Lon Chaney: A Thousand Faces

Decades before current day special effects technicians turned film actors into superheroes, vampires and other outlandish characters, one Hollywood actor defined what it meant to be versatile: Lon Chaney. This documentary, shown on Turner Classic Movies in 2000, goes over the life, triumphs, and difficulties of this silver screen legend. Chaney (Born Leonidas Chaney) was born on April 1st, 1883 in the small town of Colorado Springs. His parents were both deaf and incapable of speaking, and one of his relatives founded a school for educating mutes, which is still there now. While he had a depressing and silent childhood, this was the ideal environment for Lon to become proficient with the skills he would use so deftly as an adult, and he learned to communicate with body language and his face instead of his voice. By the early 1900s, Chaney began performing in vaudeville and met a teenage singer named Cleva Creighton, with whom he had a son, Lon Chaney Jr. After both moving to California, new problems arouse with Cleva over her disinterest in looking after their son, which led to the two breaking up. Cleva tried killing herself by drinking mercury, but only succeeded in permanently damaging her voice. The resulting scandal ensured Chaney couldn't continue to work on the stage any longer, and he decided to go into film. Chaney went on to portray characters in dozens of silent films all throughout the 1910s, and more often than not played one that loves a girl who loves someone else. Aside from how well he was able to alter his looks, what Chaney did better than arguably any other actor was get you to pity him. You really do feel devastated when he is humiliated, killed or forced to endure some other unpleasant thing in his movies. Early in the 1920s, Chaney starred in The Penalty, a forgotten classic nowadays that was harshly attacked at the time due to its rather brutal nature. Chaney plays a legless gangster named Blizzard whose legs were cut off as a boy by the father of a girl he likes. For the film, Chaney plays the part of a double amputee by walking on his knees while they're placed into leather containers. He had to fold his legs backwards into a large jacket he was wearing so the audience couldn't see them, and the back portion of the jacket was enlarged for this purpose. In an adaptation of Oliver Twist, Chaney worked opposite the young child star Jackie Coogan, later to find much more fame as the eccentric Uncle Fester on The Addams Family. Shortly after this, Chaney had his breakout roles in Hunchback of Notre Dame, in which he played the deformed title character (using his most ambitious makeup yet), and Phantom of the Opera, where he played a mysterious, ghostly entity lurking in the underground halls of a theater. Chaney also played clowns sometimes in his movies, which turned out to be some of his most memorable and tragic portrayals. He Who Gets Slapped and Laugh Clown Laugh (the latter featuring a young Loretta Young) were the prime examples. Later that decade, Chaney played a part that I personally love even though it has nothing to do with the horror roles that were his bread and butter. Tell It to the Marines from 1926 has Chaney play a no-nonsense marine corps sergeant who, in spite of being hard on the recruits underneath him, has a heart of gold. People (and even the USMC itself) liked it so much they made Chaney an honorary marine, as he accurately portrayed most members of the service. The next year, Chaney starred in a strange movie, even by his standards, and one of my personal favorites. The Unknown features Chaney as an armless circus performer who is in love with a girl played by the novice actress Lucille LeSueur (whose name by now was Joan Crawford). She likes Chaney's character over the strongman who always tries to hit on her because she feels intimidated by his big arms, and since Chaney has none, she wants him instead. Later on, Chaney gets into a fight with another performer and accidentally reveals that he is not armless, and the girl now knows about it. To gain her affection back, Chaney has a surgeon cut off his arms for real, only to discover the girl is no longer afraid of the strongman's presence. The mental breakdown Chaney suffers after he learns this is one of the most powerful silent film moments, and there's no way you can't feel bad for him. Soon, Chaney would go on to star in London After Midnight. It is a lost film; a fate that sadly befell most things Chaney was in. Reports on what exactly it was about are unclear, but it took place in London and Chaney's character had a truly terrifying look, with small wires holding his eyes and upper corners of his mouth open. Chaney would go on to star in a few other non-horror related films towards the end of the decade, with Thunder (another lost film) being his last silent one. When sound in movies came, Chaney was hesitant to get involved with them, thinking the reveal of his voice would destroy any magic his portrayals had built up of him. His first sound movie (and also his last) was a remake of a previous one he did, The Unholy Three. Not even 2 months after it was released, he died from lung cancer, apparently picked up from pneumonia he got in Wisconsin while working on Thunder. At Chaney's funeral, the eulogy was delivered by a chaplain from a nearby marine base. No one is sure why, but his crypt doesn't have a name. This is a great documentary. Narrated by Kenneth Branagh (someone I consider basically the modern Laurence Olivier), it offers everything you'd want to know about Lon's career, and how he went on to be one of the best silent film actors when executives thought he wasn't worth anything. TCM has a habit of putting together really good documentaries on things and people important to the development of early films, and I liked the one they made on Joan Crawford which came out around the same time as this. Whether he was starring in a horror movie or not, Chaney was able to propel himself to the top of early cinema and stood there for years.

... and yet the man still remains an enigma, because that seems to be the way he wanted it. He always said that between movies there is no Lon Chaney and always eschewed the Hollywood lifestyle.

His entire life is discussed - being born to two deaf mute parents, the apparent divorce of those parents, having to care for his bedbound mother when her arthritis advanced, and then the beginning of his acting career on the stage at age 19. Apparently his first marriage was fraught with jealousies and arguments, and when his wife took poison on stage - she lived but her singing voice was wrecked - in tune with the Victorian values of the time, somehow it was Chaney's stage career that was ruined, and that took him to film acting.

There are clips and stills from his surviving films in the 1910s. Only four of his Universal films remain intact because the films were deliberately destroyed to extract the silver. His good relationship with Irving Thalberg translated into him moving to MGM when the studio was founded, and as a result of MGM making a deliberate effort to preserve its film history, we have a pretty good record of Chaney's work there. Only a few of his MGM films are lost, and these are discussed. There are actually people who saw the lost "London After Midnight" (1927), a kind of holy grail to film preservationists. These witnesses say that they think modern audiences would be disappointed and they mention specifics about the production.

Chaney's favorite film - "Tell It To The Marines". Without makeup or a gimmick Chaney gives a great performance as a Marine Corp drill sergeant, trying to whip recruit William Haines into shape. His performance was so genuine he was named an honorary marine.

Chaney only made one talking film, and there are excerpts. There is speculation that because of his skill with makeup he would likely have gone back to Universal, had he lived, and played Dracula and Frankenstein and just been a big part of the Universal Horror years. But we'll never know. So many big stars with perfectly good voices just didn't make that transition to sound films for reasons that are not clear. As it is, Lon Chaney is frozen in time at age 47, his age at his death, at the top of his career.

If you want the details of Chaney's life and career this is a great documentary, as is anything Kevin Brownlow did. It was an extra on the Warner Bros. DVD set of Lon Chaney silents, but it is absent from the MOD set that replaced it. And unfortunately quite a few of the Lon Chaney DVD sets produced from 2006-2009 were subject to the DVD rot that plagued Warner Bros. DVDs manufactured during that time. But the documentary does pop up from time to time on youtube.

This is a welcome addition to my DVD collection. Here is an opportunity to learn a lot about the silent screen actor and the man who gave birth to the horror film genre in America - Lon Chaney. Whilst it's true that the man himself isn't revealed very much (he fiercely protected his privacy at all times), we are still enlightened as to how Lon Chaney the actor worked and struggled his way to the top of his profession. There haven't been that many documentaries about this talented individual but Lon Chaney certainly hasn't fallen into obscurity (unlike a lot of people from the silent film era). We are fortunate to witness interviews with people who happen to remember watching Chaney's movies when they were first released - an exceptional rarity. The interview excerpts with Lon Chaney Jnr. could have more frequent but they were informative all the same. Via this tribute, I was introduced to films like "The Unholy Three," "Tell It to the Marines," "HE Who Gets Slapped," amongst others. There are excepts from quite a few of his existing films and some rarely seen home movie footage. With regards to Lon Chaney shunning any kind of publicity, the documentary highlights this account: at one stage, some footage shows some of M.G.M's biggest names as they all stand next to each other outside. At the end of this line of people, stands a man who has his back to the camera as it moves in his direction. He is wearing a cap and glasses and he turns to look at the camera for a split second and resumes his former position. That person was Lon Chaney. This clip sums up his feelings about anything relating to publicity. The same applied to attending any film premieres: the actor avoided these occasions at all times. A rare exception, was when he and his wife attended the premiere of "Tell It to the Marines," due to the film being a personal favourite of Chaney. It is a case of wondering what might have been, if the actor had lived to experience success in talkie films. His only one - the remake of "The Unholy Three" - was deemed successful with regards to Chaney's vocal ability. He had a good, strong voice and I am convinced he would have adapted to sound satisfactorily. Thanks to this documentary and to the books written by devout follower Michael F. Blake, Lon Chaney's existing work can be enjoyed by a new generation of fans (me included).

I highly recommend this one!

This was a great documentary with excellent interviews and clips; could have done without Branagh though. This docu seems to finally remove the taboo labeling of horror star from Lon; showing the casual viewer that he made many, many , many more films that merely Phantom & Hunchback; and that a horror star he WAS NOT. Can't wait for it to come out on DVD. A

Documentary on silent film star Lon Chaney. It shows his start in the movies back in the 1910s It seems he was born and raised by two deaf mutes...this goes a long way to explaining how he was able to convey so many emotions with his face and gestures. It chronicles his marriages (one produced his only child--Lon Chaney Jr.) and start in show business.

The docu is OK. It does stress that Chaney only did a few horror movies--although that is what he's known for today. It shows rare clips from his many lost films (over 100!) and from virtually all of his surviving ones. It's a great opportunity to see what a great actor Chaney was--but this is lacking. There's VERY little info about his personal life--some people say he was happy go lucky but all accounts I've heard of said he was a very cruel, violent man. There is some interview footage from Chaney Jr.s son talking about his grandfather but that's about it.

The movie consists mostly of footage from Chaney's films or talking heads--people like Ray Bradbury, Forrest Ackerman, Lon Chaney Jr. (in an old interview before his death), various cameraman and such who worked with him.

It's a good chronicle of Chaney's movies but VERY little about his personal life. I give it an 8.