The journey
to the eventual film script for Frankenstein
was a labyrinthine one. In 1823, dramatist Richard Brinsley Peake wrote the
first dramatized version of Mary Shelley’s novel for the stage. Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein
introduced plot and character detail changes to her work that were still
present right through to the Universal film.
Another connection that ties the fate of Frankenstein to Dracula in the twentieth century comes courtesy of Hamilton Deane,
the theatre producer whose stage adaptation of the Stoker novel had done so
much to bring it to future cinema fame. After that success, he looked for
another property which he could tour around England on a double-bill with Dracula and commissioned Peggy Webley to
adapt Frankenstein. This became an
equal horror hit, and the duplication of the earlier formula was completed when
John L. Balderston applied the same revisionary treatment for Broadway of this
material in 1930 as he’d already done for Dean’s Dracula. Among his contributions to the developing mythology we
know today were the introduction of a creation scene for the monster and the
addition of Frankenstein’s assistant Fritz, who was mute. (It was only for the
1931 film that the creators decided he should speak so that Frankenstein had
someone with whom he could share his plans!). Producer Horace Liveright, who
was behind the Broadway run of Dracula,
wanted to add his own stamp to the script, but before that complication could
add to the mix the catastrophic stock market crash of 1929 cleaned him out. The
Broadway run never happened and he finally sold the Frankenstein movie rights to Balderston and Webling who ultimately
benefitted in a deal made with Universal.
The other
similarity in the gestation of both horror films is the passionate commitment
of Carl Laemmle Jr in pushing it through production. His enthusiasm for
Universal making Frankenstein was as
keen as for Dracula. For a man who
had been literally gifted his post of Vice President of Production by his
father as a 21st birthday present, Laemmle Jr showed great instincts
in choosing commercial projects. Not only were these two highly successful, in
fact vital, money-makers for the studio but he was also behind their seminal All Quiet On the Western Front.
Universal
bought the film rights to Frankenstein
for $20,000, giving Webley and Balderston 1% of the gross profits for cinema
releases based on their work.
Having only
existed till now as an official Frankenstein
film in a rushed silent short by the Edison Company in 1910, Life Without Soul (1915) and Albertini’s
Italian version Il Monstro di
Frankenstein in 1920, Italian Mary Shelley’s classic tale would now be
galvanised into feature-length cinematic life in the sound era by an American
studio who already had form in the genre. Robert Florey negotiated to write as
well as direct the project in May 1931; meanwhile the studio had contracted Balderston
to submit his own draft. Florey aimed to protect his position by insisting on a
contract stating he was performing both duties on Frankenstein. This was granted by scenario editor Richard Schayer but
Florey was too appeased to spot that the document didn’t specify the actual name
of the film.
Florey wrote
his own screenplay’s plot, enlisting Garret Fort to supply dialogue. Florey invented
the plot point of transplanting the criminal abnormal brain into the creature, later
extended in Francis Edwards Faragoh’s draft to being a replacement by Fritz for
dropping a normal one. This would mollify critics by safely explaining away the
creature’s homicidal actions.
Under Florey’s
tenure as director, the role of Henry Frankenstein was originally earmarked for
Bela Lugosi following his success in Dracula.
He tested for all of the character’s scenes up to the ‘birth’ of the creature.
However, Laemmle Jnr ordered that he be transferred to trying out instead for
the monste, a part which Lugosi saw as degrading. His make-up featured
clay-like skin and an enormous head prosthetic reminiscent of Paul Wegener as
The Golem. Carl Laemmle Jr reported that seeing this footage made his father
“laugh like a hyena”. According to stellar make-up artist Jack Pierce who
famously crafted the creature’s iconic look, the fault lay with Lugosi who
heavily influenced the design: “Lugosi
thought his ideas were better than everybody’s”. Allegedly, the actor quit
the film citing a desire to retain his self-professed romantic lead status – to
be fair an equal case was his dissatisfaction with the script’s draft at this
point, which as we’ve seen showed the creature as a rampaging soulless machine.
Certainly, the final shooting script pitied the monster much more than the
stage play source material. Ultimately Lugosi was to play the scientist’s
creation - however this would be down the diminishing quality line of sequels
in 1943’s Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man. The poor reception for Lugos’s
screen test resulted in Florey being sacked as director.
To helm the
project instead, Universal chose James Whale, a prestigious director they had
under a five-year contract. Mounting stage productions became a passion of his
whilst he was a POW in a German camp during World War One. After the war, he
abandoned his work as a newspaper cartoonist to concentrate on a career in the
theatre, proving his own mettle with the class material of R.C. Sheriff’s play
and film of Journey’s End and the
movie of Waterloo Bridge. Whale
welcomed the challenge of working in the realms of the macabre, the script
being “The strongest meat” of the
offers made to him, and never shied away from a subject that was daring,
controversial and new to him. This embrace of the unconventional echoed his
private life in which, rarely and riskily for the period, he was openly gay.
To portray
Henry, Whale followed his creative instinct and fought for Colin Clive, who’d
played Stanhope to great acclaim in both Whale’s stage and film productions of Journey’s End. He respected Clive’s
talent and his distinctive clipped tones, a vocal versatility “like a pipe organ…”The studio ideally
wanted Leslie Howard (at least agreeing that something in the scientist suited
a very British, cut-glass accented type that would continue through many
incarnations) but Whale got his way. He had valuable experience in guiding
Clive through the previous role’s intensity and suggested adding a measure of
Stanhope’s simmering breakdown into the part in a letter to the actor prior to
filming. Whale was careful to steer Clive toward balancing Henry Frankenstein’s
excesses with a believable truth, finding different shadings to avoid running
exclusively on a roaring, high-octane overdrive. He saw Henry as: “…an intensely sane person…at times rather
fanatical…and in one or two scenes a little hysterical”. Even before filming,
the director’s considered approach and integrity is evident and pays off
tremendously in modulating Clive’s fierce energy and credibility even at the
highest pitches of emotion. One of my favourite moments in Frankenstein is his subtle and amusing reaction to Dr. Waldman’s
news that the creature has been given an abnormal brain. Henry ponders this
coolly, his composure momentarily ruffled, glances at the doorway to the lab as
if silently computing the odds of trouble and then airily dismisses any hint of
setback.
Colin Clive (born
Colin Glenn Clive-Greig in 1900) came from a distinguished military family. He
was descended from ‘Clive of India’, the Commander-in-Chief of British India,
Major General Robert Clive. Colin would later play Captain Johnstone in the
1935 film about his illustrious ancestor, Clive
of India. How ironic that he portrayed notable army roles as an actor since
he was training for a military career at Sandhurst when his horse fell,
fracturing the young man’s knee. This ended his following of the family
business as it were, so he switched careers into the theatre, studying at the
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. After stage repertory work, the huge critical
and commercial success of Journey’s End
was to make his and Whale’s careers, establishing him as a riveting talent
especially in tortured roles. He would go on to appear in two more horror roles
in Mad Love and reprising the young
scientist in Bride of Frankenstein.
Privately, Clive’s triumphs couldn’t allay his
insecurity and the crippling inner tension of attempting to hide his
homosexuality, which was still illegal in those times. Unable to conduct his sexuality
with the same boldness as Whale, his conflicted inner life channelled into the
seething sincerity of his performances but manifested itself more destructively
in the chronic alcoholism which eventually claimed Clive’s life so tragically early
in 1937.
FROM BILLY
TO BORIS
Boris
Karloff was born William Henry Pratt in Forest Hill, Surrey in 1887 to a
violent and abusive English father and an Indian mother who divorced Karloff’s
father within 18 months of ‘Billy’ (her youngest child of nine) being born.
Throughout his career, Karloff hid his ancestry, knowing that prevalent racism as
well as racial typecasting would adversely affect his acting ambitions. Looking
at early photos of him courtesy of Stephen Jacobs’ excellent biography Boris
Karloff: More Than a Monster, it’s hard to believe he was able to keep his
dark, brooding Anglo-Indian looks a secret. He would explain this away later as
the product of spending too much time in the sun!
After a
somewhat uneven childhood - indulgence from his mother and bullying by his
siblings - Billy dodged a life in the civil service into which most of his
siblings fell. His passion was for acting, overshadowing his studies whilst at
Uppingham public school and kindled by seeing his brother George in the
profession (who later abandoned it for the more secure world of paper
merchanting). Billy’s family tried in vain to use George’s change of heart to
persuade him into forgetting the notion of an unstable career in the theatre,
holding an intervention during which they cruelly belittled his looks and
talent. Partly to escape this lack of support at home, Billy took advantage of
the period’s welcoming of immigrants by Australia and Canada. The toss of a
coin led him to plump for a Canadian adventure. He sailed to Montreal listing
his profession as ‘farmer’ with no knowledge of either the profession or his
new home country.
Although he
had no firm plans, Billy could not be accused of being work-shy. He went from
back-breaking farm work to real-estate brokering before spotting an advert by
chance in a newspaper: the Jeanne Russell Players stock theatre company were
looking for a character actor. He bluffed his way in and there began his
grounding in arduous but solid technique as a repertory stage actor for various
companies touring Canada. At one point, the turnover of productions he learned
on the road was astounding – two plays a week for 53 weeks.
It was
around this time circa 1911 that Billy Pratt became Boris Karloff, an important
name transformation in horror history whose origin has never been definitively
traced. Like many of Karloff’s anecdotes, he wove fantastical stories that were
often founded more in entertainment value than strict truth. Whilst it’s true
that Billy Pratt wouldn’t have the same marquee impact, Karloff claimed that: “The ‘Karloff’ comes from my mother’s family
– there were some Russian ancestors - and the ‘Boris’ I took out of the air or
something”. The most plausible explanation posited by Greg Nesteroff
suggests the inspiration was a ‘Count Karloff’ in a Harold McGrath play that
was staged in Canada two years before. Regardless, ‘Boris Karloff’ was to
conjure up a usefully enigmatic aura for his heavy features and presence. Universal
would exploit this to the hilt when marketing his films, going so far as to
refer to him simply by the surname for extra publicity chills.
The
all-important role of Frankenstein’s creation seemingly came by way of James Whale’s
life partner, producer David Lewis, who had admired Karloff’s work as a vengeful
convict in The Criminal Code on stage
and screen. By the time he was considered
for this life-changing part, Karloff was already making a living as a Universal
contract player, a veteran of 80 films varying in shades of ethnic villainy and
the occasional good-guy role of varying sizes. Whale met Karloff and was
captivated immediately by his cadaverous visage. Karloff recalled him remarking:“Your face has startling possibilities”.
His other physical attribute, a height of six feet would be a bonus,
though in the shape of a rather thin physique which did not concern Whale as he
knew the actor’s costume could be padded out to create the fear-inducing bulk
of the monster. Crucially, what was within Karloff’s nature would make his
monster a classic icon, more than simply the gross stuff of shock effects.
Whale reflected later on the actor’s “queer penetrating personality”, and
despite the painstaking metamorphosis of his face and body, underneath we feel
pity for this shambling, awkward giant child, pushed rudely into the world,
unwanted, trusting to a fault and hounded to death.
Karloff’s
make-up by Jack Pierce followed consultations with Whale and his resulting
design has never been bettered in portraying the composite creature (notable
inferior attempts include Universal’s own sequels):
“I figured that Frankenstein, who was
a scientist but no practising surgeon, would take the simplest surgical way. He
would cut the top of the skull off straight across like a pot lid, hinge it,
pop the brain in, and then clamp it on tight. That's the reason I decided to
make the Monster's head square and flat like a shoe box and dig that big scar
across his forehead with the metal clamps holding it together.”
Pierce initially stalled
delivery of a screen test for three weeks so he could perfect his work. Once
approved for shooting, every morning the actor would sit from 4 am till 8 am
while Pierce began layering cotton and collodion solution onto his face to
produce the operational scarring. Mortician’s wax fashioned the eyelids under which Karloff’s wounded, soulful eyes peer. Special molar
fixtures were designed to reshape his jawline, and by sucking in his cheeks,
cadaverousness was augmented by shading them. A blue-green greasepaint gave off
a corpse-like greyness to the skin on monochrome film – and the finishing touch
was the positioning of those iconic bolts to the sides of his neck as
lightning-electricity inlet points.
In
constructing Karloff’s remarkable full-body transformation, he was given a
black suit whose colour firstly emphasised the pallor and details of his
striking visage. It was double-quilted to fill out the actor’s slim frame and
featured shortened sleeves to make the arms appear over-long.His
fingernails were painted with black show-polish to simulate how the corpse’s blood would flow to
the extremities.
For his
lower-half, steel struts were attached to his legs enabling the stiff,
tottering gait and asphalt-spreader boots were worn that not only increased his
height and ungainly stomp but allowed him to lean forward at an unnatural angle.
It’s easy
for us to forget that Karloff’s Frankenstein monster was once totally unknown
to the public – the character has so saturated global pop culture since the
1930s. Whale clearly understood the shocking impact that he must have upon
being revealed to audiences for the first time. Artfully, the director staged
Karloff’s entrance as a tease for maximum effect. At his master’s command he
enters the scene backward and then turns slowly into the light so we can take
time to savour his gloriously unsettling appearance. It is one of the greatest
movie entrances of all time. In
Karloff’s lumbering movements, his silent expressive eyes and hands pleading
for compassion, he is a little frightened boy trapped inside an enormous
skyscraper…for life.
The other
principal cast members featured two returning from Dracula, namely Dwight Frye as the hunchback assistant Fritz (the
role later immortalised as ‘Ygor’) and Edward Van Sloan who played Professor
Waldman as well as giving an opening speech out of character that we will
discuss shortly. Van Sloan was arguably something of a good-luck talisman for
Universal as he appeared in the opening films of their first three horror
franchises: Dracula, Frankenstein and
then The Mummy (1932). Frye, despite
his evident talent, had now become locked into typecasting as eccentric servant
parts. By World War Two, he was reduced to working night shifts for Lockheed
aircraft company and died in 1943, possibly induced by the strain of supporting
his family whilst trying to stay connected with the business in local theatre
productions. By then, his death certificate listed his job title as ‘Tool
designer’. Fortunately we have his legacy in Frankenstein’s scenes between him and Clive; as master and servant
they are sublime examples of teamwork, both actors matching each other in
intensity of shared demonic purpose.
In the 1927
and 1930 theatre productions, the monster deserves that name by behaving as a
violent brute rather than the sensitive, poetic soul who is turned malevolent
by society’s awful treatment of him. The scientist’s lack of responsibility for
his creation also intensifies into physical cruelty – he uses a whip and hot
irons to dominate the creature, even ordering him to lie down and roll over
like a submissive dog. Cunningly, in the film, this inhumane torturing is
passed to Fritz, thus placing the creator in a more sympathetic light and
amplifying the truly pathetic in Karloff’s moving and heartfelt performance.
John Boles
had the dubious honour of portraying Victor Moritz, a newly-contrived character
designed to drive an unnecessary wedge of soap-opera love triangle between
Henry and his fiancé Elizabeth (Mae Clarke). He flourished in the era of
talking pictures, his forte as a baritone in such famous operettas as the film
of The Desert Song in 1929 for Warner
Brothers. In Frankenstein, he comes
across as an ill-at-ease tailor’s-dummy clone of Ronald Colman, blandly
accompanying the heroics whilst pining ineffectually for Elizabeth. In the novel,
the scientist Victor’s best friend is the breezy, optimistic Henry Clerval. For
the Webling play onwards, his first name was exchanged with Moritz which for
the scientist at least has a less imperious ring to it, one of a number of
subtle alterations made to render him more sympathetic.
Actress and
dancer Mae Clarke had turned an uncredited gangster’s moll famously receiving a
half grapefruit in the face from James Cagney in The Public Enemy (1931) to two lead roles before the year was out.
Her dancer-turned-prostitute in the hugely popular Waterloo Bridge so captivated Whale that he insisted on her for
Elizabeth in Frankenstein. (The
studio had considered the young Bette Davis for the part but Carl Laemmle did
not find her sexy enough). Writer Anita Loos had also found Clarke enchanting;
she was the inspiration for singer Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Amongst the
supporting cast, Frederick Kerr was also transplanted from Waterloo Bridge. Whale rated
highly this veteran of fifty years in the theatre – “He’s an asset to any picture” – and as Baron Frankenstein, Henry’s
father, he makes a splendidly Colonial old buffer of comic relief, at times
rambling away in a quasi-improvisatory style. Lionel Belmore playing the
Burgomaster came back for the sequels Son
of and Ghost of Frankenstein; so
did Michael Mark, the father of the drowned child, who also pops up in House of Frankenstein.
The film
opens with a speech by Edward Van Sloan as himself before a front-cloth as if
making an announcement to a theatre audience. This was filmed sometime after
production and was intended to pacify religious fundamentalist groups’
objections to Frankenstein’s controversial ‘God complex’. The studio had
already fallen foul of regional censorings of such lines as his “In the name of God” and “Now I know how it feels to be God!” and
when re-submitting the film in the more conservative climate of the Production
Code for its 1937 U.S. re-release this line was cut out of all distributed
prints. Other cuts would include minor surgery to Fritz’s goading of the
creature, the removal of Henry’s hypodermic injection into his back and
eliminating the entirety of Karloff drowning the little girl, which we will
examine.
The music is
by Bernhard Kaun whose score only accompanies the beginning and end of the
film. Within a few years it would be standard practise for a film to be
under-scored throughout.
In the
credits there is the notable identity (or lack) of the actor playing the
Monster as simply “?”. This is not
just for the purposes of marketing mystique but playfully harks back to the
1823 stage version which reversed the mystery billing by naming the actor T.P.
Cooke but labelling his role as ‘_____’.
Kenneth
Strickfaden’s famously elaborate design for Frankenstein’s laboratory equipment
was the product of his life-long fascination with gadgetry of all kinds.
Beginning his career as an electrician, he amassed a huge quantity of parts
collected from automobiles, aircraft and other sources. The cornucopia he
constructed for the lab looked dauntingly impressive and wonderfully
incomprehensible. Even so, the lightning sparks given off during the monster’s
creation were still enough to make Karloff apprehensive as he lay prostrate
under the technicians’ handiwork high up on the platform. (Me
Brooks would request him personally to come out of retirement to create his
wonderful workshop for 1974’s Young
Frankenstein).
Whale paid as much
attention to selling the creation scene to audiences as he did to every other
aspect of the film, understanding that without it, vital credibility would
affect their willing suspension of disbelief and investment in the characters.
Karloff got
along well with his director, only differing in point of view when it came to handling
the controversial scene in which the creature drowns the little girl (Marilyn
Harris) by accident. Karloff felt he should treat her innocently like the
delicate flowers he had been tossing into the river, whereas Whale saw this as
a clumsy and brutal act, albeit unintentional. Either way, the resulting
scene both horrifies us and earns sympathy for the unwitting child-like
monster, unaware of the tragic consequences he has now set in motion – hence
the censor’s unease over it. It seems the censored version before restoration
may have increased the scene’s unpleasantness rather than tempered it as it cut
just at the point where the creature reaches out for the girl, suggesting the
even more awful possibility of child rape.
The
Frankensteins’ wedding day festivities, like much of the shoot, was filmed on
the Universal back lot. The company kept a fully-intact European market-place
set for many years until it was burnt down. The staged scene was populated with
genuine Austrian musicians and dancers, which unwittingly adds to some
confusion over just what period and location we are supposed to be in.
Characters have German-sounding names and often costumes befitting the time of
Shelley’s novel and yet the principal actors sport English or modern American
accents and are sharply dressed from the same era as the film-making. This clash
of styles is jarringly evident during the man-hunt for the creature – suddenly Frankenstein’s
people leading the olde worlde villagers resemble time-warped 1930s Warner
Brothers gangsters.
Originally
the climactic fire consumes the windmill, creature and Frankenstein together,
however the studio realised they had a budding franchisable hit, so Whale and
his scenario editor invented the survival epilogue that shows the Baron and his
staff discussing his son’s recovery while Henry has Elizabeth at his bedside in
the background. Because of Kerr’s positioning and soft focus through the
doorway, we cannot be sure if Mae Clarke was in the scene. Another actor definitely
doubled Clive who’d already returned to Europe by now. While we’re on the
subject of re-appearances, fans of Kerr’s welcome dash of relish will be
pleased to see him again as he vanishes mysteriously during the wedding scenes.
Let’s not forget
also that in the novel, Henry’s fiancé herself does not survive. Elizabeth is
strangled by the monster on their wedding night. The Peggy Webley play allowed
Elizabeth to live as well, but further complicated matters by having the
creature fall in love with her. Any possibility of this muddying the murky
waters is mercifully cancelled out when in that version he throws himself
suicidally from a cliff-top at the end.
The film was budgeted at $262,000 for a 32-day shoot, finally coming in five days over schedule at a final cost of $292,000. To boost
publicity for Frankenstein’s release,
the studio pulled out all the stops, using the kind of sideshow gimmicks
producer William Castle would notoriously use in promoting his films in the
1950s – offering free nerve tonic in cinema foyers as well as stationing nurses
and ambulances on hand in case of overcome audience members. There was no need;
Frankenstein was an enormous hit, and
the box-office from this and Dracula between
them not only confidently began the horror movie genre that would make
Universal world famous, they also rescued the studio from debts of $2.2m
accrued by 1930. Azmid the glowing reviews, Film Players Herald praised Karloff’s
affecting subtlety : “If Universal’s
production of Frankenstein does nothing else, it establishes Boris Karloff as
the one important candidate who has arisen for the mantle of Lon Chaney.”
Ultimately
Boris Karloff enjoyed a happy association with the creature that made him famous
over the following decades. Despite a
punishing schedule of sixteen-hour days due to the make-up application (about which
Karloff had to officially complain to the Academy) he was eternally grateful
for the sewn-together corpse who had revived them both to stardom. “God bless the old boy. Without him, I’d
have been nowhere”. Though he was initially stifled by increasingly
restrictive sequels, unlike Lugosi he avoided the temptation of endless
repetition of the part into self-parody. He refused to do more than two sequels
in the role, re-teaming with Whale for Bride
of Frankenstein (as well as The Old
Dark House) increasing his range
in other horror projects sufficiently to allow him to play the scientist in House of Frankenstein for Universal to
no ill effect career-wise. Lugosi had done the same but could not resist
recycling his signature Dracula in
many touring stage productions, while complaining of the limitations that
prevented him from fulfilling the matinee-idol status he’d enjoyed back in
Hungary. Karloff seemed altogether more at peace with his lot as a ‘horror
actor’ type and would go on to a long and lucrative career. “God bless the old boy. Without him, I’d have
been nowhere”.
After
finishing Frankenstein, before
leaving the genre James Whale would direct three more successful horror
pictures for Universal culminating in the sequel Bride of Frankenstein that re-teamed him with Colin Clive and Boris
Karloff.
