
Lon Chaney: The Man of a Thousand FacesFilm 6 of 14
Lambert Hillyer, Universal, 1923. Lon Chaney is Wilse Dilling, a crippled crook sent from San Francisco to a quiet town to set up a banker. Virginia Valli is the banker’s daughter he was not supposed to care about. The 1906 earthquake is restaged as both plot and punctuation; the AFI lists the picture at about seventy minutes. Cost a reported $90,220 and earned more than twice that, a Jewel beside the Super Jewel Hunchback the same year. Chaney’s walk is another harness job. The shock of the title is geological and moral, and the film knows the pun.
Lon Chaney: The Man of a Thousand Faces
A crippled crook sent to a quiet town to set up a banker, and the 1906 earthquake for a third act. Another harness, another walk. The film made twice its cost beside the Hunchback. Watch how the crutches become the character's argument before the earthquake settles it.