A Lon Chaney Sr Tribute

I have long considered Lon Chaney Sr to be the ultimate character actor in the history of film. The man was a marvel. Not only could he play anybody, but he completely disappeared inside the characters he portrayed. Every move he makes, even down to the smallest and seemingly most insignificant of gestures, draws you in and keeps your attention. He also conveys more inner turmoil and emotion to audiences with a single look than any line of dialogue could ever hope to convey. He reached emotional and psychological depths that few other actors have ever been able to. Lon Chaney became the characters he inhabited. When I first started to get into Silent cinema it didn’t take long for him to become my favourite actor of the era. I have a tendency to get a bit bored with some actors after a while. It happens because so often some seem to just play variations of themselves on screen. This was never true in Lon Chaney’s case. Each performance he gave was completely different. In many of his…