Career Įthel Grey Terry and Chaney in The Penalty (1920)īy 1917, Chaney was a prominent actor in the studio, but his salary did not reflect this status. The new couple gained custody of Chaney's 10-year-old son Creighton, who had resided in various homes and boarding schools since Chaney's divorce from Cleva in 1913. In 1915, Chaney married one of his former colleagues in the Kolb and Dill company, a recently divorced chorus girl named Hazel Hastings. During this time, Chaney befriended the husband-wife director team of Joe De Grasse and Ida May Park, who gave him substantial roles in their pictures, and further encouraged him to play macabre characters.

His skill with makeup gained him many parts in the highly competitive casting atmosphere. The time spent there is not clearly known, but between the years 19, Chaney worked under contract for Universal Studios doing bit or character parts. The suicide attempt failed, but it ruined her singing career the ensuing scandal and divorce forced Chaney out of the theater and into film. Marital troubles developed and on April 30, 1913, Cleva went to the Majestic Theater in downtown Los Angeles, where Lon was managing the ' Kolb and Dill' show, and attempted suicide by swallowing mercuric chloride. The Chaneys continued touring, settling in California in 1910. In 1905, Chaney, then 22, met and married 16-year-old singer Cleva Creighton (Frances Cleveland Creighton) and in 1906, their only child, a son, Creighton Tull Chaney (later known as Lon Chaney Jr.) was born. He entered a stage career in 1902, and began traveling with popular vaudeville and theater acts. His great-grandfather was congressman John Chaney.īoth of Chaney's parents were deaf and, as a child of deaf adults, Chaney became skilled in pantomime. Chaney's maternal grandfather, Jonathan Ralston Kennedy, founded the 'Colorado School for the Education of Mutes' (now Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind) in 1874, and Chaney's parents met there. His father was of English and French ancestry, and his mother was of Scottish, English, and Irish descent. Chaney (a barber) and Emma Alice Kennedy.

Leonidas Frank Chaney was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, to Frank H.

Phantom of the opera mask with rose