Before it was a musical or a movie with Claude Rains, THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA was a 1925 silent movie starring Lon Chaney.

Tonight the Ron Robinson Theater will be screening this movie. A silent movie, it was shot largely in black and white, but there are some color sequences where filters were used to add hues to it.

Directed by Rupert Julian, the movie came out fifteen years after Gaston Leroux’s novel first appeared.  In addition to Chaney, the movie features Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry, Arthur Edmund Carewe, Gibson Gowland, John St. Polis, Snitz Edwards ,Mary Fabian, and Virginia Pearson.

When the movie was first released, Universal Pictures would not allow any magazine or newspaper to publish a photo of Chaney as the phantom. They wanted the audience to be surprised by his face.

The showing starts at 6:30pm. The cost is $5.00.