User Reviews

For the hard core Chaney fans this episode of Biography provides no new information but it is entertaining and touching in it's tribute to Lon. What I love about Biography or at least the earlier years of Biography is the fact that they would do shows about obscure people that the mainstream audiences may not have expected them to do a show about. Lon Jr is someone who it is easy to make assumptions about simply because sadly a great deal of people think of him as a drunkard who got to where he was by riding the coat of his father's legacy. This biography talks to people who personally acted with Chaney, and some film historians. We get to see some footage from rare films in which Lon was in in the 30's like Midnight Taxi. What I like here is that the people interviewed are very sincere, we see some bias from Ron Chaney who is entitled to it, and some annoyance from Forest Ackerman who isn't a fan of Chaney Jr to begin with but for the most part this is a straight forward documentary.

I really wish Biography would go back to this format of being a documentary instead of a tabloid type show

The legacy of Creighton Chaney's father dominates the first part of this film as you see how scattered his home life was, between a mentally unstable mother and a very busy father, known as "the man of many faces", sadly dying at a young age. Creighton went through a variety of professions before deciding to pursue his own acting Ambitions, reluctant to live in his father's Shadow by taking on his name and being Junior but eventually realizing that he had no choice. It took nearly a decade for supporting player Lon Chaney Jr. To make a name for himself, and when he did, in "Of Mice and Men", it was a performance worthy of an Oscar nomination. But with horror movies on the rise after a wall, Chaney ended up back in his father's genre, winning screen fame as becoming an official star with "The Wolf Man", leading him to over three decades of horror movies which just seemed to get worse as his career went on.

This very well done biography has interviews with descendants, surviving co-stars and family members of co-stars including Lugosi and Karloff's children. It's a nice legacy towards a man whose career started out slowly, built up to popular b-movies but then descended down into the worst dreck possible. With disappointment from these roles and other personal problems to deal witg, alcohol aided his depression but led to health issues as well as a dependency which made his performances sadly laughable in truly horrible films that are fun to watch for their foibles but sadly aided in the destruction of a legacy. Fortunately the middle part of that career has been greatly remember, and this fairly gives a nice overview of the best, and unfortunately, the worst of these films. But considering that he got to have a biography done about himself, that leaves him the last laugh, and his films are still enjoyed today. A great companion piece to any Chaney film, especially the bad ones, so you get to see the truth of who he was.