Lon Chaney, Jr.

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Lon Chaney, Jr.

Lon Chaney Jr.
Birth name Creighton Tull Chaney
Born February 10, 1906
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States
Died July 12, 1973
San Clemente, California, United States
Spouse(s) Dorothy Hinckley
Patsy Beck
Notable roles The Wolf Man in The Wolf Man
Lennie in Of Mice and Men

Lon Chaney, Jr. (February 10, 1906 – July 12, 1973) was an American character actor, well-known mainly for his roles in monster movies and as the son of silent film actor Lon Chaney. Began acting under that name, and was first credited as "Lon Chaney, Jr." only in 1935, as a studio marketing ploy by a small production outfit.

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[edit] Biography

Born Creighton Tull Chaney in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma to his father and Cleva Creighton Chaney, a singer and stage performer who traveled on road shows across the country with Lon. His parents' troubled marriage ended in divorce in 1913 following a scandalous public suicide attempt by his mother in Los Angeles. Young Creighton lived in various homes and boarding schools until 1916, when his father (now employed in films) remarried to Hazel Hastings and could provide a stable home. Many sources report he was led to believe his mother Cleva had died while he was a boy, and was only made aware she lived after his father's death in 1930.

From an early age he worked hard to avoid his famous father's shadow. In young adulthood, his father discouraged him from show business, and he became successful in a Los Angeles appliance corporation. It was only after his father's death that Chaney began acting in movies, beginning with an uncredited role in the 1932 film Girl Crazy. He appeared in films under his real name Creighton until 1935, when he began to be billed as Lon Chaney Jr.; later in his career he appeared as Lon Chaney. He first achieved stardom and critical acclaim in the 1939 feature film version of Of Mice and Men, in which he played Lennie Small.

In 1941, Chaney starred in the title role of The Wolf Man for Universal Pictures Co. Inc., which characterization and company would typecast him for the rest of his life. He maintained a career in Universal horror movies over the next few years, replaying the Wolf Man in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein; Frankenstein's monster in The Ghost of Frankenstein; Kharis the mummy in The Mummy's Tomb, The Mummy's Ghost and The Mummy's Curse and Dracula in Son of Dracula, generally regarded as his most significant performance in a Universal picture after the original The Wolf Man. Universal also starred him in a series of psychological mysteries tied in with the Inner Sanctum radio series. There were also attempts to star him in western hero roles, such as the serial Overland Mail, but the six-foot, 220-pound actor often just appeared as mundane heavies. After leaving Universal, he worked mostly in character parts in low-budget films, due to typecasting and a heavy drinking problem. In later years he largely played mute or brutish roles, in part because of the ravages of throat cancer, the same disease that had claimed his father's life. In his final feature film, Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971), he played a mute zombie named Groton who was Dr. Frankenstein's assistant.

Chaney played supporting roles in the classic western High Noon (starring Gary Cooper) and The Defiant Ones (starring Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier.)

He became quite popular with baby boomers, however, after Universal released its backlog of horror films to television in 1956 and Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine regularly focused on his films; and he was honoured by appearing on one of a series of United States postage stamps portraying movie monsters, as the Wolf Man, in 1997 (Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein's monster and The Mummy, Bela Lugosi as Dracula, and Lon Chaney as The Phantom of the Opera made up the rest of that series).

Married twice, he died of liver failure in San Clemente, California. He had two sons (both deceased), and is survived by a grandson, Ron Chaney, who attends film conventions and graciously discusses his grandfather's life and film career. Ron Chaney was featured on the CBS Sunday Morning program on October 29, 2006.

[edit] Family Ancestors

[edit] Images of Lon Chaney, Jr.

[edit] Selected Filmography

  1. A Scream in the Night (1935)
  2. Mr. Moto's Gamble (1938)
  3. Charlie Chan in City in Darkness (1939)
  4. Of Mice and Men (1939)
  5. One Million B.C. (1940)
  6. Man Made Monster (1941)
  7. The Wolf Man (1941)
  8. The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942)
  9. The Mummy's Tomb (1942)
  10. Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943)
  11. Son of Dracula (1943)
  12. Calling Dr. Death (1944)
  13. Weird Woman (1944)
  14. The Mummy's Ghost (1944)
  15. Dead Man's Eyes (1944)
  16. House of Frankenstein (1944)
  17. The Mummy's Curse (1944)
  18. Here Come the Co Eds (1945)
  19. The Frozen Ghost (1945)
  20. Strange Confession (1945)
  21. House of Dracula (1945)
  22. Pillow of Death (1945)
  23. My Favorite Brunette (1947)
  24. Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)
  25. The Black Sleep (1956)
  26. 13 Demon Street
  27. The Alligator People (1959)
  28. The Haunted Palace
  29. House of Black Death
  30. Dr. Terror's Gallery of Horrors (1965)
  31. Hillbillys In A Haunted House (1967)
  32. Spider Baby (1968)
  33. The Female Bunch (1969)
  34. Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971)

[edit] Cultural References

  • He, along with his father, is mentioned in the Warren Zevon song Werewolves of London.
  • In the movie Jackass: The Movie, Johnny Knoxville's senior citizen character states, "I was Lon Chaney's lover" after he is thrown out of the convenience store for shoplifting, although he actually had no idea who Lon Chaney was at the time. He only exclaimed this statement spontaneously after noticing his celebrity star nearby on the sidewalk.
  • In an early issue of the original Fantastic Four comics series, a fan wrote in suggesting that, in a movie version of the story, The Thing (comics) be played by Lon Chaney.

[edit] External links

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