Lon Chaney Jr.

He was posthumously awarded a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs Walk of Stars in Palm Springs, California on January 11, 1999.

Pictured on one of a set of five 32¢ US commemorative postage stamps, issued 30 September 1997, celebrating "Famous Movie Monsters". He is shown as the title character in The Wolf Man (1941). Other actors honored in this set of stamps, and the classic monsters they portray, are Lon Chaney as Phantom Of The Opera (1925); Bela Lugosi as Dracula (1931); and Boris Karloff on two stamps as The Mummy (1932) and the monster in Frankenstein (1931).

Was mentioned in Warren Zevon's 1978 song "Werewolves of London".

Was possibly not as tall as is often reported. According to Calvin Thomas Beck in "Heroes of the Horrors" (Macmillan, 1975), Chaney wore special shoes in Of Mice and Men (1939) to increase his height by six inches. Beck writes, "In reality, he was just six feet tall." According to Beck, Chaney said that "from that film on, people thought I was much taller" (Beck, p. 235). Early publicity accounts from the 1930s describe Chaney as a strapping six-footer. In Gregory W. Mank's books, Chaney is described as being 6' 2" (though Mank reproduces press material for The Wolf Man (1941) which describes Chaney as being five inches taller than Claude Rains, who was 5' 7").

His last film might have been in Woody Allen's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask (1972). In "Conversations With Woody Allen" by Eric Lax, Allen recalls feeling like a fan, "sitting across from the Wolf Man!" as he interviewed Chaney for a role. Chaney did not appear in the final cut, and passed away the year after this was released.

He made headlines in the 1960s when he criticized "Fractured Flickers" for desecrating old film classics like his father's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923).

His scheduled ten-day tour on behalf of Bride of the Gorilla - Raymond Burr & Lon Chaney In A Schlock Classic (1951) spiraled to 4-1/2 months and covered 4500 miles.

By the 1950s, he was established as a star in low-budget horror films and as a reliable character actor in more prestigious, big-budget films such as High Noon (1952). Never as versatile as his father, he fell more and more into cheap and mundane productions which traded primarily on his name and those of other fading horror stars. His later years were bedeviled by illness and problems with alcohol.

He was released from his contract with "Universal" in 1945. The reason given for this, was due to the actor's problem with alcohol.

Well-known character actor William Smith started out as a child actor, and in an interview with a horror-film magazine stated that during breaks on the set of The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), Chaney treated all of the children on the set to ice cream.

, cast Chaney as the tortured Lawrence Talbot in The Wolf Man (1941). With this film and the slew of horror films that followed it, Chaney achieved a kind of stardom, though he was never able to achieve his goal of surpassing his father.

Like his father, Chaney created his own make-up for the role of Akhoba in One Million B.C. (1940), but union regulations forced him to abandon this.

Most of the parts he played were unmemorable, often bits, until 1939 when he was given the role of the simple-minded Lennie in the film adaptation of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men (1939). Chaney's performance was spectacularly touching; indeed, it became one of the two roles for which he would always be best remembered. The other came within the next year, when Universal, in hopes of reviving their horror film franchise as well as memories of their great silent star, Chaney Sr.

Broderick Crawford, who had played Chaney's role of Lennie in "Of Mice and Men" on Broadway in 1937, worked with Chaney at one time and shared a dressing room with him. Apparently, both men were such heavy drinkers that they would get drunk together and take turns beating each other up.

He played number of supporting parts before a producer in 1935 insisted on changing his name to Lon Chaney Jr. as a marketing ploy. Chaney was uncomfortable with the ploy and always hated the "Jr". addendum. But he was also aware that the famous name could help his career, and so he kept it.

He has two roles in common with Bela Lugosi: (1) Lugosi played Count Dracula in Dracula (1931) and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) while Chaney played him in Son of Dracula (1943) and (2) Chaney played Frankenstein's Monster in The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), in which Lugosi also appeared, while Lugosi played him in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), in which Chaney also appeared.

American character actor whose career was influenced (and often overshadowed) by that of his father, silent film star Lon Chaney. The younger Chaney was born while his parents were on a theatrical tour, and he joined them onstage for the first time at the age of six months. However, as a young man, even during the time of his father's growing fame, Creighton Chaney worked menial jobs to support himself without calling upon his father. He was at various times a plumber, a meatcutter's apprentice, a metal worker, and a farm worker. Always, however, there was the desire to follow in his father's footsteps. He studied makeup at his father's side, learning many of the techniques that had made his father famous. And he took stage roles in stock companies. It was not until after his father's death in 1930 that Chaney went to work in films. His first appearances were under his real name (he had been named for his mother, singer Frances Chaney).

Had two sons with his wife Dorothy Hinckley: Lon Ralph (born July 3, 1928) and Ronald Creighton (born March 18, 1930).

He wanted to reprise his father's role of Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and underwent a screen test for the 1939 version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), but the role went to Charles Laughton. Chaney did recreate this in an episode of the television series Route 66 (1960).