HAPPY BIRTHDAY MR. CHANEY

Slam dunk for choosing a factoid for today when it includes monsters, Colorado Springs, and the United States Marine Corps ... happy birthday to "The Man of a Thousand Faces," the one-and-only, Leonidas Frank "Lon" Chaney!

Chaney - 1919

Born in Colorado Springs on 4/1/1883, April Fool's Day, to Frank and Emma (a mix of French, English, Scottish, and Irish descent) Chaney, two deaf parents who teach at the Colorado School for the Education of Mutes (now the Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind, started by Chaney's maternal grandfather, Jonathan Ralston Kennedy in 1874), Chaney early learns the art of pantomime to communicate with his mom and dad ... a talent that will serve him well when he starts to make silent movies. His stage career begins in 1902 ... and there he finds love for the first time, marrying 16-year-old singer Frances Cleveland Creighton in 1905 (the couple's only child, son Creighton Tull Chaney will later become Lon Chaney, Jr. in Hollywood).  But martial bliss will not be lasting, and when during a run at the Majestic Theater in downtown Los Angeles, Frances tries to commit suicide by drinking mercuric chloride, Chaney finds himself unemployed when the show is killed because his wife no longer can sing (a divorce soon follows). Looking for work, he drifts into the nearby growing movie business, first at Universal Studios, using his mastery of make-up to get part after part (he also becomes a world class contortionist), from bit roles in the background to character parts to star turns (and he marries again, a chorus girl from his vaudeville days, Hazel Hastings).

Colorado School for the Deaf and Blind

Frances

Jr. As The Wolfman

His breakthrough performance comes in 1919, in The Miracle Man (it will be voted the favorite movie of the year by readers of Photoplay magazine, beating out director D.W. Griffith's Broken Blossoms and The Birth of a Nation, and Charlie Chaplin's The Kid) playing Frog, a crook who pretends to be a cripple that is miraculously "cured" by a con artist (sadly, most of the film is now lost).  From there, Chaney will star in hit after hit until his death.

Frog

Chaney And His Makeup Kit

As The Vampire In London After Midnight

In Laugh Clown Laugh

As Mr. Wu

In The Road To Mandalay

With Joan Crawford In The Unknown

Legless In The Penalty

His two biggest hits, the movies he is most still remembered for are playing Quasimodo in the 1923 version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and the murderer Erik in 1925's The Phantom of the Opera.  For Quasimodo he will play the part with 20-pound plaster hump on his back, in a harness that keeps Chaney in a hunch throughout filming.  As Erik, Chaney will paint his eye sockets black to achieve a skull-like effect, pulled his nose up and pinned it in place with a wire, enlarge his nostrils with more black paint, and put a set a jagged false teeth in his mouth (another time and place, the makeup is so unexpected and horrific that it causes some audience members to faint, scream, and flee theaters across the nation).  A trooper, in both roles he is in pain during the filming because of the makeups he has created!

Movie Poster

Esmeralda Gives The Whipped Hunchback Water

Quasimodo

Movie Poster

In Erik's Underground Lair

The Big Reveal!

And surprise-surprise, he also has a major hit in his own face, playing Sergeant O'Hara, a tough United States Marine drill instructor with a heart of gold in the 1926 MGM production, Tell it to the Marines (it will be the biggest money maker of Chaney's career, and the second most popular movie of 1926/1927).  A huge success at the box office, the movie also endears Chaney to the Marine Corps and Chaney will become its first honorary member from the motion picture industry (upon his death, the Corps will provide a chaplain and Honor Guard for Chaney's funeral).

Movie Poster

Sgt. O'Hara

Already a huge star, with the distinctive voice Chaney has also been blessed with, it is believed he will become even bigger as the movie industry transitions from silent film to "talkies."  Such does not turn out to be the case however ... in 1929 he is diagnosed with bronchial lung cancer, which is in turn exacerbated by artificial snow from the movie he is filming lodging in his throat, and seven weeks after the release of the talking remake of The Unholy Three (only five years after his 1925 silent version ... he is that popular!), he suffers a throat hemorrhage in Los Angeles and dies at the age of 47 on Tuesday, August 26, 1930.

Movie Poster - 1925

Movie Poster - 1930

Chaney will be buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California in an unmarked crypt.  At the funeral, his pallbearers will be a who's-who's of Hollywood's elite ... Paul Bern (an MGM director, screenwriter, and producer who is married to Jean Harlow when  he commits suicide at the age of 42), Hunt Stromberg (who will direct the Thin Man movies for MGM), Irving Thalberg (MGM's Head of Production), Louie B. Mayer (MGM's boss man!), Lionel Barrymore (an Academy Award winning actor for A Free Soul), Wallace Beery (an Academy Award winning actor for The Champ), Tod Browning (the future director of Dracula), Lew Cody (a silent film acting buddy), and Ramon Novarro (Hollywood's first Ben Hur!). Away from the funeral, at the same time, all the studios in Hollywood and every office at MGM observe two minutes of silence to honor Chaney.

National News

Unmarked Crypt - Forest Lawn Memorial

Cemetery - Glendale, California

Gone but not forgotten ... Chaney will be played in a 1957 Universal biopic by legendary actor James Cagney (who doesn't come close to being Chaney in his famous film roles), has books and documentaries made about his life (including a recent edition of the PBS show, American Masters), gets a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, has his makeup kit shown by the Los Angeles County Museum, gets two U.S postage stamps, and in Colorado Springs, the place of his birth, has a small theater named in his honor (a 235 seat venue that often plays his silent movies, with one chair bearing a small golden name plate honoring Jay M. Bobinette, my movie-loving little brother that I miss every single day!)

Stamp

Stamp

Star!

Happy Birthday Mr. Chaney ... you made many days matter for the better with screams and tears ... thank you!

Becoming The Phantom

LASZLO LOWENSTEIN LEAVES

3/23/1964 - On this day, legendary Jewish character actor Laszlo Lowenstein suffers a stroke in Los Angeles, California, and dies at the relatively young age of only 59.  Legendary?  Who the HELL is this Laszlo goof you might be wondering ... and as always, you probably know Lowenstein by his more famous Hollywood name ... for Lowenstein is actually, the one, the only ... Mr. Peter Lorre (oh, and the fact that I use to be able to do a mean impression of the man had nothing to do with this selection for today).

1946

Acting on the stage in Vienna at the age of 17, Lorre becomes an international star playing a child murderer in Fritz Lang's "M" (based loosely on the real life murders of the Vampire of Dusseldorf, Peter Kurten) in 1931.  Fleeing Germany because of his Jewish background once Hitler comes to power, Lorre will use his celebrity to score the crucial role of evil spy Abbott in Alfred Hitchcock's first version of "The Man Who Knew Too Much."

Movie Poster

And with that hit added to his resume, the doors to Hollywood open ... but again, the role that scores features Lorre playing a very strange bad guy ... as he will be typecast throughout his career ... this time in 1935 as the demented surgeon Dr, Gogol (who replaces the accident wrecked hands of a concert pianist with those of an executed knife throwing killer) in MGM's "Mad Love." 

Mad Love

Despite being born in the Slovakian region of Austro-Hungarian Empire, little kids around the country learn to love Lorre, when for three years, he plays the brilliant Japanese detective, Mr. Moto, in a series of B-Movie films for 20th Century Fox (during the same period, he wisely turns down the Basil Rathbone role as Baron Wolf von Frankenstein in the horror classic, "The Son of Frankenstein," and misses playing Quasimodo in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" when MGM cancels its plans to film Victor Hugo's novel).

Movie Poster

Then it is on to RKO, where in 1940, he plays a menacing stranger in the movie many film historians believe to be the first in the new genre, film noir, "Stranger on the Third Floor," along with sharing the screen with horror film legends Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in a musical comedy mystery (and major turkey!) starring band leader Kay Kyser called "You'll Find Out."  Also in 1940, he captures convict Clark Gable trying to escape from the French penal colony of "Strange Cargo."

The First Film Noir?

Selling his services for the best contract available (and now a naturalized United States citizen), it is at Warner Brothers that he has roles in some of best movies ever produced by that studio ... as black bird hunter Joel Cario opposite Humphrey Bogart in "The Maltese Falcon," battling Bogart as the German spy Pepi in "All Through the Night," playing Japanese agent Baron Ikito, he tries to capture invisible spy Jon Hall in "Invisible Agent," as Signor Ugate, the killer who gains "the letters of transit" that fire the plot of 1943's Best Picture Oscar winner, "Casablanca," helps Gene Kelly escape from a German prison camp in "The Cross of Lorraine," stars as Soviet spy Nikolai Zaleshoff in the George Raft thriller, "Background to Danger," is Bogart's convict buddy Marius in the thriller, "Passage to Marseille," plays the Dutch writer Cornelius Leyden in the spy thriller, "The Mask of Dimitros, is a member of Paul Henreid's Norwegian resistance team in 1944 thriller, "The Conspirators," plays a drunkard named Johnny West in the crime drama, "Three Strangers," is Victor Emmric, Sydney Greenstreet's macabre artist friend in "The Verdict" (future Dirty Harry director Don Siegel's first movie in-charge), and is the out-of-his-gourd basket case strangler Hillary Cummins in "The Beast with Five Fingers" (my personal favorite ... when he goes off thinking the hand is after him it is Lorre playing Lorre playing Lorre ... carpet chewing acting at its best!)

The Beast with Five Fingers

During the 1940s, Lorre also convinces Warner Brothers, to let him lend his talents to Frank Capra's production of the Cary Grant black comedy, "Arsenic and Old Lace," playing alcoholic plastic surgeon, Dr. Herman Einstein.  And in another comedy, he gives fits to Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour (along with Lon Chaney, Jr.) in "My Favourite Brunette."

With Raymond Massey In Arsenic And Old Lace

Post WWII and into the 50s and 60s, Lorre turns include playing the very first James Bond villain in the 1954 television adoption of Ian Fleming's "Casino Royale," taking on Burt Lancaster over a bag of diamonds in "Rope of Sand," being the boat buddy of Kirk Douglas's harpooner, Ned Land, in the Walt Disney production of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," teaming up with Bogart in the caper movie, "Beat the Devil," playing comic Russian Comrade Brankov in the Fred Astaire - Cyd Charisse MGM musical, "Silk Stockings," guarding a kidnapped Jerry Lewis in the comedy, "The Sad Sack," also going underwater as retired Commodore Lucius Emery in the movie version of Irwin Allen's "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea," playing a steward on the SS Carnatic during David Niven's travels in "Around the World in 80 Days," burying his wife alive (and her black cat) in Roger Corman's Edgar Allen Poe ripoff, "Tales of Terror" (co-starring with Basil Rathbone and Vincent Price), spends time aloft with Red Buttons, Fabian, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, Barbara Eden, and Chester the Chimp in the Irwin Allen production of Jules Verne's "Five Weeks in a Balloon, as Dr. Aldolphus Bedlo, assays the inept wizard transformed into a raven in "The Raven," also featuring Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, and as Bedlo's son, a young actor named Jack Nicholson, gets sand between his toes as Mr. Strangedour in the hideous Annette and Frankie vehicle, "Muscle Beach Party,"  and God help him, in his last role, shares the screen again with maniac unfunny funnyman, comedian Jerry Lewis, in "The Patsy."

 

Poe Is Turning In His Grave!

Chronic gallbladder troubles medicated with morphine prove to be Lorre's undoing, and he strokes out in 1964 at the age of 59.  Gone, but not really gone at all because of the movie roles he played ... and that still provide entertainment to millions of film lovers around the world ... thanks Laszlo ... rest in peace (and ignore that your voice and mannerisms have been hijacked by the demented cartoon Chihuahua, Ren Hoek, in the animated Nickelodeon TV series, The Ren & Stimpy Show).

In His Breakthrough Role In M

THE HIDDEN LIFE OF FRED GOETZ

3/21/1934 - Created and mentored by Al Capone for "special" jobs like the elimination of New York gangster Frankie Yale and the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, with the notorious Scarface in prison for income tax evasion, afraid capture for bank jobs could bring forth testimony on mob activities, new Chicago headman Frank Nitti does some housekeeping, eliminating 37-year-old "American Boy" killer Fred Samuel Goetz (aka "Shotgun" George Ziegler), the man many crime historians believe planned assorted crimes for the Chicago mob and the Barker-Karpis gang of the 1930s, courtesy of three shotgun blasts to the gunman's face and chest (a fourth blast misses).

An unusual criminal, the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde style double life of Goetz begins with his 2/13/1897 birth in Chicago, to German immigrants, Samuel and Ottilie Goetz (Samuel is a baker of European pastries at the city's famous Viennese restaurant, Henrici's).  The only boy (he has an older sister, Sophie) and youngest member of the family, Fred grows up on Chicago's north side, a handsome 5'9" muscled youth with blue eyes and sandy blonde hair, graduating from Lane Technical College Prep High School in 1914, seemingly leading a normal life, with no indications that he will someday become a multiple time murderer.  With the advent of WWI for the United States, Goetz enlists in the military and becomes a Second Lieutenant pilot in the United States Army Aviation Branch. Honorably discharged at the conclusion of the war, upon his return to Chicago, Goetz enrolls at the Champaign branch of the University of Illinois ... thriving in Academia, he studies business and engineering, becoming an honors student, joins the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity, is known as "Fritz" to his classmates, is elected to the local American Legion's board of directors, joins the school's aviation club, and plays on the freshman basketball team and makes the college's Varsity football team.  In front of his happy parents, Goetz graduates with a business degree in 1922.

Out of school, still searching for exactly what he wants to do with his life, Goetz fills his summer's by life guarding at Chicago's Clarendon Beach, and it is as such that he lets the public view his Mr. Hyde persona for the first time in 1921 ... seeing a group of men attack fellow lifeguard Roger Bessner (the altercation involves insults exchanged with a female bather) with broken bottles, Goetz leads a rescue that results in he and his comrades, using oar handles and a hammer, beating the snot out of the upset beach goers (the left eye of one man, Harry Brown, is knocked out, and it is reported that he is still pummeled after becoming unconscious) and instigating a 500 person riot that police have to be called in to suppress.  First taste of being a bad boy, the tipping point takes place in 1925, when 7-year-old Jean Lambert is sexually assaulted in a basement near her home, and Goetz is arrested fleeing the scene.  Out on bail, knowing his case will go to trial and that he needs a good lawyer, Goetz seeks legal funds for his situation by robbing Dr. Henry Gross and his wife ... but makes things even worse, getting into a gun battle that wounds the doctor and kills the doctor's chauffeur, Bonificias Hernandez. Ratted out by an accomplice that is also wounded in the gun fight, Goetz will be on the run the rest of his life ... nine years.

Discovering he enjoys the criminal life, and that it can be extremely lucrative during hard times, Goetz lives in plain sight as George Ziegler (he also masquerades as a George Von Ash and about twenty other aliases), operates a garage in Cicero, Illinois, has a resort on 400 acres of wooded Wisconsin real estate (Al Capone will be a frequent visitor and he nicknames the non-Italian killers Goetz associates with "The American Boys"), and becomes heavily involved in armed robbery, bootlegging, and making hits for Mr. Capone, often partnering with killers Fred "Killer" Burke and Gus Winkler.  A quick study in the art of mayhem. Goetz soon has a criminal resume that among other heinous acts includes a $12,000 heist of cash and jewelry, a failed armored truck robbery in 1927 (one of the men in the caper forgets to bring dynamite for the two safes that are stolen, and the robbers miss out on $200,000) during which he kills police officer George Zientara, the New York assassination of former Capone friend, gangster Frankie Yale, a $93,000 robbery of the First National Bank of Peru, Indiana, a $350,000 robbery of the Farmers and Merchants Bank of Jefferson, Wisconsin, loosing a torrent of lead into members of the George Moran gang during the St. Valentine's Day Massacre in which seven men are killed (1929), running liquor from Havana to Miami, participates in the Barker-Karpis gang robbery of a postal carrier in downtown Chicago (1932), participates in the Barker-Karpis gang kidnapping of brewer William Hamm (1933), for awhile, is mistakenly identified as one of the killers at the Kansas City Massacre, joins the Barker-Karpis gang for the Chicago robbery of a mail truck in which one police officer is killed (the garage Goetz owns creates an armored getaway car that can release clouds of blinding smoke) and a St. Paul, Minnesota job in which two police officers and an innocent bystander are gunned down, and helps the Barker-Karpis gang kidnap banker Edward Bremer in 1934 (the best educated of the crew, Goetz rents the house Bremer is held in, is in on the snatch, types up the ransom demand letters and instructions, and he is the one that scoops up the loot when Bremer's family meets the kidnapper's terms of $200,000 in ransom).  And all the while, Goetz appears to be a wealthy businessman, living with a beautiful wife (his girlfriend, Irene ... he also has a secret apartment for a mistress) in the best parts of town, with taste for fine foods and music, gardening, and a huge passion for the game of golf.

Federal and local heat covering the Midwest underworld due to the antics of John Dillinger, the Karpis-Barker gang, Baby Face Nelson, and other desperadoes, when Goetz is identified as a suspect in the Bremer kidnapping, Frank Nitti and other Chicago Outfit mobsters decide they can not risk the gunman's capture, and the chance that he might someday try to buy his way out of the capital offense by trading mob information for a lighter sentence, and a hit is contracted.  Racing each other to find Goetz first, Chicago gunmen beat the Federals to the wanted man on a cool Wednesday evening in the town of Cicero.

At around 11:00 in the evening, Goetz is standing on the sidewalk, in front of a tavern called Minerva, lighting a cigarette, when a touring car suddenly comes screeching around a corner, jumps the curb, and men inside fire four shotgun blasts at the hitman and robber.  A buckshot mess, dead instantly, when police examine the outlaw's corpse they find membership cards in the name of George Ziegler for the Chicago Yacht Club, the Onwentsia Golf and Country Club, the Elks Club, the Oakdale Riding Club, and the Mohawk Country Club, the Associated News Service, the Sheriffs and Police Officers Association, and the American Landscapers Association.  They also find a single $1,000 bill in Goetz's wallet ... and within his belt, six small steel saw blades suitable for instigating jail cell leavings. Names and hangouts investigated, despite the corpse's mangled face (he will be identified by marks on his body by his sister), it soon becomes clear that justice of a type has finally caught up with Fred Goetz.

Secrets taken to the grave, the mystery of who actually pulled the triggers at the St. Valentine's Day Massacre is buried with Goetz (Fred "Killer" Burke dies of a heart attack while in jail in 1940, and much like Goetz himself, Gus Winkler will be shotgun assassinated in 1933, with some saying Goetz actually does the job himself) ... just as the Chicago mob wanted ... and no suspects are ever arrested for the murder. 

O.K. CORRAL PAYBACK

1882 - Payback for the O.K. Corral gunfight!  After taking in a Saturday night performance of the musical, "Stolen Kisses," at Tombstone's Turnverein Hall (the performance lasts abot three hours), Wyatt and Morgan Earp decide to play a few rounds of billiards at the town's Campbell & Hatch Billiard Parlor before going home to their sweethearts.  It is a very, very bad idea (just the day before, Wyatt is warned that there is a plot against the Earps from a local named Briggs Goodrich, who has a lawyer brother that does legal work for a number of Cowboys)!

Tombstone, Arizona - 1881

Cowboys Killed At The O.K. Corral - Tom McLaurey, Frank McLaurey, And
Billy Clanton

The Campbell & Hatch Billiard Parlor 

At about 10:50 in the evening, Morgan is playing a game of pool against the establishment's owner, Bob Hatch, while Wyatt, Dan Tipton, and Sherman McMaster watch.  Lining up a shot, gunfire suddenly erupts through the upper window of a door leading out to a dark alley at the back of the property.  Standing only ten feet away from the door when bullets are pumped into the parlor, Morgan is struck in the right side by a rifle round that shatters his spine, passes through his left side, and comes to rest in the thigh of parlor patron and local mining foreman, George Berry (another round, lodges in a wall, only inches above Wyatt's head).  Rushing to his brother's side, Wyatt and Morgan's friends try to stand up the fallen lawman, but the wounded Morgan pleas, "Don't, I can't stand it.  This is the last game of pool I'll ever play."  Doctors summoned, Morgan is looked at by physicians William Miller, James Matthews, and George Goodfellow (the nation's leading expert on treating abdominal gunshot wounds) ... all agree that the lawman's wounds are fatal.  Moved to a clean spot on the floor near the door to a card room in the parlor and then placed on a lounge, Morgan dies less than an hour after being shot ... his last words honoring an agreement the brothers have about reporting dying visions of the next life, Morgan whispers to Wyatt before passing, "I can't see a damned thing" (Wyatt's original story of the moment has Morgan expressing sorrow he will not be able to get even with his killers, and Wyatt responding that he'll take care of it).

Morgan Earp

Wyatt Earp

True West Magazine - Last Seconds

Pissed already at the crippling of his brother Virgil in another Tombstone ambush in December of 1881, law be damned, Wyatt makes a personal decision to kill the men he believes are responsible (and any of their friends that might not like it and get in the way) ... and soon, begins stalking Cowboys, Pete Spence, Indian Charlie (Florentino Cruz), Frank Stilwell, and Frederick Bode ... revenge which begins only days later (3/20/1882) at the Tucson, Arizona rail yards, where Cowboys are set up to go after Virgil Earp again (with his wife Allie, on his way to his parent's home in Colton, California).  

Virgil Earp

Stilwell
 
Pete Spence & Florentino Cruz

In the ongoing feud, this time the Cowboys are the victims of an ambush (along the train tracks, about a hundred yards from the Porter Hotel) that leaves surprised outlaw Frank Stilwell with a load of buckshot in his legs, a load of buckshot in his chest, and four "finishing" bullet wounds in his chest and head (a local will state that Stilwell's is the worst shot up body he's ever seen ... some of the buckshot is fired at such close range that Stilwell's clothes catch on fire and he has wounds with a radius of three inches in his body ... studying the corpse, the Tucson coroner will state the Cowboy has been shot by five different weapons). 

True West Illustration - The Stilwell Crime Scene

Stilwell Gets His - True West Magazine

Goodbye Stilwell - True West Magazine

Life Size Statue of Wyatt And Doc Holliday
At The Spot Where Stilwell Is Killed

What will be called "The Earp Vendetta" ride has begun ... and by the time its over, by either Wyatt's hands, Wyatt's friends, or from the guns of others, along with Stilwell, Florentino Cruz, Curly Bill Brocius, Billy Claiborne, Johnny Ringo, and Ike Clanton will all go adios to bullet deaths.

The Vendetta Ride - True West Magazine

Where Morgan Sleeps