Once he was a star Chaney almost never looked the same way twice on the screen, and it’s hard to picture him as he looked in everyday life. Instead, we visualize him in one of his famous guises – most likely the hunchback of Notre Dame or the phantom of the opera, his two best-known roles. Watching the Chaney movies available today, I was almost shocked when I encountered him as an ordinary human being – say, as a marine sergeant in Tell It to the Marines. Chaney as a normal man doesn’t look normal! (In an era of men and women movie stars who were ethereally gorgeous, Chaney was somebody you might see out on the street. He had an excellent physique and an attractive face, but he wasn’t a Gilbert or a Valentino, or even a Rod La Roque or an Antonio Moreno. In no way, though, did he resort to bizarre makeup to hide some real – or imagined – ugliness).

Jeanine Basinger, Silent Stars, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1999