Died Today (July 12th): Lon Chaney Jr.

Date of Birth 10 February 1906, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, USA
Date of Death 12 July 1973, San Clemente, California, USA (beriberi and liver failure)
Birth Name Creighton Tull Chaney
Nickname The Prince of Pain
Height 6′ 2″ (1.88 m)

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, [Lon Chaney], myself and all the others. They all won the audience’s sympathy. The Wolf Man didn’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’s sake. There’s no motivation for how monsters behave. There’s too much of that science-fiction…