Classic Horror Mummy ' S Tomb Lon Chaney Jr. Elyse Knox 1942 Vintage Photograph
Item History & Price
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ITEM: This is a vintage and original production still photograph from the 1942 Universal Pictures classic horror film The Mummy's Tomb, Lon Chaney Jr. takes on the role of Kharis the mummy. Chaney Jr., in full mummy bandaging, stands ominously over the fainted body of Elyse Knox. An exciting piece of Golden Age of Hollywood memorabilia from Universal's pantheon of classic horror monsters.
Measures 10" x 8" on a glossy single weight paper stock.
CONDITION: Fine condition with light, scattered corner and edge wear and mild storage/handling wear. Please use the included images as a conditional guide.
Guaranteed to be 100% vintage and original from Grapefruit Moon Gallery.
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Elyse Knox, the actress best known for starring in The Mummy's Tomb (1942) and for being Heisman Award-winner Tom Harmon s wife and actor Mark Harmon's mother, was born Elsie Lillian Kornbrath on December 14, 1917 in Hartford, Connecticut, to Austrian parents Hermine Sophie (Muck) and Frederick Kornbrath, from Vienna. Knox's first love wasn't acting but art: she began painting in oils during high school, and painting remained a passion throughout her life. She had an exhibition of her work in 1981.After graduating from New York City's Traphagen School of Fashion, she got a job in a New York design studio as an artist's assistant intent on becoming a fashion designer. When a model didn't show up as scheduled, she filled in and soon became a top fashion model herself, appearing in all the major magazines. She modeled some of her own creations in "Vogue Magazine" in 1937. That and an appearance as a fashion model in a newsreel landed her a Hollywood contract from 20th Century-Fox.She made her debut in an uncredited bit part in Wake Up and Live (1937), starring gossip columnist Walter Winchell, in 1937. Knox would not appear again on-screen for another three years, until Free, Blonde and 21 (1940) in 1940. In all, she made 39 movies in the 1940s.Knox bounced around between studios, including Paramount and Universal. While at Paramount, she met Heisman Trophy winner Tom Harmon, to whom she became engaged. The engagement was broken off when he went off to WWII and she married another man, but that marriage proved short-lived. When Harmon returned from the war, she married him in 1944.She was a contract player at Universal in the 1940s, where she made the "Mummy" movie with Lon Chaney Jr. who - having had to carry her in a kidnapping scene - thanked her for being petite. The real-life love of a genuine sports hero, she also played Anne Howe, girl friend of fictional boxer "Joe Palooka, " in a series of B-movies at Monogram.After having two children with Harmon, she retired in 1949. "I'm just a mother at heart, " she said, "so I decided it was time to retire from the screen."Her son Mark, born in 1951, played for UCLA as a quarterback and became a top TV star. One of her daughters, Kristin Harmon, was an actress who married Ricky Nelson. The singer-songwriters Gunnar Nelson and Matthew Nelson are her grandchildren.Elyse Knox died on February 16, 2012 in Los Angeles. She was 94 years old.- IMDb Mini Biography By: Jon C. Hopwood
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American character actor whose career was influenced (and often overshadowed) by that of his father, silent film star Lon Chaney. The younger Chaney was born while his parents were on a theatrical tour, and he joined them onstage for the first time at the age of six months. However, as a young man, even during the time of his father's growing fame, Creighton Chaney worked menial jobs to support himself without calling upon his father. He was at various times a plumber, a meatcutter's apprentice, a metal worker, and a farm worker. Always, however, there was the desire to follow in his father's footsteps. He studied makeup at his father's side, learning many of the techniques that had made his father famous. And he took stage roles in stock companies. It was not until after his father's death in 1930 that Chaney went to work in films. His first appearances were under his real name (he had been named for his mother, singer Frances Chaney). He played number of supporting parts before a producer in 1935 insisted on changing his name to Lon Chaney Jr. as a marketing ploy. Chaney was uncomfortable with the ploy and always hated the "Jr". addendum. But he was also aware that the famous name could help his career, and so he kept it. Most of the parts he played were unmemorable, often bits, until 1939 when he was given the role of the simple-minded Lennie in the film adaptation of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men (1939). Chaney's performance was spectacularly touching; indeed, it became one of the two roles for which he would always be best remembered. The other came within the next year, when Universal, in hopes of reviving their horror film franchise as well as memories of their great silent star, Chaney Sr., cast Chaney as the tortured Lawrence Talbot in The Wolf Man (1941). With this film and the slew of horror films that followed it, Chaney achieved a kind of stardom, though he was never able to achieve his goal of surpassing his father. By the 1950s, he was established as a star in low-budget horror films and as a reliable character actor in more prestigious, big-budget films such as High Noon (1952). Never as versatile as his father, he fell more and more into cheap and mundane productions which traded primarily on his name and those of other fading horror stars. His later years were bedeviled by illness and problems with alcohol. When he died from a variety of causes in 1973, it was as an actor who had spent his life chasing the fame of his father, but who was much beloved by a generation of filmgoers who had never seen his father.
- IMDb Mini Biography By: Jim Beaver
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