LON CHANEY
MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES
Lon Chaney was born Alonso Chaney on April 1, 1886, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the second of four children born to deaf and dumb parents, Frank H. and Emma Chaney. His father, who worked profitably as a barber, had emigrated from Ireland, and had been deaf and mute since the age of three. Chaney's mother had never heard or spoken; her own mother, Emma Kennedy, who had given birth to four impaired children, was known importantly as one of the original founders of Colorado's State Institution for the deaf and dumb. When Chaney was only nine years old and a fourth-grade student in Colorado Spring's public school, his mother was stricken with inflammatory rheumatism, and remained bed-ridden throughout the rest of her life. It was her son Lon who left school to tend her faithfully during the first three years of her invalidism.
It was he who filled his eyes and mind with both the unusual and everyday happenings of Colorado Springs, and later interpreted their essence in pantomine so that she too might see and relish his experiences. Small wonder that he became and remained a master of the pantomimic art. He learned out of necessity at an early age how to touch the heart through expression and gesture alone. In the summertime he worked as a tourist guide on Pike's Peak, and later through his elder brother John found work backstage in plays, after being aloud to speak fragments of lines in various small parts Lon was admittedly and hopelessly stagestruck. When his brother John decided to form a company of his own and embark upon a onenight stand tour of the Southwest, he called Lon home and, together, they wrote an original play, "The Little Tycoon". The inevitable happened and the little travelling company went broke. John sold his interest in the company and Lon went out on his own.
Chaney was only 19 when, in Oklahoma City, he fell in love with a singer he'd hired for the show, Cleva Creighton. They were finally married in the spring of 1905, and the following year Chaney's only child, a son, was born. The boy was named Creighton Chaney : he too became an actor and years later, after his father's death, changed his name to Lon Chaney Jr. By this time Cleva was making a name for herself as a great singer. She had many insecurities. Worst of all, she was not an amiable drinker, and she began to drink too much. Their quarrels were frequent. On one occasion at least, Chaney accused her of infidelity. Dramatically, she attempted to take her life by swallowing poison. She did not die, but after a long hospital stay, she found that the poison had ruined her vocal chords forever.
Chaney divorced Cleva and soon fell in love again with a chorus girl, her name was Hazel Hastings, and until he was grown Creighton thought Hazel was his real mother. The Chaney's moved to the movie capital Los Angeles and then into Universal City, this was in 1912 and by 1913 he was getting credit for some of his small extra roles in countless comedies and western action and dramas.
Lon received sole billing for a comedy released through Universal in August, 1913, called Poor Jake's Demise. He became a regular on the Universal lot, and while never under contract during those early years, he was on the weekly payroll list. In 1915, Universal gave him a chance to direct several programme features, he also wrote several scripts - but he pursued neither field to any great length. Chaney gained billing in over 75 films before, in 1917, he finally had a good part in a major feature that was not only critically rewarding but also a big audience box-office attraction. Hell Morgan's Girl, Lon's career really took off after this feature.
After many more features, Lon crossed paths with a director he was to work with many more times, Tod Browning, the first feature together was called Outside the Law (1921). During the next 2 years, Chaney continued to dazzle his audiences with one vivid characterisation after another. In 1923 Universal put forward a two-picture deal with Chaney. They had determined to make a 12-reel Super-Jewel picturisation of Victor Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris, more commonly known as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Chaney was the actor to play this role.
Chaney's performance of Quasimodo stunned the entire world into a universal acclaim for his talent. The next year when Thalberg took over the production reins at MGM, one of the first things he did was to sign Chaney to a long-term starring contract at the Culver City lot. In the late summer of 1925, the talents of Browning and Chaney merged again to present for MGM what was probably their best joint endeavour - The Unholy Three, a crime drama of three master criminals, which gave Chaney a chance to offer a vivid characterisation as Echo, the Ventriloquist, and also an opportunity to don a grey wig, be-ribboned bonnet and skirt to play a bizarre but believable fence for the criminal world known as the Little Lady Who Sells Parrots.
Chaney later went on to play the Phantom in Phantom of the Opera (1925), Chaney continued to be the mystery man of MGM. He let no one know much about him. He lived in Beverly Hills, and on only very rare occasions did he don black tie and attend a premiere with his wife. In the next four years Chaney starred in thirteen more features for MGM. The three features Chaney filmed in 1929 all boasted special sound effects, but no talking sequences. Chaney like Garbo and Chaplin, held out as long as he could from making a talking picture. During the making of his next to last movie, Thunder, Lon got a small piece of artificial snow lodged in his throat and was causing him constant irritation. Chaney finally agreed to make his first talkie. A remake of his own film The Unholy Three.
The talking version of The Unholy Three was enthusiastically received when it was premiered in midsummer of 1930. Following the completion of The Unholy Three, Chaney journeyed to New York, where he consulted throat specialists. His trouble was more than tonsillitis, because he had recently undergone a tonsillectomy, or any throat irritation caused by a fleck of artificial snow. The specialists determined among themselves that he was suffering from a bronchial cancer that could only be terminal. He was not told, nor did his public know that his days were numbered.
Chaney went to his cabin in the high Sierras, hoping that a long rest would restore his health, but struck by pneumonia and then found to be suffering from anaemia, he was forced to return to Los Angeles and St.Vincent's Hospital there, where he underwent a series of blood transfusions. He responded to treatment, although his voice was completely gone and ironically for a star who had just made his debut as a talking actor, he could only pantomime his needs and thoughts. In the early hours of August 26, 1930, he died of a haemorrhage of the throat.