For his graphic novel Lon Chaney Speaks, Pat Dorian created a cluster of mock movie posters, one of which says of Chaney, "The mystery star of the silent screen becomes more amazing, more surprising in this gripping all-talking story." An unscrupulous book reviewer might steal that line to describe Lon Chaney Speaks.
"My childhood was good," Chaney reports in Dorian's book, "although others might consider it unusual." His parents were deaf, so he and his siblings used sign language until "we could speak with our eyes." With this in his actor's tool belt, Chaney left Colorado Springs at 21 to tour with a vaudeville troupe. On the road he met the first woman he would marry, became a father and struggled with money and with his hard-drinking wife, whose scandal-making suicide attempt cost Chaney his job. He reported to Universal Studios and spent five years taking any acting gig on offer. To make himself more castable, Chaney mastered the arts of disguise ("I invested a small fortune in wigs") and makeup application, earning the sobriquet "The Man of a Thousand Faces." Finally he landed the role of Quasimodo--"a lovestruck bastard who can't catch a break"--in 1923's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The rest is celluloid history.
Fittingly, Dorian's illustrations--loose but sure-handed lines on yellowed-newsprint-like backgrounds, with spot color and quip-filled dialogue balloons--recall old-time comic strips. Lon Chaney Speaks is a lovingly crafted ode that brings readers tantalizingly closer to knowing the famously private Hollywood legend. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer