LISA LICHTENFELS
"Lon Chaney" "The Man of a Thousand Faces" certainly has fascinated countless people over the years. Along with Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Clara Bow - he was one of early cinema's greatest talents. Of all his incarnation, my favorite is simply him, smiling. Every time I see that face I think of my father. There's an enthusiasm and quiet confidence, but it's a complex face, full of a lot of layers of life and feeling. I'm sure my father, the consummate engineer, would not have liked the association with an actor, but there are similarities in their life stories. Both had very rough lives but forged honorable careers. They were both of a certain generation of men…you don't see faces like those any longer. Lon Chaney's parents were both deaf and he learned to communicate with them with his face and gestures. His father was a barber, and Lon would entertain the family by doing pantomimes of the customers as well as people from the town. These early facial gymnastics must have been quite marvelous because even without makeup he changes persona almost completely. The face on the left is from a movie where he played a gangers -- how is that the same man who is smiling on the right? And when he used his talent as a makeup magician the transformation is even greater. They say he used wax, false teeth and grease paint to become the "Phantom of the Opera" in 1925, but the collapsing of his nose implies something more - he also created a crevasse in his cheeks and flattened his ears. (When asked about it, Chaney would only say the inspiration was the faces of Wounded WWI veterans.) By the way, each face in this trio has the exact same skull underneath with the slight exception of the monster - I had to chip part of the nose bridge to create the profile. It makes me wonder - did he break his nose to do that part?
In his essay on Lon Chaney, Michael F. Blake described the actor's reluctance to be interviewed - "Between pictures, there is no Lon Chaney." He also wrote, "When we think of the silent film era, we think of [movie stars] who created trademark personas and spent their entire careers testing the limits of those characters. They perfected what they had created, but rarely attempted other roles. For many in the industry, both then and now, this type of careers sis considered the pinnacle of success, but for one actor it was the antithesis of his art. For Lon Chaney, the art of acting was the art of continual transformation, and it came from a desire to become someone else, to leave his own skin and enter another's." (From the PBS American Master's Series). This approach to art, in my opinion, deserves the greatest respect. It is art without ego, where the act of creation involves the deepest compassion. Lon Chaney dressed much like my father - white shirt and tie, practical black shoes - I can't imagine he had his head turned much by the glitz and glamour or Hollywood. They shared a similar work ethic too. Doing his last picture, it wasn't enough to make the transition to talkies with one voice - he played a crook ventriloquist with five distinct voices. The strain of that performance might have killed him - he died of a throat hemorrhage soon after. It may be impossible to create a portrait of such a man, but
looking at this piece makes me feel so good I know I must have gotten
something right.
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