Flag down: 15 yards for illegal use of legs

I programmed The Penalty (1920) starring Lon Chaney as a legless criminal mastermind as part of our Film Studies unit on acting. I had wanted to show The Unknown if only for the brilliant long take in which Chaney's character realizes he has had his arms lopped off for nothing. His reaction, laughter--which grows increasingly bitter and irrational as it goes on for an unnaturally long time, went a long way to convincing me of Chaney's brilliance as an actor beyond his bag of make-up tricks.

But I couldn't get my hands on a copy to show in the slot I wanted, so I thought it would be interesting to see The Penalty at long last, since still images from it were long familiar to me. Chaney's character is so evil that he gleefully poses for a bust of Satan. According to Chaney biographer Michael Blake, he gives one of his key performances in this film.

Honestly, as an admirer of Chaney, once he figured out how to tie his legs up and walk around on his knees, Chaney seemed to consider himself done. The rest of the performance is nothing but cheap-jack melodramatic sneering. Then, at the end, when he gets his brain fixed so he is no longer evil (seriously, that is the plot), and is a nice man, but has to go to jail anyway (that is The Penalty), he makes very sincere saintly looking faces. There is nothing in this film to convince students that there is anything to film acting other than mugging. This is absolutely the last time I schedule any film sight unseen.

A harmless Chaney is a toothless Chaney

Lon Chaney's films occupy an aesthetic space that doesn't exist in film anymore. He made popular entertainments based on solid acting and a disinclination to pander to the audience. If the stories veer into the sentimental, that was what Chaney sincerely desired.

He is most famous for his characterizations which amounted to disguises, and his role in Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928) is no exception. (And yes, that cheesy song with the lyrics, "Even though your heart is breaking/Laugh, Clown" that turned up in 1930's cartoons was written to publicize this movie.) But though he disguised himself, there were common qualities to all his characters--strong romantic desire, a penchant for self-sacrifice, and, in the best of films, menace--or at least power--held in check. Writer William Goldman describes in his book The Season how Burt Lancaster and George C. Scott suggested that power and menace, even in a meeting. There is always the sense in a good Chaney film that whatever he's doing right now, he could choose to do something much, much worse.

But not in Laugh, Clown. It's the literally pathetic story of the clown who raises a little girl and falls in love with her, but she loves the other fellow, so he nobly steps aside, which somewhat relieves the story from its inherent skeeviness. But throughout, he is completely harmless. He is not going to strangle the handsome young fellow, or whack him over the head, or cut off his limbs or do anything interesting. And Chaney not being weird and twisted, is just another sentimental old ham from the 1920's. I cannot imagine he would have the reputation he has today, 80+ years later if the body of his work were no edgier than this pablum.

Johnny No-Trump

I want to keep this short. It's hard enough to get people to view and appreciate silent films without a stiff like this making things harder. I watched The Ace of Hearts (1921) by way of getting to more of the work of Lon Chaney. You could describe this as Anarchists in Love. It's the usual Chaney triangle where he doesn't get the girl (surprise!) In this one they took the 75-minute running time of the film and packed all of 8 minutes worth of story. Nothing happens over and over and over and everyone pulls a face to show how they feel about it. With so many interesting Lon Chaney films lost, why did this one have to survive?

Unknown to me

Even as a silent-film buff, I had only seen Lon Chaney's two most famous performances, in Phantom of the Opera and Hunchback of Notre Dame. But with Halloween on its way, it seemed appropriate to catch up on some of his other work.

Chaney's films aren't really horror films, but they dwell among the grotesque, bizarre and sometimes horrific. The Unknown (1927) is a prime example. Co-written and directed by frequent collaborator Todd Browning (best known today for the Lugosi Dracula and Freaks), the story is typically weird. It concerns a criminal with double thumbs who poses as Alonzo, an armless knife thrower, to avoid police detection. He falls in love with a young woman (played by a very young Joan Crawford) who is sorta sweet on Alonzo, since she has a phobia about men's arms and being touched. Alonzo blackmails a doctor into removing his arms, only to find that the young woman has fallen in love with someone else. Chaney's performance when he realizes what he has done to himself for no reason is still quite startling, ending in a cry which is no less piercing because there is no soundtrack.

The film's technique is rudimentary--it is all about Chaney's acting (which includes some well-staged stunts using a real armless actor). But it has set me off on the trail to see as much of Chaney's work as I can.