The Man of a Thousand Faces

 

Lon Chaney, the first great horror film star and a pioneer in the use of film-related make-ups. Known as "The Man of a Thousand Faces", Chaney created his own appliances for his films and kept their origins a closely guarded secret. His speciality was bizarre and gruesome characters, so much so that a popular joke was often told about him. If someone saw a spider and went to step on it, another person in the room would call out, "Don't kill it, it may be Lon Chaney.". One of the few silent film stars to still be known today, the bulk of Chaney's movies had no audio. The advent of sound in pictures spelt out the doom of many actors and actresses in Hollywood. They may have looked good, but they didn't sound good. But, Chaney was also a great vocal mimic, and in his one & only "talkie" he showed he would have had continued success in film. That picture was a remake of an earlier film of his, The Unholy Three (I recommend seeing it). If he had lived, Chaney would've had a long career (movies, radio, television, cartoons), but this was ended when he died of cancer in 1930.