The son of a Hollywood set designer and a music teacher, Jack Hill was a musical prodigy whose first career choice was to score motion pictures rather than direct them.

As a young musician, Hill earned rent money playing gypsy music at a Hungarian restaurant on the Sunset Strip.

Hill was a classmate of Francis Ford Coppola at UCLA and followed Coppola into work for Roger Corman.

Hill's first screen credit was as a production assistant on Battle Beyond the Sun (1963), a Russian science fiction film originally titled Nebo Zovyot (1960) that producer Roger Corman had reedited and dubbed into English for distribution in the U.S.

Lon Chaney, Jr. was born Creighton Chaney, son of silent film actor Lon Chaney. After his father's death in 1930, Creighton gave up a job in his father-in-law's plumbing company to pursue an acting career.

At the insistence of RKO Studios, with whom Chaney was under contract, the actor legally changed his name to Lon Chaney, Jr.

Chaney, Jr. is most often associated with playing The Wolf Man (1941) for Universal Studios, a role he reprised in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), House of Frankenstein (1944), House of Dracula (1945) and Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).

For the rest of his life, Lon Chaney, Jr. would regret the professional use of his father's name. He died of a heart attack while undergoing treatment for throat cancer on July 12, 1973, at the age of 67.

At age 19 and known by her real first name of Armelia, Spider Baby costar Carol Ohmart won the crown of Miss Utah 1946.

Ohmart served as the model for villainess Copper Calhoun in Milton Caniff's popular comic strip Steve Canyon.

In 1955, Ohmart was signed by Paramount Pictures, who hoped to groom the young hopeful as a successor to problematic bombshell Marilyn Monroe.

Ohmart also starred in House on Haunted Hill (1959) and The Spectre of Edgar Allan Poe (1974), her last film.

Jill Banner was born Mary Kathryn Molumby in Bremerton, Washington, in 1946.

Banner studied acting at the Hollywood Professional School, where one of her classmates was future Mod Squad star Peggy Lipton.

Banner was writing a script for Marlon Brando when she sustained mortal injuries in a motor vehicle accident on August 7, 1982, and died shortly thereafter.

Quinn Redeker is credited with writing the original story that became Michael Cimino's celebrated The Deer Hunter (1978).

Los Angeles native Beverly Washburn got her start in show business as a child performer in such films as The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), Shane (1953) and Old Yeller (1957).

At the age of 12, Mantan Moreland ran away from his Monroe, Louisiana home to make a career as a dancer and comic on the so-called "chitlin circuit."

A popular player in Monogram's Charlie Chan mysteries, Moreland also featured prominently in such horror cheapies as King of the Zombies (1941) and Revenge of the Zombies (1943).

Mantan Moreland died on September 28, 1973, scarcely two months after Spider Baby co-star Lon Chaney, Jr.

Although Karl Schanzer had been an actor in films and in theatre, he was working as a private investigator prior to shooting Spider Baby.

Mary Mitchel had previously appeared in the films Panic in Year Zero! (1962) and Dementia 13 (1963).

Mitchel and husband Bart Patton were UCLA classmates of Jack Hill and Francis Ford Coppola.

Compiled by Richard Harland Smith

Sources:

Jack Hill interview, Psychotronic Video No. 13, by Sean Axmaker, 1992
Jack Hill audio commentary, Spider Baby DVD
Lon Chaney, The Man Behind the Thousand Faces, by Michael F. Blake
Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies & Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films by Donald Bogle
Milton Caniff: Conversations by Milton C. Caniff & Robert C. Harvey
Spider Baby surviving cast interview, Filmfax No. 63-64, 1998
Internet Movie Database