The Wolf Man (1941 film) Chaney Jr. would reprise his classic role as "The Wolf Man" in four sequels, beginning with "Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man" in 1943. Sometime in the early twentieth century, after learning of the death of his brother, Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney Jr.) returns to his ancestral home in Llanwelly, Wales to reconcile with his estranged father, Sir John Talbot (Claude Rains). While there, Larry becomes romantically interested in a local girl named Gwen Conliffe (Evelyn Ankers), who runs an antique shop. As a pretext to converse with her, he purchases a silver-headed walking stick decorated with a wolf. Gwen tells
The Wolf Man (1941 film) and become huge paws (courtesy of uncomfortable "boots" made of hard rubber, covered in yak hair). In the final scene, the werewolf does gradually return to Larry Talbot's human form through the standard technique. Stories about the make-up and transformation scenes have become legendary, and are mostly apocryphal. The transformation of Chaney from man into monster was certainly laborious. The series of makeups took five to six hours to apply, and an hour to remove. Jack Pierce had originally designed it for Henry Hull in "Werewolf of London" (1935) but Hull argued that the disguise made no sense within the