{"id":243,"date":"2012-06-06T23:29:01","date_gmt":"2012-06-07T03:29:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/?p=243"},"modified":"2020-12-06T21:31:43","modified_gmt":"2020-12-07T02:31:43","slug":"ray-bradbury-meets-the-man-of-1000-faces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/?p=243","title":{"rendered":"Ray Bradbury Meets the Man of 1,000 Faces"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was a kid, growing up and watching movies on TV, I read about Lon Chaney Sr., in the magazines of Forrest J. Ackerman.\u00a0 Ackerman (1916-2008) was a great friend of Ray Bradbury and Ray Harryhausen.\u00a0 As of Mr. Bradbury\u2019s death today, Harryhausen (1920- ) becomes the last survivor of the long-lived group.<\/p>\n

Ackerman always praised Lon Chaney and claimed he was a special actor, whose like is not to be seen today.\u00a0 Even as a nine-year-old, I wanted to see more of his films.\u00a0 In those days, most of Chaney\u2019s pictures were impossible to see.\u00a0 If you were very lucky, you might see a chewed-up print of The Phantom of the Opera <\/em>or The Hunchback of Notre Dame<\/em>.\u00a0 It was unlikely that you\u2019d see any of the other ones.<\/p>\n

As video came to the world, I got a slow trickling of Lon Chaney movies.\u00a0 I was a teenager at the time.\u00a0 I was mesmerized by him.\u00a0 What an actor.\u00a0 Ackerman was right.<\/p>\n

Then, many years later, I attended a lecture at Butler University with Douglas Adams and Ray Bradbury, two authors who could hardly be more disparate, but were both typecast (if one may use that word for an author) as \u201cscience fiction guys.\u201d\u00a0 This, as Harlan Ellison would tell you, is considered by the literati to be one small step up from porno authors and men\u2019s room attendants.<\/p>\n

Adams came on and was enchanting.\u00a0 He read excerpts from his Hitchhikers\u2019 Guide <\/em>books, and some other things.\u00a0 He was a natural-born actor, able to put a spin on his work like no performers I had ever seen before.\u00a0 I loved every moment of what he did, and since he died not long after, I\u2019m glad I got the chance to see him in person.<\/p>\n

Then Bradbury came on.<\/p>\n

By this time in his life, had had a stroke, and was stuck in a wheelchair.\u00a0 His speech was somewhat impaired.\u00a0 His ability to move one hand seemed to be a little strained.<\/p>\n

I realize that everyone will focus on Mr. Bradbury\u2019s literary accomplishments, which are legion, in celebrating his life.\u00a0 I don\u2019t want to take anything away from that at all, because I love Bradbury\u2019s work.\u00a0 But there was another side to him, as a lover of film, and since this is a film blog, that\u2019s what I want to cover here.<\/p>\n

Bradbury called films \u201cwonderful\u201d and \u201cmagical,\u201d and he wanted nothing to do with the idea that they were somehow low-class art.\u00a0 He\u2019d worked on many films himself, including the underrated Something Wicked This Way Comes <\/em>(1983) and Moby Dick <\/em>(1956).\u00a0 He did a fantastic impression of director John Huston when he spoke of the making of that picture.<\/p>\n

He went on to talk about his favorite star when he was growing up.\u00a0 Born in 1920, Bradbury was an impressionable child just as Lon Chaney was becoming a big star.\u00a0 In those days, it was fairly easy to see movies reissued, so even as a youngster, he was able to see most of Chaney\u2019s big pictures in reissue.<\/p>\n

Chaney, he said, was able to reach into his soul and find something in some of these characters that was human and touching, despite how horrible they often were.\u00a0 Bradbury often teared up a bit when talking of Chaney\u2019s work, and how emotional it made him.<\/p>\n

Of course, most of the audience had no idea what he was talking about.\u00a0 After all, Chaney has been dead since 1930, and he only made one talking picture.\u00a0 Even today, a good bit of his silent material is difficult to see and a fair chunk doesn\u2019t survive at all.\u00a0 But I had seen it! \u00a0<\/em> I knew exactly what he meant.<\/p>\n

One of the things that always annoys me in an interviewer is when they ask me, \u201cCan you name an actor today who is like this silent star we\u2019re discussing?\u201d\u00a0 Well, no.\u00a0 Lon Chaney was unique in cinema.\u00a0 There was no one ever like him, and there likely never will be again.\u00a0 Despite the fact that some of his movies were clich\u00e9d and hammy, with hare-brained plots and weak direction, Chaney was always <\/em>able to wring something worthwhile out of them.<\/p>\n

He was so good at certain things that he got tagged with them and had to do them over and over again.\u00a0 Weird, contortionist makeup?\u00a0 He was great at it.\u00a0 Playing disabled characters with deformities?\u00a0 No one better.\u00a0 Ethnic types?\u00a0 Chaney\u2019s your man.\u00a0 And the thing that tied them together: No one, no one ever, was able to convey the emotions of traumatic disappointment and utter heartbreak like Chaney did.\u00a0 One facial expression.\u00a0 You felt his pain.\u00a0 The man was a genius.<\/p>\n

It was almost a given that Chaney didn\u2019t get the girl at the end of the picture, but he sure tried and it killed him (sometimes literally) that someone else ended up with his love.\u00a0 I often find that some of Chaney\u2019s best performances are in his most conventional parts, like Tell It to the Marines <\/em>(1926) or While the City Sleeps <\/em>(1928).\u00a0 But Chaney could still play convincingly through thick makeup.\u00a0 Even a fairly conventional picture like Shadows <\/em>(1922) features Chaney playing an 80-year-old Chinese laundryman.\u00a0 It is hard to see the 39-year-old Chaney in the part.\u00a0 After a few minutes, we simply believe he is<\/em> that character.<\/p>\n

As I continued to listen to Bradbury, it occurred to me that much of his work was colored in the same way that Chaney\u2019s had been.\u00a0 No, not science fiction, not horror, not claptrap.\u00a0 Chaney was all about emotion. Often it was about a alienated person who didn\u2019t really fit in with the rest of society.\u00a0 Bradbury\u2019s work was too.<\/p>\n

I remembered that in high school we\u2019d been assigned to read 1984 <\/em>and Fahrenheit 451<\/em>. \u00a0 I know that the \u201cEnglish teacher mentality\u201d taught that 1984 <\/em>was a timeless classic.\u00a0 I felt at the time that Fahrenheit 451 <\/em>was much more interesting, because it had passion that I never felt at all in Orwell\u2019s novel.\u00a0 Bradbury\u2019s characters deeply loved a history that society was taking away, so much that they were willing to die in order to preserve it.<\/p>\n

It was a very Lon Chaney sort of idea.<\/p>\n

Bradbury was moved to tears again as he recounted Chaney\u2019s untimely death in 1930, and how it affected him personally.\u00a0 This man, his hero, was dead!\u00a0 It could even happen to someone like Lon Chaney!\u00a0 It made the ten-year-old boy shudder at both Chaney\u2019s mortality and his own.<\/p>\n

We are fortunate that Bradbury lived over 90 years, just as we are unfortunate that Chaney never reached 50.\u00a0 Tonight I celebrate the legacy of both men.\u00a0 I hope somewhere, somehow, The Man of 1000 Faces gets to meet the creator of The Illustrated Man.<\/p>\n

As a postscript: I have seen an artist\u2019s picture, which I cannot find, of Death laying the final mask on Lon Chaney\u2019s face.\u00a0 I can think of no better image to include here.<\/p>\n

Post postscript: (added 8\/26\/12). \u00a0Michael Blake found the picture, which I am including here.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a kid, growing up and watching movies on TV, I read about Lon Chaney Sr., in the magazines of Forrest J. Ackerman.\u00a0 Ackerman (1916-2008) was a great friend of Ray Bradbury and Ray Harryhausen.\u00a0 As of Mr. Bradbury\u2019s death today, Harryhausen (1920- ) becomes the last survivor of the long-lived group. Ackerman … Continue reading “Ray Bradbury Meets the Man of 1,000 Faces”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"powered_cache_disable_cache":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[207,4],"tags":[62,93,94,92,95],"class_list":["post-243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-views-and-reviews","tag-classic-film","tag-forrest-j-ackerman","tag-lon-chaney","tag-ray-bradbury","tag-ray-harryhausen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=243"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":268,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243\/revisions\/268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.drfilm.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}