While the life of an actor isn’t for everyone, it certainly ran in the Chaney family’s blood. Lon Chaney, star of films like The Phantom of the Opera (1925) and He Who Gets Slapped (1924), was the father of Lon Chaney Jr. The younger Chaney starred in popular horror films like The Wolf Man (1941) and The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942).

But during an interview with the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Chaney Jr. said that his father didn’t plan on his son following in the family business.

“My father refused to let me be an actor while he was alive,” said Chaney Jr. “He said to me, time and again, ‘I don’t want my son to work that hard to make a living.’”

According to the elder Chaney, performing was too difficult a career path. “He loved acting with his heart and soul, but he felt that success in acting demanded too much of a man,” said Chaney Jr. of his father. “He wanted me to be president of some good manufacturing concern. Never a good businessman himself, he looked at the type almost with adoration. ‘Business - that’s the real way to make a living,’ he would tell me…I finally went into acting because you could hardly keep from it a boy who was born on the road, who was born on the road, who had no kid friends, only grown actors until he was 12.”

Although Chaney Jr. wasn’t willing to follow his father’s advice, he still viewed the elder actor as a role model. “But no matter what a boy may choose as his final profession, I don’t think any youngster living could have a better philosophy of life than that given me by my father,” said Chaney Jr. “It was ‘You can make any mistake in life except that of…quitting too soon.”