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| Lon Chaney as Blizzard. |
Before there was Tom Savini, there was "The Man of a Thousand Faces," Lon Chaney, the great silent horror actor who quite literally wrote the book on movie make up techniques--among other contributions, Chaney wrote the first edition on film make up for the
Encyclopedia Brittanica in 1929. In addition to the usual array of powder and grease paint, Chaney used most anything he could find to achieve the results he wanted, and never shied away from possibilities that would be too dangerous or uncomfortable for most anyone else. In
The Phantom of the Opera alone, he put a film of egg white over his eyeballs to make them appear cloudy, and stretched a piece of fish skin over his face in order to reshape its basic contours. While the claim that an inhaled grain of artificial snow from a film set caused the throat cancer that killed him is likely false, he did cause irreparable damage to his health through make up and effects used in at least two films,
The Hunchback of Notre Dame and
The Penalty.
