11. Karloff and Lugosi faded in popularity with audiences in the 1940s
Though the Frankenstein and Dracula franchises, as they would be called today, continued during the 1940s the two stars most closely linked to them – Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi respectively – saw their careers begin to ebb. Lon Chaney’s Wolf Man became Universal’s most popular monster with the release of The Wolf Man in 1941. Chaney took on the role of the monster in The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), and Lugosi played the monster in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) with Chaney as the werewolf. Several Mummy films appeared, with the hard-working Chaney playing the Egyptian title character in three.
In 1943 Universal released The Phantom of the Opera, a remake of the 1925 silent film which had starred Lon Chaney. Claude Rains assumed the title role. The film drifted from the story depicted in the original film and the novel on which it was based, and where Chaney’s Phantom terrified audiences, according to critics Rains’ version did not. The film was nonetheless successful at the box office, the only true measure of Hollywood success, and by the end of the year Universal announced a remake, obviously in the belief another potential franchise was in their hands.