Lon Chaney Junior

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lon Chaney Junior (born February 10, 1906 in Oklahoma City , † July 13, 1973 in San Clemente , California ; actually Creighton Tull Chaney ) was an American theater, film and television actor. The son of the silent film star Lon Chaney senior was mainly known for his appearances in the universal horror films.

Life

Creighton Tull Chaney was born to actor Lon Chaney, Sr. , who became a star in the 1920s through his work in horror films . Creighton Chaney's film career began in 1932 with a minor supporting role in the comedy Girl Crazy . In reference to his father, who died in 1930, he gave himself the stage name Lon Chaney Jr. in order to benefit from his prominence. After he had at first rather mediocre success, Chaney Jr. became known in 1939 for the role of the simple-minded Lennie in Von Mäusen und Menschen , a film adaptation of the novel by John Steinbeck . Lon Chaney Jr. made his first horror film in 1941, in Man-Made Monster , he played a young fairground artist who is turned into a monster immune to high voltage by a mad scientist. Lionel Atwill embodied the mad scientist .

Lon Chaney junior became famous in 1941 for the role of Larry Talbot, who turns into a werewolf , in the horror film The Wolf Man , in which Bela Lugosi and Claude Rains also took part. Lon Chaney junior repeated the role of the werewolf in Frankenstein meets the Wolfman , in Frankenstein's house , in Dracula's house and in Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein . This makes him the only actor at Universal who embodied the same role in all of the sequels, while the other monster characters (such as Frankenstein's creature, the mummy or Dracula) were portrayed successively by different actors - again by Lon Chaney, Jr. He played Monster in 1942 in Frankenstein Returns , Count Dracula in 1943 in Dracula's Son , and Mummy three times, in The Mummy's Tomb (1942), The Mummy's Ghost (1944) and The Mummy's Curse (1944).

Chaney didn't just play monsters, however. Universal also used him in the six-part mystery film series The Inner Sanctum , starting with Calling Dr. Death (1943). The actions of all these B-films were completely independent of each other, the series was held together primarily by Chaney in the lead role, who embodied the (but sometimes ambivalent) hero.

Also in the 1950s and 1960s, Lon Chaney Jr. appeared repeatedly in horror films. In The Black Castle he was seen at the side of Boris Karloff , in The Chamber of Horrors of Dr. Thosti alongside Bela Lugosi, Basil Rathbone and John Carradine . With Vincent Price he directed The Torture Chamber of the Witch Hunter , directed by Roger Corman .

Also outside of the horror genre, Lon Chaney Jr. took on many supporting roles, especially villains in westerns or crime films. He has appeared on westerns like Twelve Noon with Gary Cooper and Grace Kelly , Until the Last Breath with Gregory Peck , Between Two Fires with Kirk Douglas, and Murderers of Arkansas with Henry Fonda . However, it became increasingly difficult for his colleagues and directors to work with Chaney from the mid-1950s onwards, as he suffered from severe alcohol addiction : "Get what I can get out of me until noon, after that I guarantee nothing," advised he on the authority of Forrest J Ackerman , the last of Chaney's side in the movie, the horror - drama Dracula vs. Frankenstein , participated, the film crew. For the passionate actor himself, the illness-related restriction was difficult to bear, which in turn led to new and heavier drinking.

In 1973, Lon Chaney Jr. died of lung cancer at the age of 67. Just a few months later, the same illness claimed the life of Glenn Strange , with whom Chaney Jr. had made several horror films for Universal Studios in the 1940s . The death of both actors marked the final conclusion of the "golden era" of classic horror cinema. To this day, Lon Chaney junior is the only actor besides Paul Naschy who has played Dracula ( Dracula's son ), Frankenstein's monster ( Frankenstein returns ), the mummy ( The Mummy's Tomb ) and his regular role, the Wolfman ( The Wolfman ).

Filmography (selection)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Kathleen Ussher: Lon Chaney, the chameleon. The stage 1926, accessed on May 10, 2020 .
  2. ^ Daniel Sander: Hollywood's second division , under SPON
  3. ↑ Quoted from Rolf Giesen: Lexikon des phantastischen Films . Volume 1, Ullstein Verlag, Berlin et al. 1984, pp. 119f.
personal data
SURNAME Chaney, Lon junior
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Chaney, Creighton Tull (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American theater, film, and television actor
DATE OF BIRTH February 10, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Oklahoma City
DATE OF DEATH July 13, 1973
Place of death San Clemente (California)