I watched a great documentary on Lon Chaney (Sr) last night on TCM. WOW! What an actor!
I was truly impressed, and not only with Chaney’s well known make up abilities. The amount of emotion he could convey with his expressions and movements was simply phenomenal.
Now I’ve got to go out and find as many of his movies as I can on video. If you get the chance to catch this (it’s called, simply enough, “Lon Chaney”) on TCM, watch it.
I completely agree. I’ve always thought that he is the all-time most under-appreciated actor. People always focus on his Hunchback, and Phantom roles, but never notice how trully exceptional an actor he was. He could convey much more meaning with words, than most every other actor could would words. And when he finally did move into talkies for his last movie, he did it so seemlessly. I’ve just always thought that he was one of the best students of studying the nature of what is ‘character’ which is alot of the reason he was such a good make-up man, Because he understood the relationship between, as well as the defferences between, appearance and emotion so well.
Unfortunately most of his films are lost forever. . . .
I caught part of that too. The guy was great! I loved the part where they showed his make-up kit. How the heck did he make himself look SO different with just those few things? It made me want to contribute to that fund AMC is always promoting where they salvage old films. Such a shame that so much of his work is gone. 
I cannot remember the name of the film (probably could identify it on IMDB) but there was one film that was SO bizarre, it really stands out. It was set in a circus, and was one of the WEIRDEST, most bizarre (daringly bizarre) films I’ve seen in my life. It had Joan Crawford in it, Chaney played this con-artist type who was faking being an armless man, in a circus act. He did everything with his legs/feet, with his arms bound and hidden under his clothes. And the thing is, Chaney DID it so convincingly! Like (if I remember the scene correctly) resting his head on his feet (the way you might rest your head on your hand) and doing very “hand-like” gestures with his feet. Man oh man. This guy was a genius. Thank goodness for Turner Classic Movies, they still show these films regularly.
I looked on IMDB.com for the title of this particular film, but I can’t find it. It’s probably under a name that doesn’t ring a bell.
yosemitebabe: The Unknown.
Dijon, THANK YOU!!! Wow. I did look on IMDB, even tried to find the film by matching Chaney’s and Crawford’s names together, but to no avail. I guess I did something wrong. Thanks for finding it!
And, here is the synopsis of the film, from IMDB: (This will give you an idea of how bizarre it is - it got a decent rating from viewers too - 7.5.)
Oh my gosh. That is one frickin’ bizarre movie!
It was a tricky one to track down, but it was there. Have you ever seen “Freaks”, another Tod Browning circus movie? Very strange but moving film with a good dose of creepiness. I’m going hunting for The Unknown, now. It sounds like a winner. Happy to help. 
David Skal, in “The Monster Show”, points out how many of the Browning/Chaney horror films had a very unhealthy undercurrent of body mutilation in them.
That’s probably what makes them so scary, huh?
Good book, that. I should haul my copy out and read it again.
Mel Gordon’s THE GRAND GUIGNOL: THEATRE OF FEAR AND TERROR lists the themes of the Horror Plays as Helplessness, Infanticide, Insanity, Mysterious Death, Suffering of the Innocent, Suicide, Vengeance…plus the ever-popular Mutilation, and Surgery.
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Our comics page today had a panel captioned “NASA learns that sending Lon Chaney, Jr. on a moon mission was a mistake.” The cartoon shows him transforming into a werewolf, with another astronaut on the radio, “Uh, Houston, we’ve got a problem here!”
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Actually Even Lon isn’t quite that good, For most of the really dextereous foot scenes in The Unknown they used a stunt pair of legs from a guy who really had last his arms.(at least thats what I’ve heard)
Well, here we go again.
Persnickety critics have been levelling that “Stand-In for the Dextrous Foot Scene” conjecture ever since THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (1903), where the band of desperadoes hijacked the locomotive using only their feet.
“Stand in!” they shouted when Charles Boyer lit two cigarettes with his feet.
“Stand in!” as Clark Gable, planning ravishment, carried Vivian Leigh up the grand staircase in his feet.
And “Stand in!” again when Anthony Perkins dismembered Janet Leigh down at the old Bates Motel using only his feet (and teeth).
I for one am heartily sick of it!
OK, I’ve been REAL busy of late (just got the galleys in for my next book and have to proof and INDEX it), but I had to pop in to proudly note that I am friends with one of Lon Chaney’s costars! Anita Page, who was in “While the City Sleeps” (there’s a clip of her in that movie on the special). She told me she and Lon used to talk about how much of acting is in the eyes, rather than the face or the body . . . She wasn’t well enough to be interviewed for this show.
Taped a few of the Chaney films TCM is showing: “Mr. Wu” was a corker, and I am looking forward to seeing “Ace of Hearts” this weekend.
By the way, w/o his scary makeup on, Lon wasn’t a bad looker . . .
Correct me if I’m wrong (like I really have to tell you people), but The Unknown was considered to be a lost film until fairly recently.
There was a film canister(s) in the vault labled “unknown” and the archivists just assumed it contained random or unidentified footage – not a movie of that name. Finally someone put two and two together, or inspected the contents of the can(s), and The Unknown was rediscovered.
Gee, one of my most sought-after lost silent films is the 1917 Theda Bara starrer “We Don’t Know What This Is and It’s Probably Decayed to Dust.”
Wonder if THAT’S in someone’s vault . . .
Y’know, In Louis B. Mayer’s old office at MGM there’s a big ol’ box on the shelf labeled GREED. All this time, everyone’s just assumed it was his personal diary…
So, Ukulele Eve (my new name for the most cutting yet urbane co-ed tag-team on the SDMB), are you saying that my story about the rediscovery of The Unknown is an urban legend? Tell me more…
I dunno, Stuy, it may well be true . . . But I suffer from Weisenheimer’s disease (I suspect Ike does, too) and am physically incapable of passing up a good straight line.
That appears to be pretty close. According to John DeBartolo from the invaluable Silents Majority site:
“For many decades The Unknown was believed to be a lost film. In the early 1970s a group of film preservationists located a collector in France thought to have “lost” films in his possession. When he was contacted and asked if he had a copy of Chaney’s The Unknown, all he had to show them were cans of films, many marked “unknown.” Apparently it was his practice when a film didn’t have any opening credits, he simply marked the cans with this label and didn’t think any more about it. Little did he know that he had correctly identified one of his mystery films, for one of the cans contained Lon Chaney’s long lost The Unknown!”
He doesn’t site and names or institutions, but they generally do a good job with research there. Here’s the complete link: