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
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man Wolf Man" and "The Ghost of Frankenstein". Immediately following his success in "Dracula", Bela Lugosi had been the first choice to play the Monster in Universal's original "Frankenstein" film, but Lugosi famously turned down the nonspeaking, heavily made-up role: as conceived by the original director Robert Florey, the Monster was nothing more than a mindless killing machine and not suitable for Lugosi's rising stardom and career as a leading actor. After the change of directors to James Whale, along with a major script and conceptual revision, the virtually unknown Boris Karloff was then cast in his star-making role. (Florey later