When the film was in production, Philbin was very young (around 22 or 23), prim, proper, and religious. In addition, Riley culled memories from a couple of key contributors to the film – lead actress Mary Philbin (1902-1993) and cinematographer Charles van Enger (1890-1980) – and it’s these memories that concern me here.

Illustrations abound and are especially valuable when they reproduce publicity stills from versions of the film that no longer exist. It also reproduces important artifacts, such as the fifth revised shooting script and numerous vintage newspaper articles concerning the production. Riley and first published in 1999, The Making of the Phantom of the Opera 1 is a slightly oversized, 317-page paperback filled with a daunting amount of facts concerning Phantom’s checkered history, from its origins as a silent film in 1925 to its re-emergence as a partial talkie in 1929.

Following up on the author’s previous Phantom piece, here he discusses Mary Philbin’s innocence, Lon Chaney’s dedication, and the larger implications of Norman Kerry’s “roving hands.”

Lon chaney phantom of the opera mask