name	Caresse Crosby
birth date	April 20, 1891
birth place	New Rochelle, New York
death date	January 26, 1970
death place	Rome, Italy
other names	Mary Phelps Jacob, Polly Jacobs, Polly Peabody
known for	Inventor of the modern braCo-founder, Black Sun Press
occupation	Publisher, activist, writer
nationality	American
parents	William Hearn Jacob and Mary Phelps Jacob
spouse	Richard R. Peabody, Harry Crosby, Selbert Young
children	William Jacob; Polly ("Poleen") }}

Caresse Crosby (April 20, 1891–January 26, 1970), born Mary Phelps Jacob, was an American patron of the arts, poet, publisher, and peace activist. Her parents William Hearns Jacob and Mary Phelps nicknamed her Polly. They were both descended from American colonial families, William from the Van Rensselaer family and Mary from William Phelps. At age 19, she invented the first modern brassiere to receive a patent and gain wide acceptance. Her life at first followed convention. In 1915, she married the well-to-do Richard R. Peabody, whose family had arrived in New Hampshire in 1635. They had two children, but following Richard's service in World War I, Richard turned into a drunk who loved to watch buildings burn. She met Harry Crosby at a picnic in 1920 and they had sex within two weeks. Their public relationship scandalized proper blue blood Boston society.

Two years later Richard granted her a divorce and Harry and Polly were married. They immediately left for Europe, where they joined the lost generation of American expatriates. They embraced a bohemian and decadent lifestyle, living off of Harry's trust fund of USD$12,000 a year (or about $}} in today's dollars), had an open marriage with numerous ongoing affairs, a suicide pact, frequent drug use, wild parties, and long trips abroad.

At her husband's urging, Polly took the name Caresse in 1924. In 1925 they began publishing their own poetry as ''Éditions Narcisse'' in exquisitely printed, limited-edition volumes. In 1927 they re-christened the business as the ''Black Sun Press''. They became instrumental in publishing some of the early works of many emerging authors who were struggling to get published, including James Joyce, Kay Boyle, Ernest Hemingway, Hart Crane, D. H. Lawrence, Rene Crevel, T. S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound.

In 1929 one of her husband's affairs culminated in his death as part of a murder-suicide or double suicide at the studio of a friend. His death was marked by scandal as the newspapers speculated wildly about whether Harry shot his lover or not. Caresse returned to Paris where she continued to run the Black Sun Press. She was friends with many of the eminent authors of her time, including Robert Duncan, Anais Nin and Henry Miller. She left Europe in 1936 and bought Hampton Manor in Virginia outside Washington D.C. She married Selbert Young, an unemployed, drunk actor sixteen years her junior. She helped Henry Miller by taking over writing pornography for an anonymous Texas oil baron. Her guests at Hampton Manor included Buckminster Fuller, Salvador Dali, Ezra Pound and other friends from Paris. She began a long-term love affair with black actor-boxer Canada Lee despite the threat of miscegenation laws. She founded Women Against War. She continued after World War II to try to establish a Center for World Peace at Delphi, Greece. When rebuffed by Greek authorities, she purchased Castello di Rocca Siniblada, a 15th-century castle north of Rome, which she used to support an artists colony. She died of pneumonia related to heart disease in Rome in 1970.

Early life

Born on April 20, 1891 in New Rochelle, New York, she was nicknamed "Polly" to distinguish her from her mother. Her family was descended from a prominent New England family. She was the oldest daughter of William Hearn Jacob and Mary Phelps Jacob and had two brothers, Leonard and Walter "Bud" Phelps. Her family divided its time between estates in New York at 59th Street and Fifth Avenue, Watertown, Connecticut, and New Rochelle, New York. She enjoyed the advantages of an upper-class lifestyle. She took dancing lessons at Mr. Dodsworth Dancing Class, attended Miss Chapin's School in New York City, went to school at Rosemary Hall prep school in Wallingford, Connecticut, where she played the part of Rosalind in ''As You Like It'' to critical acclaim. She attended formal balls, Ivy League school dances, and horse riding school.

In 1914 she was presented to the King of England at a garden party. Her ancestry included a knight of the Crusades and the Allardyce family in the War of the Roses. She was descended from Robert Fulton, developer of the steamboat, from the Plymouth Colony's first governor, William Bradford, and on her mother's side she was the granddaughter of General Walter Phelps, who commanded troops at the Civil War Battle of Antietam and the seventh great-granddaughter of Puritan colonist William Phelps.

Polly's family was not fabulously rich, but her father had been raised, as she put it, "to ride to hounds, sail boats, and lead cotillions," and he lived high. She grew up, she later said, "in a world where only good smells existed." "What I wanted", she said of her privileged childhood, "usually came to pass." She was a rather uninterested student. Author Geoffrey Wolff wrote that for the most part Polly "lived her life in dreams." In keeping with the American aristocratic style of the times, she was even photographed as a child by Charles Dana Gibson.

After her father's death in 1908, she lived with her mother at their home in Watertown. That same summer she met her future husband, Richard Peabody, at summer camp. Her brother Len was boarding at Westminster School and Bud was a day student at Taft School. Approaching her own debut, she danced in "one to three balls every night" and slept from four in the morning until noon. "At twelve I was called and got ready for the customary debutante luncheon."

Attends debutante ball

In 1910, at age 19, Polly was preparing to attend yet another débutante ball one evening. As was customary, she wore a corset stiffened with whalebone and a restrictive, tight corset cover that flattened and jammed her large breasts together into a single monobosom. The stiffened corset cover poked out from under the sheer evening gown that she had worn to her own debut a few weeks previously and covered her plunging neckline. On this particular evening she threw the restrictive corset cover to the side. Instead, she worked with her maid Marie to fashion two silk handkerchiefs together with some pink ribbon and cord. I

Polly's new undergarment complemented the new fashions introduced at the time. When she showed it to friends the next day, they all wanted one. Family and friends almost immediately asked Polly to create brassieres for them, too. One day, she received a request for one of her contraptions from a stranger, who offered a dollar for her efforts. She knew then that this could become a viable business.

Patent for the brassiere

She filed for a patent on February 12, 1914 and on November that year the U.S. Patent Office granted her a the first U.S. patent for the 'Backless Brassiere'. Polly related her invention to corset covers which were worn to cover the bosom when a woman wore a low corset. It had shoulder straps that attached to the garment's upper and lower corners, and wrap-around laces attached at the lower corners which tied in the woman's front, enabling her to wear gowns cut low in the back.

Polly wrote that her invention was "well-adapted to women of different size" and was "so efficient that it may be worn by persons engaged in violent exercise like tennis." Her design was lightweight, soft, comfortable to wear, and naturally separated the breasts, unlike the corset, which was heavy, stiff, uncomfortable, and had the effect of creating a single "monobosom". In the U.S., patents for various bra-like undergarments had appeared as early as the 1860s. The modern brassiere was invented and popularized by Paris couturier Herminie Cadolle as early as 1889 and was a sensation at the Great Exposition of 1900, becoming a fast seller among wealthy Europeans in the decade that followed.

After she married Richard Peabody, Polly filed a legal certificate with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts on May 19, 1920, declaring that she was a married woman conducting a business using separate funds from her husband's bank account. She named the company the Fashion Form Brassiere Company and located her manufacturing shop on Washington Street in Boston, where she ran a two-woman sweatshop that manufactured her wireless brassière during 1922. The location also served as a convenient place to go for trysts with Harry Crosby, who would become her second husband.

In her later autobiography, ''The Passionate Years,'' Caresse maintained that she had "a few hundred (units) of her design produced." She managed to secure a few orders from department stores, but her business never took off. Harry, who had a distaste for conventional business and a generous trust fund, discouraged her from pursuing the business and persuaded her to close it. She later sold the brassiere patent to The Warner Brothers Corset Company in Bridgeport, Connecticut for USD$1,500 (roughly equivalent to $}} in current dollars). Warner manufactured the "Crosby" bra for a while, but it was not a popular style and was eventually discontinued. Warner went on to earn more than USD$15 million dollars from the bra patent over the next thirty years.

In her later years, she wrote, }}

Marriage and divorce

In 1915, Polly Jacob and Richard ("Dick") Peabody were married by his grandfather, Endicott Peabody, the founder of the Groton School, and whose family had been one of the wealthiest in America during the 19th century. By the early 20th century a case could be made that the Peabodies had supplanted the Cabots and the Lodges as the most distinguished name in the region. They had a son, William Jacob, born on February 4, 1916. Polly found that Dick was a well-educated but undirected man and a reluctant father. Less than a year later Dick Peabody enlisted at the Mexican border and joined the Boston militia engaged in stopping Pancho Villa's cross-border raids. Less than a year after he returned home, he enlisted to fight in World War I. Their second child, a daughter, Poleen Wheatland ("Polly"), was born on August 12, 1917 but Dick was already in Officers Training Camp at Plattsburgh, New York, where he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Artillery. He became a Captain in the United States Army's 15th Field Artillery, 2nd Division, American Expeditionary Force. While she had been largely cared for by his parents, he had been enjoying life at the front as a bachelor.

Dick Peabody returned home in early 1921 and was assigned to Columbia, South Carolina. Polly and the children soon joined him, but when the war ended, Dick found himself left with nothing but a family allowance. He suffered from his war experiences and returned to drinking heavily. Polly found he had only three real interests, all acquired at Harvard: to play, to drink, and to turn out, at any hour, to chase after fire engines and watch buildings burn. Polly's life was difficult during the war years and when her husband returned home, significantly changed, her life soon changed abruptly too.

Meets Harry Crosby

thumb|Nantasket Beach and the Nantasket Hotel, State Bath House and Paragon Park in the background, circa 1910.The catalyst for Polly Jacob Peabody's transformation was her introduction and eventual marriage to Harry Crosby, a wealthy scion of a socially prominent Boston family and another veteran and victim of the recent war. Harry attended private schools and until age 19 appeared to be well on the path to a comfortable life as a member of the upper middle class. His experiences in World War I changed everything.

In the pattern of other sons of the elite from New England, he was a volunteer in the American Field Service Ambulance Corps. On November 22, 1917, the ambulance he was driving was destroyed by artillery fire, but he emerged miraculously unhurt. His best friend, "Spud" Spaulding, was seriously wounded in the explosion and Harry saved his life. The experience profoundly shaped his future. He was at the Second Battle of Verdun. After the battle, his section (the 29th Infantry Division, attached to the 120th French Division) was cited for bravery, and in 1919 Crosby was awarded the Croix de Guerre. Crosby wrote in his journal, "Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense and discover when it's too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes." He vowed that he would live life on his own terms.

After returning from World War I and while completing his degree at Harvard, Harry met Polly on July 4, 1920. Polly's husband Richard was in a sanitarium drying out from another drunken spell. Sensing Polly's isolation, Harry's mother Henrietta Crosby invited Polly to chaperone Harry and some of his friends to a party, including dinner and a trip to the amusement park at Nantasket Beach. During dinner, Harry never spoke to the girl on his left. breaking decorum. By some accounts, Harry fell in love with the buxom Mrs. Peabody in about two hours. He confessed his love for her in the Tunnel of Love at the amusement park. Crosby pressed her to see him alone, an unthinkable proposition for a member of Boston's upper crust. She later wrote, "Harry was utterly ruthless... to know Harry was a devastating experience." On July 20, they spent the night together and had sex, and two days later Polly accompanied Harry to New York. He had planned a trip to France to tour battle sites. They spent the night together in New York at the Belmont Hotel. Polly said of the night, "For the first time in my life, I knew myself to be a person."

Polly was seen by her social circle as someone who had perverted the trust placed in her as a chaperone, as an older woman who had taken advantage of a younger man. To the Crosbys, she was dishonored and corrupt. Their scandalous courtship was the gossip of blue-blood Boston. She was 28, six years older than Harry, with two small children, and married.

In the fall her husband Richard moved back home. His parents supplied a small living allowance and Richard, Polly and the two children moved into a three-story tenement building. Crosby lived with his father while he continued his studies at Harvard. While Dick Peabody worked at the bank, Harry Crosby sent crates of flowers from his mother's garden to Polly's apartment and brought over toys for the children. They drove to the shore together. Richard volunteered to join the fire department and persuaded the fire chief to wire a fire alarm bell to his home so he could turn out at any hour. The fire chief soon let Richard go, and he retreated into drink again.

Crosby pursued Polly and in May 1921, when she would not respond to his ardor, Crosby threatened suicide if Polly did not marry him. Polly's husband Richard Peabody was in and out of sanitariums fighting alcoholism several times. Crosby pestered Polly to tell her husband of their affair and to divorce him. In May she revealed her adultery to Richard and suggested a separation, and he offered no resistance. Polly's mother insisted that she stop seeing Crosby for six months to avoid complete rejection by her society peers, a condition she agreed to, and she left Boston for New York. Divorce was "unheard of...even among Boston Episcopalians." Peabody's parents were outraged that she would ask for a divorce and at her affair with Crosby. Richard's father Jacob Peabody even visited Harry's father Stephen Crosby on January 4, 1922 to discuss the situation, but Harry's father would not engage in a conversation. Despite his disapproval of Harry's irregular behavior, he loved his son. Stephen Crosby at first attempted to dissuade Harry from marrying Polly Peabody, even buying him the Stutz he'd been asking for, but Harry would not be persuaded to change his mind. For her part, Polly's former friends pilloried her as an adulteress, leaving Polly stunned by the quick turn-about in their attitude towards her. Polly later described Harry's character as "He seemed to be more expression and mood, than man," wrote Caresse, "yet he was the most vivid personality I've ever known, electric with rebellion."

Divorce from Richard Peabody

In June, she formally separated from Richard, and in December he offered to divorce her. In February 1922, Polly and Richard Peabody were legally divorced. (Richard subsequently recovered from his alcoholism and in 1933 published ''The Common Sense of Drinking.'' He was the first to assert there was no cure for alcoholism. His book became a best seller and was a major influence on Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson.) Crosby had been working for eight months at Shawmut National Bank. He went on a six-day drinking spree and resigned. In May 1922, he moved to Paris to work in a job arranged for him by his family at Morgan, Harjes et Cie, the Morgan family’s bank in Paris. Crosby was the nephew of Jessie Morgan, the wife of American capitalist J. P. Morgan, Jr., who was also both Richard Peabody's and Harry Crosby's godfather.

Polly had previously traveled to England to visit her cousins, where Crosby visited her. In June, 1922, Polly returned to the U.S. In September, Crosby proposed to Polly via Transatlantic Cable, and the next day bribed his way aboard the ''Aquitania'' for New York.

Move to Paris

thumb|Harry and Polly Crosby shortly after their marriage in Paris during September 1922.On September 9, 1922 Harry and Polly were married in the Municipal Building in New York City, and two days later they re-boarded the ''Aquitania'' and moved with her children to Paris, France. Harry continued his work at Morgan, Harjes & Co., his uncle J. P. Morgan's family bank in Paris.

Flirtations, affairs, drugs and drinking

Their bubble in Paris burst when Polly learned shortly after their arrival that Harry had been flirting with a girl from Boston. It was the first of many flirtations and affairs that Polly would learn to live with. In 1923, shortly after they arrived in Paris, Polly introduced Harry to her friend Constance Coolidge, the Comtesse de Jumilhac, and they began a sexual relationship. Polly had her own courtiers, and she outwardly tolerated Harry's dallying. In her journals, she privately worried about Harry's continued loyalty to her. When preparing her autobiography years later, she read letters between Harry and Constance in which shortly after his marriage to Caresse, Harry proclaimed to Constance that he cannot continue with Polly or meet her demand that he "love her more than anyone else in the world."

Their glamorous and luxurious lifestyle soon included an open marriage and numerous affairs, and plenty of drugs and drinking. They pledged a mutual suicide pact, in which they planned on October 31, 1942, when the earth would be closest to the sun in several decades, to jump out of an airplane together. This was to be followed by cremation and dispersal by another airplane.

In July 1925, he had sexual relations with a fourteen year old girl he nicknamed "Nubile," with a "baby face and large breasts," who he saw at Étretat. In Morocco during one of their trips to North Africa, Harry and Caresse took a 13-year-old dancing girl named Zora to bed with them. Harry had sex with a boy of unspecified age, his only homosexual dalliance.

In 1927, in the midst of his affair with Constance, he and Caresse met Russian painter Polia Chentoff. Harry asked her to paint Caresse's portrait, and he soon fell in love with her. In November Harry wrote his mother that Polia was "very beautiful and terribly serious about art she ran away from home when she was thirteen to paint." He was also in love with his cousin Nina de Polignac. In June 1928, he met Josephine Rotch at the Lido in Venice while she was shopping for her wedding trousseau, and they began an affair. In her autobiography, Caresse minimized Harry's affair with Josephine, eliminating a number of references to her. Harry told Polly that Constance and Josephine wanted to marry him.

Expatriate life

From their arrival in 1922, the Crosbys led the life of rich expatriates. They were attracted to the bohemian lifestyle of the artists gathering in Montparnasse. Harry enjoyed betting on the horse races and frequently dropped in a Drosso’s, where he would smoke opium, and he sometimes stayed away from home for days at a time. They settled in an apartment at 12, Quai d'Orléans on Île St-Louis, and Polly donned her red bathing suit and rowed Harry down the river to the Place de la Concorde where he walked the last few blocks to the bank. Harry wore his dark business suit, formal hat, and carried his umbrella and briefcase. Caresse rowed home alone, and in her swim suit her generously endowed chest drew whistles, jeers and waves from workmen. She later wrote that she thought the exercise was good for her breasts, and she also enjoyed the attention.

After about a year, Harry soon tired of the predictable banker's life and quit, joining the lost generation of expatriate Americans disillusioned by the restrictive atmosphere of 1920s America. Harry wanted as little to do with Polly's children as possible, and after the first year, her son Billy was shipped off to Cheam School in Hampshire, England.

Polly and Harry purchased their first race horse in June 1924, and then two more in April 1925. At the end of 1924, Harry persuaded Polly to formally change her first name. They briefly considered Clytoris before deciding on Caresse. They later named their second whippet Clytoris, explaining to Caresse's daughter Poleen she was named after a Greek goddess. They lived in a fashionable apartment at 19, Rue de Lille, and obtained a 20-year lease on a mill outside of Paris in Ermenonville, France, from their friend Armand de la Rochefoucauld for 2,200 dollar gold pieces (about $}} today). They named it "Le Moulin du Soleil" ("The Mill of the Sun"). In January 1925 they traveled to North Africa where they first smoked opium, a habit to which they would return again and again. In 1928, they traveled to Lebanon to visit the Temple of Baalbek.

In 1928, he inherited Walter Berry's considerable collection of over 8,000 mostly rare books, a collection he prized but which he also scaled back by giving away hundreds of volumes. He was known to slip rare first editions into the bookstalls that lined the Seine. Polly took on lovers of her own, including Ortiz Manolo, Lord Lymington, Jacques Porel, Count Armand de la Rochefoucauld, and Cord Meier. But behind closed doors, Harry applied a double standard, quarreling violently with Caresse about her affairs. Occasionally they strayed together, as when they met two other couples and drove to the country near Bois de Boulogne, drew the cars into a circle with their headlights on, and changed partners.

Affair with Henri Cartier-Bresson

In 1929, Harry Crosby met Henri Cartier-Bresson at Le Bourget, where Cartier-Bresson's air squadron commandant had placed him under house arrest for hunting without a license. Crosby persuaded the officer to release Cartier-Bresson into his custody for a few days. They found they both had an interest in photography, and they spent their time together taking and printing pictures at Crosby's home, Le Moulin du Soleil. Harry later said Cartier-Bresson "looked like a fledgling, shy and frail, and mild as whey." A friend of Crosby’s from Texas encouraged Cartier-Bresson to take photography more seriously. Embracing the open sexuality offered by Crosby and his wife Caresse, Cartier-Bresson fell into an intense sexual relationship with her. In 1931, two years after Harry Crosby's suicide, the end of his affair with Caresse Crosby left Cartier-Bresson broken-hearted and he escaped to Côte d'Ivoire within French colonial Africa.

Publish poetry and new writers

thumb| Cover of Tales of Shem and Shaun by James Joyce published by Caresse Crosby and the Black Sun PressIn April, 1927, they founded an English language publishing company, first called ''Éditions Narcisse'', after their black whippet, Narcisse Noir. They used the press as an avenue to publish their own poetry in small editions of finely-made, hard-bound volumes. In 1924, they first published a volume of poetry by Caresse, ''Crosses of Gold'', followed by ''Graven Images'' in 1926. They enjoyed the reception their initial work received, and decided to expand the press to serve other authors.

They printed limited quantities of meticulously produced, hand-manufactured books, printed on high-quality paper. Publishing in Paris during the 1920s and 1930s put the company at the crossroads of many American writers who were living abroad. In 1928, as ''Éditions Narcisse'', they printed a limited edition of 300 numbered copies of "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Edgar Allan Poe with illustrations by Alastair.

In 1928, Harry and Caresse changed the name of the press to the Black Sun Press in keeping with Harry's fascination with the symbolism of the sun. The press rapidly gained notice for publishing beautifully bound, typographically flawless editions of unusual books. They took exquisite care with the books they published, choosing the finest papers and inks.

They published early works of a number of avant-garde writers before they were well-known, including James Joyce's ''Tales Told of Shem and Shaun'' (which was later integrated into ''Finnegans Wake''). They published Kay Boyle's first book-length work, ''Short Stories'', in 1929, and works by Hart Crane, D. H. Lawrence, Ezra Pound, Archibald MacLeish, Ernest Hemingway, Laurence Sterne, and Eugene Jolas. The Black Sun Press evolved into one of the most important small presses in Paris in the 1920s. In 1929, she and Harry both signed poet Eugene Jolas' ''The Revolution of the Word Proclamation'' which appeared in issue 16/17 of the literary journal ''transition''. After Harry died in a suicide pact with one of his many lovers, Caresse Crosby continued publishing until 1936, when she left Europe for the United States.

Harry's suicide

On July 9, 1928, Harry met 20 year old Josephine Noyes Rotch, whom he would call the "Youngest Princess of the Sun" and the "Fire Princess." She was descended from a family that first settled in Provincetown on Cape Cod in 1690. Josephine would inspire Crosby's next collection of poems called ''Transit of Venus.'' Though she was several years his junior, Harry fell in love with Josephine. In a letter to his mother, dated July 24, 1928, Crosby wrote:}}

Josephine and Harry had an ongoing affair until she married, when it temporarily ended. However, Josephine rekindled their affair, and in the late fall of 1929, Harry and Josephine met and traveled to Detroit where they checked into an expensive, USD$12 (about $}} today) a day hotel as husband and wife. For four days they took meals in their room, smoked opium, and had sex.

On December 7, 1929, the lovers returned to New York where once again they attempted to end the affair, and Josephine agreed that she would return to Boston and her husband. But two days later she had delivered a 36-line poem to Crosby who was staying with Caresse at the Savoy-Plaza Hotel. The last line of the poem read: On December 9, Harry Crosby wrote in his journal for the last time:

Harry was found at 10pm that night in bed at Stanley Mortimer's studio in the Hotel des Artistes. He had a .25 caliber bullet hole in his right temple next to Josephine, who had a matching hole in her left temple. They were in an affectionate embrace. Both were dressed but had bare feet. Harry sported red-painted toenails and tattoos on the bottom of his feet. The Coroner said the Josephine had died at least two hours before Harry. There was no suicide note, and newspapers ran sensational articles for days about the murder or suicide pact—they could not decide which.

Later work

thumb|left|Illustration by [[Alastair (Baron Hans Henning Voigt)|Alastair from Harry Crosby's book ''Red Skeletons'', published in 1927.]] Harry left Caresse USD$100,000 (about $}} today) in his will, along with generous bequests to Josephine, Constance, and others. His parents Stephen and Henrietta had it declared invalid, but reassured Caresse that she would receive USD$2000 (approximately $ today}}) a year until she received money from Walter Berry's estate. Upon her return to Europe, Polleen was brought from Chamonix by Caresse's friend Bill Sykes, Billy was brought home from boarding school by another friend,, and the family and friends spent some time at the Mill. Polleen stayed with her mother for a few months, refusing to return to school. Billy returned to Choam, and in 1931 returned to the U.S. to attend the Lexox School.

After Harry Crosby's suicide, Caresse dedicated herself to the Black Sun Press. She also established, with Jacques Porel, a side venture, Crosby Continental Editions, that published paperback books by European writers including Alain Fournier, Charles-Louis Philippe, Antoine de Saint-Exupery, Paul Eluard, George Grosz, Max Ernst, C. G. Jung and Americans like Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, William Faulkner, and Kay Boyle, among others. Her paperback books, an innovative product in the 1930s, were not well received, and she closed the press in 1933.

Crosby pursued ambitions as an actress that she had since her 20s, and appeared as a dancer in two short experimental films directed by artist Emlen Etting, ''Poem 8'' (1932) and ''Oramunde'' (1933). The Black Sun Press broadened its scope after Harry's death. Although it published few works after 1952, it printed James Joyce's ''Collected Poems'' in 1963. It did not officially close until Caresse's death in 1970.

Affair with black actor

In 1934, she had begun a love affair with black actor-boxer Canada Lee despite the threat of miscegenation laws. They had lunch uptown in Harlem at the then new restaurant ''Franks'' where they could maintain their secret relationship. By the 1940s, Lee was a Broadway star and featured in the nation-wide run of the play ''Native Son''. But the only restaurant in Washington D.C. where they could eat together was an African restaurant named the ''Bugazi''. Unlike so many of her lovers, he didn't ask for money, even when his nightclub ''The Chicken Coop'' had a difficult time. When Crosby's brother Walter expressed his dismay at their relationship during a dinner in the early 1940s, Caresse was offended, and had little contact with Walter over the next 10 years. Crosby and Lee's intimate relationship continued into the mid-1940s and contributed to her world-view. Crosby wrote a never-published play, ''The Cage'', transparently based on their relationship.

Marries again

While taking her daughter Polly to Hollywood where she aspired to become an actress, Caresse met Selbert "Bert" Saffold Young, an unemployed aspiring actor and former football player 18 years her junior. When he saw her staring at him in a restaurant, he immediately came over and asked her to dance. She described him as "handsome as Hermes" and "as militant as Mars." Her friend Constance Coolidge described Bert as "untamed" and "entirely ruled by impulse."

Without a job, he convinced Caresse he just wanted to own a farm and they decided to look for land on the east coast. They drove into Virginia looking for an old plantation house smothered in roses. When their car broke down, she accidentally discovered Hampton Manor, a Hereford cattle farm with a dilapidated brick mansion on a estate in Bowling Green, Virginia. It had been built in 1838 by John Hampton DeJarnette from plans by his friend, Thomas Jefferson. John Hampton was the brother of Virginia Legislator Daniel Coleman De Jarnette.

On September 30, 1936, she wrote to the New York Trust Company and instructed them to send 433 shares of stock that she used to buy the property, which was in need of renovation. They were married in Virginia on March 24, 1937. Bert was always asking Caresse for money, he crashed her car, ran up the telephone bill, and used all her credit at the local liquor store. Bert ended one bout of drinking with a solo trip to Florida and did not come back to Virginia until the next year.

Writing pornography

In Paris during 1933, Caresse had met Henry Miller. When he returned to the U.S. in 1940, he confessed to Caresse his lack of success in getting his work published. Miller's autobiographical book ''Tropic of Cancer'' was banned in the U.S. as pornographic, and he could get no other work published. She invited him to take a room in her spacious New York apartment on East 54th Street where she infrequently lived, which he accepted, though she did not provide him with money.

Desperate for cash, Miller fell to churning out pornography on commission for an Oklahoma oil baron at a dollar per page, but after two 100-page stories that brought him USD$200, he could do no more.(There is no evidence about this, and Henry Miller denied having taken part in this operation.) Now he wanted to tour the United States by car and write about it. He got a USD$750 advance, and persuaded the oil man's agent to advance him another $200. He was preparing to leave on the trip but still had not provided the work promised. He thought then of Caresse Crosby. She was already pitching in ideas and pieces of writing to Anaïs Nin’s New York City smut club for fun, not money. In her journal, Nin wrote, "Harvey Breit, Robert Duncan, George Barker, Caresse Crosby, all of us concentrating our skills in a tour de force, supplying the old man with such an abundance of perverse felicities, that now he begged for more." Caresse was facile and clever, wrote easily and quickly, with little effort.

Caresse accepted Henry's proposal. She wrote at the top the title given her by Henry Miller, ''Opus Pistorum'' (later republished as Henry's work as ''Under the Roofs of Paris''), and started right in. Henry left for his car tour of America. Caresse churned out 200 pages and the collector’s agent asked for more. Caresse's smut was just what the oil man wanted, according to his New York agent. No literary aspirations, just plain sex. In her journal, Nin wrote, "'Less poetry,' said the voice over the telephone. 'Be specific.'" In Caresse the agent had found the basic pornographic Henry Miller.

Caresse spent some of her time while her husband, Bert Young, fell into a drunken stupor every night churning out another 200 pages of pornography. In her diary, Anaïs Nin observed that everyone who wrote pornography with her wrote out of a self that was opposite to her or his identity, but identical with his desire. Polly or Caresse grew up amid the social constraints imposed by her upper-class family in New York. She had a doomed and troublesome romanticism with Harry Crosby. She participated in a decade or more of intellectual lovers in Paris during the 1920s.

Political and artistic activity

Although her husband Bert was often drunk and infrequently home, Caresse did not lack for company. Caresse extended an invitation to Salvador Dali and his wife, who were long-term guests, during which he wrote much of his autobiography. In 1934, Dalí and his wife Gala attended a masquerade party in New York, hosted for them by Crosby. Other visitors included Buckminster Fuller, Anaïs Nin, Ezra Pound, Henry Miller, Max Ernst, Stuart Kaiser and other friends from her time in Paris. By 1941, having divorced Bert, Caresse moved to live in Washington D.C. full-time where she owned a home at 2008 Q Street NW from 1937 to 1950, and she opened the Caresse Crosby Modern Art Gallery, what was then the city's only modern art gallery, at 1606 Twentieth Street, near Dupont Circle.

In December, 1943, she wrote Henry Miller to ask if he had heard about her gallery and asked if he would be interested in exhibiting some of his paintings there. In 1944, she spent some time with at his home in Big Sur, and later opened his first one-man art show at her gallery.

Publishes ''Portfolio''

She also published under the Black Sun Press ''Portfolio: An Intercontinental Quarterly'', in which she sought to continue her work with young and avant-garde writers and artists. She printed issues 1, 3, and 5 in the U.S. The second issue was published in Paris in December 1945, less than seven months after the end of the war. It featured primarily French writers and artists; the fourth issue was published in Rome and focused on Italian writers and artists; and the last issue was focused on Greek artists and writers.

During World War II and for some time after, paper was in short supply. Caresse printed the magazine on a variety of different sizes, colors and types of paper stock printed by different printers, stuffed into a by folder. Caresse printed 1,000 copies of each issue, and as she had done with the Black Sun Press, gave special treatment to 100 or so deluxe copies that featured original artwork by Matisse, Romare Bearden, and others. She secured contributions from a wide variety of well-known artists and writers, including Jean-Paul Sartre (''The End of the War''), Robert Lowell, Albert Camus (''Letter to a German Friend'', his first appearance in an English-language publication), Henri Matisse, Weldon Kees, Paul Eluard, Pablo Picasso, René Char, Henri Cartier Bresson, Louis Aragon, Kay Boyle, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sterling A. Brown, Charles Bukowski, Albert Camus, Rene Char, Paul Eluard, Jean Genet, Natalia Ginzburg, Victor Hugo, Weldon Kees, Robert Lowell, Henry Miller, Eugenio Montale, Anais Nin, Charles Olson, Francis Ponge, Kenneth Rexroth, Arthur Rimbaud, Yannis Ritsos, Jean-Paul Sartre, Karl Shapiro, Stephen Spender, Leo Tolstoy, and Giuseppe Ungaretti. After the sixth issue, she ran out of funds and sponsors. This was her last major publishing effort.

Visits Europe

Having left Europe in 1936, she yearned to visit her daughter Polly who had been living in London the entire time. Civilian travel was still very restricted after the war ended, and she reached out to Archibald Macleish, now Assistant Secretary of State, who helped her make travel arrangements and obtain a Visa. She traveled aboard a military British Overseas Airways Corporation flying boat, the sole civilian passenger, hand-carrying her Elsa Schiaparelli hat box that contained Pietro Lazzari's drawings of horses, and Romare Bearden's ''Passion of Christ'' watercolor series.

She learned after the war that Nazi troops set up base in her home "Le Moulin du Soleil," the French Mill. Caresse was upset when she learned that the German troops had painted over the wall of the home that had doubled as her guest book. Ironically, along with painting over the signature of Spanish painter Salvador Dalí (he intertwined his name with that of a Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer), D.H. Lawrence (who drew a phoenix), they also painted over the signature of Eva Braun. She signed her name when she visited Harry and Caresse along with an Austrian big game hunter she was dating.

Post-war activity

She became politically active again and founded the organizations Women Against War and Citizens of the World, which embraced the concept of a "world community" which other activists like Buckminster Fuller also supported. Caresse continued her work to establish a world citizen's center in Delphi, Greece, where in 1942 she bought a small house that overlooked the Grove of Apollo. In 1950, she divorced Selbert Young. In October 1952, she attempted to visit her property, but she was met by armed guards at Corfu as she got off the ferry from Brindisi. The police placed her under house arrest in the Corfu Palace Hotel, and after three days she was told she was not welcome in Greece, and ordered to leave. The American consul told her that the Greek government thought she was still "considered dangerous to the economy and politics of Greece." When this failed, she sought to create the "World Man Center" in Cyprus, which was to include a geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller. This effort too came to naught and she continued to search for a center for her world citizen project.

In 1953, Caresse wrote and published her autobiography, ''The Passionate Years''. She wrote it mostly based on her personal recollection rather than a specific set of sources. It contained "many amusing and intense anecdotes... but precious little about what was going on with him [Harry] is revealed."

Billy's death

In the winter of 1954-55, her son Billy Peabody was in charge of the Paris office for American Overseas Airlines. He and his wife Josette had a small third-floor walk-up apartment on rue du Bac that they heated with a fireplace and a stove. On January 25, 1955, Billy died in his sleep of carbon monoxide poisoning, while Josette was found unconscious and revived. Caresse traveled to Paris for his funeral between appearances at colleges where she talked about her life and the Black Sun Press.

Supported artist's colony

She was first introduced to a run-down castle named Castello di Rocca Siniblada north of Rome in 1949 during a tour of Italy. Designed by Baldassare Peruzzi and built between 1530 and 1560 for Cardinal Alessandro Cesarini, in the 1950s she rented and later paid USD$2,600 (about $}} today) for the estate. It came with the Papal title of ''Principessa'' (Princess). She paid to electrify the castle and thus brought electricity to the neighboring village. She told a reporter that the castle had 320 rooms, "at least that's what the villagers tell me." (The deed listed 180 rooms.) Many of the rooms had ceilings and the palace was virtually impossible to heat. "I wouldn't live here if you paid me," she told a reporter.

The residential portion of the palace contains three main apartments and two courtyards. The walls of the main hall are decorated by frescoes from the 16th century. She used the castle to support various artists, including poets' seminars. Henry Miller described Rocca Sinibalda as the "Center for Creative Arts and Humanist Living in the Abruzzi Hills." Other artists visited for a weekend or an entire season. Caresse for a time divided her time between Rocca Sinibalda, which in the winter was too cold and unlivable, Hampton Manor in Bowling Green, Virginia, a home in Washington, D.C., a sprawling apartment at 137 East 54th Street in New York City, as well as a residence in Rome. In 1953, Alvin Redman published her autobiography, ''The Passionate Years''. She put Rocca Sinibalda up for sale in 1970, shortly before she died.

Death

Suffering from heart disease, she received what was then still-experimental open heart surgery at the Mayo Clinic. She died from complications from pneumonia in Rome, Italy on January 24, 1970, aged 78. Time described her as the "literary godmother to the 'lost generation' of expatriate writers in Paris." Anais Nin described her as "a pollen carrier, who mixed, stirred, brewed, and concocted friendships."

But she lived long enough to see many of the aspiring writers she nurtured in the 1920s become well known and accepted authors. The bra she invented went through a number of transformations and become a standard undergarment for women all over the world. Her first two husbands and her son Bill preceded her in death. She was survived by her daughter Polleen Peabody de Mun North Drysdale and two granddaughters.

Works

As author

''Crosses of Gold'' Black Sun Press, Paris, 1925

''Painted Shores'' Black Sun Press, Paris, 1927

''The Stranger'' Black Sun Press, 1927

''Impossible Melodies'' Black Sun Press, 1928

''Poems for Harry Crosby'' Black Sun Press, 1930

''The Passionate Years'' Dial Press, 1953

As editor

''Portfolio: An Intercontinental Quarterly '' Six editions, Washington, D. C.

References

Additional reading

External links

Phelps Family History

Mary Phelps Jacob Inventor of the Week Archive November 2001 (December 2003)

"Caresse Crosby, Infield." Cosmic Baseball Association, 1998 (December 2003)

Mary Phelps Jacob, Inventor of the Modern Brassiere

Caresse Crosby Papers at Southern Illinois University Carbondale Special Collections Research Center

The Crosbys: literature's most scandalous couple

Caresse Crosby from "Always Yes, Caresse," 1962 (Video)

''This article was originally based upon material originally written by Brian Phelps and licensed for use in Wikipedia under the GFDL.''

Category:1892 births Category:1970 deaths Category:American socialites Category:American fashion designers Category:American book publishers (people) Category:People from New Rochelle, New York Category:People from Caroline County, Virginia Category:People from Washington, D.C. Category:Chapin School (Manhattan) alumni Category:Choate Rosemary Hall alumni

de:Mary Phelps Jacob fr:Caresse Crosby

birth name	Mary Leta Dorothy Slaton
birth date	December 10, 1914
birth place	New Orleans, Louisiana, U.S.
death date	September 22, 1996
death place	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
occupation	Actress
years active	1933—94
website	http://dorothylamour.com/
spouse	Herbie Kay (1935–39)William Ross Howard III (1943–78) 2 children }}

Dorothy Lamour (December 10, 1914 – September 22, 1996) was an American film actress. She is best remembered for appearing in the ''Road to...'' movies, a series of successful comedies starring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope (see Timeline of major beauty pageants) .

Early life

Lamour was born Mary Leta Dorothy Slaton in New Orleans, Louisiana, the daughter of Carmen Louise (née LaPorte) and John Watson Slaton, both of whom were waiters. Lamour was of French Louisianan, Spanish and Irish descent. Her parents' marriage lasted only a few years, with her mother re-marrying to Clarence Lambour, and Dorothy took his last name. That marriage also ended in divorce when Dorothy was a teenager.

In 1935, she had her own fifteen-minute weekly musical program on NBC Radio. She also sang on the popular Rudy Vallee radio show and the Chase and Sanborn Hour.

Early in her career, Lamour met J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. According to Hoover's biographer Richard Hack, Hoover pursued Lamour romantically, but she was initially interested only in friendship with him. Hoover and Lamour remained close friends to the end of Hoover's life, and after his 1972 death, Lamour did not deny rumors that she'd had an affair with him in the years after she divorced Kay. However, this appears nowhere in her memoirs "My Side of the Road" (Prentice-Hall ISBN 0-13-218594-6).

Career

In 1936, she moved to Hollywood and began appearing regularly in films for Paramount Pictures. The role that made her a star was ''Ulah'' (a sort of female Tarzan) in ''The Jungle Princess'' (1936). She wore a sarong, which would become associated with her. While she first achieved stardom as a sex symbol, Lamour also showed talent as both a comic and dramatic actress. She was among the most popular actresses in motion pictures from 1936 to 1952. She starred in the "''Road to...''" movie series with Bing Crosby and Bob Hope in the 1940s and 1950s. The movies were enormously popular during the 1940s, and they regularly placed among the top moneymaking films each year. While the films centered more on Hope and Crosby, Lamour held her own as their "straight man", looked beautiful, and sang some of her most popular songs. Her contribution to the films was considered by the public and theater owners of equal importance to that of Crosby and Hope during the series' golden era, 1940-1952. The series essentially ended with the release of ''Road to Bali'' in 1952, with her career declining while co-stars Hope and Crosby remained major show business figures.

During the World War II years, Lamour was among the most popular pinup girls among American servicemen, along with Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner and Veronica Lake. Lamour was also largely responsible for starting up the war bond tours in which movie stars would travel the country selling U.S. government bonds to the public. Lamour alone promoted the sale of over $21 million dollars worth of war bonds, and other stars promoted the sale of a billion more.

Some of Lamour's other notable films include John Ford's ''The Hurricane'' (1937), ''Spawn of the North'' (1938; with George Raft, Henry Fonda, and John Barrymore), ''Disputed Passage'' (1939), ''Johnny Apollo'' (1940; with Tyrone Power), ''Aloma of the South Seas'' (1941), ''Beyond the Blue Horizon'' (1942), ''Dixie'' (1943; with Bing Crosby), ''A Medal for Benny'' (1945), ''My Favorite Brunette'' (1947; with Bob Hope), ''On Our Merry Way'' (1948) and the best picture Oscar-winner ''The Greatest Show on Earth'' (1952; with Charlton Heston). Her other leading men included William Holden, Ray Milland, James Stewart, Jack Benny, and Fred MacMurray.

Dorothy Lamour starred in a number of movie musicals and sang in many of her comedies and dramatic films as well. She introduced a number of standards, including "The Moon of Manakoora", "I Remember You", "It Could Happen to You", "Personality", and "But Beautiful".

Lamour's film career petered out in the early 1950s, and she began a new career as a nightclub entertainer and occasional stage actress. In the 1960s, she returned to the screen for secondary roles in three films and became more active in the legitimate theater, headlining a road company of ''Hello Dolly!'' for over a year near the end of the decade.

Later career

Lamour's good humor and lack of pretension allowed her to have a remarkably long career in show business for someone best known as a glamour girl. She was a popular draw on the dinner theatre circuit of the 1970s. In the 1960s and 1970s, she lived with her longtime husband William Ross Howard III (whom she married in 1943), in the Baltimore suburb of Sudbrook Park. He died in 1978. Lamour published her autobiography ''My Side of the Road'' in 1980, revived her nightclub act, and performed in plays and television shows such as ''Hart to Hart'', ''Crazy Like a Fox'', ''Remington Steele'' and ''Murder, She Wrote''.

During the 1990s, she made only a handful of professional appearances but she remained a popular interview subject for publications and TV talk and news programs. In 1995, the musical ''Swinging on a Star'', a revue of songs written by Johnny Burke opened on Broadway and ran for three months; Lamour was credited as a "special advisor". Burke wrote many of the most famous "''Road to...''" movie songs as well as the score to Lamour's ''And the Angels Sing''. The musical was nominated for the Best Musical Tony Award and the actress playing "Dorothy Lamour" in the Road movie segment, Kathy Fitzgerald, was also nominated.

Death

Lamour died at her home in North Hollywood, California at the age of 81 from a heart attack. She was interred in the Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.

Filmography

Features

''Footlight Parade'' (1933)

''College Holiday'' (1936)

''The Jungle Princess'' (1936)

''Swing High, Swing Low'' (1937)

''The Last Train from Madrid'' (1937)

''High, Wide, and Handsome'' (1937)

''The Hurricane'' (1937)

''Thrill of a Lifetime'' (1937)

''The Big Broadcast of 1938'' (1938)

''Her Jungle Love'' (1938)

''Tropic Holiday'' (1938)

''Spawn of the North'' (1938)

''St. Louis Blues'' (1939)

''Man About Town'' (1939)

''Disputed Passage'' (1939)

''Road to Singapore'' (1940)

''Johnny Apollo'' (1940)

''Typhoon'' (1940)

''Moon Over Burma'' (1940)

''Chad Hanna'' (1940)

''Road to Zanzibar'' (1941)

''Caught in the Draft'' (1941)

''Aloma of the South Seas'' (1941)

''The Fleet's In'' (1942)

''Beyond the Blue Horizon'' (1942)

''Road to Morocco'' (1942)

''Star Spangled Rhythm'' (1942)

''They Got Me Covered'' (1943)

''Dixie'' (1943)

''Riding High'' (1943)

''And the Angels Sing'' (1944)

''Rainbow Island'' (1944)

''A Medal for Benny'' (1945)

''Duffy's Tavern'' (1945)

''Masquerade in Mexico'' (1945)

''Road to Utopia'' (1946)

''My Favorite Brunette'' (1947)

''Variety Girl'' (1947)

''Wild Harvest'' (1947)

''Road to Rio'' (1947)

''On Our Merry Way'' (1948)

''Lulu Belle (film)'' (1948)

''The Girl from Manhattan'' (1948)

''The Lucky Stiff'' (1949)

''Slightly French'' (1949)

''Manhandled'' (1949)

''Here Comes the Groom'' (1951) (Cameo)

''The Greatest Show on Earth'' (1952)

''Road to Bali'' (1952)

''The Road to Hong Kong'' (1962) (cameo)

''Donovan's Reef'' (1963)

''Pajama Party'' (1964)

''The Phynx'' (1970)

''Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood'' (1976) (cameo)

''Creepshow 2'' (1987)

Short subjects

''The Stars Can't Be Wrong'' (1936)

''Hollywood Handicap'' (1938)

''Meet the Stars #1: Chinese Garden Festival'' (1940)

''Show Business at War'' (1943)

''Unusual Occupations: Film Tot Holiday'' (1947)

''Screen Snapshots: Hollywood Shower of Stars'' (1955)

Books

Lamour was the heroine of a novel, ''Dorothy Lamour and the Haunted Lighthouse'' (1947, by Matilda Bailey), where "the heroine has the same name and appearance as the famous actress but has no connection ... it is as though the famous actress has stepped into an alternate reality in which she is an ordinary person." The story was written for a young teenage audience and is reminiscent of the adventures of Nancy Drew. It is part of a series known as "Whitman Authorized Editions", 16 books published between 1941-1947 that featured a film actress as heroine.

The real Lamour's autobiography, ''My Side of the Road'', was published by Prentice-Hall in 1980.

She also had a brief print run of 2-3 issues during the 1950s in "Dorothy Lamour Jungle Princess Comics" - A series of comic books dedicated to her movie ''Jungle Princess'' persona. (featuring screen shots from past movies as the covers.)

Notes

External links

Post-Blitz Clydebank — a documentary about Clydebank, Scotland from 1947 to 1952, featuring Dorothy Lamour

Photographs of Dorothy Lamour

Category:1914 births Category:1996 deaths Category:Actors from Louisiana Category:American beauty pageant winners Category:American female singers Category:American film actors Category:American people of French descent Category:American people of Irish descent Category:American people of Spanish descent Category:Burials at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills) Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:People from New Orleans, Louisiana Category:Torch singers Category:Traditional pop music singers Category:Vaudeville performers

ar:دوروثي لامور ca:Dorothy Lamour de:Dorothy Lamour es:Dorothy Lamour eu:Dorothy Lamour fr:Dorothy Lamour id:Dorothy Lamour it:Dorothy Lamour ja:ドロシー・ラムーア no:Dorothy Lamour pl:Dorothy Lamour pt:Dorothy Lamour ru:Ламур, Дороти sr:Дороти Ламур sh:Dorothy Lamour fi:Dorothy Lamour sv:Dorothy Lamour

name	Peter Lorre
birth name	László Löwenstein
birth date	June 26, 1904
birth place	Rózsahegy (now Ružomberok), Austria-Hungary (now Slovakia)
death date	March 23, 1964
death place	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
occupation	Actor
years active	1929–64
spouse	Celia Lovsky''(1934–45)''Kaaren Verne''(1945–50)'' Anne Marie Brenning''(1953–64)'' 1 child
website	}}

Peter Lorre (26 June 1904 – 23 March 1964) was an Austrian-American actor frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner.

He caused an international sensation in 1931 with his portrayal of a serial killer who preys on little girls in the German film ''M''. Later he became a popular featured player in Hollywood crime films and mysteries, notably alongside Humphrey Bogart and Sydney Greenstreet, and as the star of the successful Mr. Moto detective series.

Biography

Lorre was born as László Löwenstein into a Jewish family in Rózsahegy (Hungarian), Rosenberg (German), Kingdom of Hungary, part of Austria-Hungary, now Ružomberok, Slovakia. His parents were Alois Loewenstein and Elvira Freischberger. When he was a child his family moved to Vienna where Lorre attended school. He began acting on stage in Vienna at the age of 17, where he worked with Richard Teschner, then moved to Breslau, and Zürich. In the late 1920s, the young actor moved to Berlin where he worked with German playwright Bertolt Brecht, most notably in his ''Mann ist Mann''. He also appeared as Dr. Nakamura in the musical ''Happy End'' by Brecht and composer Kurt Weill, alongside Brecht's wife Helene Weigel and co-stars Carola Neher, Oskar Homolka and Kurt Gerron.

The German-speaking actor became famous when Fritz Lang cast him as a child killer in his 1931 film ''M''. In 1932 he appeared alongside Hans Albers in the science fiction film ''F.P.1 antwortet nicht'' about an artificial island in the mid-Atlantic. When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Lorre took refuge first in Paris and then London, where he was noticed by Ivor Montagu, Alfred Hitchcock's associate producer for ''The Man Who Knew Too Much'' (1934), who reminded the director about Lorre's performance in ''M''. They first considered him to play the assassin in the film, but wanted to use him in a larger role, despite his limited command of English, which Lorre overcame by learning much of his part phonetically. He also was featured in Hitchcock's ''Secret Agent'', in 1935.

Eventually, Lorre went to Hollywood, where he specialized in playing sinister foreigners, beginning with ''Mad Love'' (1935), directed by Karl Freund. He starred in a series of ''Mr. Moto'' movies, a parallel to the better known ''Charlie Chan'' series, in which he played John P. Marquand's seminal character, a Japanese detective and spy. He did not enjoy these films — and twisted his shoulder during a stunt in ''Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation'' — but they were lucrative for the studio and gained Lorre many new fans. In 1939, he was picked to play the role that would eventually go to Basil Rathbone in ''Son of Frankenstein''; Lorre had to decline the part due to illness.

In 1940, Lorre co-starred with fellow horror actors Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff in the Kay Kyser movie ''You'll Find Out''. Lorre enjoyed considerable popularity as a featured player in Warner Bros. suspense and adventure films. Lorre played the role of Joel Cairo in ''The Maltese Falcon'' (1941) and portrayed the character Ugarte in the film classic ''Casablanca'' (1942). Lorre branched out into comedy with the role of Dr. Einstein in ''Arsenic and Old Lace'' (filmed in 1941, released 1944). In 1946 he starred with Sydney Greenstreet and Geraldine Fitzgerald in ''Three Strangers'', a suspense film about three people who are joint partners on a winning lottery ticket.

In 1941, Peter Lorre became a naturalized citizen of the United States. After World War II, Lorre's acting career in Hollywood experienced a downturn, whereupon he concentrated on radio and stage work. In Germany he co-wrote, directed and starred in ''Der Verlorene'' (''The Lost One'') (1951), a critically acclaimed art film in the film noir style. He then returned to the United States where he appeared as a character actor in television and feature films, often spoofing his "creepy" image.

In 1954, he had the distinction of becoming the first actor to play a James Bond villain when he portrayed Le Chiffre in a television adaptation of ''Casino Royale'', opposite Barry Nelson as an American James Bond. (In the spoof-film version of ''Casino Royale'', Ronnie Corbett comments that SMERSH includes among its agents not only Le Chiffre, but also "Peter Lorre and Bela Lugosi".) Also in 1954, Lorre starred alongside Kirk Douglas and James Mason in ''20,000 Leagues under the Sea''.

A famous story is told in Hollywood that in 1956, both Lorre and Vincent Price attended Bela Lugosi's funeral. According to Price, Lorre asked him "Do you think we should drive a stake through his heart just in case?" However, according to Lugosi biographers Arthur Lennig and Gary Don Rhodes, neither actor attended Lugosi's funeral.

In 1959, Lorre appeared in NBC's espionage drama ''Five Fingers'', starring David Hedison, in the episode "Thin Ice". In the early 1960s he worked with Roger Corman on several low-budgeted, tongue-in-cheek, and very popular films. He appeared in a supporting role in the 1961 film, ''Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea''. In 1961, he was interviewed on the NBC program ''Here's Hollywood''.

Marriages and family

He was married three times: Celia Lovsky (1934 – 13 March 1945, divorced); Kaaren Verne (25 May 1945 – 1950, divorced) and Anne Marie Brenning (21 July 1953 – 23 March 1964, his death). In 1953, Anne Marie bore his only child, Catharine. His daughter Catharine made headlines after ''Hillside Strangler'' serial killer Kenneth Bianchi confessed to police investigators after his arrest that he and his cousin and partner in crime Angelo Buono had stopped Catharine Lorre disguised as police officers with the intent of abducting and murdering her in 1977, but after learning that she was the daughter of Peter Lorre, the pair let her go. It was only after Bianchi was arrested that Catharine Lorre realized whom she had met. Catharine died in 1985 of complications arising from diabetes.

In 1963 an actor named Eugene Weingand, who was unrelated to Lorre, attempted to trade on his slight resemblance to the actor by changing his name to "Peter Lorie", but his petition was rejected by the courts. After Lorre's death, however, he referred to himself as Lorre's son.

Health and death

Lorre had suffered for years from chronic gallbladder troubles, for which doctors had prescribed morphine. Lorre became trapped between the constant pain and addiction to morphine to ease the problem. It was during the period of the Moto films that Lorre struggled and overcame his addiction.

Overweight and never fully recovered from his addiction to morphine, Lorre suffered many personal and career disappointments in his later years. He died in 1964 of a stroke. Lorre's body was cremated and his ashes interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood. Vincent Price read the eulogy at his funeral.

Legacy and mimicry

Lorre has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6619 Hollywood Boulevard.

Lorre's distinctive accent and large-eyed face became a favorite target of comedians and cartoonists. For example, several Warner Bros. cartoons used a caricature of Lorre's face with an impression by Mel Blanc, including ''Birth of a Notion'', ''Hair-Raising Hare'' and ''Racketeer Rabbit''.

Books and comics

In the early 1940s, the adventures of ''Batman and Robin'' appeared in daily newspapers. One story, ''The Two-Bit Dictator of Twin Mills'', drawn by Batman co-creator Bob Kane, featured a hitman called Jojo who was, according to writer Al Schwartz, made to look like Lorre.

Films, television, and music

Musician and filker Tom Smith won a Pegasus award for Best Classic Filk Song in 2006 entitled "I Want to be Peter Lorre" which appears on his filk album "Homecoming: MarCon 2005", which includes his vocal impersonation of the actor.

The Jazz Butcher's song "Peter Lorre" was first featured on the group's ''Conspiracy'' album, which was released in May 1986.

The stop motion film ''Corpse Bride'' features "The Maggot", a small green worm who lives inside the title's character head. His features and voice (provided by Enn Reitel) are caricatures of Peter Lorre. "From the very beginning Tim wanted the Maggot to be a Peter Lorre-esque character, and we had a good time working with that and it went through various design changes," said co-director Mike Johnson in the book ''Tim Burton's Corpse Bride: An Invitation to the Wedding''.

On September 11, 2007 Brooklyn-based punk band The World/Inferno Friendship Society released a full-length album about Lorre called ''Addicted to Bad Ideas: Peter Lorre's Twentieth Century'', which traces Lorre's film career, drug addiction, and death. It has been performed at the Famous Spiegeltent. The album was subsequently adapted into a multi-media stage production directed by Jay Scheib, which premiered at Webster Hall in New York City on January 9, 2009, and went on to play major arts festivals around the world, including Spoleto Festival USA (Charleston, SC), Luminato Festival (Toronto), Noorderzon Festival (Groningen, Holland) and Theaterformen (Hanover, Germany).

Filmography

''Die Verschwundene Frau'' (1929) (uncredited)

''Der weiße Teufel'' (1930) aka ''The White Devil''

''Mann ist Mann'' (1931) aka ''A Man's a Man''

''M'' (1931)

''Bomben auf Monte Carlo'' (1931) aka ''Bombs Over Monte Carlo''

''Die Koffer des Herrn O.F.'' (1931)

''Fünf von der Jazzband'' (1932)

''Schuß im Morgengrauen'' (1932)

''Der weiße Dämon'' (1932) aka ''Dope''

''Stupéfiants'' (1932)

''F.P.1 antwortet nicht'' (1932)

''Les Requins du pétrole'' (1933)

''Du haut en bas'' (1933)

''Was Frauen träumen'' (1933)

''Unsichtbare Gegner'' (1933)

''The Man Who Knew Too Much'' (1934)

''Mad Love'' (1935)

''Crime and Punishment'' (1935)

''Secret Agent'' (1936)

''Crack-Up'' (1936)

''Nancy Steele Is Missing!'' (1937)

''Think Fast, Mr. Moto'' (1937)

''Lancer Spy'' (1937)

''Thank You, Mr. Moto'' (1937)

''Mr. Moto's Gamble'' (1938)

''Mr. Moto Takes a Chance'' (1938)

''I'll Give a Million'' (1938)

''Mysterious Mr. Moto'' (1938)

''Mr. Moto's Last Warning'' (1939)

''Mr. Moto in Danger Island'' (1939)

''Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation'' (1939)

''Strange Cargo'' (1940)

''I Was an Adventuress'' (1940)

''Island of Doomed Men'' (1940)

''Stranger on the Third Floor'' (1940)

''You'll Find Out'' (1940)

''Der Ewige Jude'' (1940) (archive footage)

''The Face Behind the Mask'' (1941)

''Mr. District Attorney'' (1941)

''They Met in Bombay'' (1941)

''The Maltese Falcon'' (1941)

''All Through the Night'' (1941)

''Invisible Agent'' (1942)

''The Boogie Man Will Get You'' (1942)

''Casablanca'' (1942)

''The Constant Nymph'' (1943)

''Background to Danger'' (1943)

''The Cross of Lorraine'' (1943)

''Passage to Marseille'' (1944)

''The Mask of Dimitrios'' (1944)

''Arsenic and Old Lace'' (1944)

''The Conspirators'' (1944)

''Hollywood Canteen'' (1944)

''Hotel Berlin'' (1945)

''Confidential Agent'' (1945)

''Three Strangers'' (1946)

''Black Angel'' (1946)

''The Chase'' (1946)

''The Verdict'' (1946)

''The Beast with Five Fingers'' (1946)

''My Favorite Brunette'' (1947)

''Casbah'' (1948)

''Rope of Sand'' (1949)

''Quicksand'' (1950)

''Double Confession'' (1950)

''Der Verlorene'' (1951) (also wrote and directed)

''Beat the Devil'' (1953)

''Casino Royale'', a episode of the television series ''Climax!''

''20,000 Leagues Under the Sea'' (1954)

''Around the World in Eighty Days'' (1956)

''Meet Me in Las Vegas'' (1956) (uncredited)

''Congo Crossing'' (1956)

''The Buster Keaton Story'' (1957)

''Silk Stockings'' (1957)

''The Story of Mankind'' (1957)

''The Sad Sack'' (1957)

''Hell Ship Mutiny'' (1957)

''The Big Circus'' (1959)

''Scent of Mystery'' (1960)

''Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea'' (1961)

''Tales of Terror'' (1962)

''Five Weeks in a Balloon'' (1962)

''The Raven'' (1963)

''The Comedy of Terrors'' (1964)

''Muscle Beach Party'' (1964)

''The Patsy'' (1964)

References

Further reading

External links

Watch Peter Lorre in Fritz Lang's M

The Lorre Library of Sound

The Peter Lorre Companion

Photographs of Peter Lorre

The Lodger on Mystery in the Air, 1947, starring Peter Lorre and Agnes Moorehead

Listen to Jack Benny Show 1941-03-09 (402) Guest Peter Lorre - Murder at the Racquet Club

Listen to Jack Benny Podcast 1946-03-24 (579) Guest Peter Lorre - I Stand Condemned

Mystery in the Air (1947)

Category:1904 births Category:1964 deaths Category:20th-century American people Category:20th-century Austrian people Category:20th-century Hungarian people Category:20th-century actors Category:Jewish actors Category:American film actors Category:Austrian film actors Category:Hungarian film actors Category:Hungarian Jews Category:Hungarian emigrants to the United States Category:Austrian emigrants to the United States Category:Naturalized citizens of the United States Category:American people of Austrian-Jewish descent Category:American people of Hungarian-Jewish descent Category:People from Ružomberok Category:Deaths from stroke Category:Burials at Hollywood Forever Cemetery

ar:بيتر لور ast:Peter Lorre ca:Peter Lorre da:Peter Lorre de:Peter Lorre es:Peter Lorre eu:Peter Lorre fr:Peter Lorre gl:Peter Lorre id:Peter Lorre it:Peter Lorre he:פיטר לורה hu:Peter Lorre nl:Peter Lorre ja:ピーター・ローレ no:Peter Lorre pl:Peter Lorre pt:Peter Lorre ru:Петер Лорре simple:Peter Lorre sk:Peter Lorre sh:Peter Lorre fi:Peter Lorre sv:Peter Lorre tr:Peter Lorre

birth name	Creighton Tull Chaney
birth date	February 10, 1906
birth place	Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States
death date	July 12, 1973
death place	San Clemente, California, United States
occupation	Actor
years active	1931–71
spouse	Dorothy Hinckley (1928-1937) (divorced) 2 children Patsy Beck (1937-1973)(his death) }}

Lon Chaney, Jr. (February 10, 1906 – July 12, 1973), born Creighton Tull Chaney, was an American character actor. He was best known for his roles in monster movies and as the son of famous silent film actor, Lon Chaney. He is notable for portraying Lennie Small in ''Of Mice and Men'' and Larry Talbot in ''The Wolf Man'' movies.

Originally credited in films as Creighton Chaney, he was first credited as "Lon Chaney, Jr." in 1935. Chaney had English, French and Irish ancestry.

Early life

Creighton was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the son of silent film star Lon Chaney and Frances Cleveland Creighton Chaney, a singing stage performer who traveled in road shows across the country with Creighton. His parents' troubled marriage ended in divorce in 1913 following his mother's scandalous public suicide attempt in Los Angeles. Young Creighton lived in various homes and boarding schools until 1916, when his father (now employed in films) married Hazel Hastings and could provide a stable home. Many articles and biographies over the years report that Creighton was led to believe his mother had died while he was a boy, and was only made aware she lived after his father's death in 1930.

From an early age, he worked hard to get out of his famous father's shadow. In young adulthood, his father discouraged him from show business, and he attended business college and became successful in a Los Angeles appliance corporation.

Career

It was only after his father's death that Chaney started acting in movies, beginning with an uncredited role in the 1932 film ''Girl Crazy''. He appeared in films under his real name until 1935, when he began to be billed as "Lon Chaney, Jr." (and would appear as "Lon Chaney" later in his career). Chaney was asked to test for the role of Quasimodo for the 1939 remake of ''The Hunchback of Notre Dame''. The role went to Charles Laughton. In 1962 Chaney would get a brief chance to play Quasimodo, and return to the roles of the Mummy and the Wolfman on the television series ''Route 66'' with friends Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre.

Chaney first achieved stardom and critical acclaim in the 1939 feature film version of ''Of Mice and Men'', in which he played Lennie Small. In 1941, Chaney starred in the title role of ''The Wolf Man'' for Universal Pictures Co. Inc., a role which would typecast him for the rest of his life. He maintained a career at Universal horror movies over the next few years, replaying the Wolf Man in ''Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man'', ''House of Frankenstein'', ''House of Dracula'', ''Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein'', Frankenstein's monster in ''The Ghost of Frankenstein'', Kharis the mummy in ''The Mummy's Tomb'', ''The Mummy's Ghost'' and ''The Mummy's Curse''. He also played the title character in ''Son of Dracula''. Chaney is thus the only actor to portray all four of Universal's major monsters: the Wolf Man, Frankenstein's Monster, the Mummy, and the vampire son of Count Dracula. Universal also starred him in a series of psychological mysteries associated with the ''Inner Sanctum'' radio series. He also played western heroes, such as in the serial ''Overland Mail'', but the imposing 6-foot 2-inch, 220-pound actor often appeared as heavies. After leaving Universal Studios, where he made 30 films, he worked primarily in character roles in low-budget films.

He also established himself as a favorite of producer Stanley Kramer, taking key supporting roles in the western ''High Noon'' (1952) (starring Gary Cooper), ''Not as a Stranger'' (1955), a hospital melodrama featuring Robert Mitchum and Frank Sinatra, and ''The Defiant Ones'' (1958, starring Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier). Kramer told the press at the time that whenever a script came in with a role too difficult for most actors in Hollywood, he called Chaney.

One of his most talked about roles was a live television version of ''Frankenstein'' on the anthology series ''Tales of Tomorrow'', for which he showed up drunk. During the live broadcast, Chaney, playing the Monster, was so drunk that he thought it was just a rehearsal and he would pick up furniture that he was supposed to break only to gingerly put it back down while muttering, "Break later."

He became quite popular with baby boomers after Universal released its back catalog of horror films to television in 1957 and ''Famous Monsters of Filmland'' magazine regularly focused on his films. In 1957, Chaney went to Ontario, Canada, to costar in the first ever American-Canadian television production, as Chingachgook in ''Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans'', suggested by James Fenimore Cooper's stories. The series ended after 39 episodes.

In the 1960s, Chaney's career ran the gamut from horror productions, such as Roger Corman's ''The Haunted Palace'' and big-studio Westerns such as 1967's ''Welcome to Hard Times'', to such bottom-of-the-barrel fodder as ''Hillbillys in a Haunted House'' and ''Dr. Terror's Gallery of Horrors'' (both 1967). His bread-and-butter work during this decade was television — where he made guest appearances on everything from ''Wagon Train'' to ''The Monkees'' — and in a string of supporting roles in low-budget Westerns produced by A. C. Lyles for Paramount. During this era, he starred in Jack Hill's ''Spider Baby'' (filmed 1964, released 1968), for which he also sang the title song. He appeared in a 1958 episode of the western series ''Tombstone Territory'' titled "The Black Marshal from Deadwood".

In later years he battled throat cancer and chronic heart disease among other aliments after decades of heavy drinking and smoking. In his final horror film, ''Dracula vs. Frankenstein'' (1971), directed by Al Adamson, he played Groton, Dr. Frankenstein's mute henchman. He filmed his part in the spring of 1969, and shortly thereafter filmed his final film role, also for Adamson, in ''The Female Bunch''. Due to illness he retired from acting to concentrate on a book about the Chaney family legacy, ''A Century of Chaneys'', which remains to date unpublished in any form. His grandson, Ron Chaney, was working on completing this project.

Personal life

Married twice, Chaney had two sons, Lon Ralph Chaney (born July 3, 1928) and Ronald Creighton Chaney (born March 18, 1930), both now deceased. He is survived by a grandson, Ron Chaney, who attends film conventions and discusses his grandfather's life and film career. Ron Chaney was featured on the ''CBS News Sunday Morning'' program on October 29, 2006.

Chaney was well liked by his co-workers — "sweet" is the adjective that most commonly emerges from people who acted with him — yet he was capable of intense dislikes. For instance, he and frequent co-star Evelyn Ankers did not get along at all despite their undeniable on-camera chemistry.

Chaney is also said to have had a belligerent relationship with actor Martin Kosleck; years after the fact, Kosleck explained this as a case of jealousy over Kosleck's (self-described) superior talent.

Chaney had run-ins with actor Frank Reicher (whom he nearly strangled on camera in ''The Mummy's Ghost'') and director Robert Siodmak (over whose head Chaney broke a vase). Actor Robert Stack claimed in his 1980 biography that Chaney and drinking buddy Broderick Crawford were known as "the monsters" around the Universal Pictures lot because of their drunken behavior that frequently resulted in bloodshed.

Death

Chaney died of heart failure at age 67 on July 12, 1973 in San Clemente, California. His body was donated for medical research.

He was honored by appearing as the Wolf Man on one of a 1997 series of United States postage stamps depicting movie monsters.

Filmography

This is a list of known Lon Chaney, Jr. theatrical films broken down by decade. Television appearances are listed separately.

1920s

''The Trap'' (1922) (Hand Only)

1930s

''The Galloping Ghost'' (1931)

''Girl Crazy'' (1932)

''The Roadhouse Murders'' (1932)

''Bird of Paradise'' (1932)

''The Most Dangerous Game'' (1932)

''The Last Frontier'' (1932)

''The Black Ghost'' (1932)

''Lucky Devils'' (1933)

''The Three Musketeers'' (1933)

''Son of the Border'' (1933)

''Scarlet River'' (1933)

''Sixteen Fathoms Deep'' (1934)

''The Life of Vergie Winters'' (1934)

''Girl o' My Dreams'' (1934)

''The Marriage Bargain'' (1935)

''Hold 'Em Yale'' (1935)

''A Scream in the Night'' (1935)

''Accent on Youth'' (1935)

''The Shadow of Silk Lennox'' (1935)

''The Singing Cowboy'' (1936)

''Undersea Kingdom'' (1936)

''Ace Drummond'' (1936)

''Killer at Large'' (1936)

''Rose Bowl'' (1936)

''The Old Corral'' (1936)

''Cheyenne Rides Again'' (1937)

''Love Is News'' (1937)

''Midnight Taxi'' (1937)

''Secret Agent X-9'' (1937)

''That I May Live'' (1937)

''This Is My Affair'' (1937)

''Angel's Holiday'' (1937)

''Born Reckless'' (1937)

''Wild and Woolly'' (1937)

''The Lady Escapes'' (1937)

''One Mile From Heaven'' (1937)

''Thin Ice'' (1937)

''Charlie Chan on Broadway'' (1937)

''Life Begins in College'' (1937)

''Wife, Doctor, and Nurse'' (1937)

''Second Honeymoon'' (1937)

''Checkers'' (1937)

''Love and Hisses'' (1937)

''City Girl'' (1938)

''Happy Landing'' (1938)

''Sally, Irene and Mary'' (1938)

''Mr. Moto's Gamble'' (1938)

''Walking Down Broadway'' (1938)

''Alexander's Ragtime Band'' (1938)

''Josette'' (1938)

''Speed to Burn'' (1938)

''Passport Husband'' (1938)

''Straight Place and Show'' (1938)

''Submarine Patrol'' (1938)

''Road Demon'' (1938)

''Jesse James'' (1939)

''Union Pacific'' (1939)

''Charlie Chan in City in Darkness'' (1939)

''Of Mice and Men'' (1939)

''Frontier Marshal'' (1939)

1940s

''North West Mounted Police'' (1940)

''One Million B.C.'' (1940)

''Too Many Blondes'' (1941)

''Billy the Kid'' (1941)

''Man Made Monster'' (1941)

''San Antonio Rose'' (1941)

''Riders of Death Valley'' (1941)

''Badlands of South Dakota'' (1941)

''The Wolf Man'' (1941)

''North to the Klondike'' (1941)

''Overland Mail'' (1942)

''The Ghost of Frankenstein'' (1942)

''Keeping Fit'' (1942)

''Eyes of the Underworld'' (1942)

''The Mummy's Tomb'' (1942)

''Frontier Badmen'' (1943)

''Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man'' (1943)

''What We Are Fighting For'' (1943)

''Son of Dracula'' (1943)

''Crazy House'' (1943)

''Calling Dr. Death'' (1943)

''Weird Woman'' (1944)

''The Mummy's Ghost'' (1944)

''Cobra Woman'' (1944)

''The Ghost Catchers'' (1944)

''Dead Man's Eyes'' (1944)

''House of Frankenstein'' (1944)

''The Mummy's Curse'' (1944)

''Here Come The Co-Eds'' (1945)

''The Frozen Ghost'' (1945)

''Strange Confession'' (1945)

''House of Dracula'' (1945)

''The Daltons Ride Again'' (1945)

''Pillow of Death'' (1945)

''Desert Command'' (1946)

''My Favorite Brunette'' (1947)

''Laguna U.S.A.'' (1947)

''Albuquerque'' (1948)

''The Counterfeiters'' (1948)

''Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein'' (1948)

''16 Fathoms Deep'' (1948)

1950s

''Captain China'' (1950)

''There's a Girl In My Heart'' (1950)

''Once a Thief'' (1950)

''Inside Straight'' (1951)

''Bride of the Gorilla'' (1951)

''Only the Valiant'' (1951)

''Behave Yourself!'' (1951)

''Flame of Araby'' (1951)

''The Bushwhackers'' (1952)

''The Thief of Damascus'' (1952)

''Battles of Chief Pontiac'' (1952)

''High Noon'' (1952)

''Springfield Rifle'' (1952)

''The Black Castle'' (1952)

''Raiders of the Seven Seas'' (1953)

''Bandit Island'' (1953)

''A Lion Is in the Streets'' (1953)

''The Boy from Oklahoma'' (1954)

''Casanova's Big Night'' (1954)

''The Big Chase'' (1954)

''Passion'' (1954)

''The Black Pirates'' (1954)

''Jivaro'' (1954)

''Big House, U.S.A.'' (1955)

''I Died a Thousand Times'' (1955)

''The Indian Fighter'' (1955)

''Not as a Stranger'' (1955)

''The Silver Star'' (1955)

''The Black Sleep'' (1956)

''Indestructible Man'' (1956)

''Manfish'' (1956)

''Pardners'' (1956)

''Daniel Boone, Trail Blazer'' (1956)

''The Cyclops'' (1957)

''The Defiant Ones'' (1958)

''The Alligator People'' (1959)

''Money, Women, and Guns'' (1959)

1960s

''House of Terror'' (1960)

''The Phantom'' (1961)

''The Devil's Messenger'' (1961)

''Rebellion in Cuba'' (1961)

''The Haunted Palace'' (1963)

''Face of the Screaming Werewolf'' (1964)

''Law of the Lawless'' (1964)

''Witchcraft'' (1964)

''Stage to Thunder Rock'' (1964)

''Spider Baby'' (1964)

''House of Black Death'' (1965)

''Young Fury'' (1965)

''Black Spurs'' (1965)

''Town Tamer'' (1965)

''Johnny Reno'' (1966)

''Apache Uprising'' (1966)

''Welcome to Hard Times'' (1967)

''Dr. Terror's Gallery of Horrors'' (1967)

''Hillbillys in a Haunted House''(1967)

''The Far Out West'' (1967)

''Cannibal'' (1968)

''Buckskin'' (1968)

''The Fireball Jungle'' (1969)

''The Female Bunch'' (1969)

''A Stranger in Town'' (1969)

1970s

''Dracula vs. Frankenstein'' (1971)

Selected television appearances

''Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans'' (1957) - Chaney was a regular on this television series, portraying the role of Chingachgook

''Along the Mohawk Trail'' (1957)

''The Redmen and the Renegades'' (1957)

''The Pathfinder and the Mohican'' (1957)

''13 Demon Street'' (1959) - Chaney was the host of this horror anthology series

References

External links

Lon Chaney Jr. Informative Biograph

Chaney Jr. Application's of Make-Up Through the 1940s-1960's

Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans TV Show Information

Additional Information on Chaney's Career

Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture - Chaney, Lon, Jr.

Category:1906 births Category:1973 deaths Category:American people of English descent Category:American people of French descent Category:American film actors Category:Actors from Oklahoma Category:People from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Category:Deaths from cirrhosis Category:American people of Irish descent Category:Children of Entertainers

an:Lon Chaney Jr. ca:Lon Chaney Jr. da:Lon Chaney Jr. de:Lon Chaney junior et:Lon Chaney juunior es:Lon Chaney Jr. fr:Lon Chaney Jr. id:Lon Chaney, Jr. it:Lon Chaney Jr. ja:ロン・チェイニー・ジュニア no:Lon Chaney jr. pl:Lon Chaney Jr pt:Lon Chaney Jr. ru:Чейни, Лон (младший) simple:Lon Chaney, Jr. sh:Lon Chaney Junior fi:Lon Chaney, Jr. sv:Lon Chaney, Jr. zh:小朗·钱尼