Lon Chaney facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Lon Chaney
Chaney during the production of The Miracle Man, 1919
Born	Leonidas Frank Chaney (1883-04-01)April 1, 1883 Colorado Springs, Colorado, U.S.
Died	August 26, 1930(1930-08-26) (aged 47) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Cause of death	Lung cancer
Resting place	Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California
Occupation	Actor, director, screenwriter
Years active	1902-1930
Spouse(s)	Cleva Creighton (1906-1915) Hazel Hastings (1915-1930)

1923 Lon Chaney portrait

Still from The Hunchback of Notre Dame showing Chaney, as "Quasimodo", being offered water by "Esmeralda" (Patsy Ruth Miller), 1923

Lon Chaney (April 1, 1883 – August 26, 1930) was an American actor during the age of silent movies. He is said to be one of the best actors of early movies. He was well known for his playing tortured, and often grotesque characters. He was famous for his artistry with makeup. Chaney is remembered for starring in silent horror movies. These include The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera. His ability to change himself using makeup techniques which he created earned him the nickname "The Man of a Thousand Faces."

Biography

Lon Chaney was born Leonidas Frank Chaney in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on April 1 1883 to Frank H. Chaney and Emma Alice Kennedy; his father had mostly English and some French ancestry, and his mother was of Irish descent. Both of Chaney's parents were deaf, and Chaney was skilled in pantomime because of this. He entered a stage career in 1902. In years following, Chaney traveled with popular Vaudeville acts. In 1905, he met and married singer Cleva Creighton and in 1906, their first child and only son, Creighton Chaney (aka Lon Chaney Jr.) was born. The Chaneys continued touring, and settled in California in 1910.

In 1913 Chaney went through marriage troubles and divorced his wife - all this received negative press coverage. This adversely affected Chaney's career and forced him out of the theater and into movies, to which he had worked as bit parts as far back as 1912.

Between the years 1912 and 1917 in film, Chaney worked under contract for Universal Studios doing bit or character parts. During this time, Chaney befriended the director team of Joseph DeGrasse and Ida May Parke (married couple), who both gave him substantial parts in their pictures.

By 1917, however, Chaney had become a substantial actor within the studio, but his salary was still low. When asking for a raise, he was told by studio executive William Sistrom that, "you'll never be worth more than fifty dollars a week."

Leaving the studio, Chaney struggled for the first year as a character actor. It was not until 1918, when he was chosen to play a substantial part in William S. Hart's picture, Riddle Gawne, that his talents as a character actor were recognized by the industry.

But it was not until 1919 that Chaney made a breakthrough performance as "The Frog" in George Loane Tucker's The Miracle Man. The film not only displayed Chaney's skills as an actor, but also as a master of makeup. The film received critical praise and earned over $2 million - this put Chaney on the map as America's best character actor.

Chaney is mainly remembered as a pioneer in such horror films as (the silent versions of) The Hunchback of Notre Dame and most notably The Phantom of the Opera. His ability to transform himself without sophisticated make-up techniques earned him the nickname of "Man of a Thousand Faces". He also appeared in several films by director Tod Browning, often playing disguised or mutilated characters (or both), including carnival knife thrower Alonzo the Armless in The Unknown (1927) with Joan Crawford. In 1927 Chaney starred alongside Conrad Nagel, Marceline Day, Henry B. Walthall and Polly Moran in the now lost Tod Browning directed horror classic London After Midnight, quite possibly the most famous and talked about lost film ever. His last film was a remake with sound of his silent classic The Unholy Three (1930), his only "talkie" and the only film in which he could showcase his powerful voice.

The Phantom of the Opera, 1925

His portrayals of Quasimodo (the bell ringer of Notre Dame) and Erik (the "phantom" of the Paris Opera House) meant to find some sympathy among viewers. These were "monsters" created by a cruel hand of fate - not by their own actions, and the world turned away from them.

"He somehow got into the shadows inside our bodies; he was able to nail down some of our secret fears and put them on-screen," the writer Ray Bradbury once explained. "The history of Lon Chaney is the history of unrequited loves. He brings that part of you out into the open, because you fear that you are not loved, you fear that you never will be loved, you fear there is some part of you that's grotesque, that the world will turn away from."

During the filming of Thunder in 1929, Chaney developed pneumonia. His condition gradually worsened, and the following year he died of throat cancer, and he was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, in Glendale, California.

Lon Chaney has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and in 1994, he was honored with his image on a United States postage stamp designed by caricaturist Al Hirschfeld.

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, who later changed his name to 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 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 name-called in the last verse.

Honors

Chaney's Sierra Nevada House, located near Big Pine, California, was his mountain retreat.

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 Paul R. Williams. Located in the Inyo National Forest, the cabin still stands, though 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 also named after the actor.

Filmography

Approximately 102 of the 157 films made by Chaney are currently classified as lost films. A number of others exist only in extremely truncated form or suffer severe decomposition.

Short subjects

Feature films

Images for kids

• 

  Chaney with his personal makeup kit in 1925

• 

  Ethel Grey Terry and Chaney in The Penalty (1920)

• 

  Chaney as the Chinese immigrant "Yen Sin" in Shadows (1922)

• 

  Chaney, in full makeup and attire of "Mr. Wu", conducts a women's orchestra, 1927

• 

  Chaney's unmarked crypt in the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California

• 

  Fagin in Oliver Twist (1922)

See also

In Spanish: Lon Chaney para niños