PHP chmod() does not change permissions

This is all I'm doing:

$fname = "$dir/key";

$file = fopen($fname, 'w');
fwrite($file, $value);
fclose($file);

chmod($fname, 0777);

Then another PHP script loads it. It loads it fine, but when I go see the file permissions they are 411 in FileZilla. chmod() is returning 1 but they are not changing. I've read that only the file owner may change the permissions, but since the file is being created by PHP, I beleive it should be able to be modified by PHP.