Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera has been weaving its spell over readers and audiences since its publication in 1910. Prior to the Lloyd Webber musical, most Phantom fans were introduced to the story with the 1925 film starring Lon Chaney, which moved and touched many deeply with Chaney’s magnificent performance, in spite of changing the ending to a less sympathetic version than the novel (and original cut). Chaney’s Phantom became a beloved figure of the Universal Studies “Monsters” series, and more movie adaptations would follow, none very accurate to the book. I met many Phantom phans in the 1990s who had first become captivated with the story through the Lon Chaney film.
Full scale Phantom “phandom” really took off with the international success of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical in 1986, much of it initially focused around Michael Crawford. By 1989, a fanzine called “Phantom Notes” was being published from the US, by Jenn Bills. It included cast updates and occasional fanfic, but its crown jewel was the letters section, where fans wrote in with reviews of casts and discussion about many aspects of the role and story, including why we’re so drawn to it. “Phantom Notes” ran for 12 issues.
In 1993, the Phantom Appreciation Society was started in the UK, publishing 12 issues of a zine called “Beneath the Mask” (first four issues named “Masquerade”, renamed as there was already a musical theatre magazine by that name). By its final issue, “Beneath the Mask” had over 400 readers, with cast news, reviews, character analyses, and discussion of all versions of Phantom, including an extensive letters page.
From 1997, POTO: The Phantom of the Opera magazine (run from the US) published information, articles, reactions and reviews on the ALW musical and other versions, publishing 5 issues ending with the massive 200+ page “Millennium Edition”. The 90s also saw a German Phantom fanzine, called The Chandelier.
By this time, Phantom fandom was moving on to the internet, with a Phantom email discussion list and several early web boards. From there, it has continued to grow with the internet, including LiveJournal communities, with the previous incarnation of this site, phantomoftheopera.com, running discussion boards filled with fan content for over a decade. Nowadays, phans continue to gather in Facebook groups and on tumblr.
We’ll be adding more about Phantom phan culture as we develop the site, including more on phandom history, fan fic and fan art, and other fandom activities.
Images above: 100 x 100 icons made for livejournal, circa 2006.