On this date, 116 years ago, Lon Chaney, Jr. was born in Oklahoma City.  At the time, Oklahoma wasn’t even a state.  His father was the actor Lon Chaney Sr.

Originally named Creighton Chaney, Lon Jr. followed in his father’s footsteps.  Like many sons of famous men, he often struggled to escape his father’s shadow.  While he would never be mistaken for a man of a thousand faces, Lon Chaney, Jr. did make a name for himself, first as Lenny in the Oscar-nominated 1939 film version of Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and then as Larry Talbot, the unfortunate man who found himself cursed to turn into the Wolf Man whenever the moon was full.  Chaney spent the majority of his career appearing in horror films and, later, westerns.  Not only did he play The Wolf Man but he was also one of the many actors to take a shot at playing both Frankenstein’s Monster and Dracula.  Later, he would appear in a series of low budget horror films that were often a far cry from his best-known films.  In his later years, he was a favorite of producer/director Stanley Kramer, who cast him in both High Noon and The Defiant Ones and who once said that Chaney was one of the finest character actors in Hollywood.  His deep voice and craggily face made an undeniable impression in those later films.  Looking at him, you could see had lived a tough life but he had the heart of a survivor.

In today’s scene that I love, Larry Talbot learns the facts about being a werewolf.  From 1941’s The Wolf Man, here is Lon Chaney, Jr in his signature role.