Movies: Lon Chaney

Part of a 7-part series exploring all aspects of Hollywood....

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....

When a sculptor falls in love with his model but finds his love unrequited, he plans to kill his love rival with the help of the owner of a Horror Wax museum. The film is considered lost....

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....

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 Ope...

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....

A young girl is struck and seriously injured by a wealthy society matron's car. The woman brings the girl back to her house. Later, a hardened thief is told by the girl of a goblet, that could be the Holy Grail, which has healing powers and could hel...

Dick Evans is the corrupt boss of a rough-and-tumble munitions town called Powderville. He hires his friend, Jack Ripley, to establish a newspaper, intending merely to further his own financial ambitions; however, Jack envisions The Trumpet as an ins...

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 fo...

Bradford Vinton falls in love with a girl singer from the slums, but his father makes plans to break the relationship; when the plans fail, he disinherits his son....

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 t...

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 cau...

When taken to a San Francisco cafe by her sweetheart Jimmy, Georgia Rodman witnesses the shooting of a policeman by an underworld gang. The owner, O'Rourke, whom Jimmy believes to be his friend, sends one of his men to their table to inquire about Ge...

Mrs. Burne-Smith and Mrs. Winthrop have determined to make a match between their respective children regardless of the fact that the two in question have never seen each other....

Jack Lane (William Stowell) has made an invention for photographing wild animals. It consists of a camera with a trigger -- when the trigger is stepped on by a passing animal, a flash goes off and the camera shoots the picture. Lane goes up to the mo...

Raphael Praz kidnaps heroine Kate....

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...

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....

A propagandistic view of the First World War, showing the political greed of the German Kaiser Wilhelm, the resistance of some of his own soldiers, and fanciful prediction of the nature of the war's end....

A train operator's obsession with being on time leads to tragedy for his family....