As an actor Lon Chaney Jr. achieved Hollywood immortality by playing a wolfman stalking the foggy moors of the Welsh countryside. In human terms, Chaney was very much mortal and lived a life dogged by alcoholism and the shadow of his legendary father. His final years were spent about as far from the Welsh land bogs as one can get — in houses perched above the sunny beaches of south Orange County.

His career spanned four decades, years in which he played a wolfman, a mummy, the son of Dracula, an idiot from the American literary canon, caretaker to a family of cannibals, and a host of heavies in films running the gamut from Hollywood masterpieces to B-movie splendor and B-movie squalor.

Today, his grandson Ron Chaney keeps his grandfather’s legacy alive running the Chaney foundation, which seeks to preserve the Chaney family heritage.

Following a phone conversation, Ron agreed to answer some question via email about his famous grandfather as well as his memories of visits to Chaney Jr.’s Orange County homes. While the house where Chaney died is located in San Clemente, the famous actor spent much of the ‘60s and part of the ‘70s in a Spanish revival home on Palisades Drive, on a bluff overlooking Capistrano Beach. As a kid Ron remembers sliding down the ivy hill behind the house to the beach below back in the days before Dana Point Harbor was completed.

“He had a big brass telescope where you could watch the boats and marine life below,” Ron explained. “Each time we’d visit the big boulders were further out shaping the (Dana Point) harbor, and he’d say what a great development it was going to be.”

Though he doesn’t recall any of his grandfather’s Capistrano haunts, Ron does remember trips around town in his grandfather’s station wagon and his grandmother Patsy’s Lincoln. They’d watch boxing matches on tv or play cards; grandpa Lon even taught Ron and his brother (qc) a wrestling move or two.

Though Chaney Jr.’s life in Orange County didn’t garner the attention of his silver screen exploits, there are sporadic mentions of him in old OC news clippings. A February 19, 1969 restaurant guide from the now defunct Laguna Niguel Post (qc) mentions Chaney Jr. and Alan Hale (of Gilligan’s Island fame) being spotted at Omar’s Fine Dining in San Clemente. The restaurant is long gone, and the current building now houses a sport’s bar called the OC Tavern(qc). A March 20, 1995 Los Angeles Times article featured a San Clemente couple who ran a photography studio and came to know Chaney Jr. Over the years the couple amassed a large collection of negatives and prints that included shots of Chaney as well as former President Richard Nixom.

When Chaney Jr.’s died in 1973, Ron discovered a family history his grandfather had been working titled a Century of Chaney’s. Over the years he’s worked on completing the manuscript and is currently developing part of the story into a musical focused on the life of his great grandfather, silent film actor Lon Chaney Sr. Its current working title is 1000 Faces, The Lon Chaney Musical.

It’s a story worth telling. Both Chaneys made their own unique impacts on film history as well as the horror genre in general. In a phone interview, actor Daniel Roebuck (River’s Edge, the Fugitive, Matlock) a life-long horror buff explained, “If you’re a fan of horror movies, you’re a fan of the Chaneys. The Chaney legacy runs with the same blood of the horror genre.”

But as the facts of Chaney Jr’s life suggest, the road to becoming a film icon was full of bumps.He was born in outside of Oklahoma City in 1906. As the story goes, Lon Sr. dunked the newborn infant in the icy waters of a nearby lake to jumpstart the unresponsive baby’s breathing.

“I was born dead,” Chaney Jr. recalled in an interview a few years before his death.

Young Lon, (officially named Creighton) travelled from city to city on trains with his father and mother Frances “Cleva” Creighton as the couple performed on stages across the country.  But his parent’s marriage soon soured. In 1913, his mother made a very public suicide attempt, and the two divorced. After the divorce, Lon Jr. spent time in foster care.

Though a mere Vaudevillian at the time of his son’s birth, the elder Chaney became a luminary of the silent film era. The son of deaf-mute parents, Lon Sr. spent a lifetime learning to express himself without words. Dubbed the man of 1,000 faces, he brought his grotesque characters to life in such films as Phantom of the Opera, Hunchback of Notre Dame and Tell it to the Marines. He developed his own makeup for each role and could often be seen lugging a large kit of putties, prostheses and plaster around the set with him.

His career was cut short in 1930 by a pulmonary hemorrhage while being treated for pneumonia at St. Vincent’s hospital in Los Angeles.

At the time of his father’s death, Chaney Jr. was working in the plumbing industry. He would soon throw his weight into the building of a film career. But as his father’s funeral would portend, young Chaney would have big shoes to fill. According to the Times, he was eulogized by a Lieutenant Commander from the Marine Corps. His coffin had seven pall bearers, and several more honorary pall bearers, including Louis B. Mayer, Lionel Barrymore, Jack Benny and Ramon Navarro. As the coffin was taken from the mortuary chapel of Cunningham & O’Connor, police tousled with a crowd of fans and onlookers anxious to get a closer look.

“I cannot imagine to be the son of someone as infamously talented as [Lon Sr.],” Roebuck said. “It wasn’t just that his father was famous, it’s that his father was revered as a pioneer of the motion picture business.”

But the young Chaney was tall and good looking, with a baby face antithetical to his father’s craggy mug. And the Chaney name no doubt helped open doors for him. He landed a string of uncredited film roles before a break in 1939 led to his casting as Lennie in the west coast stage version of the John Steinbeck novella Of Mice and Men. His performance was well reviewed and led to his casting in the 1939 film production alongside Burgess Meredith.

Playing the dimwitted ranch hand obsessed with puppies, rabbits, and other soft things, Chaney deftly elicited sympathy from the audience, and gave what many believe to be the performance of his career.

In the scene where Napoleonic foreman Curley violently beats Lennie, Chaney appears to leave his body, becoming a human husk controlled by faulty synapses. As Meredith’s character George shouts in Lennie’s ear, feverishly telling him to fight back (a moment Meredith channeled decades later in Rocky), Lennie suddenly grabs Curley’s hand, and slowly crushes it. It’s a moment that’s simultaneously rousing, tragic and deeply disturbing.

In 1941, Chaney earned a spot in the pantheon of horror with his performance in the Wolf Man — a story exploring themes of mental illness, compulsion and the dark side of humanity. He played Larry Talbot, a young man returning to his ancestral home in Wales after living in America. There, he’s bitten by a Werewolf, and himself turns into a creature of the night. While the makeup used to transform Chaney Jr. into a hirsute beast was cutting edge for its day, it’s the pathos and terror Chaney expresses at losing control of himself that heightens the film’s sense of dread.

According to Ron, both the Wolf Man and Of Mice and Men had special places in his grandfather’s heart.

“He called Lennie his bread and butter, but the Wolf Man was his favorite,” Ron said.

While Chaney Jr.’s work continues to be discussed in the digital era, clearly not everyone’s a fan. In the podcast You Must Remember This, which bills itself as an exploration of the forgotten histories of Hollywood’s first century, author Karina Longworth shows a particular disdain for Chaney’s work.

In one episode, Longworth discusses the relationship of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff in her trademark delivery— impeccably annunciated and slow burning. When the discussion turns to Chaney and Universal’s scrapped plan to cast him as both Frankenstein’s monster and the Wolfman in 1943’s Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, Longworth’s voice noticeably changes. Suddenly, every few words she utters are tinged with an upturned inflection, and the critic femme fatale gives way to an irritated valley girl.

“Putting aside the fact that even Lon Chaney Jr. probably wouldn’t want to meet Lon Chaney Jr.,” Longworth says, “this dual role would have caused Chaney to spend so much time in suffocating makeup and would require more careful calibration of performance than the frequently inebriated actor was able to pull off, that it was eventually dropped.”

But it’s not all podcast snark for Chaney Jr.

Comedian Gilbert Gottfried, who often refers to the actor as one of his favorite film artists, discussed Chaney Jr. in a 2015 episode of his Amazing Colossal Podcast.

“Whenever Chaney Jr. gets maligned,” Gottfried said, “you’ll see people write and they’ll talk about him being some terrible actor or something — I always think they obviously haven’t seen of Mice and Men, because his performance was amazing in there.”

While Chaney’s latter performances didn’t garner the same accolades as his early career, he worked consistently until just before his death in 1973.

“You’ve got to hand it to him, the guy was acting until the end,” Roebuck said.

Some of these films included well-respected works, such as the 1948 comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, and 1952’s High Noon, which was nominated for best picture.

The ‘60s and ‘70s saw Chaney doing a string of low-budget movies in addition to television appearances, much of which are forgettable.

One notable exception, however, is the 1967 release Spider Baby, which was helmed by blaxploitation auteur Jack Hill. A campy, tongue in cheek schlock fest, Chaney turns in a strong performance as a benevolent caretaker to a family of cannibals. Full of quizzical story elements, Chaney even sings the opening theme song, which refers to the Wolf Man, Dracula and the mummy (none of whom appear in the film). (There was a scene in that movie where it appeared to me that a werewolf like character showed up and to which Chaney gave a knowing “nod”.

Despite the campy veneer (or perhaps because of it), the movie achieved cult status, and continued to be shown on the midnight circuit decades after its release.

But it was clear from Chaney’s physical appearance in Spider Baby that he wouldn’t be around to see his cult status develop. Gone was the slim and handsome leading man of the 40s, replaced by an overweight and lumbering figure. While he performed well in the avuncular role, sweat glistens on his brow throughout the movie. In a 2009 book written by Calum Waddell on the work of Jack Hill, both Hill and actor Karl Schanzer said that while Chaney was ‘on the wagon’ during filming, they also said he was probably sneaking drinks. Hill said that Chaney was believed to be ingesting vodka-infused oranges, while Schanzer said that Chaney would allow himself a beer every few hours.

His final film, 1971’s Dracula vs. Frankenstein features Chaney as a ghoulish lab assistant named Groton, in which he has no speaking parts (due to the effects of throat cancer). Throughout the film, he cuddles a puppy in a laboratory corner, and reacts to the dialogue of his costars. He cuts a ghastly figure throughout — lit from below, severely overweight and pasty. In his final scene, a gunshot drops him from a rooftop to the ground below, where the puppy is seen licking at his dead master’s ear.

Lon Chaney Jr. died in San Clemente on July 12, 1973. The house where he passed is a small, one-story tract home perched on a tall hill above Interstate 5, with dizzying views of the Pacific Ocean.

Chaney’s death certificate states he  died of cardiac failure, caused by years of arteriosclerosis and cardiomyopathy. His body was donated to the USC School of Medicine, a decision Ron said may have been prompted by a desire to demonstrate the health effects of long-term drinking and smoking. Ron also acknowledged these things caused him problems throughout his career.

Unlike his father, Lon Chaney Jr.’s passing wasn’t marked by a large funeral. But like his father, Lon Chaney Jr. seemed to seek anonymity in death. While Lon Sr. is interred in the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Glendale, within shrieking distance of such heavy hitters as Jean Harlow, Clarke Gable, and Michael Jackson, his crypt sits unmarked behind a latched barrier out of public view.

Today, there is little to commemorate the life of Lon Chaney Jr. He doesn’t even have a star on the Hollywood Walk of fame. It’s a situation grandson Ron hopes to change — though he adds, the price tag for such an endeavor remains high, and continues to climb.

Despite his status as an icon of film, Lon Chaney Jr. proved to be as human as anyone else. Given the health problems he dealt with in later life, it’s a marvel he managed to keep working for as long as he did. In interviews, Grandson Ron doesn’t shy away from acknowledging these struggles.

“Like his father, he persevered,” Ron writes. “Took his lumps, and moved forward.”