Fly Fishing People: Lon Chaney

It’s not often that we hear that an early cult movie celebrity indulged in a passion for fly fishing. But according to a new biography by Kevin Browlow, back when Halford and Skues were bickering politely over wet-versus-dry, it seems Lon Chaney — probably best known for his ghoulish acting in The Phantom of the Opera and The Hunchback of Notre Dame — was escaping public attention through fly fishing. “Kevin Brownlow admits he expected to find ‘all sorts of skeletons in Chaney’s closet’ while researching his documentary. But he was ‘amazed at what a calm, kind character Chaney seemed to be. He seems to have got the idea before Garbo that the best publicity is no publicity.'” In the U.K. Independent.