Leonidas Frank "Lon" Chaney was an American actor and makeup artist.
28 Facts About Lon Chaney
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Lon Chaney is regarded as one of the most versatile and powerful actors of cinema, renowned for his characterizations of tortured, often grotesque and afflicted characters, and his groundbreaking artistry with makeup.
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Leonidas Frank Chaney was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, to Frank H Chaney and Emma Alice Kennedy.
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Lon Chaney's father was of English and French ancestry, and his mother was of Scottish, English, and Irish descent.
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Lon Chaney entered a stage career in 1902, and began traveling with popular vaudeville and theater acts.
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Marital troubles developed and on April 30,1913, Cleva went to the Majestic Theater in downtown Los Angeles, where Lon Chaney was managing the "Kolb and Dill" show, and attempted suicide by swallowing mercuric chloride.
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The time spent there is not clearly known, but between the years 1912 and 1917, Lon Chaney worked under contract for Universal Studios doing bit or character parts.
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In 1915, Lon Chaney married one of his former colleagues in the Kolb and Dill company, a recently divorced chorus girl named Hazel Hastings.
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When Lon Chaney was away branching out on films such as Riddle Gawne and The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin, Stowell and Phillips would continue on as a duo until Lon Chaney's return.
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Lon Chaney had a breakthrough performance as "The Frog" in George Loane Tucker's The Miracle Man.
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The film displayed not only Lon Chaney's acting ability, but his talent as a master of makeup.
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Lon Chaney exhibited great adaptability with makeup in more conventional crime and adventure films, such as The Penalty, in which he played a gangster with both legs amputated.
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Around the same time, Chaney co-starred with Conrad Nagel, Marceline Day, Henry B Walthall and Polly Moran in the Tod Browning horror film London After Midnight, one of the most sought after lost films.
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Lon Chaney's final film role was a sound remake of his silent classic The Unholy Three, his only "talkie" and the only film in which Chaney utilized his powerful and versatile voice.
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Lon Chaney signed a sworn statement declaring that five of the key voices in the film were his own.
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Lon Chaney's talents extended beyond the horror genre and stage makeup.
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Lon Chaney was a highly skilled dancer, singer and comedian.
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Lon Chaney somehow got into the shadows inside our bodies; he was able to nail down some of our secret fears and put them on-screen.
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The history of Lon Chaney is the history of unrequited loves.
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Lon Chaney 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.
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Lon Chaney earned the respect and admiration of numerous aspiring actors, to whom he offered mentoring assistance, and between takes on film sets he was always willing to share his professional observations with the cast and crew.
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Lon Chaney was interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, next to the crypt of his father.
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In 1957, Lon Chaney was the subject of a biopic titled Man of a Thousand Faces, in which he was portrayed by James Cagney.
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The film is a largely fictionalized account, as Lon Chaney was notoriously private and hated the Hollywood lifestyle.
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Lon Chaney has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located on Hollywood Boulevard.
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In 1994, Al Hirschfeld's caricature of Lon Chaney was featured on a commemorative United States postage stamp.
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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.
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Approximately 102 of the 157 films made by Lon Chaney are currently classified as lost films.