Lon Chaney senior

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Lon Chaney

Lon Chaney (born April 1, 1883 in Colorado Springs , Colorado , † August 26, 1930 in Los Angeles , California ; actually Leonidas Frank Chaney ) was an American actor of the silent film era . He became famous above all as a performer of tortured and grotesque figures such as the Hunchback of Notre Dame or the Phantom of the Opera , to whom Chaney was able to give dramatic depth and complexity. Because of his great versatility, he was also known as "the man with a thousand faces".

Life

Lon Chaney Sr. as The Phantom of the Opera

Lon Chaney was born in Colorado Springs in 1883 to deaf parents. His father Frank H. Chaney worked as a hairdresser . His mother, Emma Alice Chaney (née Kennedy), fell ill when Lon Chaney was a boy, had to stay in bed for a long time, and eventually died. As a child, Chaney often performed pantomime so that he could communicate better with his parents . At first he worked as a wallpaper and parquet layer before he made his first appearance as an amateur actor in 1902 at the age of 19. With vaudeville actors he traveled all over America. Chaney made his first secured film appearance in 1913 with a role in the short film comedy Poor Jake's Demise . In the following years he played in numerous films at Universal Studios , but Chaney only rarely came out on supporting roles and thus initially achieved little prominence. Only his villain role in the western Riddle Gawne on the side of cowboy star William S. Hart made him known to a wide audience. Between 1917 and 1919 Chaney also starred in numerous films alongside the screen couple Dorothy Phillips and William Stowell .

Chaney's final breakthrough came in 1919 with The Miracle Man alongside Thomas Meighan and Betty Compson . In this role of the lovable cheater The Frog , he was also able to prove his great talent for make-up and disguise first. He quickly rose to become one of the leading character actors in American film. Lon Chaney came into the top ranks of Hollywood stars in 1923 through the role of Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame , a film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Victor Hugo and directed by Wallace Worsley . The film was a success not least thanks to Chaney's acting performance and its elaborate masquerade. Chaney reportedly wore a 72-pound rubber hump for the role and a flesh-colored body suit that had a device that prevented Chaney from closing his mouth. The costumes for other roles were similarly elaborate and caused Chaney's health to suffer.

In 1924, Chaney starred in Victor Sjöström's drama The Man Who Got the Slap in the face of a circus clown with a tragic past who wants to prevent the marriage between one of her revered girls and his old archenemy. Chaney's portrayal of the phantom in the horror film The Phantom of the Opera from 1925, a film adaptation of the world-famous book by Gaston Leroux , also achieved great popularity . Chaney's mask is reminiscent of a skull and is therefore the only one so far based on the description in the original novel. Like The Hunchback of Notre Dame , The Phantom of the Opera was a success thanks to Chaney's multi-layered portrayal. Probably the first to portray horror characters, he not only portrayed them as monsters, but as tormented characters with their own inner workings and positive character traits.

It is also worth mentioning Chaney's ten films with director Tod Browning . In The Unfortunate Three , Chaney embodies Professor Echo , the owner of a pet store and leader of a gang of criminals who rob wealthy people. In addition to Professor Echo, who also likes to disguise himself as an old woman, the gang also consists of a dwarf named Tweedledee and a muscle man named Hercules . In the melodrama The Unknown , which takes place in a circus in Spain, Chaney embodies the armless Alonzo , a knife thrower who exercises his art with his legs. Alonzo actually has arms, but he hides them. After he has strangled the ringmaster, he has his arms amputated to divert any suspicion. Joan Crawford can be seen in the role of Estrelita , the daughter of the ringmaster , with whom Alonzo falls unhappily in love . For the role of Alonzo, Chaney wore a leather corset through which he pressed his arms so tightly that he looked like an armless. In the horror film At Midnight , Chaney played a police inspector disguised as a vampire to convict the gentleman killer Sir James Hamlin (played by Henry B. Walthall , who appeared frequently with Chaney in the 1920s). As a vampire, Chaney wore a ghastly mask again; the sharp teeth of the vampire are reminiscent of those of a shark. In 1935, Tod Browning made a remake called The Mark of the Vampire with Bela Lugosi and Lionel Barrymore .

Lon Chaney Sr. died on August 26, 1930 after a brief illness of bleeding from his larynx cancer . He was married twice: from 1905 to 1913 to Frances Cleveland "Cleva" Creighton, that marriage was divorced; and from 1915 until his death with Hazel Bennett Hastings. From his first marriage he had the son Creighton Tull Chaney, who later also became a well-known actor in horror films under the name Lon Chaney junior . Lon Chaney Sr. holds a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame .

Filmography (selection)

Chaney with Ethel Gray Terry in The Penalty

filming

1957 Lon Chaney's life was under the title The Man with 1000 Faces ( Man of a Thousand Faces filmed). James Cagney played the role of Lon Chaney .

literature

  • Rainer Dick: Lon Chaney. The man with the 1000 faces. In: Rainer Dick: Stars of the horror film. Tilsner, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-910079-63-6 , pp. 61-70.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Don G. Smith: Lon Chaney, Jr .: Horror Film Star, 1906-1973

Web links

Commons : Lon Chaney senior  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Chaney, Lon senior
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Chaney, Lon; Chaney, Leonidas (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American actor of the silent movie era; mainly seen in horror films
DATE OF BIRTH April 1, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Colorado Springs , Colorado , United States
DATE OF DEATH August 26, 1930
Place of death Los Angeles , California , United States