Lon of 1000 Faces [Paperback]

Forrest J. Ackerman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2002

The career of actor Lon Chaney Sr, the Man of 1000 faces. A chronolocical pictorial history featuring stunning characters in hundreds of pictures from his many films. This seminal appreciatio contains biographical sketches and remembrances of Chaney's film and life by Forrest J Ackerman as well as other friends, fans, and relatives. A must for anyone interested in Chaney's films, special effects, makeup artistry, or the history of the Golden Era of Hollywood silent film making.

Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: James A Rock & Co. Publishers (January 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0918736390
• ISBN-13: 978-0918736390
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,842,796 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Should be called A LON CHANEY PHOTO ALBUM!, October 17, 2003

By 

2littlemoney "somuch2buy" (Oakland, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lon of 1000 Faces (Paperback)

This book was first published sometime in the 80's (?) and now brought to serious LON CHANEY fans again (thankfully!) by the James A. Rock Publishing Co./Sense Of Wonder Press in a completely revised format, with rescanned and cleaned up images from the first edition's plates (or lack of plates, that is, which was put out by another company).
This book is pretty amazing. In other Lon Chaney books we are treated to an in-depth look at the man's life via extensive text, here, we are treated to an in-depth VISUAL accounting of his films courtesy of the legendary film stills collection of Forrest J Ackerman. If you've picked up the Chaney books by Michael Blake featured elsewhere on Amazon, you'll likely want to pick this up to round out those works. Here, Ackerman takes us film by film, utilizing old newspaper clippings, stills, film frames etc and gives us an insightful *LOOK* into the man's work. There are a number of articles/commentaries by notables such as Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, and Kenneth Strickfadden (amongst many others) that are testimonials to the man's genious. There is a section on Lon candids, newspaper clippings etc., etc., and it all just seems to go on and on.
If I were to have a beef, and I'm stretching myself here, I guess it would be that the halftones on all of the pictures could have been a bit tighter/darker and not as apparent. But as I'd said, I'm stretching myself considering the wealth of visuals contained within this book makes it all worthwhile. Not to mention, the fact that Sense Of Wonder Press should be thanked for putting this book back into circulation after so long!
Overall, this ranks up there with Phillip Riley/MagicImage's treatment of Lon's films (find those elsewhere on Amazon!), and I'm definitely quite pleased to have this in the collection here.