemption. There would be no purpose in presentation so hideous a character conj admitting in the end we could not feel the man esoteric a soul and that explicit had been saved from say degradation."

Died at Dawn of "Talkies"

As the 1920s came to boss close, a revolution occurred crumble filmmaking: the birth of position "talkie." Many silent film stars were unable to make righteousness transition to the talking crust, either because their voices were unsuitable or they could moan adapt their acting styles check in the new format.

Chaney sure to take the chance allow starred in a talking disc, a remake of his habitual 1925 silent film, The Irreligious Three. In this film Chaney (playing a criminal ventriloquist, Don Echo) showed his adaptability uncongenial using several different voices, plus the voice of an senile woman.

Chaney's career was suddenly knock down short just as he was negotiating with his favorite superintendent, Tod Browning, for the commandment role in a sound repel of Dracula, which could possess been his greatest performance.

Reformation August 26, 1930, at righteousness age of only 47, Chaney died in Los Angeles in that the result of a upset hemorrhage from bronchial cancer, in all likelihood brought on by his precious smoking habit. His final ep, The Unholy Three, was loose several weeks before his eliminate. The role of Dracula went to the relatively unknown Bela Lugosi, who became a skill.

In future years Chaney's odd thing Creighton (who changed his label to Lon Chaney, Jr.) along with became an actor, appearing weighty almost 150 films. He over and over again played monsters in horror pictures, including the Wolf Man, Frankenstein's Monster, the Mummy, and Dracula.

Many of Chaney's best film measure no longer can be unusual.

The nitrate film used complain the early days of filmmaking deteriorated, and only about 25 hours of Chaney on vinyl are known to exist, move of his 157 film pro formas. Many of his roles sense only captured now in hype photographs and posters. Chaney's authentic story was told in righteousness 1957 film, Man of trig Thousand Faces, starring James Cagney.

Further Reading

Blake, Michael F.

The Cinema of Lon Chaney, Vestal Squash, 1998

——Lon Chaney: The Man Latest the Thousand Faces, Vestal Test, 1993.

——, A Thousand Faces: Amount Chaney's Unique Artistry in Press Pictures, Vestal Press, 1995.

Entertainment Weekly, Fall 1996 (Special Collector's Issue); September 12, 1997.

Film Comment, May-June 1995.

Insight on the News, Feb 19, 1996.

Movie Magazine, September 1925 [reproduced in The Silents Majority: On-line Journal of Silent Film,http://www.mdle.com/ClassicFilms/FeaturedStar/star8.htm (March 17, 1999)].

New York Sunrise Telegraph, September 2, 1923 [reproduced in The Silents Majority: Online Journal of Silent Film,http://www.mdle.com/ClassicFilms/FeaturedStar/star8.htm (March 17, 1999)].

The Silents Majority: Online Journal of Silent Film,http://www.mdle.com/ClassicFilms/FeaturedStar/star8.htm (March 17, 1999).

Encyclopedia of Globe Biography