Actors
Lon Chaney and James Cagney, though separated by many years, were major
Hollywood legends in their own respective times. Passionate and gifted in their kindred
abilities to morph into wildly disparate characters who couldn’t be more
different from themselves, Chaney and Cagney set the bar for larger than life
performances very high for many decades.
That the two icons of film would cross paths one day seemed unthinkable
but in this 1957 biographical drama of the aptly named Man of a Thousand Faces, Mr. Cagney took on the unenviable task of
portraying Mr. Chaney, one of the silver screen’s most versatile and still
largely unmatched chameleons.
While
much of his life was spent in front of big studio film cameras making unforgettable
and timeless movies focused on grotesque characters often ostracized from
society, Mr. Chaney himself remained an intensely private man who kept his
personal life out of the public eye. Though this Academy Award nominated CinemaScope production by
jack-of-all-trades director Joseph Pevney wound up taking the route most
celebrity biopics do by fictionalizing some events for dramatic effect, Man of a Thousand Faces attempts to get
to the heart of the man behind the mask and what drove so many of his greatest
moments before the camera.
Following
Chaney from his early days of Vaudeville on stage to the eventual transition to
film from silent pictures to talkies, Man
of a Thousand Faces plays a bit like a greatest hits compilation of some of
the actor’s most iconic characterizations.
Technically speaking it’s handsomely photographed in panoramic
widescreen by Russell Metty and sports an evocative score by Frank Skinner,
though the picture is largely lead by the magnetism of James Cagney. It’s hard to imagine the film without him. While it does take liberties with his
neurotic wife Cleva Chaney’s (Dorothy Malone) portrayal including making her
additionally unsympathetic towards her husband’s deaf parents, it doesn’t hide
her own transgressions including attempted suicide by drinking mercuric acid as
well as abandoning her son during his childhood.
The
implication here is that Mr. Chaney worked tirelessly in acting to maintain a secure
and stable roof over his son’s head though the real Lon Chaney always said his
personal and professional lives never collided with one another. The film also tends to make Chaney a saintly
figure when the history books will point to a man who was a bit rougher around
the edges than the one seen here. Man of a Thousand Faces lets Lon Chaney
off the hook somewhat in the treatment of his wife though Cagney adds the line ‘I
drove her to this’ which keeps viewers from picking sides.
Though
he looks nothing like the real Lon Chaney, James Cagney’s performance as the
mysterious yet ingenious actor is full of emotion and heart. In moments of meta-filmmaking, Cagney is
tasked with having to convey personal emotions through his many makeup setups
more than once including his most famous role as Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Take for instance a scene where the actor is
filming a pivotal sequence in Hunchback
donned in his deformed makeup and the actor breaks character when his wife
appears on set, resulting in a heated argument so stern he doesn’t wait to take
his costume off before laying into her.
It’s a remarkable sequence where both Chaney and actor Cagney are forced
to convey complex emotions from behind a mask, a testament to both actors’
gifts for performing.
Probably
the most surprising casting bit in an already meta biopic is that of then-actor/future-Paramount
CEO Robert Evans as legendary Universal Studios CEO Irving Thalberg. Opening the picture at an obituary for Mr.
Chaney with the film playing as flashback, that the late Robert Evans
portraying such an iconic film producer would go on to become an iconic film
producer himself in later years remains a most curious coincidence and turn of
events. At a time now with studio heads
generally being frowned upon as only caring about the bottom line, it’s
refreshing to see Mr. Thalberg portrayed with such sympathy and a clear passion
for storytelling.
As
much about Lon Chaney as it is about the man portraying him, Man of a Thousand Faces represented an
important chapter in James Cagney’s career though Chaney die-hards will likely
come away saying the legendary actor’s life was “Hollywoodized” for the big
screen. Despite the fictionalization, it
remains an engaging and entertaining traditional Hollywood biopic which for the
uninitiated proves to be a good starting point to learn about both actors. Lon Chaney demonstrated an uncanny ability to
disappear into a role past the point of being recognizable and James Cagney
clearly had an admiration for that kind of actor power. Mr. Cagney might not look much like Mr.
Chaney but he most certainly “gets” him.
--Andrew Kotwicki
