Leonidas Frank Chaney, “Man of a Thousand
Faces,” is getting a run for his money from Mark Dawidziak.
Lon Chaney was “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”
and the title character in “The Phantom of the Opera” nearly a century before
Gaston Leroux’s novel was set to the music by Andrew Lloyd Webber that stirs my
soul and emotions every time I see it – in Toronto, in Cleveland, in the movie -- alongside the woman I love.
Dawidziak, current PD and former BJ pop
culture critic, has been the face of Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark
Twain, a Civil War character, Rod Serling “Twilight Zone” worshipper and,
Tuesday, October 17 and Thursday, October 26, a vampire.
Even Mark’s email address is a tribute to two
icons, savage
humorist H.L. Mencken and frenetic comedian Groucho Marx.
Mark’s
Facebook post:
“For
those of you who have asked (and those who didn't), two chances at area
libraries to experience the awe and mystery that is The Vampire Talk, a lively
look at the changing face of the undead in history, folklore, literature and
the pop culture.
“These
are a few of the props I'll be bringing to the North Royalton Branch of the
Cuyahoga County Public Library (5071 Wallings Road) at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 17,
and the Cuyahoga Falls Library (2015 Third Street) at 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 26.
“As
Count Dracula once said, time to think outside the box. Book signing after?
Count on it.”
If you missed, that's coffin humor. The box. Get it?
The
Vampire Talk is just part of Mark’s expansive resume. He did one in 2013 in
Massillon at the Massillon Museum.
Some
day I expect Mark to show up at one of the Largely Literary Theater’s Mark Twain
performances dressed as Edgar Allen Poe. I don’t know how he keeps his
characters straight, but he channels them amazingly accurately.
And I
didn’t teach him any of that when he was my TV critic at the BJ for so many
years, starting in 1983, during my Television Editor days at Ol’ Blue Walls.
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