Still the master after all these years...

[enyawd72]

Working on my Phantom of the Opera portrait has given me a renewed respect for Lon Chaney Sr.
Looking at him in makeup it's easy to forget what a handsome man he actually was. What he was able to achieve using simple greasepaint, putty, and wires is nothing short of amazing.

The thing that really stands out to me is how he cleverly used his own natural facial lines and exaggerated them. If you look very closely at the Phantom photo on the right, all those fine wrinkles in the Phantom's skin are nothing but painted on! How real they appear on film is incredible.

No one will ever top his skill with a simple tackle box full of supplies.

[Hedji]

Great post. Yeah, that kind of Talent is just unheard of these days. Now, all you get is actors complaining about having to wake up early to sit in the makeup chair. But this man did it all himself. It's really quite remarkable. And usin his own facial contours is what makes it scary. A human face tweaked just slightly here and there is infinitely scarier than overdone appliances or masks. Pretty wild that he stands alone.. There hasn't been another actor like that since.

[Earth 2 Chris]

Yeah, he was one of a kind. I think more actors would have at least tried the Chaney approach if the studio system didn't get so rigid. Lugosi insisted on doing most of his own Dracula makeup, not that it was any great accomplishment, but he did do it. Chaney Jr. developed some make-up of his own but they didn't let him use it.

Chris

[PNGwynne]

You couldn't have put it better, Dwayne.

Chaney was truly a skilled artisan in make-up, with only the most basic supplies--most inherited from the theatre. And I will always have the utmost respect for Chaney's dedication in following the book's description of the Phantom.

Look at Cagney's Chaney-inspired makeups by Westmore in "Man of a Thousand Faces": They used "modern" prosthetics but are no comparison.

[Mikey]

No disrespect to LCS but I never understood why anybody would think the POTO was so ugly ?

He basically looks like a drunk guy that's been up all night

[PNGwynne]

^In the novel, he looks like a "living corpse"--it's a birth defect: emaciated, skull-like features: no nose, yellowish pale skin like parchment, nearly bald, & piercing "burning" eyes.

Chaney's interpretation is pretty sharp for 1925, to me it's iconic. But I'll admit he looks sort of strung out lol.