Lon Chaney: A monochrome chameleon

Lon Chaney (1883-1930) is a paradox. He was a character actor unrecognisable to most cinemagoers, but he became the biggest star of his era. He was a man who terrified, intrigued and revolted audiences in equal measure in famous roles such as The Phantom of the Opera or The Hunchback of Notre Dame, but was known to be courteous and soft-spoken.

Chaney was a shape shifter. Grotesques were his speciality. He could play hunchbacks, limbless gangsters, Dickensian villains, clowns, insane surgeons, old ladies and vampires. You never knew where you would see him next. "Don't step on that spider," director Marshall Neilan told a party guest. "It might be Lon Chaney."

Occasionally, Chaney could act "normal", too. His favourite role was one of his least deviant: as the hard-boiled but kind-hearted sergeant in Tell It to the Marines (1926). It is the type of role that John Wayne specialised in a generation later, but not at all what you expect from Chaney.

In photos taken off set, Chaney has the battered look of a boxer. He is not conventionally good looking. There is little in his expression to hint at the delicacy and pathos he brought to his best roles. Much about him is contradictory. His athletic prowess was astounding, but he died in his forties of lung cancer.

The usual explanation for his wildly expressive acting style was the fact that his parents were deaf mutes. Growing up in a world of silence gave him an uncanny gift for gesture. Allied to this was his painstaking approach to make-up. In Kevin Brownlow's documentary about Chaney, A Thousand Faces, made in 2000, we're shown the famous case in which Chaney carried his tools. Using its ingredients and his own imagination, he could transform himself seemingly at will.

In the crime thriller Outside the Law (1921), Chaney played the dual role of the gangster Black Mike and the Oriental, Ah Wing. The story ended with Chaney murdering... none other than Chaney.

Chaney's biographer (and professional make-up artist) Michael F Blake offers an intriguing description of the lengths the actor went to transform himself into Ah Wing, using fishskin, spirit gum, tape, a wig, false teeth, and by pulling and stretching his skin every which way.

Turning himself into Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) was even more of a leap. Cotton, gum, plaster, leather harnesses, putty, cigar holder ends and crêpe wool were all ingredients in a process that took more than three hours. Chaney's stoical endurance of pain gave him an edge over rivals. To play a character walking on stumps, he was prepared to strap up his legs behind him for hours.

At his best, Chaney evoked pathos and terror in equal measure. There is an extraordinary moment early on in Hunchback when Esmerelda (Patsy Ruth Miller) first spots the hunchback - "the inhuman freak, the monstrous joke of nature" as the townspeople call him. It is the carnival and Quasimodo, the ugliest man in Paris, has been crowned King of the Fools. Esmerelda, who is dancing for the crowd, sees him. At first she recoils, but there is pity and curiosity in the way she regards him. These were feelings that audiences, too, shared when confronted with his latest screen grotesquerie.

Kevin Brownlow admits he expected to find "all sorts of skeletons in Chaney's closet" while researching his documentary. But he was "amazed at what a calm, kind character Chaney seemed to be. He seems to have got the idea before Garbo that the best publicity is no publicity."

The research threw up endearingly banal details. For example, the ghoulish star spent time between takes teaching actresses to knit and had a passion for fly fishing. This wasn't enough to keep MGM's publicists happy. While Chaney declined to give interviews, they spread gossip around him.

There were grim moments in Chaney's past. For example, in 1913, his cabaret singer wife, Cleva, attempted suicide by swallowing mercury. Shortly afterwards, the couple endured a messy divorce.

There were also times early on when Chaney was hard-up. His son, Lon Chaney Jr, would tell how his father would take him into bars. While Chaney danced to distract the regulars, his son would creep behind the bar, stuffing his pockets with food.

The unmasking of the phantom in The Phantom of the Opera is arguably the most memorable moment in any Chaney movie. As he is exposed by the woman he loves, we see his rage. His face looks like a skull. The protuberant teeth and hollow eyes give a verminous sense of malice. Typically, Chaney twists the scene. "Feast your eyes - glut your soul, on my accursed ugliness!" reads the intertitle, but by now the phantom's self-loathing is obvious. Somehow, Chaney makes us feel sorry for him. .

Chaney remains almost unique as a character actor who became a star. It is hard to think of anyone else who came close to matching his chameleon-like qualities. More than 70 years after his last movie, Chaney still has the ability to induce a sense of dread in even the most hard-bitten audiences.

Lon Chaney: Man of a Thousand Faces at the Barbican, London EC2, continues with 'The Unknown', 15 April and 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame', 22 April (www.barbican. org.uk/film; 020-7638 8891)