Lon Chaney 77 Years Dead

Silent film actor Lon Chaney's (April 1, 1883 - August 26, 1930) most memorable performances incarnate the grotesque. Robert Bloch (April 5, 1917 - September 23, 1994) always reminded us that watching Chaney's "Quasimodo' in THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1923) turned out to be the most significant moment in his childhood. Sometime after meeting Robert Bloch in 1989, but before mid-1993, I attended a screening of Chaney's THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1925) at a downtown L.A. historic theatre (probably the ORPHEUM). A famous organist (I forget his name, but he wore a turban.) played the accompaniment magnificently. Before the show, he introduced an elderly lady sitting in one of the still elegant boxes on the side of the theatre close to the stage. She was Chaney's co-star. She had played 'Christine Daae.' Film legend Mary Philbin (July 16, 1903 - May 27, 1993) took a bow while the audience applauded. (Actually, I don't remember if she stood up to bow or just nodded and bent, unable to stand.) It was a nice moment. I wondered if seeing the young and gorgeous Mary Philbin being romanced by Chaney the Phantom did anything for Robert Bloch's adolescence?

"He was someone who acted out our psyches. 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 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 never will be loved, you fear there is some part of you that's grotesque, that the world will turn away from."
- Ray Bradbury

While I appreciate Chaney's two biggest hits, my personal favorite is "the most intense and demented" of director Tod Browning's films THE UNKNOWN (1927). Once again, Chaney shows off his athletic skills as well as his genius at portraying seriously messed up human beings playing carnival knife thrower 'Alonzo the Armless.' Fate throws his character the cruelest blow imaginable. After sacrificing the unthinkable for the woman he loves, she falls in love with another man. (No spoilers in this piece. Go watch the movie.)

Like his character in THE UNKNOWN, life provided a series of difficult ironies for Lon Chaney. Certainly we are surprised at the obvious irony that the silent film star came from deaf parents. But the sound irony didn't end there. When his troubled wife attempted suicide, she ruined her voice as well as her singing career. As a final irony, Chaney became ill with bronchial lung cancer and died of a throat hemorrhage.

But my strongest impressions of the life and career of Lon Chaney come from the James Cagney performance in the bio pic MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES (1957). As when he played 'George M. Cohan,' Cagney's own theatrical background paralleled the real-life performers he would portray. The result is seamless, for both films. The Cagney performance presented Chaney as the journeyman actor who worked long at his career and hard at his craft before success arrived. As Chaney was able to illustrate Quasimodo's pain in living a misunderstood life, Cagney showed the emotional toil single father Chaney endured while struggling to maintain a relationship with his son. In the end, Cohan was a pro, Chaney was a pro, and Cagney was a pro.