1000 Faces, 330 million Lives

Silent film star Lon Chaney was portrayed in the 1950’s film “The Man of 1000 Faces” by actor James Cagney.  It is a bittersweet movie about the life and rise to fame of Chaney as a character actor. I recommend it to anyone who has ever been touched in their life by the pain of being or loving someone who has a physical affliction or any kind of life challenge that often times makes us feel like the world would prefer that we were never born. Despite what ignorance and prejudice might tell us is truth, our place in the Universe and on this planet was preplanned and predestined to make a difference in sometimes small ways and sometimes very large ones. I don’t really know how the biography and films of Lon Chaney affected the people who were alive during his short but profoundly meaningful career but while he lived, he did more to capture the attention and give the world a glimpse into the sad and painful plight of people who were seen as different.

Lon Chaney knew all too well what it was like for people who were different having been a child of deaf-mute parents in the late 1800s. The movie reveals that Lon was constantly getting into fights with other children who thought they had a God-given superior right to ridicule and insult his parents for being “Dummies.” Later in the film when Lon is married and discovers that his wife Cleva is going to have a baby, he is so excited that he wants to go back to his parent’s home for Christmas so they can meet his wife and learn that they will soon be grandparents. Having not previously told his wife that his parents are deaf, he hopes that once she sees that they are a family like any other she will not be troubled by the fact that they cannot hear.  He was dreadfully wrong.  She is horrified when she learns the truth, and does not want to go through with the pregnancy.  She does relent and agrees to have the baby after a bitter argument with Lon, but their relationship never recovers from it, and Lon takes his young son after he is born and leaves Cleva, then telling his son when he is old enough to understand that his mother died.

After years of struggle to make a career for himself in cinema Lon finally breaks through to make many films that have at the center of them, a character who is different.  Many of the characters he portrays are grossly disfigured and treated cruelly and harshly because of their very existence. A 1930’s film called “Freaks” produced and directed by Tod Browning, had a role specifically handpicked by Browning for Lon to play, but Lon died of cancer before he could star in the film.

My father had a glass eye which I knew nothing about until I was about 10 years old.  No one ever talked about it, and my father wore thick lens glasses and had a very good quality glass eye so it was just something that I never could have known if someone hadn’t told me.  And they didn’t.  When I did learn about it my parents were going to take a day trip to Chicago and I was asked if I wanted to go with them.  I very much wanted to go but I was a bit intimidated by it because I had heard that Al Capone used to live there and he ran a criminal syndicate from there during Prohibition. I suppose it was ridiculous to be frightened of someone who had been dead for many years prior to our visit, but I remember seeing the incredibly tall high-rise buildings in the downtown area and wondering if any of Capone’s gang might still be there just waiting to shoot down anyone who might look at them wrong. On the way to Chicago, I still didn’t really know why we were going there except I did know that my father was going to see a doctor.  While my mother and I waited for my father when he was with the doctor my mother told me that my father was getting a new glass eye.  I was profoundly confused when she told me that.  It was all big news to me that he had an old one!  She told me not to say anything about it when he came out from seeing the doctor.  I don’t think that I could have anyway.  I was still processing the news when he did return.  He didn’t look any different to me. He was still “Dad”.  So, the drive back to Michigan was quiet in our car which was no different from the drive to Chicago had been. A few days later, I got up enough nerve to ask my mother how he had lost his eye. She told me a story that wasn’t true but I didn’t find that out until years later when I asked my father to make an audio tape for me and tell me what he knew about our family history. When I found out exactly how he had lost his eye I couldn’t believe that my mother had lied to me about it.  I do not know to this day if it was a deliberate lie or if she really didn’t know the truth herself. One thing that I did learn from my mother that was true was that my father was extremely sensitive about his eye and that more than once my father got into fist fights with other men in Louie’s Tavern after a few beers if any of them dared say anything about his glass eye. Why my parents took me with them to Chicago that day I will never know. They didn’t invite my older sister to go.  I can only assume that my father wanted me to know about it but didn’t want to talk about it.  Since I was the quiet and reserved child in the family, I guess he thought that I would learn the truth but wouldn’t ask any questions, and I didn’t.  I was always the observer and rarely the participant in family conversations so I must have been thought to be the only one who wouldn’t run out and tell every kid on the block about my dad’s glass eye.  He was right.  I never did.

So why am I telling these stories about how people have situations in their lives that can get them harassed, ridiculed, ostracized, beaten up and even killed for being different? Because things haven’t changed. Some things are better understood now.  There are wheelchair accessible buildings and many changes have been made to better serve the physically challenged.  But the challenges of the people who have a different point of view or a different lifestyle are targets for harassment and ridicule more now than ever.  The good news is that forums where we can express another opinion are available to us now but it does not follow that we will necessarily be safe from hatred and violence for making a statement.

As Lon Chaney was able to draw attention to the plight of the disabled, disfigured, and mentally challenged in that time period, there are people now who are tirelessly working to shed light on how people are being treated unfairly for just needing a job, affordable housing, healthcare, and earning a living wage.  I have seen all of my life how people are given little or no respect for trying to advocate for a better future for themselves and for others. The situation has been made much worse in the last few years by those who are so proud that they don’t have these struggles that they feel entitled to verbally and physically abuse those who have not been so fortunate. I have yet to discover how this kind of harassment can be stopped when the very people who should have our backs when abusers attack us are many times abusers themselves.  Communication with the Universal mind offers some guidance on this, but it is a problem of a species that has free will to choose right and balanced action or action that can only bring out the worst in people because their priorities and incentives come from a place of selfishness, jealousy, and a delight in cruel treatment of others. Our society cannot be bothered to intervene. And a people who will not take care of their own will not use the tools available to them to put a halt to the abuse.  People call on their god to stop what is happening to our world without understanding that we are given the knowledge to solve these problems ourselves, and as individuals we must apply the information that we are given on a daily basis.  There are people who advocate every day to show us what is wrong and how we might fix these problems, but not enough people are listening, and most of the people who are do not see that they have a place in bringing about the solution.

In the early part of the 20th century, we had Lon Chaney to show us what society needed to address in the culture to stop the needless cruelty toward those who are born or created by life circumstances different.  We have many people right now in this early part of the 21st century who are telling us what can be done to redirect ourselves to bring about change. Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, Bernie Sanders, Michael Moore, Robert Reich, and Richard Wolff {who by the way shares an April 1st, Aries birthday with Lon Chaney} are speaking to us every day in many different venues that are accessible to us free of charge on YouTube. But for whatever reason that we might cite as a reason for not trying to apply the insights that they provide we are truly not making an effective push for the change necessary to bring us out of these situations.

I would urge everyone to look within and find the unique strengths that you already possess by the mere fact that you are in this country and on this planet and apply them in whatever manner you believe to be appropriate for you.  Do not assume that it is always someone else who can do the job better.  The people that I listed above had to start somewhere, and many times it starts with the feeling that something is very wrong and you are fed up with the fact that nothing is being done about it.

Find your anger and find your voice and this time find them for the good of the many instead of the good of the few who decided that the voice of hate was the best catalyst for change.