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| Construction time. Oh joy. |
I’m having some work done on my house today and to say I’m dreading it
would be a truly laughable understatement.
I don’t do this stuff well. My panic disorder goes into high gear and
while I no longer will actually crawl under the table and hide my head, I will
still want to – very badly.
So, I wrote this section below yesterday when I still had a few senses
sparking relatively well. Pardon me if it’s boring, but I love this kind of
stuff and I thought I’d share.
Hopefully, tonight I will be able to do more than grunt my name in your
general direction, but of that I make no guarantees. *smiles*
Enjoy!
The silent screen stars of the early twentieth century have always
fascinated me. I feel a link to them, as if these actors and actresses were a
lot like writers... artists paid to bring a scene fully to life despite the
limited amount of tools available to them.
While I am by no means an expert on silent films, I do have my
favorites. Lon Chaney is one of them.
“The man of a thousand faces” isn’t a publicist’s exaggeration. The man
continuously made himself unrecognizable in films, sometimes playing more than
one part in the same scene without the audience’s knowledge. He was a master of
his craft. He was responsible for all of his incredible makeup. He carried all
his tools in a case that now resides in a California museum.
From “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” to “The Phantom of the Opera,” his
portrayals were classic and mesmerizing. Tragically, he died of lung cancer at
the age of 47, merely a year after making his one and only “talkie” in which he
voiced five roles.
I feel every writer should have role models outside of the writing
profession. Other artists or entrepreneurs to whose dedication to their work
the author can aspire. Lon Chaney is one of mine.
I share a few facts of his life, both personal and professional, with
you today so, perhaps, you too can latch onto his far-from-fading star as a
silent mentor in your craft…. Yes, that may be silly and trite, but what is
Chloe Stowe but much too silly and far too trite?
-Both of Lon Chaney’s
parents were deaf. Many people claim this childhood led him to be such a master
of pantomime skills.
-He often portrayed
terribly disfigured characters. In one case he played an amputee in which he
had to bind his “missing” limb to his body in a position so painful he could
not hold for more than 20 minutes at a time.
-An intensely private
man, he refused the publicity the studios continuously pushed on him as one of
their stars.
-Appeared in 162 films,
all of them silent except his last one (in which he played a ventriloquist, an
old woman, a girl, the ventriloquist’s dummy and the parrot.)
-In his portrayal of
“The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (a movie he spearheaded the production of
himself), his right eye was completely covered by makeup during the entire film.
This effected his eyesight the rest of his life.
-During a publicity
reel in the 1920’s in which MGM showed all of their actors lined up outside and
smiling at the camera, Lon Chaney, alone, kept his back turned. It was said he
didn’t want the public to see the real man behind all the makeup.
Until tonight…
Chloe
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