Can you guess which movie made Lon Chaney want to form a monsters' union?
The Wolf Man actor wanted rights for Monsters!
Monster problems
Look, it's hard out here for a monster. More to the point, though: It's hard for the folks who portray them. As if running away from pitchforks and fire weren't bad enough, there's all the time-consuming special effects makeup and the heavy costumes, too. What's worse, if the makeup's good enough, the actors are rendered unrecognizable. How can you receive credit for a movie your face is hardly in? Monsters might even have to do their own stunts, whereas their prettier colleagues probably get stunt doubles. It's not easy being a terror!
An unholy alliance
It might not come as a surprise, then, that Lon Chaney, Jr. had thoughts of creature collectivism in the mid-'40s, but the reason might be a shock. While work conditions can always be improved upon, Chaney wasn't aiming to rally the troops for better on-set life. It's always important for actors to band together to demand the best treatment possible, but that wasn't Chaney's goal. Instead, he just wanted to feel protected as a horror commodity.
Lon Chaney Jr. was a legend for being scary
In 1944, Universal released Ghost Catchers, and it's a movie that doesn't age as well as its peers. While movies like Son of Dracula and especially The Wolf Man are timeless classics, Ghost Catchers is a bit of a dud, with stale comedy that makes it feel dated. Worse, Chaney is completely miscast. He'd played Frankenstein's Monster, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, and Dracula, and here he was hamming it up in a bear costume.
It was time contracted monster actors had more say in what they appeared in, at least according to Lon Chaney, Jr.
Here's why he wanted monsters to organize
In a publicity interview after Ghost Catchers, Chaney made his position clear. His words rang just as true when they were republished in this 1996 biography, Lon Chaney, Jr.: A Horror Film Star.
"I had more fun than I've ever had in any picture I've ever worked in, but what it's going to do to my career is something else. We monsters should get together and form a union. The public comes to see us in a fantastic ghost, or mummy, or zombie, or Frankenstein or Wolf Man picture, and we expect the audience to take us seriously. Thus far, they have. But now what can we expect when we let ourselves be cast in roles where the horror pictures are spoofed?"
Lon Chaney Jr.'s greatest comedy role
Luckily, one of the greatest examples of the movies Chaney was afraid of came out in 1948 when he starred in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. Not only did it show off his versatility as an actor, but the movie also remains one of his best-remembered performances!
