The Phantom of the Opera (1925 film) of the title character based on the description given in the novel, where the Phantom is described as having a skull-like face with a few wisps of black hair on top of his head. As in the novel, Chaney's Phantom has been deformed since birth, rather than having been disfigured by acid or fire, as in later adaptations of "The Phantom of the Opera". Producer Laemmle commissioned the construction of a set of the Paris Opera House. Because it would have to support thousands of extras, the set became the first to be created with steel girders set in concrete.
The Phantom of the Opera (1986 musical) make the leap from film to stage. Later, in New York, Lloyd Webber found a second-hand copy of the original, long-out-of-print Leroux novel, which supplied the necessary inspiration to develop a musical: "I was actually writing something else at the time, and I realised that the reason I was hung up was because I was trying to write a major romantic story, and I had been trying to do that ever since I started my career. Then with the Phantom, it was there!" Lloyd Webber first approached Jim Steinman to write the lyrics because of his "dark obsessive side", but