Lon Chaney, Sr.

Trivia

• He carried almost all the make-up he used in films in a small leather case he always around when in Hollywood.
• His knowledge of make-up was so vast that he wrote the entry on the subject for an edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica.
• Lon Chaney's salary on The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923/I) was $2,500 a week. Shooting began in December of 1922, and was completed in June of 1923. Chaney ended up making close to $60,000 plus contract bonuses from the picture, which was the longest shoot in his career.
• His star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is featured during the theme song of season one on the Fall Guy television show.
• He was of English, French and Irish descent.
• A popular joke of the era was "Don't step on it; it might be Lon Chaney!"
• A quiet soul by nature, Chaney valued his privacy highly. Granting few interviews and disliking the Hollywood social whirl, he much preferred spending quiet time with his family and a few close friends, often at his cabin in the Sierra Nevadas. This avoidance of publicity led him to be unfairly labeled by some as strange and unfriendly.
• Pictured on one of a set of five 32¢ US commemorative postage stamps, issued 30 September 1997, celebrating "Famous Movie Monsters". He is shown as the title character in The Phantom of the Opera (1925).
• The Lon Chaney Theater in Colorado Springs, CO, is named for one of that city's most famous native sons.
• At Chaney's death, in addition to Tod Browning's Dracula (1931), several other vehicles were being planned for him. Most were filmed with other actors in the parts intended for Chaney: The Sea Bat (1930) (Charles Bickford), The Phantom of Paris (1931) (John Gilbert), The Big House (1930) (Wallace Beery) and The Bugle Sounds (1942) (Beery, again).

Quotes

• "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/I), 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."
• "My whole career has been devoted to keeping people from knowing me."
• "Between pictures, there is no Lon Chaney."