Lon Chaney: A Thousand Faces (2000) - full transcript

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English Subtitles
by MrTriggerHappy~Karagarga

Lon Chaney's make-up as the
Phantom of the Opera was so frightening

that all photographs
were banned before the release.

This made the kids flock to the movie

eager, but somewhat nervous.
For there had never been anything like it.

Edward Mountaine saw the film as a boy

on its original release in 1925.

There was one spot in the picture

where Mary Philbin takes the mask off

and the screen
is full of this horrible face.

I saw the picture once



and I almost ran out of the theater.

but came back again
with a friend of mine, Russy McCord.

And I started to build
this moment to Russy

and he sat there and we waited

and he said
how close are we to that moment?

How close? Are we getting close? Close?

And just as we got to it he says:

"I've got to see my mother!"
and walked out the theater.

Chaney frightened people, there's no
question about it.

He was a genius.

This man, Lon Chaney

can best be described

as someone who acted out our psyche.

He somehow
got into the shadows inside our bodies.



He was able
to nail down some of our secret fears

and put them on the screen.

We would go wanting to be,
to have a hell-scare out of his movies

and he usually accomplished it.

We would always
tryd to pick a sit near the the front.

So the image would be bigger
and would scare us more.

You couldn't help but laugh
with Lon Chaney.

I guess people don't realize that today.

You know he, all the monsters and

make-up he did all the time.

But he was actually a very,
to me, a very happy

old lucky man.

"The Hunchback of the Notre Dame"

and that wonderful make-up.

And his stature,
it reminds me of a dancer.

He just dances through things.

Lon Chaney was remarkable
and then he did his own make-up.

If he had lived he probably,

to my mind, would've played Frankenstein

and would've been Dracula
and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

But Chaney was a great deal more
than a make-up artist.

He was a,
he was an actor of great power,

enormous eloquence.

Certainly,
I've never heard a tribute to Chaney

of anything like the dimensions he deserve.

Chaney's career
has obsessed another make-up man.

No less than three books

have been written about him
by a Hollywood make-up expert,

who spent 25 years on the task.

Michael F. Blake.

My first taste of Chaney
was watching a very snowy print

on public television station
watching "Shadows".

And I was about 12 years old at the time.

But somehow someway
that marvelous word we call

Charisma and chemistry with the camera,

he just reached out and I got hooked.

What's amazing
is people think today that Lon Chaney

is a horror actor.

But Chaney wasn't just a horror actor.

Now, he could play anything.

He was Hollywood's first character star.

Chaney gave such life and depth

to his characterizations

that his films are invariably more
than just melodramas.

The was a scene in "The Shock"

where he's sitting in his wheelchair

and he thinks he has injured his girlfriend

and she's being taken away

and the expression on his face

It was so, so sad

it said everything.

It said sorrow, regret, pity. Everything.

After that, every afflicted person,
every cripple

has been special to me, because of Lon.

I think he tried to convey that,

no matter how bad a person is,

no matter how bad a villain he is,

there's always some good in him.

One or two of his performances

may seem old fashioned now,

but most are
as realistic as Humphrey Bogart,

who he sometimes resembles.

Yet he is remembered mainly for the fact

that he frightened people.

¶ Lon Chaney's gonna get you ¶

¶ if you don't watch out ¶

Colorado Springs
is now a modern industrial town

of 300.000.

When Leonidas Chaney
was born there in 1883,

the population was a mere 6,000.

In this colorful mining town,
his maternal grandparents

had founded a school for the deaf which

is still there today.

His parents were deaf-mutes.

Frank had met his mother, Emma

when she was working at the deaf school

and they settled in the town.

Years later, when Frank Chaney
had moved to Los Angeles,

he lived in this house
opposite of Malcolm Sebastian.

A child actor in silent comedies.

Lon Chaney
used to visit Malcolm at the studio

and watch him work because the boy

was friendly with his step-mother,
Cora, also a deaf-mute.

I liked it very much.

I got started going over there

when the other kids wouldn't go over there.

Because they were afraid of her.

She was some kind of a,
excuse the expression,

a monster.

And they would stand around on the side

looking around the trees at her

and everything, but,

I was curious.

I wandered up there

on to the porch

and she'd go in the house

and come back out with a cookie.

Several times he was over there and

he'd have a cookie
along with us so I believe

he came down to the studio,

because I cared for his step-mother.

Lon Chaney always said

his childhood was reasonably happy.

But he had a difficult time.

Well, the first part of his life,

from what I understand,

has been passed down through the family.

He didn't speak

for the first several years of his life.

Because he grew up in this world of silence

outside of a, you know,

the children,

the children
didn't have any affliction as far as

deafness goes.

So, the noise around the house
was only by the children.

The parents were quite silent.

Lon Chaney's education
at the Lincoln school

came to an abrupt end when he was only 9.

His mother fell ill.

The family was living in this house

on West Bijou street.

And Lon had to look after
his brother and sister,

but above all, his mother.

Due to the fact
that she had rheumatism

and not only she was bedridden,

but she can no longer
use her hands for sign language.

So, their only contact
was through the eyes.

Growing up in a deaf family
was probably one of the best

training grounds for Chaney.

Because as the deaf people say,
he had a "Deaf Face".

You use your whole body,
you use your face,

your hand,

you communicate everything,

because you don't have
the ability to speak or hear.

At the opera house

his older brother was a stage hand

and Lon joined him in 1902.

It was here

that he first began to act.

"As a comedian, he is irresistible",

said his first review,
which also praised his dancing.

He toured the mid-west
in one night stands.

In 1905, he reached Oklahoma city

and met a 15 year old singer

who came to an audition
and ended up marrying him.

Cleva Creighton
wanted to become a dancer

but couldn't dance,

and Chaney did his best to teach her.

They went on tour together.

Before they knew it,

they had to return to Oklahoma city

because she became pregnant.

And the birth of my grandfather

whose real name...

most people known as Lon Chaney Jr.

his real name is Creighton Chaney.

He was born on February 10th, 1906.

I was born dead.
I was born black and dead.

My father happened to be the mid-wife.

My poor mother
gave birth to me at seven months.

Well, dad not knowing what to do better

took me outside,

this was in February, imagine,

in Oklahoma it's very cold.

He took me outside

to the edge of the lake,
cracked the ice,

dumped me in and brought me to life.

Until the baby was strong enough,

Chaney took a job
at the furniture store,

then returned to the theater.

These barnstorming tours
that they would go out on

sometimes and often went broke
when they were out on the road.

So, not only did they
not get paid for their performances,

they had no money to get back home.

If you had a nickel,
you could buy a beer and

that would entitle you
to go to the free lunch

and have all you wished.

Well, while dad was getting his beer,

I'd go down
and get underneath the free lunch.

Of course I wasn't tall enough
to come above the counter

and the bar tender couldn't see me.

So, dad would get his beer
and instead of drinking it,

he would take his time and

come down to the free lunch.

And then he'd start
making big sandwiches,

such sandwiches,

and he'd act like he was gonna eat it but

then he'd hand them down
underneath, like that.

I'd grab them, into the pocket.

We did this as long as we dared.
Till the pockets were bulging.

Then we'd leave.

When he did get work,
Chaney not only acted,

he was choreographer
wardrobe supervisor,

and stage manager.

But the marriage was in danger
by Cleva's fractiousness.

Cleva was very headstrong,
and so was Lon.

Jealousy is aroused,

so he was teaching

ballet dances and working
with the female roles as well.

So, I'm sure

lots of misunderstandings.

And by the time
they came out to Los Angeles,

Cleva was still performing with him
in various shows,

but then she started to branch out.

She took a singing job
at one of the local cabarets

in Los Angeles,

and she became very, very popular.

More so than Chaney.

And that caused a lot of problems,

as well as with the facts that,

in order to be very popular
with a cabaret crowd

a woman would have to sit at the table

with whoever was there
and share drinks,

and obviously there were
a lot of well-dressed men

and a lot of drinks going around,

and unfortunately she developed
a very bad habit of drinking.

When Chaney prepared to leave

with the "Kolb & Dill" company,

they had a furious argument about

who was to look after Creighton.

Cleva refused.

She'd been on some various medicines

that were prescribed
for her nerves at the time

and she went,

I think they couldn't resolve it,

they separated for a time
before this event took place

and tried to reconcile.

So, after she finished her show,

she walked over

to the Majestic Theater
in downtown Los Angeles,

and standing
in the wings of the theater,

swallowed a vial of bichloride mercury.

It didn't kill her,

but it did kill her singing career.

And they separated in May, after Chaney

was assured that she would survive.

After the separation,
the Chaneys were divorced.

And Lon never met
or spoke about Cleva again.

Once the newspapers
printed details of the scandal,

Chaney could not stay in the theater.

He was forced into
the moving picture business.

By coincidence, one of his early films

shows him as a reporter.

Working for
a sensation hungry newspaper.

He comes to the aid of a girl reporter,

upset at orders
to ruin a woman's reputation.

Chaney helps her to save it.

His earliest films
ere made at the first studio

to open in Hollywood.

Nestor at Sunset and Gower.

He began as an extra,

but soon won more substantial parts.

Here, with Agnes Vernon,

he stages a rape-scene,

which was
alarmingly realistic for 1914.

Universal moved out
to the San Fernando valley.

And in 1915,
a much bigger studio was opened.

Universal City.

Chaney became one of hundreds of actors

trying to get work,

but he had the edge on the rest because

of his skills with make-up.

This was the make-up case
he used at Universal.

It was an ordinary lunch box,

But out of it, Chaney
conjured an extraordinary gallery.

He had his make-ups photographed

so that he could judge
what worked and what didn't

on film.

These were stills
Chaney sent home to his brother.

Sometimes he was recognizable,

but often he had to indicate
which part he played.

"I was playing a wild man."

"This is me, just below the X sign."

"Here I am a Russian prince."

The films from Chaney's early career

were almost all destroyed by Universal

to recover the silver.

Of a 110 films he made for the studio,

only 4 exist complete.

Those that survived
are often ravaged copies,

too shrunk sometimes
to go through a printer.

But archives and collectors
struggle to save what they can.

The National Film Archive in London

saved this earliest example

of Chaney playing two roles.

Both hunchbacks.

One in a vision,

the other in reality. A fisherman.

A collector in England
rescued this film,

which displays
the beauty of Chaney's movements,

even if the acting style
belongs to the stage.

It contains the only
surviving shot of Chaney dancing.

All too brief.

Chaney was taken out
by the director Joseph De Grasse,

and his wife Ida May Park,
also a director.

De Grasse encouraged Chaney
to develop his ability

with bizarre characters,

and together
the team made more than 60 pictures.

During this period
Chaney began directing films himself,

and even tried script-writing.

But he wasn't allowed
to carry out his ideas,

so he returned to acting.

In "The Scarlet Car",

directed by De Grasse, Chaney plays an

elderly bank teller
who catches his employers

cooking the books.

Chaney had married Hazel Hastings

while he was at Universal.

Creighton came home from boarding school

to live with them.

Hazel persuaded Lon to

ask Universal for a raise.

He had asked for a $125 a week
and a five year contract.

And the studio manager,

William Sistrom, refused.

He says: "You're never gonna

worth more than a $100 a week."

He left, but outside Universal

he endured weeks of unemployment.

His career was saved
by western star William S. Hart,

who gave him
an important part in a film now lost.

This surviving scene
came from the archive in Moscow.

Chaney came to public notice
and began to get work.

He was even employed
back at Universal with a director

called Tod Browning.

Browning was
one of the most remarkable directors of

the silent era.

A former carnival barker,
he revealed an obsession

for the morbid and bizarre.

He created disturbing dramas

the stories of which
he often wrote himself.

His collaboration with Chaney
began with this picture,

long considered lost.

He presented the underworld
with an uncompromising toughness.

He never allowed his characters
to look like actors.

Here he signals to his audience

that Priscilla Dean
is playing a street worker

having trouble with her shoes.

He throws in a dope addict.

Chaney and Priscilla Dean

played
hard-bitten characters who don't care

if the audience thinks them obnoxious.

This was startling at the time.

But it was "The Miracle Man" that

made Chaney Hollywood's
most outstanding character actor.

He played one of four crooks
who tried to cash in on

a series of apparent miracles,

performed by a blind faith-healer.

Director George Loane Tucker
wanted a real contortionist,

but none of those he found could act.

Chaney did a test so convincingly,

Tucker was shaking.

Everyone used to say
Chaney was contortionist

or he was double-jointed.
It's not true.

If you really watch
the healing sequence,

when he comes up and

he'll do like
the hand will snap out like this,

or he'll snap the joints like this,

it's all acting.

It's all just acting.

In the story, Chaney pretends to be

a crippled begger

in the process
of being cured by the faith-healer.

The crooks ready
to fleece a gullible public.

Then, a real miracle occurs.

"The Miracle Man" was

Paramount's
biggest money maker of the year

and a tremendous hit for Chaney.

Chaney's fame
brought him no leading man parts,

but more character roles.

Here he plays a Canadian trapper

supposedly lost in the mountains.

Chaney loved the mountains

and location trips like this
were a holiday for him.

In this minor film,
he plays opposite Betty Blythe.

"The Penalty"
is a forgotten masterpiece.

So brutal,
that protests appeared in the press.

Based on a novel by Gouverneur Morris,

It was hardly the sort of film

when associate with the age of innocence.

"The Penalty" had the censors running

for their scissors as quick as they could.

I mean you had a dope fiend,

you had a murder,

you had a naked model

and you had this character who wants to

cut off another man's legs and

have them grafted onto his own.

You watch it today and you say,
it's a really powerful film.

Back then Variety said:

"Here's a film as cheerful as a hanging."

Chaney plays Blizzard,

a gangster whose legs were amputated
when he was a boy

by this girl's father.

For Chaney seen here
with writer Gouverneur Morris,

this was as important a role as
"The Miracle Man".

Everything he trained for,

everything that he was,

that he learned throughout the years,

came through in this part.

Chaney actually
strapped his legs behind him,

walked on his knees

and refused to do trick-angles.

This is
the back of the jacket of the costume

for "The Penalty".

You'll notice
the lower portion here of the jacket

is very long,
much longer than in the front

and has a wider swoop in the back.

This was designed so that Chaney

could hide his bent up legs

and still appear like
a real double amputee to the audience.

Chaney put his bent up legs
into these leather stumps

and then
the oversized pants and the oversized coat

completed the effect.

The pain was so intense,

that Chaney
could only stand wearing the stumps

for 10, 20 minutes at the time.

Blizzard takes his revenge.

He plans
to have this young doctor's legs removed

in an underground operating theater.

Fascinated by the criminal mind,

Chaney wrote articles on prison reform.

He paid visits
to the underworld as an observer.

He was aided by law enforcement officers
like William J. Burns,

here visitng Chaney and Tod Browning

on the set of "Outside the Law".

"Outside the Law" has to be

a turning point
in the Chaney/Browning collaboration.

He plays the gangster Black Mike Sylva.

He's vicious,
he's terrible, he's villainous.

He's also got
a real interesting streak about him.

Chaney would do
certain things with his character.

I remember once discussing
this movie with a friend of mine.

who had seen it as a young boy and

after I told him I had seen it, he said:

"Did it still have the scene
where he picks up the tip?"

There's a scene in the movie

where they are plotting to set up a murder

and so, Chaney's the last to leave

and he pauses for a second,
he looks down at the table,

he picks up the tip and he pockets it.

I mean, it's a little piece of business,

it doesn't mean anything really,

but speaks volumes of the character

and then you look at

what Browning
did with the Chinese character.

He had nothing to do with the story,

the Ah Wing character that Chaney plays

doesn't advance the story whatsoever.

But Browning realized
this was a good piece for Chaney

and if you compare his performance

to the man
who plays Chang Lo in the film,

who's another Caucasian actor,

Chaney is more Chinese

than any other Caucasian actor around.

It was courageous to make this film,

because of the widespread prejudice
against the Chinese.

They were really reviled,

hated,

terribly mistreated,

and there were even lynchings

if anyone tried to speak up or protest.

There has been a wreck

off the New England sea port of Urkey

and among the survivors
there's a Chinese cook

I remember how completely

Lon Chaney was in the role.

And I remember the,
like the way he walked,

as if his feet had been
bounded or something.

He had a little,

very, very characteristic

and memorable way that

he walked.

Of course it was all make-up that

made him to look Chinese,

but all of the body language, eh,
sort of humiliated,

and I remember him
in sort of a bent way that he was.

He didn't have to say anything,
he didn't have to have dialogue.

You just felt him. You felt his presence.

Budd Schulberg was a boy of 8

when he visited the set.

The film was directed
by Tom Forman, seated,

and produced by Budd Schulberg's father,

B.P. Schulberg.

It may not have been
a box office sensation,

but it was selected

as one of the best pictures of 1922.

It was a very daring thing for then,

and it would still
be daring if they made it now.

Chaney was so sympathetic in the role,

that he was able to make a connection

with the audience that even people
who might come in the theater

hating the Chinese

would come out with a different

feeling that

these people are human beings also.

It amazed me
that this guy I had seen in pictures,

wearing a cap, and a suit, and a tie,

and suddenly he's bent over
and looks like a Chinese

and he acts like a Chinese character.

That's what one reviewer
said one time in the 20s:

"What else can this guy do?"

The role of Fagin in Oliver Twist

went automatically to Lon Chaney.

The title role
was played by Jackie Coogan.

We hired him to play Fagin,

we hired the outstanding actor.

Both had the ability to play anything,

and the ability to look like anything.

When he came down
to do his stuff with me,

we went to work
like on a Monday morning

and I met him for the first time

and we got up to rehearse this scene.

It was a pickpocket scene,

where Fagin
teaches Oliver how to pickpocket

and my dad told me: "Watch him,

he's a thief.

He'd steal the whole scene from you,

be careful to every trick."

But we rehearsed
and we shot it in the first take.

The only thing he ever said to me.

after that he came over
after we had done the scene he says:

"Hey, kid, you're all right."

But he gave a wonderful performance.

The same could not be said of this film,

which began life as

"The Heart of the Wolf",

with the highest credentials.

Its story co-authored
by Lon Chaney and Irving Thalberg,

the young head of production at Universal.

But the company
saved money on the director,

who wasn't up to the task.

Chaney always said he needed direction,

despite his experience.

Otherwise he might overact.

Re-titled to "The Trap",

it was the first film to be advertised

with this famous slogan.

"The Shock" was another for universal.

But it came in for severe criticism

Irving Thalberg
received from studio boss Carl Laemmle,

a letter saying
how disappointed he had been

by "The Shock" and "The Trap".

"I say to you, Irving,
I'm worried about the future.

I'm not going
to see you produce any more flivvers."

It has always been thought

that the idea of making
"The Hunchback of Notre Dame"

was Irving Thalberg's.

But Michael Blake
founded Alfred Grasso,

Chaney's business manager
had kept papers

proving otherwise.

Well,
Hollywood history has been re-written

because Lon Chaney,
like a lot of stars back then,

was looking to find material for himself

and he actually optioned the right to

"The Hunchback of Notre Dame",

and he was trying to find
financing for the picture.

It eventually came to Thalberg

and he convinced Laemmle.

The extent of Chaney's involvement

has never been before realized.

It ranged from who would direct
to who would write

and who would play Esmeralda.

Thalberg had
recent experience in making epics.

His baptism of fire
had been "Foolish Wives"

for which
Erich Von Stroheim had re-build Monte Carlo

and had gone on shooting until the cost

drove close to a million dollars.

Behind the set
of the "Foolish Wives" casino

rose a more economical set
for the cathedral of Notre Dame.

It would be combined with a miniature

to amaze audiences.

Just as Chaney himself

would startle the world
with his most extreme make-up yet.

Chaney's inspiration
came from an illustrated

edition of Victor Hugo's novel.

It meant
that he had to alter his whole body.

Making-up took 3 hours a day

and was extremely uncomfortable.

Patsy Ruth Miller played Esmeralda.

I felt that he almost relished that pain

because,

it gave him that feeling
that he wanted to have

of a tortured creature.

He did obviously suffered
a great deal of discomfort

but a lot of the myths behind Chaney

are just that, myths.

There's no truth
that he was a masochist,

he was very proud of his work,

he was very professional about his work,

but he would never
endanger himself to the point

that he hurt his body
that he would never work again.

I mean it's foolish
when you really think about it.

Everyone said
he wore a 70-pound (32 kg) rubber hump

but it's not true.

It was 5 to 20-pound (9 kg)
and was made out of plaster

and it fit
on a harness that he wore on his back,

similar to a back-pack,
attached around the waist

and on the upper portion
of the breastplate area

he had some ropes

and he would tie, take the rope
and bend down and tie himself here

so he would be in a stooped position.

Chaney got his friend
Wallace Worsley as director.

Worsley had done "The Penalty"

and three other Chaney productions.

Wallace Worsley was the director,

but in my opinion,

Lon directed it more than Worsley did.

One of the things that I learned

about acting from him was

that you don't have to feel the emotion

enough to really cry real tears
or tear yourself apart.

I don't think he would've approved

to the school of acting a bit.

What he kept saying to me:
"Remember, you are an actress

and an actresses job
is to make the audience feel.

doesn't matter
whether you're torn apart inside.

if you do not tear the audience apart

you're not playing the part well."

He convinced me,
even though I was 3 years old.

that there was
a hunchback somewhere in me.

There was this shadow of this hunchback

even though I was a normal kid.

But my feelings for him were so terrific

that I bursted into tears.

Every available arc-light in Hollywood

was used
to illuminate the massive night scenes.

Quasimodo was besieged in the cathedral
with Esmeralda,

as the Paris mob rises.

It was something

people hadn't seen before.

You know, this was medieval Paris
and all the sets and the crowds

and here you have this hunchback character

that people love, people feel sorry for

when he doesn't get the girl.

And when he dies
at the end and he's ringing the bells,

you know he's ringing
his own death-knell.

It was a tremoundes performance,

"The Hunchback" established Chaney

as Hollywood's
outstanding character star.

His modest announcement
that he was now at liberty

was followed by a picture for Paramount

and then one for a new company

Metro Goldwyn,
occupying the old Goldwyn studio

at Culver City.

In charge of production,

Irving Thalberg.

But MGM insisted on publicity

while Chaney was ambivalent about it.

Chaney's approach to publicity was:

I get more publicity
if I say nothing and do nothing

than if I stood there and smiled.

For instance,

a prime example
is the 1925 MGM's studio tour

which was made for

the stock holders of Loews Inc.

and they had all the MGM stars assembled

on the front lawn
in front of the dressing room row

and the camera pans
and you see Norma Shearer,

John Gilbert, and everybody in it.

And then,
as we come towards the end here

here's this guy
with his back to the camera

and he's in a very animated conversation

and he turns just ever so briefly

so you get a quick look at the face

and then turns back
and that was Chaney.

He had embarked

on a rare publicity tour for "Hunchback"

and thrilled this boy when

his picture appeared in the papers.

But he avoided interviewers

and the press
regarded him as a man of mystery.

Between pictures he used to say

there is no Lon Chaney.

He was what I would call
a self-enclosed man,

if you know what I mean.

Not that he wasn't outgoing,
in many ways he was very sweet,

he was easy to chat with
if you got him in the right mood,

when he wasn't thinking of his part,

but he did not enter
into Hollywood as such.

I don't recall
he's ever been at any parties

and I don't think many people knew much

about his private life.

His private life was private.

There are few personal photographs

even theses shots of his farewell

to Hazel and Creighton
were taken on the "Hunchback" tour.

There are shots of him clowning on the set

with Wallace Beery.

A few snap-shots
show him on holiday in the mountains.

He built a cabin in the woods at Big Pine.

And there are home movies

taken by his friends, the Dunphys.

Here, Chaney clowns with his wife Hazel.

The other man is William Dunphy.

Little is known about Hazel,
but they were a devoted couple.

Chaney was so keen on filmmaking

that he bought
one of the first 16mm cameras.

This still is
the only evidence of his filmmaking,

the footage he shot has disappeared.

Chaney was no recluse,

Here he is
with western star Harry Carey.

With director Clarence Brown.

With a new actress, Greta Garbo.

Chaney stood up for the best interests

of the crews he worked with

and was generous with money and advise.

One man he helped was Boris Karloff.

He of all people,
gave him the best single piece of advice

he had ever been given.

There was a time
when my father was certainly

an unknown struggling actor

and a bit discouraged

and Chaney Sr. gave him a lift home

and in the car
my father was asking his advice

and Chaney Sr. said to him:

"The best advice I can give you is to

find something no one else can do

and do it better
than anybody else can do it

and you'll leave your mark."

Chaney was Metro Goldwyn's first star

in the company's first film.

His director was
from Sweden, Victor Sjostrom.

Chaney co-starred

with Norma Shearer and John Gilbert.

The clown takes revenge
on the man who have betrayed him.

Tully Marshall as the Count,

Marc MacDermott as the Baron.

Chaney plays a scientist
in the Andreyev's play.

His discoveries
are presented to the academy

by his sponsor, the Baron.

The scientist joins a circus
using the slap as his act.

The clown sees the Baron

among the audience.

He falls in love
with the bareback rider

played by Norma Shearer.

When he confesses his love to her,

she thinks he's kidding and she slaps him.

He's devastated and

your heart breaks,

you're going oh my God,
you feel terrible for him.

That was a credit
to Chaney's talent that

he was able to reach in and

get the audience's sympathy.

The history of Lon Chaney

is the history
of a sequence of unrequited loves.

In film after film after film

he brings
that part of you out in the open

because you fear that you are not loved,

you fear that you never will be loved,

you fear there's some part of you

that's grotesque.
That the world will turn away from.

I think that's the quality
that puts Lon Chaney

above almost all the stars of his time.

In "The Unholy Three"

the girl Chaney loves comes back to him

as she promised

and he lets her go.

Her gratitude is profound,

she leaves for the man she really loves.

Tod Browning had great difficulties
selling the project,

but it turned out to be

one of the most successful
films of the year.

Restoring Browning's reputation,

he was back with the world he knew so well.

A world of carnivals,
freaks and side shows.

The script-writer was Waldemar Young,

who adapted 8 of the Chaney-Browning films.

Chaney was at the peak of his talent

as Echo, the ventriloquist.

"The Unholy Three"

Echo, played by Chaney;

a strong man, Victor McLaglen;

a midget, Harry Earles,

can concoct the perfect crime.

They open a bird store as a front.

Mrs. O'Grady runs it.

The old lady and the baby

add a charming domestic touch.

Nobody would suspect these gentle people

of robbery or murder.

In a scene
with Matthew Betz as a detective,

Chaney's expressions

enhance the suspense,

for the stolen jewels

are in the elephant.

This is Lon Chaney
in a 1918 propaganda film

with Rupert Julian as the Kaiser.

Julian never got over
the Prussian officer pose

and maintained it even while

directing "The Phantom of the Opera"
at the Universal.

There were rumors of tension
between Julian and Chaney.

But were they true?

Oh, I know the problems

between Chaney and Julian were true.

Charles Van Enger,
the cameraman, told me that

they just hated each other.

Julian wanted a much broader performance

than what Chaney had in mind
for his character

and Julian kinda coming off
of replacing Von Stroheim

in "Merry-Go-Around",

he probably thought
he was as good as Von Stroheim,

if not better.

And the relationship
between Chaney and Julian

quickly went downhill.

Nonetheless Julian did a remarkable job.

The Phantom
is at first sketched in by suggestion.

People thought Universal mad,

where they really
paying Chaney to play a shadow?

I mean you can always tell Chaney,

no matter how much make-up he's got on

you can tell it's Chaney
by the use of his hands.

They were like music.

Some scenes were done
in various color processes:

Handschiegl and Technicolor.

There were
certain scenes in all of his films

that you knew were set pieces.

Like on top of the opera house

late at night with the lovers up there

and they think
they have escaped The Phantom

but he's above them in the wind.

Or the moment
when The Phantom comes down the stairs

and freezes the people
at The Masque of the Red Death.

And then at the very end of the film,

when The Phantom confronts the crowd,

and he rears back,

and he's got what they think
might be a hand grenade

or something in one hand

and he threatens them
with a clenched hand

and they all pull back.

And then he opens his hand and laughs

to show
that he terrified them with nothing.

That metaphor
is the whole of the Lon Chaney.

For a whole lifetime

he threatened you with his closed fist

and you knew
there was something terrible in there

and at the very end of his life

went like that

and you saw
there was nothing there at all

but you've been terrified for no reason.

Chaney's contract

proscribed all photographs
of the un-masked Phantom

to ensure the strongest possible impact
in the theater.

A lot of people say
that the make-up caused him

great pain
and great difficulty but it's not true.

The secret lay
in a small leather covered box.

This was Lon Chaney's make-up box.

To many make-up artists
this is the Holy Grail.

This is the make-up case

that he created his thousand faces with.

He started using this case in 1919

and used it until his death in 1930.

It was originally a mechanic's

tool box.

With these simple devices,

Chaney created
one of the most frightening faces

ever put on the screen.

He prepared much of his make-up

on this wax model of his head

using cotton and collodion
to create face pieces.

And as far as the nose,
he took a strip of fish skin

which is a thin transparent material

that he would glue here
on his nose with spirit gum,

hold the nose up
to whatever length or width he'd want

and then run it up
to the bridge of the nose

and up under the skullcap
so you'd have that effect.

No one thought
Chaney could ever improve on that.

One of the very few
whoever saw the make-up develop

was assistant director Willard Sheldon

who watched him create
an ancient Chinese for a MGM film

called "Mr. Wu".

So, what he did,

he got on a streetcar

and took a seat
at the back of that streetcar

and stayed in that streetcar

towards the end.

He didn't care where it was going

at the end of that time

not one person took him for

anything but what he appeared to be,

and old Chinese laundry man.

In the film,

the make-up became
that of a hundred year old Mandarin.

In the same picture
he played his own grandson,

young, and middle aged.

My grandfather talks about
remembering him

going out to his room
and secluding himself

and calling him up occasionally, saying:

"Hey, what do you think of this?"

You know, and he would certainly

go through a lot of pains
to perfect the role.

Out of a small little kid

these thousand faces emerged

that was just incredible,
the way he changed himself.

But then Chaney made
"Tell It to the Marines"

with William Haines.

This was the movie that proved
Lon Chaney did not need make-up

to prove that he was a good actor

and he was a box office star.

Chaney is

just phenomenal in it.

He is the character
that you see in later films like

"To the Shores of Tripoli",
"Sands of Iwo Jima",

tough Marine sergeant

who's gonna mould
this wise-mouth smart-aleck

into a real Marine

and despite him being so hard

and so gruff

he's really got
a heart of gold underneath.

Eleanor Boardman played a nurse

who cares for both men,

while the sergeant
conceals his love for her.

Everybody praised it.

I mean, the reviews for this film were

across the board very, very positive

and I think the best review
that was ever written for the film came

in Leatherneck magazine
which was for the Marine Corps.

And they said that:

"In Chaney's performance we saw

every sergeant we knew."

He was the living, breathing, embodiment

of that tough Marine sergeant.

And so much so,

the Marines loved his performance

that he became
the first motion picture actor

to be made an honorary member

of the United States Marine Corps.

This was one of Chaney's
favorite films, according to his wife

and he and Hazel

made a rare attendance at the premiere.

MGM's new star Lucille LeSueur,

seen here with designer Erte,

was chosen for Chaney's "The Unknown".

By now, her name
had been changed to Joan Crawford.

It was a reunion for Chaney
with his old friend Tod Browning

and it was one of their
strangest productions.

Crawford played Nanon,
the daughter of the owner

of a circus in Spain.

Chaney was
"Alonzo the Armless", a knife thrower

deeply in love with Nanon.

Nanon has a fear
of being touched by men.

Norman Kerry as "Malabar the Strong Man"

is baffled by her rejection.

She feels at ease with Alonzo.

Incredibly, Chaney is doing this trick
with a real arm-less

body double providing the legs.

Alonzo seems a pleasant enough man

who puts up with this situation
until his secret is revealed.

Alonzo is a murderer on the run.

He hides his arms because

of a congenital defect

that would immediately incriminate him.

And now Nanon
has seen those double thumbs.

He visits a surgeon and blackmails him

into removing his arms.

Burt Lancaster told me
when I was working with him once

we got talking about Chaney,

and Burt Lancaster said:

"The scene where Chaney realizes he's

cut his arms off for nothing

was the most emotionally

compelling scene
he's ever seen an actor do".

And it is

when you realize that it's basically shot

in a medium close-up,

he doesn't use his hands,
it's his face.

And you can feel the emotional intensity

that just comes right up from the gut.

"London After Midnight" is a lost film.

The most eagerly sought after
of all the missing Chaney's.

I saw "London After Midnight",
Lon played a straight part of a detective

who dresses up as a vampire

and the vampire is terrible.

He had a huge grin,

long hair and a top hat

and walked along in a sort of

crawling way.

I'm convinced
that Groucho Marx saw the film and

patterned himself after
Lon Chaney that kinda

of a crouch he had in
the way he went around

and if you see it today you may say:
"Why, he's mimicking Groucho Marx!"

And he certainly did a mysterious glide

up from the ceiling I think in the room

to terrify somebody or other.

That was a fantasy.

It was so unreal,
but the make-up was terrific.

He had thin wires
that fitted around his eyes

so that it would give this

hypnotic stare.

Then he had a set of

upper and lower false teeth,

the upper portion had a wire

that would hold
the corners of his mouth open

to give it a kind of a

fixated grin.

And that was it, and a wig.

And the characterization itself.

One tends to get excited
about lost films.

I think people
would be very disappointed

if they saw "London After Midnight".

I didn't enjoy it
anything as like as much "The Phantom".

It was so fantastic and unreal

that you couldn't take it seriously.

The people who made it obviously didn't.

And yet it was blamed
for a murder in London.

A man said
he had been so terrified by Chaney

he had had a fit
and murdered a woman in Hyde Park.

His defense was rejected.

"Laugh, Clown, Laugh"
showed Chaney cast again as a clown, Tito.

It was a Pagliacci story,

directed by the veteran Herbert Brenon.

Tito performs a hazardous act.

Chaney was always doubled
for scenes like this.

This was said to have been
the favorite of all his roles.

The clown, who loves a girl,
who loves someone else.

Tito had found the girl
abandoned as a child

and brings her up in the circus.

Herbert Brenon was a dedicated filmmaker

who found himself directing

an inexperienced actress
in her first feature role.

Loretta Young, aged 14,
whose real name was Gretchen.

It seemed he had to have a patsy.

Naturally he picked
on the most vulnerable one

and I was it.

He called me in,
"Gretchen, come here".

and I stand there and he says:

"I don't know whatever gave you the idea

that you could ever be an actress."

He would rip me up one side or the other

and he would do it at least twice a week.

But never when Lon Chaney was on the set

and then he said:

"Alright, ready, alright, Gretchen

go to your dressing room
and get yourself fixed up."

As long as Chaney was around

he behaved.

And I didn't know anything about acting.

Anyways, Chaney saw that

and then he never left the stage
while I was working,

never.

But he really directed me.

He did it in such a manner
that nobody else knew it.

I don't think
even Brenon was conscious of it.

Alongside the tragedy,

there was often humor in Chaney's roles.

Chaney plays Phroso,
a magician who loves his wife

and is horrified
when she leaves him for Crane,

played by Lionel Barrymore.

His wife returns, but dies

and leaves Phroso with her daughter.

He brings the girl up in the

worst of the African brothels,

for he knows it to be Crane's.

The girl was played by Mary Nolan.

Phroso repeats his stage act

for the benefit of Crane

who remembers it
from all those years ago

Phroso tells him it is his daughter.

Chaney goes from one end here

where he's taking sheer delight

and you see it go across the spectrum

to the horrendous realization
that it's his daughter

he's put through this.

The tears well up in his eyes and

he's clutching at his throat

I mean even though this is a silent film

you can hear the wail
that he's giving out

"While the City Sleeps"
was a character study

of a detective close to retirement.

Whatever it is he's doing

he has the command of that skill.

It looks like this character
has been doing

whatever it's been doing for years.

Chaney's policeman behaved

as in real life,

not a as glamourized for the screen.

His character
is secretly in love with a girl,

Anita Page.

But he tries
to keep to a fatherly concern,

brilliantly caught in this scene.

Gangster films had been given a boost

by the success
of Paramount's thriller "Underworld".

So, this MGM film tried to outdo

the climactic gunfight.

Lon Chaney final silent film
proved to be "Thunder".

It has also been lost for many years.

He played Grumpy Anderson,

an old time engineer who

will take his train
through hell or high water

but refuses to hitch on a private car

for a night club singer.

She rides on the footplate
with his son, the fireman.

To make his character real,

he found a pair of overalls that

one old train engineer was wearing

and he made a deal with him:

"I'd buy you
a brand new pair if you give me yours

so I can wear it in the movie."

And it looked worn

and it was beaten up
and it looked lived in.

There again,

he just looks like an old train engineer.

He just fits the part, he looks like
he just got off the steam locomotive.

After an accident,

Anderson is retired to the machine shop

where he is reunited
with the remains of his engine.

But it was
a very trying film for Chaney.

When he went on location from

the warmth of California
to Green Bay, Wisconsin,

it was snowy.

He caught a cold but kept on working in

true Chaney fashion.

The cold developed
into walking pneumonia.

He woke some morning,

he showed up very late
and very apologetic

and nobody really knew how sick he was.

And finally
as the picture got near the end

he had to stay out
for several days at the time

and finally the picture was shut down,

I forget, I think for a couple of weeks,

two or three weeks,

and then picked up again.

But I don't think
anybody in the company realized

how terribly sick he was.

Alright, everybody quiet please.

After the bell.

Sound had arrived and Chaney resisted it.

He wouldn't talk, he said,

because it might destroy the mystery.

MGM made a musical with all their stars

except Garbo and Chaney.

But Chaney had a number devoted to him.

¶ Lon Chaney's gonna get you ¶

¶ if you don't watch out ¶

"The Phantom of the Opera" was re-issued

with sound.

But The Phantom did not speak.

Universal wanted him urgently
for Dracula.

MGM gave Chaney a large bonus
for signing a new contract.

And Irving Thalberg
chose his first sound film.

And so they picked "The Unholy Three"

as Chaney's talking picture debut.

And in reality
it was probably a good choice,

because it gives Chaney
the chance to now become:

The man of a hundred golden voices,

Professor Echo.

Thank you doctor, thank you.

Now, folks, if you just
gather around a little closer now.

Come right a little closer.

That's it, that's fine, folks.

Now, then, if you be real quiet

I'll see if I can get
the little boy to say something.

Chaney had to sign an affidavit

that all five voices was his

and not the work of voice doubles.

He through his voice, he imitated the girl,

and even a parrot.

As Mrs. O'Grady,
he didn't try to fake the voice.

He just spoke softly
and chose the words carefully.

Oh, Rosie,

will you come here please?

Alright.

Come right in, Rosie.

What's the big idea?

What's eating you now?

You're making a play for that guy.

Don't be silly,

I like him cause he hands me a laugh.

Yeah? well, you keep on
and and I'll hand you a laugh,

you get that?

In the courtroom,

Mrs. O'Grady
is under intense cross examination.

In short Mrs. O'Grady,

you don't remember anything else
except what you want to remember,

do you?

Oh, I have such a headache.

Well, I'm sorry Mrs. O'Grady,

if you have a headache.

Thank you.

I didn't mean to make you nervous.

Oh, it's much better now, thank you.

You see, I'm only
attempting to get to the truth.

Yes, of course.

Now, Mrs. O'Grady...

You see your honor? An imposter!

Order, order in the court.

And then of course at the end,

the ending was re-shot.

Originally the ending
was like in the silent version

where Chaney goes back to the side show.

Rosie comes up and says:

"I'm going to fulfill
my part of the bargain."

And Echo realizes
that she really loves Hector.

He says: "No, you go on."

And as she starts to leave,
he has the dummy, says:

"Goodbye, old pal."

And she turns around

and he's holding the dummy in his lap

and he waves dummy's arm

and as she leaves
the dummy comes to Chaney's chest

and he puts his head down
and he begins to cry.

And I talked with a man who

happened to be working at MGM at the time

who just happened
to sneak in on the set at that point

and he said Chaney cried real tears

like you wouldn't believe.

In the final scene

as re-shot,

Echo says farewell
at the railroad station

To Hector,
Elliot Nugent and Rosie, Lila Lee.

By now Chaney knew he had lung cancer.

Well,
I guess Rosie wants to talk to you now

so I'll say goodbye.

Well, goodbye kid. Good luck.

Irony of ironies,

here's the man
who has through this film

Harry Earles told me,
he was struggling to go along

because of his health.

There were some days
where he just didn't have the energy

to get through the day.

And Hector,
as a way of saying thank you

gives him a carton of cigarettes.

I brought you some cigarettes.

Oh, swell.

Thanks, kid.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

Well, why don't you do a little of both?

You know the old saying:

"That's all there is to life,

just a little laugh, a little tear."

I'll send you postal cards.

Fades to black and we see

"The End".

That was Lon's last performance
on the silver screen.

Seven weeks after the film was released

Chaney died.

He was 47 years old.

I remember

it was my father
who saw it first on the placards

cause it was quite a sensation when,

and when he came in with the news

I really, I couldn't take it in.

I did think the end of the world
had come. No more Lon.

The day he died
when I was 10 years old

was the end of the world.

I thought, my God,
Lon Chaney died here in 1930

and I'm only 10 years old.

If he can die that means me too.

Nothing's safe.

If this great man,

this man taller than
all the buildings in the world

who represents
all the people in the world,

if he can be taken away by death,

then I'm vulnerable

and that was a terrible feeling to have.

The funeral service

was held at "Cunningham & O'Connor"

funeral home in downtown Los Angeles.

The eulogy was given by the

Chaplain of the Marine Corps of San Diego.

Hazel Chaney was in a state of collapse.

All studios in Hollywood halted work

to observe a moment of silence.

And at MGM,

They had a color guard there
from the Marine Corps

and they blew "Taps",

as the Marines
lower the flag to half-staff.

Chaney was interred

at Forest Lawn cemetery at Glendale.

No one knows the reason,

but his crypt, bears no name.

"Lon Chaney attains immortality",

said a screen magazine at the time.

No man in pictures, nor woman, either

has won the wide space in the popular heart

that Chaney could call his own.

There never was an actor
whose every gesture

carried more feeling,
more eloquence, than Chaney.

He will be missed
not only by the producers,

but by the millions
who took him into their hearts.