The ‘Phantom’ Phenom

He’s here, he’s there, “The Phantom of the Opera” is everywhere.

Best known is Andrew Lloyd Webber’s lavish musical of the tragic tale of the masked man who haunts the Paris Opera House, in its 10th SRO month at the Ahmanson Theater, its third year on Broadway and fourth sellout year in London.

Another musical version of “Phantom,” a comedic melodrama with classical music conceived by Briton Ken Hill, hit Los Angeles in the fall and is touring America.

Robert Englund, best known as the horrific fiend Freddy Kreuger in the “Nightmare on Elm Street” series, traded in his grotesque Freddy face for the Phantom mask in a slasher film version that didn’t exactly set box office records upon release last fall but was given another go-round with its video release March 7.

Sunday at 9 p.m., NBC unveils its “The Phantom of the Opera,” a two-part miniseries starring Charles Dance as the Phantom, Burt Lancaster as the former manager of the Paris Opera and the Phantom’s father and Terri Polo as Christine, the object of the Phantom’s affections.

Though Phantom-mania is thriving, when French author Gaston Leroux first published “The Phantom of the Opera” in 1911, it wasn’t a big success as a hard-cover book.

It wasn’t until “Phantom of the Opera” became a vehicle for the man of a thousand faces, Lon Chaney, in 1925 that the story gained worldwide exposure and became a classic. Universal Studios’ president Carl Laemmle first read the book in 1922-Leroux gave him the book when Laemmle visited Paris-and thought it would make a great film.

Chaney’s terrifying visage was not a mask, but his face. A wire device in his nose pushed his nostrils apart and gave it that upturned look. The bizarre facial shape was created by celluloid discs inside his cheeks. Eye drops made his eyes bulge.

The actor put in his contract a clause that no pictures be taken of him as the Phantom before the film was released. Thus, when actress Mary Philbin, who played Christine, pulled the Phantom’s mask off for the first time in the film, audiences were shocked and surprised.

In that version, the Phantom was an escapee from Devil’s Island who had been confined in a dungeon and torture chamber under the Opera House. Christine is the young opera singer whom he teaches music by talking to her from behind the wall of her dressing room. Obsessed with Christine, he kidnaps her twice, only to have her escape.

In 1930 dialogue sequences, music, sound effects and songs were added to the soundtrack. Chaney’s voice, however, was dubbed-he died of throat cancer that same year.

In the early ‘40s, Universal decided to remake “Phantom” as a lavish Technicolor extravaganza. Tenor Nelson Eddy played an opera singer in love with Christine (Susanna Foster); actor Claude Rains portrayed the Phantom.

The story line was entirely revised. The Phantom was now a shy violinist, dismissed from the orchestra of the Paris Opera due to fading talent. When he learns that his composition had been stolen by a publisher, he attacks the publisher and has acid thrown in his face by the publisher’s secretary.

He kidnaps Christine, the diva’s understudy, and takes her to his lair. He forces her to sing; her rescuers hear her voice and burst into the Phantom’s lair. In the ensuing chase, the Phantom dies in a rock fall.

Despite lukewarm reviews, this “Phantom of the Opera” was a big hit and won Oscars for best cinematography and art direction.

Herbert Lom, the befuddled Inspector Dreyfuss of the “Pink Panther” films, was the masked man in 1962 low-budget British version.

Set in Victorian England, this version presents an entirely sympathetic Phantom who dies trying to save Christine (Heather Sears) from a falling chandelier.

The year 1974 saw two offbeat twists on the story. “Phantom of Hollywood” featured the late Jack Cassidy as a disfigured actor hiding on a movie lot for 30 years who goes berserk when the lot is about to be bulldozed. “The Phantom of the Paradise” was a clever fantasy about a disfigured rock composer (William Finley)-his head got stuck in a disc-pressing machine-seeking revenge against a producer (Paul Williams) who stole his songs.

Maximilian Schell played the Phantom in an unmemorable 1983 CBS movie. Set in Hungary after World War I, Schell was a conductor whose diva wife committed suicide after receiving a bad notice. While attacking the critic, Schell knocked over a water heater setting his clothes on fire. When he tried to extinguish it, he used acid instead of water and was badly scarred. While living under the opera house, he heard a young singer (Jane Seymour) who resembled his wife, and he plotted to destroy his enemies through her.

Sex is the major theme of Lloyd Webber’s Tony Award-winning musical, which kicked off the current wave of Phantom-mania. His brooding, romantic Phantom commits murder, but kills because of his frustrated passion for Christine.

Like the Beast in Jean Cocteau’s “Beauty and the Beast” and the recent CBS series of the same name, this Phantom is a monster with the soul of a poet. The Phantom role has made something of a sex symbol of Michael Crawford, who originated the part in London, won a Tony on Broadway and has been with the show at the Ahmanson since May.