Lon Chaney

Yeah.

Like the person who had seizures, like the person who knew they were coming, like the person who knew they were the werewolf, you know, lycanthropy, you know, Lon Chaney.

You knew this.

Yeah.

That is a different thing.

I do not feel that Lon Chaney was stalked by ghosts.

Yeah.

So if we're willing to accept that, I guess we have to be willing to accept at least a swing at a different kind of ending.

He had a lot of prosthetics on.

They say he's like the Lon Chaney of dogs.

Yeah.

He's the dog of a thousand faces.

But I trust you.

You realize our audience is about nine years old, right? You're up there as Bob Dole talking about fucking Lon Chaney and Dick Powell.

Could you be talking about Zendaya or something

like that? Did you mean to say Dick Cheney and Colin Powell?

No, I meant to say Lon Chaney and Dick Powell.

My polls for Bob Dylan were from 1927.

That was the problem, was that I was doing present-day Bob Dylan, a person only guys like me care about, and then the things that he would reference, which are before his time.

Well, yeah, don't forget.

I grew up reading famous monsters of film land and Forrest Jackman had an article, you know, when I was like five or six years old called the clown at midnight with Lon Chaney and one of his clown makeup.

So yeah, scary clowns go way, way back.

What is it about Pennywise that seemed to resonate the

And You watch the film and I think beyond maybe an extended, like they give him a little bit up top.

There's nothing on his face, his nose.

And, you know, to kind of follow Steven, like I think what they, if I'm remembering correctly, they wanted to model it after Lon Chaney and Phantom of the Opera.

Right, Phantom of the Opera.

His parents fought frequently and divorced when he was only seven, and according to some accounts, he didn't even know she was alive until after his father Lon's death.

Lon Chaney, who is a celebrated stage actor and an incredibly famous screen performer, who was known as the Man of a Thousand Faces due to the roles he performed in Heavy Makeup – he was the Phantom in the silent film version of Phantom of the Opera – forbade his son from going into show business, but the elder Chaney died at the age of only 47 from throat cancer when Creighton was only 24.

That freed Creighton to go into acting, and he had a few significant roles in the 1930s, including The Last Frontier and Sixteen Fathoms Deep, but the studios pressured him to rebrand himself as Lon Chaney Jr. to emphasize the connection with his famous father, and after a stint with 20th Century Fox in the 30s, he went over to Universal in the 40s, starting with the horror picture Man-Made Monster.

although not before he played Lenny in a 1939 adaptation of the play Of Mice and Men, which is widely considered to be his best dramatic role.