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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 where Chaney went to work in films. His first appearances were under his real name (he had been named for his mother, singer Frances Chaney). He played in a 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, however was also aware the famous name could help his career, and so he kept it. 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., 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. 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. When he died from a variety of causes in 1973, it was as an actor who had spent his life chasing the fame of his father, but who was much beloved by a generation of filmgoers who had never seen his father.

My father would be horrified if he knew I was making it in the
pictures and that I&#39;m not billed as Creighton Chaney.

I am most proud of the name Lon Chaney. I am not proud of Lon Chaney Jr., because they had to starve me to make me take this name.

Nothing is more natural to me than horror.

All the best of the monsters played for sympathy. That goes for my father, [<a class="ipc-md-link ipc-md-link--entity" href="/name/nm0151606/?ref_=nmqu_qu">Lon Chaney</a>], myself and all the others. They all won the audience&#39;s sympathy. The Wolf Man didn&#39;t want to do all those bad things. He was forced into them.

The trouble with most of the monster pictures today is that they go after horror for horror&#39;s sake. There&#39;s no motivation for how monsters behave. There&#39;s too much of that science-fiction baloney.

[on his makeup for The Wolf Man (1941)] What gets me is after work when I&#39;m all hot and itchy and tired . . . [I&#39;ve still] got to sit in that chair for 45 minutes while [makeup artist Jack P. Pierce] just about kills me, ripping off all the stuff he put on me in the morning.

[on &#39;Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein&#39;] Abbott and Costello ruined the horror films. They made buffoons out of the monsters.

Quotes

Lon Chaney Jr.

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