Lon Chaney

Join foremost experts discussing true Horror Classics - Frankenstein, Dracula, The Black Cat, Wolfman, King Kong, Bride of Frankenstein, and more. Grab the popcorn and take a deep breath as we conjure up the thrills, chills and magic of Monster Madness!

Among the pieces featured in Fragments are the final reel of John Ford's The Village Blacksmith (1922) and a glimpse at Emil Jannings in The Way of All Flesh (1927), the only Oscar®-winning performance in a lost film. Fragments also features clips from such lost films as Cleopatra (1917), starring Theda Bara; The Miracle Man (1919), with Lon Chaney; He Comes Up Smiling (1918), starring Douglas Fairbanks; an early lost sound film, Gold Diggers of Broadway (1929), filmed in early Technicolor, and the only color footage of silent star Clara Bow, Red Hair (1928). The program is rounded out with interviews of film preservationists involved in identifying and restoring these films. Also featured is a new interview with Diana Serra Cary, best known as "Baby Peggy", one of the major American child stars of the silent era, who discusses one of the featured fragments, Darling of New York (1923).

Lon Chaney, the silent movie star and makeup artist, renowned for his various characterizations and celebrated for his horror films, becomes the subject of this documentary.

Famous Monster takes a fast-paced, colorful look at the life of science fiction's greatest fan - Forrest J. Ackerman, whose 85 year love affair with the genre helped bring it into the mainstream and shape the way we view science fiction today.

On Valentines Day, 1931, Universal Pictures released the film Dracula - the first true horror movie. Its worldwide success catapulted the film's lead actor, Romanian-born Bela Lugosi, to overnight stardom. "Bela Lugosi: The Fallen Vampire" traces the life and career of this mysterious man whose name became synonymous with the evil, yet magnetically compelling Count Dracula. Using archival still and film clips as well as interviews with film historians, actors and Lugosi himself, the special chronicles the meteoric rise and then precipitous decline of a talented yet tragic man who forever changed the face of horror films.

Hosted by Christopher Lee, this documentary examines the different actors who have portrayed Dracula over the years.

A documentary about the era of classic monster movies that were made at Universal Studios during the 1930s and 1940s.

Born Creighton Chaney, this is a biographical documentary on Lon Chaney Jr, the only star to play all four of the classic monsters: the Mummy, the Wolf Man, Frankenstein and Dracula.

A collection of film clips from horror movies and interviews with the actors and directors who made them.

A history of horror movies.

In this made-for-TV production, Vincent Price and his hunchback sidekick (Billy Van) host a pun-filled salute to the horror film genre from its earliest beginnings all the way up to The Exorcist. Featuring clips from classic horror films and interviews with genre greats like Frank Gorshin, John Carradine, John Astin and SFX legend Bill Tuttle, among others.

An independent producer unwisely opens a can of worms after he decides to make a movie about the unsolved murder of a famous silent film director.

A compilation of early-day silent films that serves as a glimpse back to the formative days of the movie industry as a salute to Hollywood's Golden Year, so proclaimed by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce as 1953.

The edition of Screen Snapshots celebrates 25 years of production. It looks at the content of edition #1, then a tribute to movie people who have died in those 25 years. Finally there are tributes to the Screen Snapshots series by Cecil De Mille, Walt Disney, Louella Parsons and Rosalind Russell.

The House That Shadows Built (1931) is a short feature, roughly 48 minutes long, from Paramount Pictures made to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the studio's founding in 1912. It was a promotional film for exhibitors and never had a regular theatrical release and includes a brief history of Paramount, interviews with various actors, and clips from upcoming projects (some of which never came to fruition). The title comes from a biography of Paramount founder Adolph Zukor, The House That Shadows Built (1928), by William Henry Irwin.

The deformed Phantom who haunts the Paris Opera House causes murder and mayhem in an attempt to make the woman he loves a star.

In 15th century France, a gypsy girl is framed for murder by the infatuated Chief Justice, and only the deformed bellringer of Notre Dame Cathedral can save her.

After a baron steals his scientific discoveries, runs away with his wife, and slaps him in public, a man joins a Parisian circus sideshow as a clown whose act consists of being slapped repeatedly and becomes infatuated with a showgirl colleague whose father intends to marry her off to the baron.

On the lam, criminal Alonzo hides in the circus as The Armless Wonder—a performer who uses his feet to hurl knives. Alonzo keeps the arms he really has concealed to hide his identity. Meanwhile, ringmaster's daughter Nanon has a phobia of being touched by men, but is romantically pursued by not only Alonzo but the strongman Malabar. Alonzo's desperation to remain with Nanon will only end in tragedy.

Three sideshow performers form a conspiracy known as 'The Unholy Three' – a ventriloquist, midget, and strongman working together to commit a series of robberies.

The abandoned Balfour House, the owner of which was found dead five years earlier, comes back to life with the arrival of two suspicious sinister-looking tenants.

A despairing clown suffering a broken heart and a self-indulgent count who uncontrollably laughs learn to help each other with their problems, but both fall in love with the same young woman.

A magician seeks vengeance upon the man who paralyzed him and the illegitimate daughter he sired with the magician's wife.

Berenice Arnold spends her time trying to keep her family happy. This is easier said than done -- her brother, Jimmy, is a gambler and he steals 80 dollars that his father was responsible for. Berenice sets out to get the money back, but winds up causing a scandal because of her association with Trix Ulner, a gambler and thief.

Silent Madden and his daughter Molly have left the criminal underworld of San Francisco thanks to the wise teachings of Chang Low, a Confucian master. But the evil Black Mike Sylva is determined to frame Madden to avenge a mistake from the past…

Heavyweight boxing champion Jack Dempsey stars in this 15 chapter action serial, of which portions of reels 1, 2, and 4 survive. In the serial he plays the star fullback of his college's football team who gets drawn into an adventure when he stops to rescue a young woman from some thugs on a country road. It includes a gag featuring an exploding football. The rest of the cast includes Lon Chaney, Edgar Kennedy, Bull Montana, Josie Sedgwick and Herschel Mayall.

The Swedish Crown Prince and Crown Princess visit the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios.

When Mandarin Wu's unmarried daughter becomes pregnant by a young Englishman, he seeks vengeance.

Yen Sin, a humble Chinese, is washed ashore after a storm and finds himself an outsider in the deeply Christian fishing community of Urkey. Yen Sin elects to stay, despite his status as a despised 'heathen', only to reveal hypocrisy amid the self-righteous township.

A Chinese wife returns to the American family she left behind in Southeast Asia and then moves in on her daughter's beau.

Young Jim Hawkins is caught up with the pirate Long John Silver in search of the buried treasure of the buccaneer Captain Flint, in this adaptation of the classic novel by Robert Louis Stevenson.

Singapore Joe is a captain onboard a ship bound for Mandalay with his wife, who lies gravely ill in her cabin. His wife dies giving birth to a daughter, and the Captain leaves the child in the care of his brother Father James, a priest who raises the girl as his own. 20 years pass, and the captain is now a hardened criminal with a blind eye who runs a Singapore brothel alongside a vile Chinese associate.

An orphan endures a harsh life in a workhouse before fleeing to London, where he falls in with a gang of juvenile pickpockets led by the criminal Fagin, and eventually finds a better life, exposing the cruelties of poverty and child labor in Victorian England.

A romantic rivalry among members of a secret society becomes even more tense when one of the men is assigned to carry out an assassination.

A Canadian Mountie allows an innocent fugitive to escape with the women he loves.

U.S. Marine Sergeant O'Hara has his hands full training raw recruits, one of whom, 'Skeets' Burns, is a particular thorn in his side. If Burns's lackadaisical approach to the military were not bad enough, he also makes advances on nurse Nora Dale, whom Sergeant O'Hara secretly loves. Nora is oblivious to O'Hara's feelings and is attracted to the handsome 'Skeet.' But an indiscretion turns her against him, and it takes an expedition to China and a battle with a warlord's bandit brigade to sort things out among the nurse and her two Marines.

Blizzard, deranged from a childhood operation in which both his legs were needlessly amputated after an accident, becomes a vicious criminal, and eventually mob leader of the San Francisco underworld.

A tough New York cop is determined to bring down a crook who has always managed to provide an alibi for the crimes he's been accused of, even though the detective knows he's guilty of committing them.

Mark is the captain of a whaling ship and he looks down on brother Joel, who has never gone to sea. But when Mark's ship arrives in port sans its captain, Joel takes over the command. His new bride, Priscilla, insists on coming along and they head for the South Seas, where Mark was last seen.

Two thieves, the Blackbird and West End Bertie, fall for the same girl, a French nightclub performer named Fifi. Each man tries to outdo the other to win her heart.

After his beloved daughter leaves for the city to pay off his debt, an old farmer goes mad when her letters become less frequent and it is suspected she may be using her body to get the money.

A 1927 silent-era series of Hollywood studio tours, these short subjects go behind the scenes at major studios and showcase famous stars, directors, and landmarks of the movie capital.

Nora Helmer has years earlier committed a forgery in order to save the life of her authoritarian husband Torvald. Now she is being blackmailed lives in fear of her husband's finding out and of the shame such a revelation would bring to his career.

During a violent disagreement, a miner strangles his partner and accidentally shoots the man's wife. He then deserts his own wife and son to elope with the saloon keeper's daughter. As they are fleeing, the girl discovers the deed and insists upon caring for the baby found in the dead wife's arms.

Adaptation of Joseph Conrad novel about lust and violence on a South Seas Island.

No synopsis available yet.

Roger Curwell (William Stowell) is disowned by his father (Joseph W. Girard) because of his desire to be an artist. But instead of making good as a painter, Roger finds himself drunk and on the skids in San Francisco's Barbary Coast. At a dive run by Hell Morgan (Alfred Allen), he meets Lola (Dorothy Phillips), who nurses him back to physical and moral health.

When Gawne finds his brother dying and hears that the killer has run off with his brother's wife, he swears revenge.

The friendship of Damon, the senator, and Pythias, the soldier, is famous in Ancient Syracuse.

Dorothy Phillips was starred as Elinor Crawford, a small-town girl who becomes a reporter on a big-city newspaper -- and immediately plunges into the "Bohemian" lifestyle. Assigned to interview a condemned murderer, Elinor must first obtain permission from criminal lawyer Evan Klavert (William Stowell), who happens to hail from Elinor's hometown and who prudishly disapproves of her current mode of living.

This melodrama about an actress in love with a playwright and the stage manager blackmailing her for her affections offers a unique glimpse into Chaney’s career before his classic performances in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Phantom of the Opera. Preserved and restored by the Academy Film Archive in 2004.

Dance-hall queen Kate Carewe is the toast of the gold-mining camp of Huxley's Gulch. One day a minister, Ralph Bowen, arrives to "clean up" the town. He is scorned by the miners, gamblers and "loose women" of the place, especially Kate, who resents that Bowen calls her a "scarlet woman".

After divorcing his first wife and marrying a more gentle natured woman, Ralph Hadley finds himself again attracted to his ex-wife, a shrewd business woman. Trouble begins when he foolishly invites her to lunch, setting gossipy tongues-wagging. The news reaches his devoted wife who has discovered she is pregnant.

In pre-Civil War days, a woman dies in childbirth. Her sister, believing the child to be illegitimate, leaves the baby in the care of one of her sister's slaves.

The story of a young woman living in the wilderness.

Wealthy Jack Stimson (Jay Belasco) falls in love with Broadway diva Velma Vrooman (Gretchen Lederer), and for her sake bankrolls the musical production in which she is currently starred. But when Velma proves to be fickle and unreliable, Jack shifts his affections to humble chorus girl Bobbie (Louise Lovely).

When Mary and Fannie Graham, daughters of a good mother but a father with criminal instincts, are left motherless, Mary flees from her unhappy surroundings while Fannie, inheriting her father's disposition, remains and is raised as a thief.

Paul Revere Forbes, an descendant of Paul Revere, is a teller at Cyrus Peabody's bank. He learns that Cyrus and his son, Ernest, have speculated with $35,000 of the bank's money, and the entire sum has been lost.

Her strict upbringing is driving Genevra French (Dorothy Phillips) crazy, so when she gets her hand on a book called "How to Attract the Opposite Sex," she takes its advice to heart. She uses her newly found wiles on Lawrence Tabor (William Stowell) and gets him to marry her. Only after the wedding does she tell him she married him just to get away from her family, and that she intends to do exactly as she pleases.

A man recalls his earlier days when he was married and his wife cheated on him.