Leonidas Frank "Lon" Chaney (April 1, 1883 – August 26, 1930) was an American actor and makeup artist. He is regarded as one of the most versatile and powerful actors of cinema, renowned for his characterizations of tortured, often grotesque and afflicted, characters and for his groundbreaking artistry with makeup. Chaney was known for his starring roles in such silent horror films as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925). His ability to transform himself using makeup techniques that he developed earned him the nickname "The Man of a Thousand Faces".
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Early life
Leonidas Frank Chaney was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, to Frank H. Chaney (a barber) and Emma Alice Kennedy. His father was of English and French ancestry, and his mother was of Scottish, English, and Irish descent. Chaney's maternal grandfather, Jonathan Ralston Kennedy, founded the Colorado School for the Education of Mutes (now Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind) in 1874, and Chaney's parents met there. His great-grandfather was congressman John Chaney from Ohio.
Both of Chaney's parents were deaf. As a child of deaf adults, Chaney became skilled in American Sign Language. He entered a stage career in 1902, when he was 19, and began traveling with popular vaudeville and theater acts.
In 1905, Chaney, then 22, met and married 16-year-old singer Cleva Creighton (Frances Cleveland Creighton). In 1906, their only child, son Creighton Tull Chaney (later known as Lon Chaney Jr.), was born. The Chaneys continued touring, until settling in California in 1910.
Marital troubles developed. On April 30, 1913, Cleva went to the Majestic Theatre, where Lon was managing the "Kolb and Dill", and tried to commit suicide by swallowing mercuric chloride. She survived, but it ruined her singing career. The ensuing scandal and divorce forced Chaney out of the theater and into film.
The time spent there is not clearly known, but between the years 1912 and 1917, Chaney worked under contract for Universal Studios doing bit or character parts. His skill with makeup gained him many parts in the highly competitive casting atmosphere. During this time, Chaney befriended the husband-wife director team of Joe De Grasse and Ida May Park, who gave him substantial roles in their pictures and further encouraged him to play macabre characters.
In 1915, Chaney married one of his former colleagues in the Kolb and Dill company, a recently divorced chorus girl named Hazel Hastings. (Her ex-husband was a double amputee with no legs.) The new couple gained custody of Chaney's 10-year-old son Creighton, who had resided in various homes and boarding schools since Chaney's divorce from Cleva in 1913.
Career
By 1917, Chaney was a prominent actor in the studio, but his salary did not reflect this status. When Chaney asked for a raise, studio executive William Sistrom replied, "You'll never be worth more than one hundred dollars a week." After leaving the studio, Chaney struggled for the first year as a character actor. It was not until he played a substantial role in William S. Hart's picture Riddle Gawne (1918) that Chaney's talents as a character actor were truly recognized by the industry.
Universal presented Chaney, Dorothy Phillips, and William Stowell as a team in The Piper's Price (1917). In succeeding films, the men alternated playing lover, villain, or other man to the beautiful Phillips. They would occasionally be joined by Claire DuBrey, nearly making the trio a quartet of recurring actors from film to film. So successful were the films starring this group that Universal produced fourteen films from 1917 to 1919 with Chaney, Stowell, and Phillips.
The films were usually directed by Joe De Grasse or his wife Ida May Park - both, friends of Chaney - at Universal. When Chaney was away branching out on films such as Riddle Gawne and The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin (both 1918), Stowell and Phillips would continue on as a duo until Chaney's return. Stowell and Phillips made The Heart of Humanity (also 1918), bringing in Erich von Stroheim for a part as the villain that could easily have been played by Chaney.
Paid in Advance (1919) was the group's last film together, for Stowell was sent to Africa by Universal to scout locations for a movie. En route from one city to another, Stowell was in the caboose when it was hit by the locomotive from another train; he was killed instantly. The majority of the films made by the trio are lost apart from a few, including Triumph and Paid in Advance, which survive in private collections or in European or Russian archives.
Chaney had a breakthrough performance as "The Frog" in George Loane Tucker's The Miracle Man (1919). The film displayed not only Chaney's acting ability, but also his talent as a master of makeup. Critical praise and a gross of over $2 million put Chaney on the map as America's foremost character actor.
Chaney exhibited great adaptability with makeup in more conventional crime and adventure films, such as The Penalty (1920), in which he played a gangster with both legs amputated. Chaney appeared in ten films directed by Tod Browning, often portraying disguised and/or mutilated characters, including carnival knife-thrower Alonzo the Armless in The Unknown (1927) opposite Joan Crawford. Around the same time, Chaney also co-starred with Conrad Nagel, Marceline Day, Henry B. Walthall, and Polly Moran in the Tod Browning horror film London After Midnight (1927), one of the most sought after lost films. His final film role was The Unholy Three (1930), a sound remake of his 1925 silent film of the same name. The 1930 remake was his only "talkie" and the only film in which Chaney used his powerful and versatile voice. Chaney signed a sworn statement declaring that five of the key voices in the film (the ventriloquist, the old woman, a parrot, the dummy and the girl) were his own.
Death
During the filming of Thunder in the winter of 1929, Chaney developed pneumonia. This was exacerbated when fake snow lodged in his throat during filming and caused a serious infection. In late 1929, he was diagnosed with bronchial lung cancer. Despite aggressive treatment, his condition gradually worsened, and he died of a throat hemorrhage on August 26, 1930, in a Los Angeles, California hospital.
His funeral was held on August 28 in Glendale, California. Honorary pallbearers included Paul Bern, Hunt Stromberg, Irving Thalberg, Louis B. Mayer, Lionel Barrymore, Wallace Beery, Tod Browning, Lew Cody, and Ramon Novarro. The U.S. Marine Corps provided a chaplain and honor guard for his funeral. While his funeral was being conducted, all MGM studios and offices observed two minutes of silence.
Chaney was entombed at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, next to the crypt of his father. His wife Hazel was interred there upon her death in 1933. In accordance with his will, Chaney's crypt has remained unmarked.
Legacy
In 1957, Chaney was the subject of a biopic titled Man of a Thousand Faces, in which he was portrayed by James Cagney. The film is a largely fictionalized account, as Chaney was notoriously private and hated the Hollywood lifestyle. He never revealed personal details about himself or his family, once stating, "Between pictures, there is no Lon Chaney."
Chaney's son Creighton, later known as Lon Chaney Jr., became a film actor after his father's death. Chaney Jr. is best remembered for roles in horror films, such as the title character in The Wolf Man (1941). In October 1997, both Chaneys appeared on commemorative US postage stamps as the Phantom of the Opera and the Wolf Man, with the set completed by Bela Lugosi as Count Dracula and Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's monster and the Mummy.
Chaney is also the subject of the 2000 documentary feature, Lon Chaney: A Thousand Faces. The film was produced by silent film historian Kevin Brownlow and narrated by Kenneth Branagh.
In the song "Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon, both Chaney and his son Lon Chaney Jr are namechecked in the last verse.
In 2022, a biographical stage musical based on Chaney's life, titled A Thousand Faces: The Lon Chaney Musical, debuted at The Encore Musical Theatre Company, based in Dexter, Michigan. Chaney's character was played by Danny Gardner.
Honors
Chaney has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located on Hollywood Boulevard. In 1994, Al Hirschfeld's caricature of Chaney was featured on a commemorative United States postage stamp.
In 1929, Chaney built a stone cabin in the remote wilderness of the eastern Sierra Nevada near Big Pine, California as a retreat, hiring architect Paul R. Williams to design it. Located in the Inyo National Forest, the cabin still stands; it is not open to the public. Following his death, Chaney's famous makeup case was donated to the Los Angeles County Museum by his widow Hazel. The case is occasionally displayed for the public.
The stage theater at the Colorado Springs Civic Auditorium is named after the actor.
There is a street named after Chaney in San Antonio, Texas.
Filmography
Lon Chaney made 157 films in total. One hundred are completely lost, and another 23 are partially lost. Only 34 are extant in their entirety.
Two of Chaney's films (The Phantom of the Opera and He Who Gets Slapped) have been inducted into Library of Congress' National Film Registry.