Person:Creighton Chaney (1)

     
Creighton Tull Chaney
m. 31 May 1905
  1. Creighton Tull Chaney1906 - 1973
m. Abt 1927
  1. Lon Ralph Chaney1928 - 1992
  2. Ronald Creighton Chaney1930 - 1987
Facts and Events
Name Creighton Tull Chaney
Alt Name Lon Chaney, Jr.
Gender Male
Birth[1] 10 Feb 1906 Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Marriage Abt 1927 Californiato Dorothy Marie Hinckley
Death[1] 12 Jul 1973 Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California
Burial[1][2] Body donated to science
Reference Number? Q318261?

Lon Chaney Jr. was born Creighton Tull Chaney in Oklahoma City, OK on February 10, 1906. The son of silent screen star Lon Chaney Sr. and actress Cleva Francis Cleveland Creighton (Cleva), his birth was premature and he would have died had the doctor not submerged him in the cold water of the nearby Belle Isle Lake to shock life into him.

By the age of 6 months, little Creighton made his first appearance in show business being used as a prop in one of his father's stage acts. As a baby and young boy, he traveled with his parents by train in barnstorming vaudeville shows. Often these troupes went broke on the road leaving the family stranded in various parts of America and Canada.

By the time young Creighton was ten years old, his parents' marriage had dissolved, but Lon Chaney's film career had begun, and the family's fortune took a turn for the better. Chaney was raised in an atmosphere of Spartan strictness by his father, who refused to allow Creighton to enter show business, wanting his son to prepare for a more "practical" profession; so young Chaney trained to be plumber, and worked a variety of relatively menial jobs despite his father's fame. He worked as a newsboy, butcher boy, ice man, clothing salesman, model, plumber's helper and boiler maker. The work ethic was strongly enforced in the Chaney household. Lon had not forgotten the hard times and Creighton was not going to be spoiled by success.

In 1926, he married Dorothy Hinckley and had two sons, Lon Ralph Chaney born July 3, 1928 and Ronald Creighton Chaney born March 18, 1930. Creighton went to work for his father-in- law at General Water Heater Co and eventually became a secretary of the firm. In 1930, his father became very ill and on August 26, 1930 died from a throat hemorrhage. After his father's death, the six-foot three-inch Chaney finally entered the movies with an RKO contract, He made his film debut dancing in the chorus of Girl Crazy (1932). Despite a series of bit parts and a stint as a stuntman, nothing much happened until, by his own recollection, he was "starved" into changing his name to Lon Chaney Jr. He was finally billed as Lon Chaney Jr. in the serial Undersea Kingdom (1936).

In 1936-37 he met a young starlet and model by the name of Patricia Beck and fell in love with her, thus putting an end to his ten-year marriage with Dorothy. In the divorce settlement, Lon left everything to Dorothy and the boys.

Despite his personal challenges, his film career was taking off. His roles gradually increased in such films as Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938), Jesse James (1939), Of Mice and Men (1939, as Lennie Small, the role which finally made him a star) and One Million B.C. (1940).

In 1940 he signed with Universal, who were looking for a new star to groom for their second great cycle of horror films. After appearing in Man Made Monster (1941), he portrayed the doomed lycanthrope Lawrence Talbot in The Wolf Man (1941), which allowed him to create his own, unique character in the pantheon of classic movie monsters.

The actor went on to recreate the role of Larry Talbot in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), House of Frankenstein (1944), House of Dracula(1945) and (Abbott and Costello) Meet Frankenstein (1948). Chaney occasionally got a worthwhile role in the '50s, notably in the films of producer/director Stanley Kramer (High Noon, Not As a Stranger, and especially The Defiant Ones), and he co-starred in the popular TV series Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans. However, his life-long battle with alcohol meant that he ended his career in such low-budget trash as Spider Baby (1964),House of the Black Death (1966), Hillbillys in a Haunted House (1967), Dr. Terror's Gallery of Horrors (1967) and Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1970).

In the late '60s, Chaney fell victim to the same throat cancer that had killed his father, although publicly he tried to pass this affliction off as an acute case of laryngitis. Unable to speak at all in his last few months, he still grimly sought out film roles, ending his lengthy film career with Dracula vs. Frankenstein(1971). After successfully battling the throat cancer, Lon Chaney Jr died of a heart attack on July 12 1973, aged sixty-seven. His career included over 150 plus film credits and 60 television appearances, a body of work matched by very few. As requested, his body was donated to the University of Southern California Medical School as an anatomical specimen, with hope of helping others.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Lon Chaney, Jr..

References
  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 Lon Chaney, Jr., in Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.
  2. Lon Chaney, Jr. memorial page, in Find A Grave.