Tag: Lon Chaney

Tod Browning’s films were often unsettling, shocking and disturbing. They were populated with freaks, geeks, carny folk, ruthless people and vampires. Though his best-known film is 1931’s “Dracula,” with Bela Lugosi, his greatest productions were his collaboration with the “Man of a Thousand Faces,” Lon Chaney. So it seems only appropriate that two of his legendary films with Chaney: 1925’s “The Unholy Three” and 1927’s “The Unknown” open “American Gothic: A Tod Browning Retrospective” on Thursday evening at the American Cinematheque’s Aero Theatre. Born in Louisville, Ky., in 1880, Browning began performing and singing as a youngster. He ran away from  home at 16 and joined a circus, where he went from carnival baker to contortionist. Many of his films revolve around circuses. He later went into vaudeville and was introduced to D.W. Griffith in 1913 by an old vaudeville partner. ...

Rudolph Valentino and John Gilbert were the heartthrobs of Hollywood’s silent-film era. Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd were the kings of comedy. And Douglas Fairbanks was the dashing superhero before the term even existed. But the most unusual — and perhaps the most accomplished — of the silent superstars was Lon Chaney, who was known as “The Man of a Thousand Faces” for his uncanny ability to use makeup and often painful devices to create characters who were sometimes deformed, often tragic and always memorable. Chaney was celebrated for his work as the misshapen Quasimodo in 1923’s “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”  and as the haunted man in the mask in 1925’s “The Phantom of the Opera.” After making those movies at Universal, he signed on with the newly formed MGM, where he became an even bigger star, ...