Man of a Thousand Faces

Lon Chaney is a talented mime in the Teens working in vaudeville. He is married to neurotic, unreliable Cleva Creighton, a singer whose erratic behavior costs both of them their jobs. When they go back to visit Chaney's family, Cleva is shocked to discover that his parents are deaf-mutes. The paranoid, pregnant Cleva then irrationally presumes that her son by Lon could be born afflicted too. Even after their son is born healthy, she loses interest in being a wife and mother and tries to pursue a show business career alone. When Lon insists she return to mother young Creighton, she abandons them. When a judge decides that Lon's stage career makes him an unfit parent, the actor moves to Hollywood to get regular, reliable employment so he can regain custody.