Philip J. Riley - Lon Chaney in London After Midnight

LONDON AFTER MIDNIGHT

Books by

Philip J Riley

CLASSIC HORROR FILMS

Frankenstein, the original 1931 shooting script

Bride of Frankenstein, the original 1935 shooting script

Son of Frankenstein, the original 1939 shooting script

Ghost of Frankenstein, the original 1942 shooting script

Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, the original 1943 shooting script

House of Frankenstein, the original 1944 shooting script

The Mummy, the original 1932 shooting script

The Mummys Curse the original 1944 shooting script (as Editor in Chief)

The Wolf Man, the original 1941 shooting script

Dracula, the original 1931 shooting script

House of Dracula, the original 1945 shooting script

CLASSIC COMEDY FILMS

Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, the original 1948 shooting script

CLASSIC SCIENCE FICTION

This Island Earth, the original 1955 shooting script

The Creature from the Black Lagoon, the original 1953 shooting script (editor-in-chief)

THE ACKERMAN ARCHIVES SERIES - LOST FILMS

The Reconstruction of London After Midnight, the original 1927 shooting script

The Reconstruction of A Blind Bargain, the original 1922 shooting script

The Reconstruction of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the original 1923 shooting script

CLASSIC SILENT FILMS

The Reconstruction of The Phantom of the Opera, the original 1925 shooting script

The Reconstruction of London After Midnight the original 1927 hooting script (2nd edition)

FILMONSTER SERIES - LOST SCRIPTS

James Whales Draculas Daughter, 1934

Cagliostro, The King of the Dead, 1932

Wolf Man vs. Dracula 1944

Lon Chaney as Dracula/Nosferatu

Robert Floreys Frankenstein 1931

Frankenstein - A play, 1931 (editor)

War Eagles (as editor)

Karloff as The Invisible Man 1932

AS EDITOR

Countess Dracula by Carroll Borland

My Hollywood, when both of us were young by Patsy Ruth Miller

Mr. Technicolor - Herbert Kalmus

Famous Monster of Filmland #2 by Forrest J Ackerman

FILM DOCUMENTARIES

A Thousand Faces - as contributor (Photoplay Productions)

Universal Horrors - as contributor (Photoplay Productions)

Mr. Riley has also contributed to 12 film related books by various authors

as well as numerous magazine articles and received the Count Dracula Society Award

and was inducted into Universals Horror Hall of Fame and

won the Halloween Book Festival 2011 award in the horror catagory

London After Midnight

A Reconstruction

By

Philip J Riley

BearManor Media

P.O. Box 1129

Duncan, OK 73534-1129

Phone: 580-252-3547

Fax: 814-690-1559

www.bearmanormedia.com

1985 & 2011 Philip J Riley- Production Background

For Copyright purposes Philip J Riley is the author in the form of this book

Front Cover- MGM Art Department still, colorized

Back Cover Rick Baker, 2005 and used by permission of the artist 2010

Pictures and Titles from the Film London After Midnight used with the permission of and by

special arrangement with MGM/UA Entertainment Co.

The film London After Midnight 1927 by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Distributing Corp

Renewed 1955

Lon Chaney name and likeness are trademarks of Chaney Enterprises

Script by Waldemar Young - 1927

From a story by Tod Browning

The author wishes to thank the following individuals and institutions for their generous assistance;

MGM/UA Entertainment Co. and Herbert Nusbaum, Legal Department without whom this project would never have been possible

Jim Earie, head of the Research Library

Robert Rogers, assistant, Research Library

Ben Presser, Legal Files

Norman Kaphan, Still Department

Dore Freeman, Still Department

Florence Meeter, Script Department

Mary Meacham, Title Department

Jim Liles, Optic Department

Wes Meyers, Film Library

Ben Cowitt, Studio Manager

Copy, Props, Art, and Lab Departments

And all the girlsLois, ErmaLinda, Charlotte

Mildred, Florence, and Bernice

Also many thanks to:

Carroll Borland

David S. Horsley A.S.C.

Patsy Chaney

Bill Nelson

Robert Bloch, (I couldnt find the armadillo)

Tam Mossman

Stan Caidin, Chauncey Haines, Chris Hartnett, Carlos Clarens, Judy Miller, Ron Borst, Greg Papalia, Dennis Billows, David Kornblum, Orin Shemin, Richard Ekstedt, John Teehan

The author gratefully acknowledges permission to reprint the following.

From The Hazardous Properties of Nitrate Film , reproduced with the permission of Eastman Kodak.

From Dracula, dramatized by Hamilton Deane and John L. Balderston (New York: Samuel French), copyright 1927 by John L. Balderston; copyright 1933 by Samuel French; copyright 1954 (in renewal) by Marion Balderston Jolin; reprinted by permission of Samuel French, Inc.

Quotes from Ruth Waterburys article The True Life Story of Lon Chaney with permission of Photoplay magazine.

Telephone interview with Carroll Borland, December 8, 1980, to the author.

The section Make-up by Lon Chaney reprinted with permission from Motion Pictures in Encyclopaedia Britanica, 14th edition, 1929 by Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.

Photographs:

The Ackerman Archives

The Museum of Modern Art, New York City

The Kobal Collection, London

The Robert Sherl Collection, Hollywood

Peter Williamson Collection

Viktor Privato, Gosfilmofond, Moscow

Kevin Nevison

Bruce Torrance Historical Collection1st Federal of Hollywood.

Robert Gilmourportraits of A. A. Gillespie 1976

Alexanders Studio 53 Photographer

First Hardback Edition 2nd revised 2011

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

FOREWARD

By

Forrest J Ackerman

For the Man of a Thousand Faces, the ghastly, ghoulish, crouching bat-winged creature who haunted London After Midnight was approximately face number 50.

It was Chaneys fourty-fourth film [Now known to be over 110 films including the Univeral Silents from 1913-1916-ed.], but he had created three makeups, as the young Wu, the middle-aged Chinaman, and the ancient patriarchal Mandarin; had portrayed both Dr. Lamb and the Missing Link (the apeman) in A Blind Bargain ( 1922 ) ; in Tod Brownings The Unholy 3 (1925) was not only Echo, the sideshow ventriloquist, but the kindly, bespectacled old grandmother who was the proprietress of a pet shop and the criminal genius whose perverse personality surfaced after circus hours.

He had been facially scarred by a tigers claws in Where East is East.

Was blind in one eye both in The Road to Mandalay and as the pirate Pew in Robert Louis Stevens Treasure Island .

Crippled as Frog (the flopper) in The Miracle Man , West of Zanzibar , The Blackbird , The Shock.

Legless in The Penalty .

Armless in The Unknown .

Often Oriental: Bits of Life , Shadows , Outside the Law and the previously mentioned Mr. Wu .

He was both scientist and circus harlequin in He Who Gets Slapped and later the tragic Pagliacci-like figure of Laugh Clown Laugh.

In The Tower of Lies a mad peasant, in The Monster a mad doctor.

Of what makeups he effected, if any, in the early appearances such as Back to Life , The Forbidden Room , The Pipes of Pan , Threads of Fate , The Stronger Mind , The Chimneys Secret , Under a Shadow , Stronger Than Death , The Golden Spider , False Faces , etc. little is known, while the makeups he created as Quasimodo for The Hunchback of Notre Dame and as Erik for The Phantom of the Opera need not be embellished upon, for they have become legendary milestones on the road that began with Chaney Way and later broadened out to Jack Pierce Avenue and the intersections of Dick Smith and Rick Baker Boulevards.