Happy Birthday: Lon Chaney (1883–1930)

Lon Chaney (1883–1930)

Born: April 1, 1883 in Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA
Died: August 26, 1930 (age 47) in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA

Married to: Hazel Hastings (November 1914 – 26 August 1930) (his death)
Frances Chaney (31 May 1905 – 1914) (divorced) (1 child)

When a makeup is as painful as that which I wore as Blizzard in The Penalty (1920), when I had my legs strapped up and couldn’t bear it that way more than 20 minutes at a time – when I have to be a cripple, as in The Miracle Man (1919) or have to keep a certain attitude of body, as I did in Shadows (1922), it sometimes takes a good deal of imagination to forget your physical sufferings. Yet, at that, the subconscious mind has a marvelous way of making you keep the right attitudes and make the right gestures when you are actually acting.

I wanted to remind people that the lowest types of humanity may have within them the capacity for supreme self-sacrifice. The dwarfed, misshapen beggar of the streets may have the noblest ideals. Most of my roles since The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), such as The Phantom of the Opera (1925), He Who Gets Slapped (1924), The Unholy Three (1925), etc., have carried the theme of self-sacrifice or renunciation. These are the stories which I wish to do.

There’s nothing funny about a clown in the moonlight.

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