The Munsters Early Pilot Episode

It’s a clear measure of how big the sixties’ Monster Boom was when two network fielded monster-themed sitcoms in 1964. ABC went with a satisfying adaptation of Charles Addams’ deliciously macabre The Addams Family while CBS put out the sweet and silly The Munsters, turning the iconic Universal Monsters into comedy characters.

The Munsters were originally planned as a cartoon show. The original idea has been tracked back all the way to a 1943 “Monster Family” concept by animator Bob Clampett, and the TV project submitted to Universal in the early sixties was penned by Rocky and Bullwinkle writers Alan Burns and Chris Hayward. Somewhere along the line, Universal ordered a pilot to be made as a sitcom with live actors, and that’s how The Munsters played out, though the characters did assume cartoon form in comic books and a 1973 animated short, The Mini-Munsters.

The strength of The Munsters lies, no doubt, with it’s inspired casting, led by the muggings of Fred Gwynne as a doofus Frankenstein Monster named Herman, Al Lewis as an irrepressible borscht belt vampire Grandpa, and actress Yvonne De Carlo displaying perfect comic flair.

The series had decent ratings, outperforming The Addams Family, and it even earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best TV Show, but it was cancelled after only two years on the air, murdered in the ratings by ABC’s new, flashy, color Batman series. Despite its short run, the series’ 70 episodes would go into syndication and its ongoing popularity led to cast reunions for specials, a TV movie and a theatrical feature, Munsters Go Home! (1966). New casts were used for a revival series, The Munsters Today in 1988, a TV movie, Here Come The Munsters in 1995, and a Christmas Special in 1996. Through it all, The Munsters would jump around from CBS to ABC, NBC and eventually Fox. It is said that The Munsters was one of the most merchandized series ever, its instantly recognized characters turned into toys, model kits, dolls and Halloween costumes, their likenesses stamped on apparel, games, squirt guns, and lunch boxes.

There were three different pilots made as the series was taking shape, the first one shot in color. It’s interesting to note how the characterss appearances evolved. Gwynne appears thinner, without the bulked up chest padding and the Monster’s prominent brow is high on the forehead, above the actor’s eyebrows, perhaps in an attempt to make the face more expressive. Grandpa Al Lewis’ pointy nose is even pointier, thanks to a makeup appliance he must have been thrilled to abandon for the series. A different child actor plays the werewolf boy part that would be toned down and given to Butch Patrick and, most significantly, Herman’s wife — here called Phoebe — is played by Joan Marshall as a Morticia Addams-type character, far sexier than Yvonne De Carlo’s glamorous but motherly Lily Munster.

The short and fascinating 17-minute pilot is on YouTube: Part One, Part Two.

There are innumerable Munsters fan sites on the net, including Munsters.com (hosted by Butch Patrick), Munsterland, the very complete Marky Munsters, and The Munsters Unofficial Website.

The original TV series is available on DVD: Season One, Season Two.

An amazing site devoted to Fred Gwynne.

The Art of Frankenstein : Emma Mount

“Once I'd seen Elsa Lanchester in this role I found her to be
the most iconic horror female of them all.”

— Emma Mount

British painter Emma Mount’s gorgeous oil portraits celebrate marginals and unconventional people like pin-up girls, burlesque queens, tattooed ladies and pop culture icons. Her outsider subjects, rendered with photographic precision, assume relaxed poses and calm gazes that suggest pride, inner strength, and an unmistakable touch of attitude.

Mount’s pop icon gallery includes Judy Garland’s Dorothy, Christina Ricci’s Wednesday, and Elsa Lanchester’s Bride of Frankenstein done in a splendid circular portrait, full face and eyes forward, with her imperial upswept hairdo and beestung lips.

“I first saw the Bride of Frankenstein at a very young age,” Emma wrote me. “The impression it made was immense and I was awestruck with her in particular from that moment on."

Mount’s painted backgrounds are distinctive. Pin-ups pose against lush curtains, starry skies or intricate damask wallpaper. For The Bride, Mount painted a startling purple leopard print.

“That's just very me,” says the artist. “It sneaks into my life all over the place (clothes, shoes, cushions) and it was the first thing that came to mind when I was painting her and needed a background. I wanted to drag her out of her black and white prison, and bring her kicking and screaming into a colourful, kitsch present!”

Mount's favored subjects are usually women, but Boris Karloff’s Mummy, the doomed romantic Ardath Bey, rates a solemn, glowing portrait, with hand on chest displaying his jeweled scarab ring. Mount captures the sad spirit of Karloff’s broken-hearted monster with the same assurance and insight manifested in her superlative rendition of The Bride’s eccentric beauty.

Emma Mount’s art is displayed on her website, at deviantART and on MySpace.

Read an excellent interview on the online art magazine Phirebrush.

With thanks to Emma.

The Buzz of Frankenstein

Today, April 22^nd, is Earth Day. The term “Frankenstein Food” might pop up in the news.

Suggesting a man-made menace that is out of control, it is used to describe the potential dangers of genetically modified food, plants and “super crops”. The expression is generally believed to have originated in England “around 1999”, which would make this BBC article from November 1998 one of its earliest uses in the press.

“Frankenstein Food” is often cited in conjunction with massive industrial production and fast food, giving a bit of an ironic twist to this Burger King Frankenstein promotion…

Another use of “Frankenstein” as a buzzword includes “Frankenstein Veto”, originated in 2005 when Wisconsin governor Jim Doyle modified a budget bill by striking out and “recombining” or “stitching together” words to give the amendment a different meaning. The term is widely used in America and some States have moved to limit or ban the practice. Simply google “Frankenstein Veto” for countless references.

“Frankenstein” describes most anything that is cobbled together, hence this “Frankenstein of the Skies”, the Aeroscraft, which combines aspects of an airplane, a helicopter, a blimp and a cruise ship. Frankenstein is also used as a verb for the act of merging disparate components into a new whole, such as frankensteining a custom car or a computer. Frankensteined video or frankensteined images means they have been edited or manipulated in Photoshop.

One-Man Frankenstein

Barely five years after it was first published, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was adapted to the stage. The 1823 production, which Mary attended, was so successful that it inspired a slew of knockoffs, including lowbrow pantomime and parody, and revived interest in Mary Shelley’s book. In fact, a second edition of the book was rushed out to capitalize on its sudden theatrical popularity. Since then, the book has not only remained in print, it has continued to be an inspiration for creators in the theater and all manner of media.

For playwrights, the powerful themes suggest endless avenues of exploration, and the operatic scale of the story creates unique dramatic and visual opportunities. For actors, the roles of the obsessed, doomed Frankenstein and his wretched, cobbled Monster are simply irresistible.

One of the most intriguing and unarguably challenging adaptation of the book in recent times was Jim Helsinger’s script designed for one actor to portray all the parts, six different characters, in the Orlando Shakespeare Theater’s Frankenstein: A Modern Prometheus. The first production, in the fall of 1998, featured actor Eric Hissom (pictured at left). The play was reprised in 2006 with Steven Patterson (across the top as Walton, Frankenstein, and The Monster).

The one-man show called for the actor to play an amazing range of characters, with different personalities and individual body language. The parts in this version include that of an arctic explorer, Walton; Frankenstein’s friend Henry Clerval; the science teacher, Doctor Krempe; the compulsive Frankenstein as both an energetic youth and a broken, older man; and, of course, the powerful but childlike Monster. One of the necessary tricks employed here was to give each character his own accent. Frankenstein speaks with a Germanic lilt, Clerval is French, and the explorer Walton, British in the original novel, is played as a Yankee captain.

Though there was only one man onstage, an indispensable crew of technicians provided dramatic lighting and sound design, and dynamic sets that allowed Walton’s ship to crash convincingly through an ice field and eventually morph into Frankenstein’s eerie laboratory.

The Orlando Shakespeare Theater’s archive site (links below) features numerous photographs, and a collection of glowing reviews that provide additional and fascinating information. The one-man Frankenstein sounds like a wonderful idea and a terrific challenge, and by all accounts, the high quality of the production was as admirable as the tour-de-force performance of the principal.

An interesting note: The company also produced a one-man Dracula, written and originally performed by Jim Helsinger in 1996, revived in 2003, and an adaptation of H.G.Well’s Frankensteinian The Island of Dr. Moreau, by Eric Hissom.

The Orlando Shakespeare Theater’s current website. On the Company’s archival site: The Hissom Frankenstein production of 1998, and the Patterson production of 2006, with numerous photos and reviews.

Steven Patterson’s web page, with more information.

A video slideshow of the 2006 production.

A Frankenstein Study Guide produced in conjunction with the play.

Elizabeth : Hazel Court

No sooner had I posted a birthday celebration for Valerie Hobson that news came of another screen Elizabeth. Hazel Court, the ingenuous fiancée to Peter Cushing’s cruel Frankenstein in The Curse of Frankenstein of 1957, passed away on April 15. An autobiography, Horror Queen, is due for publication on the 23rd.

I am surprised how sad the news made me. I can’t believe how deep my heart sank. I realize now how important Hazel Court was to me. I remember how I sought out her pictures and how her presence elevated so many films that I loved. Her list of horror films is long and storied, with significant contributions made at Hammer Films of England and American International of Hollywood.

In the winter of 1956, Court joined Cushing, Christopher Lee, screenwriter Jimmy Sangster and director Terence Fisher at Hammer’s Bray Studios to make cinematic history, in the form of The Curse of Frankenstein. Court’s four-year old daughter, Sally Walsh, appeared briefly as a young Elizabeth. When the film went out around the world in the summer of ’57, despite being shredded as sadistic and repulsive by British critics, it was box-office gold, and the Hammer era of Gothic Horrors was launched.

Hazel Court was ravishing, “a beauty among the beasts” as one reviewer put it. You couldn’t possibly miss her, of course. Imagine: A redhead with green eyes, and generous cleavage bound in Victorian corsets. She was tagged as a “Scream Queen”, and she did have to shriek off the threats of monsters and villains, but she was also one hell of an actress. When given a proper role, she could make it swing. Look at her beguiling turn in Roger Corman’s The Raven (1963) — see a YouTube clip here — and see how she holds her own in a scene with Boris Karloff, Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, and a desperately young Jack Nicholson.

By the late sixties, Hazel Court was mostly working in American television, and then she walked away and went on to other things. Encouraged by her friend, art expert Vincent Price, she became an artist, another thing that made me connect with her. She was a painter first, then a sculptor of Italian marble. Admirably, Hazel Court was proud of her horror films, always willing to share her memories, and generous in her recollections of fellow actors and co-stars.

Thinking back, there are three brief scenes that instantly come to mind when I think of Hazel Court. She always seemed to be wearing one of those spectacular opera dresses. In The Raven, she exchanges lines with the venerable Boris Karloff, her back turned to him as he fixes her dress. In The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959), she backs up the stairs, keeping a horrified distance from a clawing Anton Diffring, disintegrating before our eyes as his rejuvenation experiment fails. And the most memorable scene, an instant, indelible recall for me, comes in The Curse of Frankenstein, as she prowls the abandoned laboratory and steps out on the balcony…

That’s how I remember the unforgettable Hazel Court, in her bustled, off-the-shoulder dress, holding a gasoline lamp, unaware of The Monster lurking close behind.

Hazel Court's autobiography, from Tomahawk Press.

An obituary in The International Herald Tribune.

Wonderful, touching posts about Hazel Court by Arbogast and Tim Lucas.

A fan page.

The trailer for The Curse of Frankenstein.

Updates:

A recent interview with Hazel Court in a Lake Tahoe paper.

An obituary at Cinefantastique Online.

A rememberance by Tom Weaver on Fangoria.com.

Elizabeth : Valerie Hobson

Valerie Hobson was born on this day, April 14, in 1917. In 1935, she played Elizabeth, the “true” Bride of Frankenstein in the classic film of that name.

The stunning, Irish born actress was praised for parts played in The Drum (1938), Great Expectations (1946) and the wonderful black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949). Horror film fans remember Hobson for her turns in four Universal films, all made in 1935. She appeared in the curious, Frankensteinian Life Returns, which featured newsreel footage of a re-animated dog, she played opposite Claude Rains in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, she was the Bride of the Werewolf, Henry Hull, in Werewolf of London and, of course, she played Elizabeth to Colin Clive’s Dr. Frankenstein in Bride of Frankenstein, replacing Mae Clarke who had originated the part in the 1931 film.

Hobson, unfortunately, doesn’t have much to do in the film besides fretting for her frail husband in the opening scenes, and later on struggling a little against the loose ropes that bind her as she is kidnapped and held to blackmail Frankenstein into creating the Monster’s Bride.

Worth noting: The original trailer for the film — here on YouTube — includes an outtake, not seen in the finished film, of Karloff’s Monster grabbing and carrying Elizabeth away.

Hobson abandoned her film career in the early fifties, shortly after her wedding to British politician John Profumo, whose name would become synonymous with a notorious sex and spy scandal in 1963. Hobson stood by her disgraced husband and the couple devoted the rest of their lives to very significant charity work, eventually earning redemption for Profumo and a prestigious award for contributions “countering social deprivation and exclusion”. A son, David, wrote a memoir about his parents and the impact of the scandal on their lives in which he paints a picture of his mother as a remarkably strong and dignified woman.

Valerie Hobson passed away in London, in 1998.

Valerie Hobson on the Internet Movie Database, the British Film Institute’s Screen Online, and New York Times obituary.

A review of David Profumo’s book, Bringing The House Down (2006).

Gigantic Frankenstein

“Make a Friend!” the comic book ads said in ‘64, showing a kid holding Big Frankie’s hand, as if they were out walking together.

A wonderful sculpt, topping out at 19 inches, Gigantic Frankenstein was a squat monster with a big head, and big moveable arms. He was chained to a chunk of concrete, which might explain his morose expression. The box art — highly collectible even without the kit! — features a bright green and yellow painting by legendary illustrator James Bama of The Monster based on Glenn Strange’s appearance, modified with the forehead “clamped horns” of the original 1931 test makeup.

Today, nostalgic collectors will pay a small fortune for an original Gigantic Frankenstein in good condition. Availability is limited because the kit was not successful and soon discontinued after it was first released, late in 1964. The term "gigantic" could be applied to its original price tag of $4.98, at a time when you could still pick up an Aurora model kit (including the classic tomb-striding Frankenstein) for ninety-eight cents.

Unauthorized recasts and reproductions of the box have popped up through the years, but now toy collectors and Frankenstein fans will be delighted to hear that Moebius Models will be offering an official, licensed Gigantic Frankenstein reproduction, on release this summer. Price tag is around a hundred dollars, but then again, Gigantic Frankenstein never came cheap.

Here’s the Moebius Models site.

Here’s a gallery of beautiful, high-resolution photographs of the original Aurora kit.

Thanks to John Cozzoli’s Zombos Closet of Horror for the heads up!

The Covers of Frankenstein : Monsters of the Movies No. 2

In the seventies, Marvel Comics entered the comic magazine field pioneered by Jim Warren, releasing a flood of titles that included Monsters Unleashed, Tales of the Zombie, Dracula Lives!, and The Haunt of Horror. In 1974, Monsters of the Movies was a latecomer in the movie monster magazine sweepstakes.

The editorial staff reads like a who’s who of comics, with Roy Thomas as Editor-in-Chief, East Coast Editor Tony Isabella, Consulting Editor Marv Wolfman, and Art Director John Romita. Monster movie experts Jim Harmon (serving as West Coast Editor), Don Glut and Ron Haydock were contributors.

Looking back, Monsters of the Movies, well written and informative, stands up as one of the better entries in a crowded field, though at the time it felt somewhat anachronistic, as it went over the same old school horror films that had already been covered extensively by Famous Monsters and countless other titles for almost 20 years. There were nine issues published on a brisk, bi-monthly schedule. The last issue was pitched as “Annual No.1”.

The issue at hand, No. 2 from August 1974 carries a number of Frankenstein-related articles, the most intriguing — and frustrating — being a short interview with veteran stuntman George DeNormand entitled “The Last of the Frankensteins”.

DeNormand recalls doubling for Boris Karloff in a film directed by “Jimmy Whale”, and being made up as the Frankenstein Monster by Jack Pierce’s assistant, Otto Lederer.

Interviewer Jim Harmon tentatively identifies the film as Bride of Frankenstein (1935). DeNormand says “that sounds right”, and goes on to describe his scene as one where The Monster “goes nuts and starts to smash up everything in this laboratory”, but of course there’s nothing of the sort in the film. He also mentions doing a scene “down in some kind of pit.”

DeNormand not only suffers from fuzzy recall, he is also unforthcoming, suggesting he has “unusual” and “unbelievable” stories to tell — about working with Karloff and doubling for Henry Hull in The Werewolf of London (1935) — but holding back because he’s saving them for a biography to be titled Making of a Stuntman. Unfortunately, Mr. DeNormand passed away within two years of this interview, taking his stories with him.

The issue’s striking cover was painted by the highly prolific Bob Larkin, the go-to guy for Marvel’s magazine line. Larkin also worked for Warren publications, and produced hundreds of paintings for magazines, comic books and trading cards. Along the way, he contributed vivid art for such titles as Planet of the Apes, Doc Savage, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica and Babylon 5.

Here, bathed in vivid firelight, a greenish, scaly-faced Karloff Monster, wearing his Son of Frankenstein furs, poses menacingly while grabbing a cowering Colin Clive-type mad scientist. Torch-bearing villagers look on.

But wait…

Look at the center of the painting. A furious, destroy-the-monster villager waives a fist. I hadn’t noticed in all the years since I bought this issue off a newsstand, perhaps some distance was necessary, but this villager — with long hair and mustache — looks contemporary to the magazine. He doesn’t quite fit in with the forties Hollywood Tyrolean mob, does he?

I was curious enough to investigate. I asked a friend, former Marvel editor (and artist, actor, musician and writer extraordinaire) Larry Hama if he could help. Larry contacted artist Larkin, and the mystery was quickly solved…

The Man in the Middle is Charlie Armentano, a neighbor of Larkin’s who posed for dozens of covers in the early seventies.

So there you have it, the method to Larkin’s strong, memorable cover: Reference some Frankenstein movie stills, enlist an enthusiastic model, compose a narrative, and illuminate with blazing colors. The result is a painting that glows like a stained glass window and pulsates with pulp magazine energy.

See the entire run of covers for Monster of the Movies here.

Someone uploaded the George DeNormand interview on Flickr.

I wish there was a Bob Larkin website. Here’s a glimpse of his work, otherwise you have to google his name to see some of his fabulous art.

I recommend Rob Kelly’s excellent blog All in Black & White for 75 Cents for extensive coverage of the Warren, Marvel and Skywald type of black and white magazines of the seventies.

View-Master Frankenstein

The View-Master 3D viewer and its disc-shaped reels, patented 65 years ago, was the twentieth-century upgrade of the venerable stereo viewer, a stubbornly long-lived form of Victorian “parlour entertainment”. Fisher-Price — latest in a long list of companies to own the View-Master brand — is still making these things, though today’s viewers come in a variety of shapes and feature sound effects, character voices and music.

In the 50’s and 60’s, the classic, clunky, inexpensive bakelite viewers were ubiquitous and every drugstore had racksfull of reels on offer, but in the new age of television, the routine diet of Taj Mahal travelogues and Grand Canyon scenics was getting old. The company survived by rebranding the device as a toy. Licensed characters from cartoons, TV and the movies came to dominate the View-Master collection, but there were also original story reels, mostly fairy tales, done in a puppet theater style.

One of the most intriguing of the tabletop puppet sets was a Frankenstein story told in three reels (21 scenes). Released in 1976, it was offered again in '77 as a “Talking View-Master” set.

The simple storyline, author unknown, touches ever so lightly on elements found in the Mary Shelley original: The lightning-struck tree, the Monster as peeping tom at the old man’s cottage, confronting the child William (saved here in extremis) and asking his creator for a mate (“Make a friend for me or you’ll be sorry!”). Beyond the tenuous literary connection, the visuals are movie influenced, with a castle laboratory and The Monster depicted as a straight up (yet unlicensed) Universal-style Frankenstein, complete with dark suit, flat head and forehead gash.

Erick, of the aptly named Wonderful Wonderblog, has posted scans from the Frankenstein View-Master Read-Along illustrated booklet, as well as actual images from the reels. Go look, it’s a real treat! You can also view the images, as originally uploaded by Neal Snow here, and the booklet pages are also posted on this collector’s site.

Thanks to Max for the color-corrected pic.

'How to Care for Your Monster' : Followup

Following up on Guest Blogger Geof Smith’s essay about Norman Bridwell’s 1970 monster primer, How to Care for Your Monster, my nostalgic friend Max Cheney over at The Drunken Severed Head has dug up more images from the book, including a great alternate cover.

Go look!

Norman Bridwell's 'How to Care for Your Monster' by Geof Smith

Recently on Frankensteinia, Guest Blogger Frank Dietz shared his heartfelt and heart-warming account of how one very special Frankenstein film fired his imagination and fueled a lifetime of creativity. Many of us identified with Frank’s experience, as witnessed by the enthusiastic comments posted here and on forums like The Classic Horror Film Board and The Universal Monster Army. Frank's essay also struck a chord with writer, editor and blogger Geof Smith…

I thoroughly enjoyed illustrator Frank Deitz’s recent reminiscences of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein and its influence on him. He’s spot on when he writes that the movie is a “portal allowing young people to be introduced to the classic monsters in a gentler, acceptable manner.” This reminded me of a similar friendly gateway, a book I haven’t thought about in years, How to Care for Your Monster.

I discovered Norman Bridwell’s 1970 monster manual at a second grade Scholastic book fair circa 1976, and it instantly became a favorite. By all accounts, I was an avid reader, but only this title, a few dinosaur and shark books, and a short biography of Milton Hershey really stand out. (To this day, the memory of the caramels and heavy cream in that last one still make my mouth water.) It’s interesting to note that Bridwell is also the creator of the popular Clifford the Big Red Dog series, which was first published in 1962. The art styles are definitely the same, but these books, like most children’s books, never did much for me. Whereas, How to Care for Your Monster possessed me like a Gypsy curse.

I read and reread the book and was humorously indoctrinated into a world of mummies, vampires, mad doctors, lycanthropes, and other things that go bump in the night. When Bridwell wrote that some used monsters might be damaged because they have been “thrown over cliffs or burned a little in old windmills by angry owners or hard-to-please villagers”, I unwittingly received a crash course in Universal Horror 101. This book should bear the subtitle A Primer for the Second Generation of Monster Kids. And though it mentions castles, labs, pyramids, and swamps, the pages are populated with smiling suburban kids wearing turtlenecks and Chuck Taylors and playing with their big monster buddies in TV rooms, backyards, and basements. It was the perfect synthesis of lore and reality for a six-year-old mind, and it charged my imagination.

In that half-mad way that children can believe whatever they want, I took much of the book seriously. I knew which local park would yield a werewolf and was pretty darn sure the plants near Scout Field were wolfsbane. The thought of the overgrown area near the underpass filled me with adventurous zeal because I knew it was the secret entrance to a used monster shop. Dull reality gradually infected me, and I eventually realized that the other side of those bushes was just a bus stop. Looking at HTCFYM now brings me back to a time when anything I couldn’t see could be whatever I imagined. For the record, the jury is still out as to whether or not that park has werewolves.

Of course, what I really connected with was the art. I loved those friendly line drawings. These were my “gentle portals” to an appreciation of the classic monsters long before I saw any of the original films. I copied them onto loose-leaf sheets and drew my own monster scenes. Those simple but certain lines defined what the pantheon should look like. I still think a werewolf must have a lupine muzzle, walk on two legs, and wear some soiled remnants of its human garb—something between The Wolf Man and The Howling; oddly, The Boy Who Cried Werewolf is pretty darn close. These drawings also prepared me for the humor of Mad Magazine and the caricatures of Mort Drucker, my next great obsession, which would begin around 1978.

What really makes HTCFYM special is that it gets the first half of that monster kid classification right: the monsters. They are charming, but always maintain a hint of malevolent dignity. It’s funny and slightly comforting to see the image of the Frankenstein monster cowering under the basement stairs. It tells children that they can master their fear, but it’s also true to the hulking man-child nature of the character; it hints at the pathos that makes the monster so timeless and especially appealing to children. And though he has his timid moments, he also has those moments we weird kids love to shudder at—without being too scary. Likewise, consider the image of the family of blood donors at the dinner table with their vampire: it’s funny, maybe even sweet, but with a whiff of the macabre. This is what the Clifford series lacked—teeth! Maybe they’re only baby fangs, but there’s an edge here.

Consider the picture of the werewolf returning from a nighttime romp. It suggests a big, friendly dog eager to play fetch, but there is something uncertain about it. That beast has the glower of a pet about to turn on its master. And that bone is awfully big...about the size of a human femur, no? And that image of the guy escaping the werewolf attack is played for laughs, but I was always sure he didn’t make it over the fence. Monsters kids are young, and we don’t want to be too scared, but we can also tell when our monsters are lame. As I remember, the follow-up books Monster Holidays and Monster Jokes and Riddles definitely neutered the creatures with a few too many yucks. HTCFYM always strikes the perfect balance.

I’m a children’s book editor today, and my first creation was a now-out-of-print activity book called The Official Monster Hunter’s Guide. Its lineage is obvious, and I tried to instill in it the same sense of ghoulish glee that Norman Bridwell gave his primer. It’s still one of the most satisfying accomplishments of my career, and it’s a testament to the fact that seemingly silly and simple influences can cast a long shadow, especially for us weird kids.

I still love monsters, and I still love chocolate.

Geof Smith is a full-time children’s book editor and a freelance writer. An avid fan of curious movies, and oddity in general, he recently started www.connoissewer.com to celebrate past fascinations and detail his search for new ones.

Lon Chaney 125th

On this day, April 1, in 1883, Leonidas Chaney was born. As Lon Chaney, he was a superstar of the silent movie era, literally a household name. Famous for devising his own intricate makeups, Chaney specialized in colorful character parts and gruesome villains, playing blind pirates, scarfaced gangsters, arm or leg amputees, elderly Chinese, would-be vampires, mad scientists, and even a little old lady.

In 1927, when Dracula wowed Broadway and barnstormed across America, Hollywood studios swooped in. Talkies were on the immediate horizon and the popular supernatural play was a hot movie commodity. Right from the start, conventional wisdom had Lon Chaney as the obvious, near inevitable choice for the part. Chaney’s home studio, the powerful MGM, vied with the smaller Universal Pictures for the rights.

Although he was a MGM star, Chaney’s two most famous pictures, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925), were made by the actor while on loan to Universal. Now the studio hoped to bring Chaney and Dracula together and took the lead, securing the services of Chaney’s favorite director, Tod Browning. And then tragedy struck. Suddenly, shockingly, Chaney was dead, a victim of throat cancer. He was only 47 years old.

MGM dropped out of the Dracula sweepstakes and Universal went on to make the film in 1931 with the stage Count, Bela Lugosi. It was a massive hit, and the papers proclaimed Lugosi as “the new Lon Chaney!”. Universal’s publicity department associated Lugosi’s name with a long list of projects including a remake of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame and, of course, Frankenstein. When that one fell to Boris Karloff, he, in turn, was given the “heir to Lon Chaney” mantle. Then again, most any actor who happened to play a villain in any movie made in the thirties had a good chance of being ballyhooed as “the next Lon Chaney”. The Man of a Thousand Faces had cast a long shadow.

In the March 1964 issue (number 27) of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, editor Forry Ackerman engaged in a bit of alternate history: Imagine a “mirage world” where the great Lon Chaney had lived on to play the classic Monsters of the early sound era. Illustrator George Barr was given the challenge of blending Chaney's distinctive features with the early Frankenstein Monster test makeup by Jack Pierce. Note the “clamped horns” on the forehead. (See a photograph of Karloff in the test makeup here).

Barr’s pen and ink work is superb, but the artist understood the irony of his assignment, writing, “It seems the whole point of Lon Chaney’s make-ups was to completely disguise himself — and now we’re trying to make him recognizable thru disguises he never wore! Strange.”

The problem with alternate history is that once you introduce a new twist, you open up countless new possibilities. If Chaney had survived, perhaps Dracula would have been a MGM film. Chaney might not have made a Frankenstein at all, and if he had, being celebrated as a makeup genius, it seems he would have created his own vastly different take on The Monster. Considering how very faithful Chaney had been to the descriptions of Victor Hugo and Gaston Leroux for the Hunchback and the Phantom, his Monster might have had the skeletal face, long hair and enormous stature that Mary Shelley evoked. And, of course, with Chaney around, there would be no Jack Pierce, no Lugosi, no Karloff, and certainly no Lon Chaney Jr. as Lon Sr. was adamantly opposed to his son entering show business.

It's fun playing "What If?", but changing just one thing changes everything.

George Barr is a Master among fantasy and science fiction illustrators. His elegant art has graced countless books and magazines. There’s much to enjoy on Barr’s official website, The Enchanted Thingamajig.