Where Is Lon Chaney's Makeup Case
Actor and makeup artist Lon Chaney Sr. crafted one of the well-nigh famous moments of the silent era. Here'due south how he did information technology.
Past · Published on Feb 28th, 2020
Welcome to How'd They Do That? — a bi-monthly column that unpacks moments of movie magic and celebrates the technical wizards who pulled them off.
This entire column is based around the celebration of cinematic techniques that read as magic tricks. In this context: Lon Chaney Sr. is a veritable magician.
An Old Hollywood powerhouse known for his characterizations of unnerving individuals and mangled souls, Leonidas Chaney was born on April Fool's Day in 1883 to 2 deaf parents. As Chaney himself explains in a rare interview in Picture show Weekly, the unique circumstances of his upbringing meant that, for the actor, "gesture was ever a thing of great significance." A Silent Era performer, Chaney'due south physical deftness resulted in emotionally rich, peerless performances that notwithstanding resonate and shock almost a century later.
In add-on to existence ane of the about evocative performers to ever grace the screen, Chaney was a pioneer of early on cinematic special furnishings makeup. With few exceptions, his all-time-known characters experience some sort of disfigurement, and the actor took the execution of these mutilations into his own hands, oft at the expense of his own condolement and prophylactic (more than on that afterward). From murderous madmen to misunderstood monsters, Chaney consistently elicits bi-tones of repulsion and empathy, curiosity and fearfulness, horror and compassion. Gnashing teeth, curling lips, flaring nostrils, his characters are always equally upsetting as they are mesmerizing.
A big part of why Chaney'southward creature designs are so affecting is considering, as horror director Jennifer Kent articulates in an interview with Mountain Xpress: "You can encounter that it'south a person's face. Information technology's just a confront that'due south been distorted — without CGI obviously — only manipulated so that it looks human, merely most not." Nowhere else is Chaney'south unique quality of "human, but almost not" more evident than in the disfigured ghoul of 1925's Phantom of the Opera , i of Chaney's nearly impressive make-upwardly jobs, if not certainly his most famous 1.
The unmasking of the titular Phantom is one of the most well-known moments in silent motion picture. Arguably, it'south one of the nigh horrifying images e'er put on screen. As the mysterious Eric sits at his organ, our captured heroine Christine loosens his mask. As contemporary reviewer Carl Sandburg puts it: "Her fingers requite i terminal twitch — and there you are!"
The reveal: a defacement more horrifying than whatever other cinematic iteration of the infamous Opera Ghost to date. His nose is an upturned chip, his mouth a mangled mess, his eyes threatening to pop. It's difficult to wrap your head around: how tin that thing be human? This furious, menacing, despair-filled creature? Part command, part challenge, the Phantom shrieks: "Banquet your eyes, glut your soul, on my accursed ugliness!"
With pleasance.
How'd they do that?
Long story short:
By mangling Lon Chaney'southward face with wires. Plus some good old fashioned contouring.
Long story long:
In a rare statement on his craft, Chaney explained, as cited past moving-picture show historian Scott MacQueen in the October 1989 edition of American Cinematographer: "I'm supposed to take evolved some magic process of malforming my features and limbs. It's an art, not magic…I achieved the Death's head of that role without wearing a mask."
Indeed, to pull off the ghoulish look of the Phantom, Chaney undertook a diverseness of creative if woefully self-harming illusory techniques.
To go a living skull, Chaney raised the contours of his cheekbones with cotton wool and collodion, a very flammable and syrupy solution of pyroxylin mixed in alcohol that creates the appearance of scarred peel when dried. He flattened (possibly glued) his ears to his head, calculation to the skull look. An exaggerated skullcap was used to elevate Chaney's brow by several inches, accentuating the bald dome of the Phantom's skull, draped by flat-pressed wisps of stringy black hair. Pencil lines were used not only to exaggerate the natural creases of Chaney's brow only besides to hide the lip of his bald cap.
Phantom Of The Opera (1925)
In the same quote cited in the American Cinematographer article, Chaney continues: "it was the use of paints in the right shades and the right places — not the obvious parts of the confront — which gave the complete illusion of horror. My experiments as a phase manager, which were wide and varied before I jumped into films, taught me much almost lighting effects on the player's face and the minor tricks of deception. It's all a affair of combining paints and lights to form the right illusion."
Taking the colour palette of André Castaigne'southward illustrations as his reference, Chaney painted his outer center black, adding stark white highlights around the periphery to emphasize the skeletal effect and suggest the transition from os to sockets. The Phantom's toothy smiling was accomplished past attaching prongs (yes prongs) to a serrated, rotting pair of false teeth; creating a gnarled grin with a oral cavity held wide by design. Chaney further distorted his lips and shaded his face with greasepaint.
The olfactory organ is the worst function. Chaney applied putty to sharpen the angle and inserted ii loops of wire into his nostrils (which were themselves darkened with blackness eyeliner) to make a skeletal shape. Actress wires concealed under putty and the skullcap were fastened to Chaney's nose, yanking the actor's nostrils upward.
In that location are some who have stated that in certain shots Chaney manipulated his nose with spirit glue and fish skin. But given that the reports have been contested and imitations have not been successful, we must have these claims with a grain of salt.
There is also a unsafe myth floating well-nigh that Chaney put egg membranes in his optics to give them a cloudy look. This rumor appears to be a combination of two facts: Chaney messing his sight upwards with the imitation center embrace from The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and the white-out cosmetic contact lens he had personally created for 1926'due south Road to Mandalay (ane of the first full-eye scleral white glass contact lenses fabricated for theatrical employ). In any instance, the egg membrane tidbit is likely an exaggeration if non an outright falsehood.
And really, who needs to exaggerate when it comes to Chaney? "He suffered, you lot know," recalls Phantom's manager of photography, Charles Van Enger, every bit cited past the ever-giving American Cinematography. "Sometimes [Chaney's nose] would bleed like hell. We never stopped shooting. He would suffer with it."
What's the precedent?
This was nonetheless early days in cinema history, so when we're talking about the innovative shenanigans on brandish in Phantom of the Opera, the just existent precedent in Hollywood was Chaney himself.
In the aforementioned interview in Movie Weekly, Chaney explains: "Virtually of my roles have carried the theme of cocky-sacrifice or renunciation. These are the stories I wish to do." Cocky-sacrifice was certainly the name of the game when information technology came to Chaney'due south approach to make-upward.
2 years before Phantom of the Opera, Chaney designed an affecting only physically-enervating guise for Quasimodo in Hunchback: plumbing fixtures himself with an external glass middle, a 20-pound plaster hump, and a painful harness that fixed his shoulder to his hip to accomplish the desired effect. With apprehensive innovations and the spirit of Occam's Razor, you tin can't disbelieve the impact of Chaney's make up kit (a fisherman's tackle box, today a part of the drove at the Natural History Museum in Los Angeles).
'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' (1923)
That said, without neglect, the all-time creature performances are the ones where the actor wears the makeup rather than the makeup wearing the actor. Doug Jones (Pan'due south Labyrinth, Hell Male child, Star Trek: Discovery) is the highest-profile example of a modern performer who can play creature effects like an musical instrument. Like Chaney, Jones' embodiment and the makeup he wears consistently come up together for performances that are more than the sum of their parts. Andy Serkis is another cracking case of this, though the added twist of digital space and all the post-production collaboration that entails, is a wrinkle all-time smoothed out some other time.
It would be easy (and delightful) to sit hither all day list evocative makeup performances (Jeff Goldblum in The Wing…Fredric March in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde…Warwick Davis in everything…). But, ultimately, Chaney brings something unparalleled to the table: the man did his own goddamn makeup.
The impact of this bespoke quality is elusive but you can't help but feel it when yous lookout man Chaney perform. He had an intimate noesis of his ain body, both every bit an player and equally a makeup creative person. He knew its abilities, its limitations, and how to weaponize both through the use of self-designed, tailor-made practical effects. The consequence is up there on the screen, in creatures like the Phantom who to this day remain unparalleled in both their spectacle and their sympathy.
Related Topics: How'd They Practise That?, Phantom of the Opera, Special Effects
One thousand thousand Shields is the humble farm boy of your dreams and a senior correspondent at Moving picture School Rejects. She currently runs three columns at FSR: The Queue, How'd They Do That?, and Horrorscope. She is also a curator for One Perfect Shot and a freelance writer for hire. Meg can exist plant screaming almost John Boorman'due south 'Excalibur' on Twitter hither: @TheWorstNun. (She/Her).
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