drednm James Cagney was 58 years old when he starred in this movie as Lon Chaney, who died in 1930 at the age of 47. The story starts out in the early 1900s when Chaney was a Vaudeville performer in his 20s! His son was born in 1906 and he started working in films (as an extra) in 1912 or 1913 at the age of 30. Chaney divorced his first wife in 1913 and remarried in 1914. All of these events happened to Chaney before he was 31.While Cagney does give a good performance, he's so "too old" for the role, it's hard to get past it. The filmmakers try to hide it by having Cagney is clown make-up or or theatrical guise through a lot of the early part of the film when he's married to the first wife (Dorothy Malone, who's 33 here). With Malone out and the second wife (Jane Greer, also 33) in, Cagney looks like their father.There's a lot of lip service to Chaney's film career, which really took off with THE MIRACLE MAN in 1919. That film, which exists now only in fragments, starred Thomas Meighan and Betty Compson. Chaney had the showy supporting role of "the Frog" (a role originated on Broadway by Percy Helton). This is pretty well done. We see lots of drawings of Chaney's subsequent characters in films and two of the most famous are re-enacted.The main trouble with the re-enactments of THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME and THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA is that while Chaney created his characters with makeup, hooks, wires, and rubber so that his facial expressions were free. Cagney's disguises are mostly just Halloween masks and do not come close to the original creations.Irving Thalberg is played by Robert Evans, whom Norma Shearer spotted by the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel and promoted him for the role of her dead husband. Roger Smith plays Chaney's son. He was "discovered" by Cagney in Hawaii and promoted for the role of Chaney, Jr.Others in the cast include Jim Backus as the press agent, Marjorie Rambeau as the old-time actress, Marjorie Bennett as Vera the maid, and Celia Lovsky as the mother. This film is probably a fine biopic if you know nothing about Lon Chaney. If you do, then it comes across as a vanity production of the worst kind.

Tad Pole . . . so naturally he confined his movie career almost exclusively to silent films. MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES is a Universal Picture--a biography of a Universal star decades gone. Therefore, some of its "facts" may seem a little fishy. FACES implies that Mr. Chaney's key performances were drawn directly from his personal life. The stage-obsessed, acid-scarred PHANTOM OF THE OPERA? Based on his first wife, Cleva, a frustrated singer who barges on stage to gulp acid in the middle of Lon's act. His contorted human worms and insects in flicks such as MIRACLE MAN and THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME? Sketched directly after his second wife, Hazel's, mutilated first husband. After piling on such incredible melodrama well past the tipping point, FACES "jumps the shark" with Act V: THE TROUT'S REVENGE. Habitual screen chain-smoker James Cagney is free of "coffin nails" dangling from his lips as Lon, so naturally Lon is the one Cagney character doomed to throat cancer. It's a mysterious death for Universal's "Mystery Man." Was Lon poisoned by PP&G? Or was he Humanity's first sacrifice to precipitated lead and mercury brought on by the Automobile Age? After all, FACES implies that his diet was mostly fresh-caught Southern California trout. Only, his last creel-full outlived him!

JoeytheBrit It's possible Jimmy Cagney couldn't resist the role of Lon Chaney here because of the opportunity it gave him to draw on his own stage and vaudeville experience to perform a couple of dance numbers. There's certainly nothing else about this film – a typical Hollywood biopic that pays only loose attention to historical fact – to explain why he accepted a part that he was clearly too old to play. Chaney was only 47 when he died, ten years younger than Cagney was when he filmed the role and was a rather gaunt figure whereas the middle-aged Cagney had a round face (although he appears to have slimmed down quite considerably for the part) and was noticeably short in stature. Despite these drawbacks, Cagney gives the best performance in the picture, and arguably his best post-Cody performance. Although Cagney was a thoughtful man he was also a dynamic character and the role calls upon him to rein in that natural dynamism to a large degree. Even though he manages this admirably, it's impossible for him to persuade us that he is the quiet man of few words that Chaney was. A passing reference is made to Chaney's quietness, but it plays no major part in the portrayal.As with most Hollywood biopics, the writers select a couple of the more sensational aspects of their subjects life around which they then construct an overwrought melodrama that bears little resemblance to reality. Chaney's parents were both deaf and mute but I don't recall this causing a major rift between him and his first wife. There was also some concern that their child may inherit his grandparent's mute-deafness, but again I don't think it was the major crisis in Chaney and Cleva's relationship as it is here. I could be wrong, of course, but had only just completed reading a biography of Chaney's life when I happened upon this film. Cleva did destroy her singing voice when she attempted suicide – but she didn't attempt it on stage.The film devotes most of its time to Chaney's personal life but does offer occasional glimpses into the film-making business. A few scenes that demonstrates the chaotic process of studio film-making in the very early days of Hollywood, when the absence of sound meant that several different genres of film could be shot alongside one another in an enclosed space, are quite interesting but, while we do see Cagney re-enacting a few famous Chaney scenes, the general impression is that his career is sidelined for much of the film.Chaney died in 1931 (after making only one sound movie – a remake of his silent hit The Unholy Three). His premature death from lung cancer was the result of a lifetime of heavy smoking, but we never once see a cigarette in Cagney's hands. Even as late as the late-50s it seems that the studios were still portraying movie stars as Gods Amongst Us who could never be the instrument of their own demise. Here, Chaney develops a mysterious cough. It is never explained, but briefly described to an improbably handsome Creighton Chaney (who would metamorphose into Lon Chaney Jr.) as 'malignant' shortly before all personal and emotional problems are neatly resolved and dad can pass his famous make up box to son before ascending to the great studio in the sky.

jotix100 As biopics go, this 1957 film shows limited interest today. The legendary figure of Lon Chaney is examined by the same Hollywood where he went to make a legend out of his life. He was a giant in the world of silent films because of the disguises he created for the movies during his second career in the industry. Chaney was a man way ahead of himself as far as the creation of the special type of makeup he used for all the different characters he played.Lon Chaney's roots were in vaudeville, where he also was greatly admired. However, his lucky break came not in the theater, but in the new industry of the moving pictures that was starting in California. Mr. Chaney was able to bring something new to those pictures that sparked the imagination of audiences in the many films he starred in. His association with the legendary Irving Thalberg helped cement his own status in the movie business.His personal life though, was not a happy one. His first wife, the beautiful Cleva Creighton, showed she did not care from him and abandoned Lon and her young son without a second thought. Chaney received a big blow in the custody of the young son, Creighton, who was placed in an orphanage because he couldn't show means of support for the child. Being separated from his son Creighton was a big blow to the man who adored the young boy but couldn't get his custody until he made a name for himself in the film industry. His life with Hazel, his second wife, turned out to be a fine one without the ups and downs that affected his first one.The main attraction for watching this film was James Cagney, an actor who always gave an honest performance. In here, though, he seems to be playing a variation on his own "Yankee Doodle Dandy" in the first segment devoted to his life as an entertainer in the theater. The other half, his arrival in the movies, is not as interesting as the beginning.The film, directed by Joseph Pivney, doesn't break new ground in the way the narrative plays in the film. Dorothy Malone, who is seen as Cleva, has some interesting moments. Jane Greer is also effective as the sweet Hazel, the woman who always loved Chaney from afar.