Horror and Romance - the many faces of Lon Chaney and Elinor Glyn

Find out what connects horror star Lon Chaney and romantic novelist Elinor Glyn.

The link between romantic novelist and glamour icon Elinor Glyn and silent horror film star Lon Chaney Snr may not be at first apparent. On the face of it they have nothing in common. However, this talk will explore a shared background in the fascination and narrative effect of make-up, facial surgery, and beauty treatments that takes its route through the medical advances made during the First World War and into the post war visual culture.

The celebrated actor Lon Chaney pioneered specialist make-up techniques and created bespoke appliances to construct his characters on screen, going through much pain and discomfort resulting in permanent damage to his body.

His depiction of the amputee in The Unknown (1927) and The Penalty (1920) and of facial disfigurement in Phantom of the Opera (1925) engaged the audience’s visceral emotions in the genre of horror and affectively exposed fears of social dysfunction and trauma.

Chaney’s contemporary, Elinor Glyn, author and Hollywood filmmaker, was known for her beauty regimes and her definition of ‘It’ or sexual allure. In 1926 Glyn underwent her own facial procedure, the same year that Suzanne Noël published La Chirurgie Esthetique, describing facelift, eye lift, and the correction of burns and scars.

In the two films featured in this talk, Glyn’s Man and Maid (1925) her war veteran hero rebuilds his sense of self after amputation, and in Such Men are Dangerous (1930) the main character undergoes surgery and therapeutic regimes to change his appearance leading to love and fulfilment.

About the speakers:

Alexis Weedon is Professor of Publishing Studies and Karen Randell is Professor of Film and Culture, both at the University of Bedfordshire.

Their British Academy funded project explores attitudes to the reconstructed body through the creative work of these two stars of the 1920s. Their research investigates medical procedures, photos and diaries located at archives in the UK and USA to analyse five films which creatively and successfully addressed the latent fears of technologizing the body.

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