Alonso Chaney was born at Colorado Springs, Colorado on this day in 1883, both parents were deaf and dumb. At age nine, "Lon" left school to tend his mother when she was struck with inflammatory rheumatism which left her bedridden for the rest of her life. As the boy learned the news of the town, he pantomimed it to his mother, learning to communicate in pose and gesture. At eighteen he was completely hooked on the stage, working in his own travelling company. In 1912 he moved to Los Angeles and started getting bit parts in movies, and in 1923 stunned audiences with his performance as The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Because of his skill with makeup, Lon Chaney was known as "the man of a thousand faces".