Chaney Conundrum
I have always found Lon Chaney, Jr. to be one of the most interesting stars to appear in serials. Unlike any other actor, Chaney starred in a serial, The Last Frontier (1932), as he was working to establish himself, and then starred in one, Overland Mail (1942), after he had achieved stardom with The Wolf Man (1941). John Wayne and Boris Karloff left serials behind after becoming stars, while Bela Lugosi and Lionel Atwill started doing serials when their star power began waning (Lugosi’s fall from grace is the most frightening when you consider he started doing serials a mere two years after Dracula (1931)). But the question remains, why was Chaney put into a serial by Universal after becoming the studio’s premiere boogie man of the forties? Was it to give him something to do until Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) was ready to begin shooting? Was it a test run for a western series? I guess it is one those things we may never know.
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