Man of a Thousand Faces
by Joseph Pevney
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DVD details
Actor: Dorothy Malone, James Cagney, Jane Greer, Jim Backus, Marjorie RambeauDirector: Joseph Pevney
Brand: Universal Studios
Cinematographer: Russell Metty
Editor: Ted J. Kent
Producer: Robert Arthur
Writer: Ben Roberts
Writer: Ivan Goff
Writer: R. Wright Campbell
Writer: Ralph Wheelwright
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Silent, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 122 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-06-24
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Universal Studios
DVD Reviews of Man of a Thousand Faces
DVD Review: "Say, Pop! There's a great new joke going around school. "Don't step on that spider. It might be Lon Chaney.""
Summary: 4 Stars
James Cagney delivers a strong performance in the intermittently-accurate screen biography of Lon Chaney Sr. - the MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES. Universal released the film in 1957 as part of their Silver Jubilee celebration. Chaney had been one of Universal's greatest silent stars, earning fame for his unforgettable gallery of characters - everything from the tormented Quasimodo of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame", to the terrifying "Phantom of the Opera" - yet his private life contained more drama than any of his film roles.
Born to deaf-mute parents (Nolan Leary and Celia Lovsky), Lon Chaney grows up with exceptional skills in the art of pantomime and performance. Soon landing a job with the successful Kolb and Dill vaudeville show, Lon marries singer Cleva (Dorothy Malone), but keeps his parents' affliction a secret from his bride. When Lon brings Cleva home to meet the family over Christmas, her disgust is readily apparent. Fearing that their eventual baby will inherit the family's deafness, Cleva spirals into paranoia, creating a rift in their marriage and driving Lon to despair. Little Creighton (soon to be Lon Jr.) is born healthy, yet Cleva can't be satisfied. Suspecting that Lon is carrying on with Hazel (Jane Greer), one of the showgirls from the vaudeville show, Cleva takes off with ambitions to become a nightclub singer, a career which Lon soon crushes. After swallowing a bottle of acid during Lon's act onstage, Cleva's showbiz dream comes to a crashing end, Creighton is removed into state custody; and Lon moves to Los Angeles, where he'll launch his incredible film career...
Whilst it glosses over many facts from Chaney's life, MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES still presents a reasonable fascimile of the personal demons that shaped and molded one of the cinema's greatest silent stars. As it had also done in "Yankee Doodle Dandy", James Cagney's early musical training came in good stead in his performance as Chaney. His clowning and pantomiming in the early vaudeville scenes is truly something to see; however the later recreations from "Hunchback of Notre Dame" and especially "Phantom of the Opera" border on cartoonish.
Riding high on the success of her Academy Award-winning role as the outrageous nympho Marylee in "Written on the Wind", Dorothy Malone supplies the story's early histrionics as Cleva, Chaney's troubled first wife. Knashing her teeth and looking stunning in Bill Thomas's costumes, Malone's performance is truly amongst her best. On the flipside, Jane Greer quietly underplays her role of Hazel, the woman who gives Lon and his son their first stable home. Greer's career is known primarily for her incredible gallery of noir heroines (in such films as "Out of the Past", and my personal favourite, "The Big Steal"). MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES isn't one of her better films, but she gives out a lovely, warm glow as the antithesis to Malone's scene-chewing hijinks.
Fans of Chaney will instantly know where fact leaves off and fiction begins, but MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES is still an entertaining and dramatic remembrance of one of the most influential figures of the early cinema.
Description of Man of a Thousand Faces
MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES - DVD MovieLon Chaney earned his nickname "The Man of a Thousand Faces" with a gallery of grotesque, misshapen characters created through a combination of elaborate makeup, contorted postures, and sensitive performances. After a rich silent-movie career starring in such classics as He Who Gets Slapped, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and The Phantom of the Opera, he died after completing his first and only sound film, a remake of his silent crime picture The Unholy Three. James Cagney plays Chaney in this glossy Hollywood biography, a reverent, melodramatic tribute that focuses on his turbulent private life and rise from vaudeville clown to hard-working Hollywood extra to movie star. Dorothy Malone costars as his unstable first wife, who flees her husband and their young son after a failed suicide attempt, Jane Greer is the loving showgirl who fills her void, and future real-life superproducer Robert Evans plays legendary MGM producer Irving Thalberg. Cagney is a short, thick pug of an actor where Chaney is tall and lean, but he oddly resembles the star in his craggy face, and his rarely tapped dancing skills are put to good use in the early vaudeville scenes and contorted recreations of twisted Chaney characters. But most importantly, Cagney brings to the role passion and compassion that burn through the indifferent direction and show-biz clichés to create a vivid, energetic portrait of the enigmatic cult star who rarely let audiences see his true face. --Sean Axmaker
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