Frankensteinia: The Frankenstein Blog

Edison's Frankenstein: A Physicalogical Phantasy

2012-02-02T22:00:00.002-05:00

A hundred and one years ago, when the first Frankenstein film came to Bemidji, Minnesota, the Majestic Theatre advertised it as “A Physicalogical Phantasy”. What that means is anybody’s guess.

The Majestic Theater, inaugurated in December 1909, was one of a new wave of movie houses that would replace the fast-fading storefront Nickelodeons. The local paper reported that, “Mr. Currie”, then manager, “has the very best movie-making machine that Edison has ever devised, and with his personal knowledge of every intricate movement of the machine, the results are indeed splendid.”

The Frankenstein ad appeared on May 6, 1910, in the Daily Pioneer. On the same page, the Social and Personal column, a random collection of gossip, community news and product placement, ran a plug for the film as “one of the interesting and fascinating pictures ever thrown upon the screen. See it tonight…”

The evening’s entertainment kicked off with a fancy Overture featuring Miss Hazel Fellows. A song, no doubt, accompanied by the pianist who would play through the evening, providing music for the films. Miss Fellows, a frequent performer at the Majestic, was probably local talent. By the following year, she’d changed her first name to Hazelle, which certainly sounded more artistique. I’d like to think that Miss Fellows provided some novelty, playing a banjo or the ukulele, maybe working in a few dance steps.

The Edison Kinetograph’s Frankenstein was up next. Shot on a Brooklyn rooftop just four months prior, the film went into circulation on May 18. Its stars, Charles Ogle, Augustus Phillips and Mary Fuller were Kinetograph regulars, miss Fuller on her way to silent-era stardom. The film has miraculously survived for us to judge, but what a thrill it must have been to see it when it was new, and pristine.

Next came an “illustrated song”, in which a popular song was either performed live or a recording played while a dozen or so glass slides were projected, “illustrating” the lyrics. The elaborately posed photographs, lavishly hand colored, bankrolled by sheet music vendors, were the music videos of the times. A vastly popular form of entertainment, some Nickelodeons played nothing but illustrated songs, with vaudeville performers and future film stars such as Fanny Brice, Eddie Cantor and Fatty Arbuckle appearing as models. Audiences would often demand repeat viewings. Sing-alongs were encouraged.

“I’m Going to Do What I Please”, written by music publisher Ted Snyder and lyricist Alfred Bryan was one of the most popular songs of its day. Snyder, a future songwriting Hall of Famer, also wrote The Sheik of Araby and Who’s Sorry Now?, and famously gave Irving Berlin his first break.

Rounding up the evening’s entertainment, “Another Of Those Thrilling Wild West Stories”, was The Girl and the Fugitive, starring Gilbert Anderson, the original Bronco Bill, the movie’s first cowboy star. Anderson had appeared, playing three different roles, in Edwin S. Porter’s seminal The Great Train Robbery (1903). He went on to write, direct, produce and star in his own movies. In 1907, he co-founded the famous Essanay Studios where he made some 300 short films, half of them westerns. The Girl and the Fugitive, released on March 9, 1910, was just one of the 44 Bronco Bill films made that year.

All told, the Majestic’s complete program ran about an hour. Not bad for ten cents. Children paid a nickel. I wonder if any kids were upset by Ogle’s scarecrow-like Frankenstein Monster.

And I wonder if anyone ever made out what a Physicalogical Phantasy was.

Frankenstein in Stitches

2012-01-31T22:00:00.001-05:00

Several comments posted here, on Facebook and points between have noted how Primo Carnera’s Frankenstein makeup from 1957, revealed here last week, was very similar to that worn by Robert De Niro in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein of 1994.

True enough. Bald and stitched cranium, sutured cheeks, upper lip and chin, and a damaged left eye. Very similar indeed, but Primo and Bobby were neither the first nor last of their monstrous kind.

Lon Chaney’s Monster for TV’s Tales of Tomorrow in 1952 heralded Carnera’s version with a baldhead and face-splitting stitch work. Springing 60 years ahead, the effect was revisited and worn by Jonny Lee Miller and Benedict Cumberbatch, sharing the part, in the celebrated British National Theater version of 2011. Call it same-school monster makeup.

Somewhat related, without facial distress, chrome-dome Monsters are known to sport ‘round the head, dotted line stitching indicating radical brain surgery. The two finest examples are — going from the ridiculous to the sublime — Cal Bolder in Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter (1966) and Freddie Jones’s heart wrenching Creature in Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969).

These Frankenstein Monsters are of a family. When opting for a baldhead look, similarities are perhaps inevitable. There are only so many ways to stitch a baseball.

The Posters of Frankenstein : Constantin Belinsky

2012-01-29T22:00:00.000-05:00

The Monster and attending Mad Scientists are blinded by the light of a glorious, luminescent Bride on this pastel poster by Constantin Belinsky (1904-1999) marking the release of Bride of Frankenstein in France, in 1935.

Belinsky arrived in Paris from his native Ukraine in 1925. He would come to share his time between commercial work as a movie poster artist and fine arts as an award-winning sculptor. His first poster was a vivid one-sheet for Scarface with a prominent credit for Boris Karloff. Though many of his posters were done in traditional oils, he was also known for his unique, modernistic posters with angular drawings and flat, vibrant colors.

After a wartime lull when his poster work fell way off — he managed to produce two elaborate posters for the 1943 Phantom of the Opera — Belinsky picked up again in the late Forties and became, through the next three decades, one of the most prolific movie poster artists in Europe. He would create art for the French release of such genre titles as The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Mole People, Creature from the Black Lagoon (and sequels), The Deadly Mantis, The Monolith Monsters, Monster on the Campus, Dinosaurus and Destroy All Monsters.

Belinsky also produced numerous posters for Sword and Sandal epics, Spaghetti Westerns and B-grade gangster movies, culminating in a series of Seventies Kung Fu action posters until his retirement in 1983. Along the way, he painted a number of Hammer Films posters, notably Dr. Jekyll and Sister Hyde, and classic exploitation work including Ricardo Freda’s The Specter of Dr. Hichcock (aka The Ghost) and Jean Rollin’s The Lake of the Living Dead/Zombie Lake.

Constantin Belinsky’s fabulous Fiancée poster is signed “C Belin”, a form he abandoned early in favor of “C Belinsky” or, more often, simple initials: “CB”. Film historian Christophe Blier published a book, Constantin Belinsky: 60 ans d’affiches de cinéma in 2000. Long out of print, it deserves to be reissued.

Related:
The Posters of Frankenstein

A FRANKENSTEINIA EXCLUSIVE! The Monster : Primo Carnera

2012-01-26T22:00:00.002-05:00

Always formidable looking to an opponent, former heavyweight champion Primo Carnera, 6 feet, 1 inch and 280 pounds, will scare the cold cream and curlers off the average housewife with his portrayal of Frankenstein.

Thus read the caption to this United Press Telephoto sent out to newspapers on February 2nd, 1957, promoting the February 5 broadcast of the NBC Matinee Theatre adaptation of Frankenstein. The presentation, the network insisted, “will not follow the movie as done by Boris Karloff but does follow the novel”.

The stunning image of Primo Carnera in full makeup was accompanied by a comparison photo of the smiling actor and suggested for use in tandem with a short news item by UP’s Aline Mosby. As an interesting side note, Mosby was the Los Angeles-based United Press reporter who famously revealed that Marilyn Monroe had posed for a nude calendar. She would become the first American female correspondent in Moscow where, in 1959, writing about American defectors, she interviewed one Lee Harvey Oswald. After the JFK assassination, Mosby’s recollections became part of the Warren Report. In Moscow, Mosby also interviewed the notorious Doctor Demikhov, the “real life Frankenstein” whose grafting experiments led to the creation of a two-headed dog. Mosby’s would go on to serve in Paris, London, Vienna and New York. In 1979, she opened the UPI’s first bureau in Beijing, China.

Primo Carnera’s acting career would remain a sideline to his athletic endeavors. A mere ten days after the Frankenstein broadcast, Carnera was in Sydney, Australia, where he drew a record crowd of 20,000 at the White City tennis stadium for a bout against Emile Czaja, nicknamed King Kong. The Vancouver Sun reported, “The match was declared no contest when both wrestlers fell out of the ring and Carnera began punching King Kong.”

Carnera’s crazily stitched Frankenstein Monster stares dead-eyed back at us across 55 years, long gone but no longer forgotten, thanks to film archeologist George Chastain.

A FRANKENSTEINIA EXCLUSIVE!1957 Frankenstein Makeup Session

2012-01-25T05:50:00.004-05:00

Collector George Chastain does it again! Back in November, we posted a fabulous photo he’d uncovered of Primo Carnera’s wardrobe and makeup test for the February 1957 Frankenstein episode of NBC’s Matinee Theater. Now, new photos have surfaced and, again, Mr. Chastain is generously sharing them here with Frankensteinia readers.

The two AP wirepotos show boxer/wrestler turned actor Carnera submitting to makeup men for a January 30th dress rehearsal. The broadcast went out live from Burbank, California on February 5.

The photos show two stages of the application. First, Carnera is fitted with a skullcap and, later on, the full-face makeup is completed with textured skin and a network of crude stitches. Five artists were required to transform Carnera into The Monster, three of them seen in the photos. Walter Schenck and Edwin Butterworth would work together again, twenty years later, on the 1977 film version of The Island of Dr. Moreau. William “Bill” Morley was makeup man on the AIP TV special, The Wild Weird World of Dr. Goldfoot in 1965.

Matinee Theatre’s Frankenstein of 1957 is one of many lost programs from the early days of TV. These images, unseen for 55 years, are possibly the only remaining record of this historical broadcast.

But wait… There’s one more! Check this post for the most stunning portrait you are ever likely to see of Primo Carnera as Frankenstein’s Monster!

With thanks to George Chastain.

The Great War Frankenstein

2012-01-22T22:00:00.000-05:00

This editorial cartoon appeared on the front page of the original Washington Times — no relation to the current newspaper of that name — on May 12, 1918. The cowering Kaiser figure in ceremonial uniform — “Afraid that the monster of his own creation will destroy him” — cowers from a looming giant wearing an eerie-looking gasmask, wielding a bomb, poison gas and “liquid fire”, a term describing gasoline or naphtha-spitting flamethrowers, sometimes mounted on airplanes.

The Frankenstein comment refers to Germany’s own attack strategies being used against it, The Monster effectively turning on its creator. “Germany is suggesting mutual cessation of air raids and gas attacks now that we have secured the ascendancy in both”. There would be six more months of horrific warfare until Armistice, in November.

The original Washington Times, first published in 1884, went through a succession of owners including, for a time, William Randolph Hearst. Eventually called The Washington-Times Herald, it was absorbed by The Washington Post in the 1950s.

The striking pen and ink drawing is signed, but I can’t make out the name. Can anybody ID the artist?

Nurses will be in attendance

2012-01-19T04:20:00.000-05:00

Real live nurses and a real ambulance from nearby St.Joseph’s Hospital are ready to handle panicked patrons as Frankenstein comes to Parkersburg, West Virginia. It’s early 1932, with Holiday decorations still in evidence.

The nurse gag was a ballyhoo staple, arching back to the silent era and still in use as late as 1973 to promote The Exorcist. Stretchers, a waiting ambulance and girls in starched white costume patrolling the lobby with smelling salts were sure signs that the current feature was meant to wrack nerves.

Note the banner stretched under the marquee, spelling out the title in die-cut letters. It was offered through Universal’s Campaign Book to exhibitors as “A giant streamer to give your front and lobby that ‘Frankenstein’ flash!” It could be stretched “to fit any desired space… around the edge of the marquee, across the top of the main entrance, along lobby walls… Put them up wherever you need extra life in the lobby.”

The streamer, made of extra-ply cardboard and printed in two colors, came strung with two wires and ready for hanging, all for $2.50. None of these wonderful banners appear to have survived.

The Smoot Theater was originally built for vaudeville in 1926 by the Smoot Amusement Company. Just four years on, it was bought by Warners and transformed into a Vitaphone/Movietone movie house, “comfortably cooled”. A simple brick building with terra cotta decorations on its façade, the typically lavish movie palace trappings were reserved for its interiors, notably some Tiffanesque hand-cut Austrian chandeliers, mahogany and brass doors, and gold gilding throughout. For a time, the Smoot was Parkersburg’s finest theatre. Movie stars and famous performers stopped over when swinging through the region. Guests included Rudolph Valentino, Guy Lombardo, Miss West Virginia and, in 1939, an visiting army of Munchkins, and two elephants.

Time and urban renewal caught up with the Smoot in 1986 when it was shuttered and marked for demolition, despite being listed on the American National Register of Historic Places. In 1989, literally two days before its scheduled extreme transformation into a parking lot, the theater was saved through community effort. Today, the grand old Smoot Theater is a vital showplace again.

The Smoot Theatre website, and page on Cinema Treasures.

Read about the remarkable Felice Jorgeson and her work keeping the Smoot Theater going.

This blacked out post is brought to you by SOPA and PIPA

2012-01-18T00:00:00.001-05:00

Frankensteinia, Frankenstein Forever and Monster Crazy are on strike today.

Learn about the Stop Online Piracy Act and the Protect IP Act and how this legislation, if passed, would affect all of us, all over the world.

And do something about it.

The Frankenstein Clock

2012-01-16T23:30:00.000-05:00

Released in November 1931, James Whale’s Frankenstein stepped across America and the world through the Holidays and into the New Year.

The Frankenstein Lobby Clock was a do-it-yourself promotional gag proposed by Universal’s publicity department. Exhibitors were told to paint a clock on a standup display, replace the twelve numbers with the twelve letters of "Frankenstein", add The Monster’s silhouetted head and fill in the number of days until the playdate. Copy should read, your choice, “Now is the time to think about Frankenstein coming here…” or “The Hour of Doom Approaches!”

We’ll look at more Frankenstein ballyhoo in days and weeks to come as we continue to celebrate the 80th Anniversary of Frankenstein.

With thanks to John McElwee for this image. John runs the ever-fabulous Greenbriar Picture Shows movie blog.

The Posters of Frankenstein : Il Mostro di Frankenstein

2012-01-12T04:45:00.001-05:00

There’s precious little material left attending the release of Il Mostro di Frankenstein, the lost Italian Frankenstein film of 1920. Here, recently surfaced, and predating a similar ad from 1926, is what becomes the earliest known poster of the film, for two showings in August 1922. Cheaply printed in two colors, these typographical posters were produced in low numbers for neighborhood distribution.

The “Frankenstein” name is misspelled, as it was, differently, on the 1926 poster. Producer/actor Luciano Albertini, an early Italian movie star known for his role as “Samson”, gets top billing.

“An extraordinary film of sensational adventures”, the copy reads, “superbly interpreted by Albertini and his troupe”. The troupe in question included fellow strongman Umberto Guarracino, who played The Monster to Albertini’s Frankenstein. “A Masterpiece without precedent… An enormous success”.

The accompanying film, La Caniglia — literally “the rabble”, and usually translated as “the gangster” — was another film from 1920, directed by and starring Enzo Longhi.

The long-lived Cinema Teatro Aurora opened in 1908 on the narrow Via Paolo Scarpi in downtown Milan. For a time, patrons could gather in an inner courtyard on warm days to be serenaded by the house orchestra. The Cinema switched to sound film in 1931 and underwent periodic upgrades through the years. After a season’s shutdown in 1980, the Teatro was revived as an adult movie house, operating briefly as the Aurora Pussycat. It closed definitely in 2003, after a remarkable 95-year run. The building is still standing, its façade intact, with the insides remodeled for commercial and cultural use.

Source: Wonderful research by film historian Giuseppe Rausa, notably a detailed account of the Cinema Teatro Aurora (in Italian), with links to numerous placard-type posters.

The Art of Frankenstein : Ben Templesmith

2012-01-06T03:30:00.000-05:00

A nasty-looking, zippered, patched, stapled and stitched Monster created by Ben Templesmith.

The artist is best known for 30 Days of Night, penned by Steve Niles and turned into a 2007 movie. Templesmith’s other titles include Wormwood and Fell, all exclusively for IDW Publishing.

Ben Templesmith’s blog

The Art of Frankenstein : Tyler Crook

2012-01-05T03:20:00.003-05:00

The Monster is a gentleman, never mind the ominous stare and the alarming forehead, in Tyler Crook’s handsome watercolor portrait.

Crook recently took over art chores on B.P.R.D., the superlative horror comic overseen by creator Mike Mignola and written by John Arcudi. Crook keeps a terrific blog where the image above was found. Go look, other Universal Monsters get the suit and tie treatment.

Tyler Crooke’s blog

Previews of Tyler Crook’s art for Dark Horse Comics

The Art of Frankenstein : Jill Thompson

2012-01-04T05:05:00.001-05:00

Exceptional art by an exceptional artist, here’s a beautiful wash study of Boris Karloff from Son of Frankenstein by Jill Thompson.

The multiple-award-winning artist has worked for all the major comics companies, notably on titles such as Wonder Woman, Swamp Thing and Neil Gaiman’s Sandman at DC, and X-Men and Spiderman for Marvel. As a storyteller, Thompson’s Halloween-flavored Scary Godmother series has appeared in comics, children’s books and two animated films for television.

Jill Thompson’s Tumblr.

A 3-page sample of Scary Godmother.

The Art of Frankenstein : Mike Mignola

2012-01-03T04:55:00.000-05:00

Let’s kick off the New Year with a handful of images, appearing daily this week, of the Frankenstein Monster as drawn by top comic book talent. First up, the master, Mike Mignola, whose simple, raw sketch captures Karloff’s soulful Monster with a bold black shape and a few essential lines. Typical of Mignola’s work, it is a beautifully designed piece, at once elegant and austere.

Visit Mike Mignola’s website, and explore Dark Horse Comics’ Hellboy Zone.

T.P.Cooke in Paris, in which the actor is stricken by gout, arrested by gendarmes, and paints himself green. Or is it blue?

2011-12-30T19:20:00.003-05:00

The Monster appears! Yet another image from the blockbusting 1826 Paris run of Le Monstre et le magicien, again showing The Monster confronting its maker.

Béraud and Merle’s Le Monstre borrowed heavily from Richard Brinsley Peake’s Presumption, or The Fate of Frankenstein of 1823 — they even hired the original play’s Monster, actor T.P.Cooke. The Monster’s first appearance, as evidenced by the numerous illustrations it inspired, was the highlight of both plays. In a blast of smoke, lit by colored lights, The Monster bursts out of the laboratory. Frankenstein — Zametti, in the French version — pulls a sword. The Monster grabs it away and snaps it in two. In the original London play, The Monster then ran to a large window and leaped to freedom. In the French version, The Monster breaks the sword, throws it down and vanishes on the spot, dropping out of sight by means of a trap door. Cooke was familiar with the perilous device, having used one repeatedly to extraordinary effect as Polidori’s Lord Ruthven, The Vampire, in 1820. Cooke’s trap door, which came to be known as a “vampire trap”, used rubber doors and sandbags as counterweight, innovating on an old stage trick.

In a case of reverse influence, the French Le Monstre et le magicien would, in turn, transform Presumption when author Peake adopted Le Monstre’s stirring conclusion aboard a storm-tossed schooner, replacing the original avalanche ending. Both plays would influence new adaptations while still competing against each other for years to come. T.P.Cooke, crossing effortlessly from one play to the other, would, in time, rack up 365 performances as The Monster. Back in 1826, his Parisian sojourn would prove to be quite an adventure…

Upon his arrival, Cooke was stricken with gout, a painful affliction he blamed on the acidity of French wines. Laid up at his hotel, his foot wrapped in flannel, Cooke was unable to attend rehearsals but he rallied quickly and, relying on his familiarity with the part, he was able to make his June 10 premiere. Le Monstre was a phenomenal success, with police called out to handle the crush of sell-out crowds. On July 15, the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin touted its triumph and spoofed its competitors with a vaudeville revue called Les Filets de Vulcain, ou le lendemain d’un succès (Vulcan’s Nets, or The Day After a Success). Cooke participated, speaking heavily accented French and sans makeup, in a sketch called Le Monstre.

Cooke was the toast of Paris yet, having vanquished the gout, another incident threatened his continued participation in the season's hit play...

In August 1867, an unsigned article in the “Parisian Sketches” section of The People’s Magazine, An Illustrated Miscellany For All Classes, published in London by The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge — whose ministrations apparently did not extend to them foreigners — related an anecdote about “the well-known and highly respected Mr. T.P.Cooke” having played The Monster at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin, “about as ugly a building as can be imagined”. According to the article, “a misunderstanding arose between (Mr. Cooke) and the manager, in consequence of some unfair advantage the latter wished to take.” The problem went unresolved until Cooke was forced to action. One morning, he sent word that he would not be appearing onstage that evening, whereupon the manager had Cooke picked up by gendarmes and marched to the theater “almost as a prisoner”. Cooke remained adamant and, ultimately “fearing a disturbance among the audience”, the manager gave way and the performance went on as planned. The incident, according to the chauvinistic People’s Magazine, was “a circumstance… which not only showed the despotic power the French police can exercise in theatrical affairs, but brought to light the determined character of our countryman as well.”

A final controversy of sorts has to do with the likely-never-to-be-resolved question of The Monster’s exact color. In The Recollections and Reflections of J.R.Planché (London, 1872), the playwright of The Vampire visited his friend Cooke in Paris, noting, “his success was so great that “monstre bleu”, the color he painted himself, became the fashion of the day in Paris.”

Otherwise, in Sinnett’s Picture of Paris, published in London, 1845, the author’s description of the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin singles out Le Monstre, writing, “In the year 1826… Mr. T.P.Cooke was received in the most flattering manner, and became quite the fashion of the day. His performance of the Monster in Frankenstein for eighty consecutive nights saved the theatre from bankruptcy, replenished its treasury, and for several weeks everything in Paris was pale green à la Monstre.”

Monstre vert or Monstre bleu? Either way, T.P.Cooke’s Parisian adventure was a colorful affair.

The Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin website.

The National Library of France Digitial Library site, Gallica.

The Monster of La Porte Saint-Martin

2011-12-27T03:30:00.004-05:00

"It is he! Oh, despair!” exclaims Zametti, the Frankenstein character, in another color lithograph from Le Monstre et le magicien, staged at Paris’ Porte Saint-Martin theater in June 1826.

Zametti, played by Ménier, is an alchemist who, in the end, perishes at sea at The Monster’s hands. The part is often attributed — erroneously — to Paulin Ménier, Ménier’s son, born 1822, who would become an actor of considerable repute. Likewise, the illustration above is by Feillet, a prominent lithographer and teacher whose work is often confused with that of his daughter, Hélène, herself a prolific artist.

In a closeup look at Feillet’s illustration, T.P.Cooke’s Monster shows a darker green color to the face down to the jawline and streaks of red greasepaint at the mouth and eyes.

The Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin, still operating today, is one of the most storied theaters in the world. Taking its name from the nearby triumphal arch, the original building was commissioned as an opera house by Queen Marie Antoinette in 1781. Incredibly, the building was erected in only two months — from the first stone laid on August 26 to its inauguration on October 26 — benefiting from money-is-no-object royal support. Twelve years on, a new Opera went up and the Porte Saint-Martin was transformed into a playhouse. The original building was destroyed by fire in the violent Spring of the Paris Commune in 1871. It was rebuilt and reopened as an 1100 seat theater in 1873.

In years to come, authors such as Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo presented their plays here, drawing in the most famous and accomplished actors and directors of the Continent. Edmond Rostand premiered his Cyrano de Bergerac in 1897, and Roman Polanski directed Master Class a hundred years later. Sarah Bernhardt appeared as Theodora in 1882, and Marcel Marceau triumphed in the Sixties. Today, la Porte Saint-Martin continues to boldly mix the classics and experimental theater, the two extremes coming together in the current offering, a contemporary version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Le Monstre et le magicien of 1826 was an early hit at the original Porte Saint-Martin, by far the most popular and lucrative play of its season, running 80 sold-out nights to often boisterous crowds.

More images from Le Monstre et le magicien coming up this week!

The Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin website.

The National Library of France Digitial Library site, Gallica.

The Frankenstein of 1826, in Color!

2011-12-23T04:50:00.003-05:00

A lithograph from an 1826 Paris performance reveals actor T.P.Cooke as Frankenstein's Monster, in color!

Cooke originated the role in London, July 1823, in Richard Brinsley Peake’s Presumption, or The Fate of Frankenstein, to phenomenal success. Within weeks, five different copycat plays sprang up, all featuring monsters based on Cooke’s interpretation. Mary Shelley herself, attending a performance on August 28, came away delighted with the play and Cooke’s performance.

Dressed in a short tunic, wrapped in a loose cloak, barefoot, fright-wigged and sporting a blue-green complexion, Cooke would be the inspiration, the template, the model for all the theatrical Frankenstein Monsters for nearly a century, just as Boris Karloff’s blockhead and bolts version has been an icon and a reference over the last 80 years.

A measure of his notoriety, Cooke, though hobbled by gout, was called to Paris in 1826 for Le Monstre et le magicien, a new play inspired not by Mary Shelley’s novel but by Peake’s play, as were all of the Frankenstein plays — more than a dozen by now — staged in England, all over Europe and in America. Save for the basic theme of an artificial man and the dire consequences for his presumptive creator, very little of Shelley’s work remained. The Monster and the Magician’s authors, Antony Beraud and Jean-Toussaint Merle, even did away with the Frankenstein name. Here, the creator was called Zametti.

In a scene lifted intact from the Peake play, The Monster, brought to life offstage, bursts out of the mezzanine laboratory in a cloud of smoke. He crashes through a balustrade and drops to the stage, confronting Frankenstein, snatching away his sword and snapping it in two. The same scene was first illustrated in 1823 (posted here), showing Cooke in a signature heroic pose. The scene was also used to illustrate Peake’s book of the play (posted here), with The Monster appearing as a baby-faced giant. In the 1826 illustration above, for the first time, Cooke appears in makeup, with full-body blue-green paint, red mouth and red highlights across the eyebrows.

The Monster’s color was variously described by contemporary critics as blue or green. One version of the play was called The Blue Demon. Cooke was such a sensation in Paris that his makeup color was replicated on gloves and dresses, with newspapers as far away as New Zealand reporting that the season’s fashionable color was vert de monstre — Monster Green!

The art is by François LeVillain — not to be confused with a famous namesake who was a sculptor and medal engraver — a lithographer of renown who was at the peak of his powers in the 1820s. LeVillain’s spectacular illustration, by far the most dynamic representation of the creation scene, is filled with tension as Cooke’s Monster hovers like an Angel of Death over the Frankenstein character, Zametti, pulling his sword. Note the composition, with the flowing robe mirroring Zametti’s arching pose and feathered hat. Note the textured smoke, the beautifully rendered folds in The Monster’s costume, and the delicate, muted colors.

This remarkable illustration, unlike any other, reveals the original stage Monster’s true appearance.

The illustration is archived on the French National Library’s Digital Library site, Gallica. I'll be posting more images from the 1826 play over this coming week.

The Monster : Peter Boyle

2011-12-16T03:30:00.000-05:00

A rare color photograph of Peter Boyle in makeup on the set of Young Frankenstein, the black and white horror comedy released 37 years ago this week, on December 15, 1974. The film was a pitch perfect parody of the classic Universal Frankenstein films, with an emphasis on Son of Frankenstein (1939).

Hailing from Pennsylvania, Boyle studied acting in New York, eventually landing with the Second City improv troupe in Chicago. His Hollywood breakthrough came with his harrowing portrayal of a violent bigot, in Joe (1970). Other early parts included memorable performances in The Candidate (1972) and The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973), confirming Boyle as one of the best character actors of his era. He worked extensively in television, garnering ten Emmy nominations, beginning with his unflinching portrayal of Senator Joe McCarthy in Tail-Gunner Joe (1977) and culminating with an Emmy win for his role in the X-Files’ Clyde Bruckman’s Final Repose (1996). The episode also won for Outstanding Writing and was crowned by TV Guide as the tenth greatest episode in television history. Boyle was also a sitcom star as the cantankerous Frank in Everybody Loves Raymond.

Young Frankenstein (1974) was conceived by Gene Wilder and written by Wilder and director Mel Brooks at the peak of their talents. Besides Wilder and Boyle, the wonderful cast includes Marty Feldman, Terri Garr, Madeline Kahn, and Kenneth Mars. Boyle played the zipper-necked Monster as a big baby, his most memorable scenes including a traumatic encounter with Gene Hackman cameoing as The Blind Hermit and a deranged musical number singing “Puttin’ on the Ritz”. The film’s authentic look was driven by cinematographer Gerald Hirschfeld’s meticulous recreation of 30’s style lighting and camera movements, along with the use of Kenneth Strickfaden’s laboratory props first used in the 1931 Frankenstein.

Peter Boyle passed away in December 2006. The following year, Young Frankenstein was turned into an expensive and boisterous Broadway musical, with The Monster’s part given to Shuler Hensley. It has since gone on the road with a new cast.

There are some more shots from Young Frankenstein up on our companion blog, Frankenstein Forever.

The Free Silver Frankenstein of 1896

2011-12-13T06:25:00.000-05:00

Frankenstein entered the public consciousness almost as soon as the novel was published. Mary Shelley herself was thrilled by a Frankenstein mention made in Parliament. Soon, in comment and caricature, Frankenstein became a reference, the name applied indifferently to the creator and his monster. A Frankenstein could be someone jeopardized or destroyed by his policies, or the monster itself, the terrible result of one’s actions. Here, from 1896, Frankenstein is “The Free Silver Monster” unleashed.

“Free Silver” was the hot issue of that year’s Presidential election. Bi-metallists advocated the use of silver as a monetary standard along with gold, a willfully inflationary measure that would theoretically benefit cash-strapped farmers and laborers. The Silverites were opposed by the Goldbugs, bankrolled by bankers and industry barons who would see their champion, Republican William McKinley, elected. By 1900, the Pro-Silver movement had lost traction and fell out of favor.

The unsigned editorial cartoon of The Free Silver Frankenstein appeared front page, center, in the Marietta Daily Leader of Ohio, on Thursday, October 29, 1896. The wild-eyed giant tramples a farmer and threatens a mother and child. The landscape is littered with demolished factories and vultures appear over destroyed cities.

The lengthy caption loosely interprets the Frankenstein story, introducing the concept to anyone who might not be familiar with the inspirational novel. In prose even more terrifying than the illustration, The Silver Frankenstein, created by “well-meaning” bimetallists, is said to have run out of control, producing “much poverty and misery”. It must be destroyed on November 8, election day, lest it “turn upon the silverites themselves and crush and kill them.”

By 1896, when The Free Silver Frankenstein was sent on its rampage, Frankenstein’s Monster had already been referenced a number of times to editorial effect. The Monster is still used today, and often, as a cartoonist’s shorthand for things gone out of control.

The Art of Frankenstein : Gray Morrow

2011-12-10T05:05:00.001-05:00

I hope I’m wrong, but I always felt that Gray Morrow was underrated. Comics fans may have preferred flashier artists, but Morrow was fast, he was reliable and he was prolific, producing realistic art for all the comic book publishers and a collection of dazzling paperback covers in a career that spanned four decades. His science fiction illustrations earned him three Hugo Awards as “Best Professional Artist” and he drew the syndicated Tarzan Sunday strip from 1983 until his untimely death in 2001.

The illustration here was found on Shades of Gray, a wonderful showcase of Morrow’s work, run by blogger Booksteve. In a rough drawing that sizzles with action, Morrow pits the Frankenstein Monster against The Heap, the original comic book “muck monster”, a template for Swamp Thing and Man-Thing.

First appearing in Hillman Comics’ Air Fighters of 1946, The Heap was a WWI ace who had died in a swamp, his body macerated and transformed into a living mass of vegetation. The character would be reconfigured, updated and re-used by various publishers, eventually landing as a menace in Todd McFarlane’s Spawn. The version illustrated by Morrow is from its early 70’s Skywald incarnation where the once indistinct blob had developed a face and a sharp-fanged mouth.

Shades of Gray blog.

The Art of Frankenstein : Shane Oakley

2011-12-07T04:05:00.000-05:00

Here’s a fake book cover for Frankenstein that looks better than most of the real ones out there. UK artist Shane Oakley created this image in the style of an old paperback cover. The symmetrical effect and simple color design are pitch perfect references to ‘60s graphics.

I love Oakley’s art, all hard angles and stark contrasts. Some of his black and white illustrations are as rigorously controlled as paper cutouts, witness his interpretations of Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing from Curse of Frankenstein (1957), typical of his sparse and perfect, to-the-point work for Little Shoppe of Horrors magazine.

There’s lots of great art to admire and enjoy on Shane Oakley’s blog. The faux cover was originally created for Hey, Oscar Wilde! It’s Clobberin’ Time!

With thanks to David Lee Ingersoll

Badge of Courage

2011-12-04T05:55:00.001-05:00

80 years ago today, on December 4, 1931, Frankenstein arrived in New York City. This is the ad that ran in the New York Times.

The film had played to boffo boxoffice in a handful of cities over the previous two weeks. Word was that Frankenstein delivered on every gruesome thrill the posters promised. New Yorkers lined up in the rain, every showing was packed.

Today, the bolt-necked Monster is too familiar. The film’s graveyard, the laboratory, the torch-bearing mob are well-worn clichés, but back in ‘31, these were new and wondrous and disturbing images. There had never been anything quite like it. It was true, then, that
No Thriller Ever Made Can Begin to Touch It!

With thanks to George Chastain.

Discovered! Ultra-Rare Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man Display

2011-12-01T22:00:00.002-05:00

A crowd gathers on a chilly March evening in 1943, drawn to a garishly decorated cinema lobby. Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man has come to town and the exhibitor blows the works: Floor to ceiling posters shout Mighty Monsters Clash!... Hair Raising Horror Hits New Heights!... Inhuman Beasts! Performers in costume entertain the throngs lining up for tickets and, look, up there on the box office booth, The Monster and the Wolf Man are at each other’s throats!

Miraculously, almost 70 years on, the mannequin monsters have survived and are shared here with us, thanks to collector Bobby Beeman. These unusual plaster heads, a bit battered but complete, are an unexpected and extraordinary find, and a wonderful example of classic movie ballyhoo.

There appears to have been more than one set of these built. The Frankenstein Monster in the old photos has a classic flattop and forehead bangs while the surviving plaster head is rounded out and made up like Karloff in Bride of Frankenstein, with exposed forehead clamps and a distinctive burn scar on the cheek. The Monster’s head shows signs of long-ago repair and may have been modified along the way. The Wolf Man head has fared better, still sporting its scraggly hair and eerie glowing eyes, the bulbs, sockets and cord embedded in plaster and, amazingly, still operational.

Based on a few tantalizing clues and some digging around, it appears that the heads were constructed by the J.H.Blecher Studio of Detroit. Through the first half of the 20th century, the Greektown company produced full-body mannequins for department and clothing stores, and display heads for hat, wig and cosmetic suppliers. It may have also produced affordable plaster statuary for churches. In 1963, Mario Messana, a long-time apprentice of Harry Blecher, bought out the business. Now called Mario’s Mannequin Studio, the company concentrated solely on repair work for a dwindling market, the classic plaster and fibreglass figures being progressively replaced by mass-produced plastic mannequins.

Until his own retirement, in 1995, Messana stored away a number of classic torsos, assorted limbs and exceptional heads, including delicate, early wax creations by the famous Dutch studio of Pierre Imans. This is where the Frankenstein and Wolf Man heads, no doubt saved for their novelty value, were first discovered back in the Eighties.

It is possible, of course, that the heads were manufactured by another company, landing at Blecher’s or Mario’s unclaimed or brought in for repairs, but there seems to be a direct line of provenance here, based on the recollections of previous owners of the Frankenstein/Wolf Man display. Still, we don’t know who ordered these originally. It could have been Universal’s promotion department, a regional distributor, a theater chain or even individual exhibitors. Until new info or new photos surface, we can’t tell. The theater in the photos is still unidentified.

I want to thank Bobby Beeman for so generously sharing his remarkable discovery with Frankensteinia readers. Bobby has posted more images here, at the Universal Monster Army board, an essential and enthusiastic celebration of movie monster toys and collectibles.

More great photos on Universal Monster Army.
Tragic Beauties, a collection of haunting photographs from Mario’s warehouse,
by Barbara Abel.
An article about mannequins, with references to Blecher and Messana on Detroit’s Metro Times.

Related:
When Frankenstein Met the Wolf Man

Nino Carbé's Frankenstein

2011-11-29T05:10:00.001-05:00

Much like the first Frankenstein play, in 1823, had spurred a new edition of Mary Shelley’s out of print novel, James Whale’s Frankenstein of 1931 brought the title back to prominence. The first books published in direct reaction to the film’s success were Grosset & Dunlap’s Photoplay Edition, featuring scenes from the movie and, in 1932, the Illustration Editions’ Frankenstein, with art by Nino Carbé (1909-1993).

The Italian-born Carbé was three years old when his parents immigrated to America, settling in Brooklyn. The boy’s artistic inclinations were encouraged and he proved something of a prodigy, studying the violin, drawing and painting, finally settling on the visual arts, enrolling at New York’s Cooper Union when he was 16. For a time, Carbé was mentored by master illustrator Willy Pogany, whose influence is palpable in Carbé’s Frankenstein. Pogany, by the way, worked briefly at Universal in Hollywood, painting a splendid poster for The Mummy (1932). Boris Karloff owned a Pogany drawing of himself in The Mummy’s Ardath Bey makeup.

Only 22 when took on Frankenstein, Carbé had already illustrated Tales of the Arabian Nights and Cyrano de Bergerac. Though he was clearly coming into his own as an artist, his Frankenstein pen and ink drawings evoke the elegant, elongated figures of Erté, the dark aesthetics of Audrey Beardsley, and Pogany’s dramatic illustrations for Tannhauser and Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Striking operatic poses, Carbé’s emaciated Monster is very much the “deamon” of the book, with fangs, a droopy lip and pointy ears. A clear sign that the movies’ Monster had already made its mark, Carbé gave his Monster neck electrodes.

The superb jacket design, in black and green, features a curving title that may have inspired the logo used a decade later by Dick Briefer for his Frankenstein comic book.

Carbé would go on to a long career as a children’s book illustrator, punctuated by stints in animation. He worked for Walt Disney in the Forties, contributing designs and lavish background art to such titles as Fantasia, Bambi and Pinocchio. He returned to Hollywood in the Sixties for Disney’s The Jungle Book, eventually working for all the major cartoon studios. In 1982, Carbé returned to Frankenstein, adding new color art to his now classic black and white illustrations for a fiftieth anniversary Danish edition. He also produced a complex, limited-edition serigraph of the cover art.

A profile of Carbé and a large selection of his work are featured in a recent issue of Illustration, No. 34, that can be read online. See also Nino Carbé’s website.

The Whole Town is Talking

2011-11-26T17:45:00.001-05:00

In November 1931, as James Whale’s Frankenstein rolled out across America, its early box-office-busting run at Milwaukee’s Alhambra proved an effective forecast of the film’s national success. The theater’s newspaper ads appearing in The Milwaukee Sentinel and The Milwaukee Journal not only ballyhooed the film with vivid pulp prose — “A Daring Experiment into the Soul Chilling Unknown!”, they also celebrated its success — “Crowds! Crowds! Crowds… Acclaimed by thousands!... It Holds the Season’s Record!”.

Opening on Friday, November 20, the film had been teased for days. “To Be Revealed At Last!” ads read, and “The Like Has Never Been Known Before!”. By Tuesday the 24th, after blockbusting weekend business, ads were boasting: “The whole town is talking… Yet words cannot describe soul-chilling, blood-curdling Frankenstein!” On the 26th, local reviews were quoted, “Milwaukee movie critics got a big thrill!”.

On the 27th, the films’ second week began with an ad proclaiming, “Capacity crowds cheering this thrilling, chilling masterpiece… Unbelievably creepy conceptions brought to the screen in a manner that will make your hair stand on end!” On the 28th, ads crowed, “2nd smashing week! The city is wild over it! We wish we had twice the seating capacity!”

On Sunday the 29th, The Milwaukee Journal ran a listing of films in town, their titles followed by a simple description, like “comedy” or “romance”. Frankenstein was tagged as “An orgy of horror”. The same day, an ad for the Alhambra showed The Monster’s head, Elizabeth thrown unconscious across her wedding night bed, and spooky cartoon eyes that recall the strange drawn figures in the film’s kaleidoscopic opening credits. “We wish we could print this in red ink” the copy read, “Shout it from the house tops! Milwaukee has gone for this picture in a great big way!”

On December first, Alhambra ads warned, “Only 3 days remain in which to see this wonder picture!”. Two days later, a new ad announced, “Wide-spread enthusiasm carries this phenomenal picture into a 3rd Gala Week… Public fancy is completely intrigued… See it now!” Then, on December 4, a large ad showed The Monster in full stride, bursting through the page: “Here he is… so potent is his weird appeal that a clamoring public demands this picture for a 3rd Request Week”.

As the film played its third and final week, a December 5 ad used a tag line that would forever be associated with the film — Dare You See It? — answering, “Thousands and thousands have had the courage…!” On December 6, a warning read, “Absolute last 5 days… And attend now because it won’t be shown again in Milwaukee this year”, adding “What an Experience to Meet FRANKENSTEIN”. On December 8, a terse ad advised, “Avoid disappointment by seeing this picture now… !”

Finally, on Wednesday, December 9, the Alhambra ran an ad for its upcoming program, A House Divided with Walter Huston, with a notice for Frankenstein across the top: “Hurry… Today and tomorrow only… Then this wonder picture departs.”

Exhibitors would run similar campaigns across America and around the world. In an era when films were typically sold on booming ballyhoo and extravagant claims, Frankenstein stood apart, delivering on every promised chill and thrill. Frankenstein opened with a bang that still resonates today.

The Alhambra series:
Frankenstein Turns 80
Thanksgiving Frankenstein

Thanksgiving Frankenstein

2011-11-24T06:50:00.000-05:00

On this American holiday, falling on November 26 in 1931, the Alhambra Theater of Milwaukee gave thanks for Frankenstein — “a really great picture!” — and a solid box-office hit.

A week earlier, on Thursday the 19^th, another stunning ad ran, setting the stage for the next day’s big opening. It featured the curious test makeup shot of The Monster combined with mystery play effects of claw, dripping blood and a note pinned with a dagger. “He produced a monster from the parts of men departed…” the prose read, “It had the strength of a dozen men, and a mechanical brain”. Karloff, we are told, “is the actor nominated as Lon Chaney’s successor”.

The film would run three weeks, making it the season’s biggest hit in the city’s largest theater.

Built for vaudeville by the Schlitz Brewery in 1896, briefly named The Uihlein after the company owners, the Alhambra Theater was the centerpiece of a massive, seven-storey entertainment complex that included four beer bars, a bicycle park and a rooftop photo studio. It was, for a time, proclaimed the world’s largest movie house with its vast floor, two balconies and opera-style private boxes totaling some 3,000 seats. The Alhambra even sported its own advertising staff and carpenters to design and build elaborate displays for new films. Another Karloff vehicle, The Mummy (1932), saw the Alhambra festooned with Egyptian motifs and a large sarcophagus occupied by a homemade mummy. Designer Milton Schultz had wrapped a store dummy in bandages and set it on fire to great effect.

For all its opulence, the Alhambra would have a tough go at it. Prohibition closed down its bars and the movie house would chronically struggle to fill its cavernous interior, competing with several theaters that had sprouted within a few blocks. In the summer of 1931, the Alhambra got an upgrade, scoring a new, larger screen; wall-to-wall carpeting and a $50,000 air-cooling plant but, still, it couldn’t beat the Depression. By the Forties, the Alhambra was a second-run house given to frequent and increasingly long closings. By the Fifties, the twin punch of television and suburban migration spelled its doom. The Alhambra was shuttered and razed in 1961. It would be another twenty years before the abandoned lot was built up anew.

Coming up tomorrow: More terrific Alhambra ads for Frankenstein.

The Alhambra Theater on Cinema Treasures.
The Alhambra on Milwaukee Cinema Graveyard.

Frankenstein turns 80... a day earlier!

2011-11-21T19:25:00.000-05:00

When, exactly, was James Whale’s Frankenstein released? All sources, all the books I’ve seen, and the IMDB, all point to November 21, 1931. However, spelunking the newspaper archives of the times, I have found that Frankenstein actually opened in Milwaukee a day earlier, on November 20!

Was Milwaukee given the unofficial premiere or did the film open elsewhere on the 20th? It makes sense to open on a Friday for a weekend rollout. For that matter, where, exactly, did the film open on the 21st, a Saturday?

Milwaukee’s Alhambra theater cranked up the ballyhoo a week earlier: “To be revealed at last… No one has ever seen the like… Weird, Wonderful!” All the ads point to it’s Friday, November 20 opening, and insisting that “It will not be seen in Milwaukee again this year!”

The ad shown above appeared in the Milwaukee Journal of Wednesday, November 18. The copy, “The Picture That Public and Press Have Been Breathlessly Awaiting” speaks to the very real anticipation over a film said to be scarier than Universal’s springtime hit, Dracula. Earlier, on November 10, syndicated gossip columnist Mollie Merrick had fired up the suspense, reporting: “A pre-view audience made up of stoic press members were a bit pale around the gills when the film reached its conclusion. When it was pre-viewed in Santa Barbara one hears of fainting women, irate men and sobbing children” adding, “the film contains no sex-appeal whatsoever. It’s plain grand-guignol material, and you are warned about it before it unfolds.”

Note how Boris Karloff’s name, amusingly misspelled, has already moved ahead of the film’s big-name stars, Clive, Boles and Clarke. Boris, even before anyone has seen the film, is proclaimed as Lon Chaney’s Successor… Only more weird!

The film would go on to play a smashing three-week run at the massive Alhambra (3000 seats!). By the time it made it’s highly publicized December 4 opening at the Mayfair in New York, Frankenstein had already mauled box-office records across the nation.

Frankenstein was a hit, and let the record hereafter show that it opened not on the 21st, but on Friday, November 20, 1931.

I’ll have more on the Milwaukee Alhambra’s wonderful ad campaign later this week.

Revealed! TV's Lost Frankenstein of 1957

2011-11-18T16:00:00.002-05:00

Here’s a great find, courtesy of horror film expert and collector extraordinaire George Chastain. Previously circulating as a blurry thumbnail, here, at last, is a large, sharp image of Primo Carnera as TV’s Frankenstein Monster of 1957.

The show was NBC’s anthology series, Matinee Theater, beamed live and in color at noon — 3PM on the East Coast — out of Burbank’s Color City Studios.

Running from 1955 to 1958, Matinee Theater would tally an astounding 650 episodes, offering a mix of original teleplays and adaptations of classic novels. A generous selection of horror, science fiction and fantasy titles included Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Tell-Tale Heart, The Fall of the House of Usher, The Cask of Amontillado, Death Takes a Holiday, and The Bottle Imp. John Carradine played Dracula with a mustache and a Grampa Munster haircut.

A version of The Invisible Man was hailed by TV Guide as a television milestone for its pioneering special effects. In fact, the whole series was a bold experiment, with a rotating crew of directors producing five hour-long plays every week, testing the RCA color equipment along the way.

The Frankenstein episode’s Monster was played by Primo Carnera, one of the most storied and tragic sports figure of the Twentieth Century. Born in Northern Italy, stricken with acromegaly, he stood 6 feet 6 inches when he began his career as a circus wrestler, barnstorming through Europe, taking on all comers, sometimes fighting as many as 12 men in one day. Introduced to boxing, he was brought to America in the late Twenties by a shady promoter with mob ties. Soft-spoken, affable and utterly guileless, Carnera would be mercilessly exploited, embarking unawares or, at least, gullibly, in a world-spanning series of fixed fights, his opponents — fueled by cash or literally threatened at gunpoint — gamely walking into Carnera’s weak uppercuts and diving operatically for the count. The giant was a sensation, landing on the cover of Time Magazine in October of 1931 even as a newspaperman in England joked about his fights being “as rehearsed as a Shakespeare play”.

In February 1933, when one of his opponents died after being knocked out — the man had been ill and desperate for fight money — Carnera’s reputation peaked. In June, he became World Heavyweight Champion in a bout one reporter said was won “with an invisible punch”. Soon thereafter, feeling the heat and having squeezed everything they could out of the Amblin’ Alp, Carnera’s mobster handlers abandoned him, walking away with the millions he had earned. Now booked into real, up-and-up fights, Carnera was led to the slaughter. The sight of the once proud giant helpless, bloodied and battered, shocked America.

Humiliated, his career in shambles, Carnera returned to Italy where he was promptly hailed and exploited again, this time as a national hero by fascist leader Benito Mussolini. And yet again, Carnera would be abandoned to his own fate after losing badly in an ill-conceived showdown against Joe Louis, a fight that amounted to a veritable massacre.

On his own, surviving as best he could, even scavenging for food through the war years, Carnera made it back to the States after the war for an unlikely but spectacular comeback, becoming one of the most popular and beloved pro wrestler of the Fifties. Meanwhile, his boxing days proved rich fodder for drama, serving as inspiration for a novel turned into a 1956 Humphrey Bogart movie, The Harder They Fall, with Mike Lane as “Toro Moreno”. Lane, like Carnera, would go on to play Frankenstein’s Monster, opposite Boris Karloff in Frankenstein 1970 (1958). Another Carnera-inspired piece was Rod Serling’s Requiem for a Heavyweight, produced for television in 1956 with Jack Palance playing “Mountain McClintock”. A 1957 British TV version had Sean Connery in the role and a film adaptation from 1962 starred Anthony Quinn.

Carnera himself appeared in a handful of movies, notably turning up as one of the wrestlers in a tug of war with Mighty Joe Young (1949), even throwing a few punches at Joe, and he would go mano a mano with Steve Reeves in Hercules Unchained (1959).

Frankenstein director Walter Grauman hired Carnera for size, bulking him up further with torso padding and thick-soled monster boots. The New York Times reported that “Only television could round out the square head of Frankenstein”, with makeup men instructed to steer clear of Universal’s iconic design from the movies. NBC PR claimed that the Monster transformation required a tag team of five makeup artists working in shifts over a period of three hours. The Monster’s appearance, bald head crisscrossed with baseball stitches, is similar to that of Lon Chaney in the Tales of Tomorrow Frankenstein episode of 1952, and anticipates the makeup sported by Robert DeNiro in the 1994 film, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

The photograph at hand is actually from a dress rehearsal. It was circulated to newspapers on January 31, five days ahead of the February 5 broadcast. Note how the futuristic costume — called “a snowsuit” by one reporter — and somewhat reminiscent of the outfit James Arness wore in The Thing (1951), is unfinished, with threads hanging and material wrapped loosely around the arms. The collar of the outer garment appears to have been cut away, with flap pockets removed and front opening sewn shut. This clearly being a work in progress, the final makeup and costume might have been a bit different by showtime. It’s impossible to know for sure, as the Frankenstein episode, like much of early live television fare, is considered lost.

One might entertain the hope it can still be found as it was one of the few episodes of Matinee Theater to ever be rerun — on October 7, 1957 — meaning that there was, at least, a kinescope — film shot off a television monitor — made of the broadcast, perhaps even a videotape copy, the still-new technology first introduced in 1956.

See a video of director Walter E. Grauman reminiscing about his experiences in early television. In part one, at roughly 35:45, he talks about the Primo Carnera Frankenstein and recalls an on-air incident.

The Dark of the Moon, a rare surviving episode of Matinee Theater, starring Tom Tryon as a Warlock, and Gloria Talbott. Both would reunite in 1958 for I Married a Monster from Outer Space.

A very short documentary clip gives us a glimpse of Color City Studios and a rehearsal for an episode of Matinee Theater.

A complete and detailed episode listing for Matinee Theater.

A harrowing 1948 account of Primo Carnera’s life and career, by Jack Sher.

The Art of Frankenstein : XNO

2011-11-15T02:40:00.000-05:00

This stupendous drawing shows a Karloffian Monster with rotting flesh and pulsating veins, its massive head held together with crude sutures, screwed-in metal clamps and plumbing. The piece was done in 1992 for a proposed but unreleased bubble-gum card set.

The eye-gouging, brain-frying lowbrow art of Chet Darmstaedter, the enigmatic artist known as XNO, evokes Weird-Ohs, Big Daddy Ed Roth, and Basil Wolverton on crack. A prolific contributor to the underground scene of the 80s and 90s, XNO took his gloriously gory art to the mainstream with Topps’ memorable Dinosaurs Attack! Series of 1988, painting 43 of the 54 cards in the set.

Frankenstein’s Monster is a favorite subject of the artist, given a toxic green complexion and often pictured in a woolen vest and chains, seen driving the Munsters coach or mingling with a cast of classic monsters, and often sharing the canvas with his bandaged Bride — sometimes depicted in images meant only for adults accompanied by grown-ups.

XNO also paints Frankenstein derivatives like the high-flying Frankenstein Jr. and Milton The Monster. His Frank’n’pop character mashes The Monster with Popeye.

What the world needs now is an XNO art book — with a large Frankenstein section, of course.

XNO paintings on the Copro Gallery site.

Another XNO gallery on the dormant Lowbrow Artworld site.

Xavier Cugat Meets Frankenstein

2011-11-11T20:15:00.000-05:00

Francisco de Asis Javier Cugat Mingall de Brue y Deulofeo was a Spanish-born Cuban violin prodigy who first came to America in the mid-1910s as a teenage accompanist to the legendary opera singer Enrico Caruso. The boy would go on to become the Big Band era’s most flamboyant orchestra leader, known worldwide as Xavier Cugat.

It was Caruso who taught the young musician how to draw, and by the mid-twenties, Cugat had quit music for a job as a cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times and the King Features Syndicate. Though he soon returned to his first love, Cugat continued drawing, providing humorous covers for several of his own record albums, publishing collections of his star caricatures and even producing an illustrated curtain for Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

Cugat famously played New York’s Waldorf-Astoria and The Coconut Grove in Los Angeles, rising to national fame through radio and a string of Latin-flavored hits, notably Perfidia (1940) and Brazil (1943). Along the way, Cugat helped fellow Cuban Desi Arnaz get started in American showbiz.

Cugat’s extravagant style — his band members wore flaming red and gold outfits — suited Hollywood and he appeared in numerous musicals, leading the orchestra with a violin bow in one hand while holding a miniature chihuahua in the other. The Cugat Show was known for its sexy female singers — and Cugat wives — that included Rita Montaner, Carmen Castillo, Lorraine Allen, Abbe Lane and Charo.

In brush outline and charcoal tones, Cugat’s caricature of Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein Monster features a dark background and a lightning flash. The figure’s elegant, sweeping strokes suggest both The Monster’s awkward gait and a dancer’s grace. Perhaps this Frankenstein moves to Cugat’s trademark rhumba. The piece, undated, could have been drawn as early as the Thirties. Cugat produced his Hollywood caricatures in the same style well into the Sixties.

In the early Seventies, in declining health, Cugat returned to his native Spain where he passed away at 90, in 1990.

Xavie Cugat on Space Age Pop.

The Art of Frankenstein : Chris Schweizer

2011-11-09T03:15:00.000-05:00

Victor Frankenstein might have been a genius, what with creating life and all that, but his skills at plastic surgery leave much to be desired, as evidenced here by cartoonist Chris Schweizer.

If this nightmarish, crazily mismatched, heavily bolted and massively sutured creature holds together long enough to stomp around the countryside and scare some local villagers, Frankenstein will have surpassed himself yet again.

Schweizer is an Atlanta-based comic book artist and comics teacher who once played Victor Frankenstein in a college play. His account of this experience is hilarious.

Chris Schweizer’s website and blog.

Frankenstein Does Vegas

2011-11-06T23:35:00.000-05:00

Las Vegas Magazine celebrated Halloween last week with a Night of the Living Entertainers photo feature matching Vegas stars with classic monsters. Magicians Penn & Teller essayed The Mummy, female impersonator Frank Marino paid homage to Maila “Vampira” Nurmi and, landing the coveted cover spot, ventriloquist Terry Fator and his wife Taylor Makakoa transformed into a green-faced Frankenstein’s Monster and his lovely Bride.

In a Las Vegas Sun article, Fator commented on how grueling the makeup session and shoot had been, stoking his admiration for Boris Karloff and The Munsters’ Fred Gwynne. “Gwynne had to do this every week for years,” Fator said. “I can’t imagine what he went through.”

The Sun article carries behind-the-scenes photos of the makeup session and the studio shoot with makeup artist Zee Clemente, fashion stylist Christie Moeller and photographer Christopher DeVargas. The Vegas Undead concept was developed by Las Vegas Magazine Managing Editor Jack Huston and Art Director Erik Stein.

Las Vegas Magazine website.
Las Vegas Sun article.
Entertainer Terry Fator's website currently carries a short "making of" video.

Related:
Las Vegas Loves Halloween

The "It's Alive" Project

2011-11-04T02:00:00.001-04:00

Here’s an art project that celebrates the 80^th anniversary of James Whale and Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein, and it also celebrates a good cause.

Eighty artists have been invited to paint, transform, re-configure and re-imagine a bust of Karloff as The Monster. That’s eighty wildly creative, new takes on an iconic image, all available for sale, with all proceeds going to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, an organization devoted to cures, treatment, means of prevention and outstanding patient care for children suffering from pediatric catastrophic diseases. Founded by entertainer Danny Thomas in 1962, the Memphis-based St. Jude’s is a world leader its field. It is a non-profit corporation and not affiliated with any religious organization.

The It’s Alive collection is currently on display at Orlando’s City Arts Factory until November 15, and all the Frankenstein busts are viewable on the It’s Alive Project website. You’ll see The Monster as Frankenberry and painted as a Dia de los Muertos figure, or Kiss-style. There’s a Justin Bieber hoodie-Franky, and Franky transformed into a biker with a handlebar mustache, Batman’s Joker and Mr. Spock. The Monster also moonlights as King Kong — with a tiny Bride standing in for Fay Wray, a Tiki Franky, a ninja and a pirate.

One bust has its flat top taken off, transforming Karloff’s Monster into a bucket of popcorn, and another bust is opened up and showing a tiny mad lab inside its skull, as if The Monster remembered its electrical origins. And it goes on and on, eighty variations on a very rich theme, and all for a spectacularly worthwhile cause. Bravo!

The It’s Alive Project website. The bust collection is here.

With Thanks to E. Francis Kohler.

New Blog! FRANKENSTEIN FOREVER!

2011-10-31T22:30:00.000-04:00

Carved pumpkins staring out living room windows at makeshift graveyards planted with cardboard tombstones. Stuffed scarecrows lounging on the doorstep and a plastic skeleton, wrapped in cotton cobwebs, swinging from a tree. Ghosts ring your doorbell and spare you for a piece of candy. It’s Halloween, and it’s a fine time for launching a new blog, especially a skeery one!

With the appropriate help of the venerable Edward van Sloan, who famously introduced James Whale’s Frankenstein eighty years ago, allow me to introduce FRANKENSTEIN FOREVER, the new companion blog to Frankensteinia!

FRANKENSTEIN FOREVER is a tumblelog of Frankenstein images, Frankenstein links and Frankenstein news, for Frankenstein fans.

You might well ask why a new Frankenstein blog, and what for? Simply said, I like Frankensteinia as it is. I want Frankensteinia to be informative, sometimes scholarly — yet unpretentious and, I hope, mostly entertaining. Still, I have tons of material on hand, more than I can handle. There are new Frankenstein books and comics, plays and films, toys and games coming out every week, an endless supply of material that I hardly ever get around to. I’ve considered posting here every day, filling the gaps between detailed posts with images and news, but I feel that would change the focus and my self-imposed mandate on Frankensteinia. A new, complementary but separate blog is the answer.

FRANKENSTEIN FOREVER will serve as a repository, a gallery, a museum perhaps, of Frankenstein-related images. FRANKENSTEIN FOREVER will feature links to new Frankenstein events as they happen. FRANKENSTEIN FOREVER will showcase more artists and illustrators than I have ever had room for on Frankensteinia.

You can reach FRANKENSTEIN FOREVER through the badge on the menu at right, or you might want to bookmark it for direct access. Should you make FRANKENSTEIN FOREVER your first stop, I’ll be sure to post a heads-up there whenever a new post is up here on Frankensteinia.

Frankensteinia will essentially remain the same. It works, I’m happy with it and proud of its success. Now’s the time to expand on the concept, and that’s what FRANKENSTEIN FOREVER is meant for.

FRANKENSTEIN FOREVER is alive NOW. Go Look!

Ben Cooper's Frankenstein

2011-10-28T16:30:00.000-04:00

On a sunny autumn day, circa 1974, young Steve Spatucci posed in front of his family’s North Arlington, New Jersey home in his brand new Ben Cooper Frankenstein costume. “In the second photo,” Steve remembers, “I'm wearing a base of green makeup, with red lips and scars to simulate the mask. I made my Mom do this, just in case the mask ripped off, so I would still remain unrecognizable — at least in my mind!”

Created in 1937 by a theatrical costume designer, the Ben Cooper company quickly became one of the biggest party costume manufacturers in America. Operating out of Brooklyn, Cooper flooded five and dime stores at Halloween-time with inexpensive “full costumes” consisting of a silk-screened tunic, originally in fabric, eventually and famously in vinyl, and a thin plastic mask. Classic cowboys, pirates and generic devils shared shelf space with licensed movie and cartoon characters, superheroes, caricatured celebrities, and essential monsters such as Dracula, the Werewolf and the ever-popular Frankenstein Monster. Cooper also offered props, makeup "disguise sets", rubber masks and cheap toys, notably the crude painted rubber figurines called “Wigglers”.

The Cooper company collapsed in the late eighties, its assets bought out by Rubie’s Costumes Co. in 1992. Today, vintage Ben Cooper costumes are collector’s items for nostalgic Monster Kids who fondly remember the cheap vinyl smocks and the garish, paper-thin plastic masks worn with an elastic headband.

Steve Spatucci, who so generously shares his Halloween Frankenstein photos with us, grew up to become a prolific illustrator and designer whose multiple activities include several fun, monster-related websites!

Steve Spatucci’s website.

A 1980 Ben Cooper catalog, on Plaid Stallions.

A Frankenstein Wiggler, on Weirdo Toys.

Monsterpalooza Magazine, Hot Off The Press!

2011-10-25T00:30:00.001-04:00

Here’s a real Halloween-time treat: The inaugural issue of Monsterpalooza Magazine is out now!

Published and edited by Mark Redfield and Michael Heisler, beautifully designed by Theresa Ratajczak, Monsterpalooza celebrates monsters, old school to cutting edge.

I’m honored to contribute and humbled to share its pages with writers such as Gary Don Rhodes, Ted Newsom, Raymond Castile, Anthony Taylor, and artists Frank Dietz and George Chastain, to name but a few of the all-star contributors.

Marking the 80^th anniversary of James Whale’s Frankenstein, my article, Dare You See It?, tracks gossip and newspaper articles published early in 1931 as the film was being conceived and created. The article is illustrated with examples of the newspaper ads and ballyhoo that attended Frankenstein’s late autumn release. Together, these parallel narratives explore how the film and its now iconic Monster first percolated into the public consciousness.

Monsterpalooza No. 1 is available now, directly from the publisher. Here’s the magazine’s website and Facebook Page, here’s a special sneak peek at what’s inside the first issue, and here’s how to order your copy of Monsterpalooza Magazine!

Frankensteinian : Gourmelin's Golem

2011-10-21T01:30:00.001-04:00

The Golem haunts Old Prague in the 1967 French television adaptation of Gustav Meyrink’s famous novel. The Golem’s mask was designed by artist Jean Gourmelin, who passed away on October 9. He was 91.

Virtually unknown in America, Gourmelin was a celebrated in his native France for his unique jet-black humor cartoons and meticulous illustrations in a surrealist vein.

As a young man, Gourmelin apprenticed with stained-glass master Max Ingrand and worked in the field for over twenty years before choosing to devote himself exclusively to his art, coming to prominence in the early sixties as a regular contributor to the legendary Fortean magazine, Planète. Gourmelin published several collections of his drawings and illustrated books by such authors as Gaston Leroux, Guy de Maupassant and H.P.Lovecraft.

In 1966, Gourmelin designed the elaborate, caligaresque sets for the ORTF’s telefilm of Gustav Meyrink’s Le Golem, directed by Jean Kerchbron from a script by Louis Pauwels, author of The Morning of the Magicians. Gourmelin also created the Golem’s mask, closely based on Meyrink’s description of the creature with large, slanted eyes.

In the photographs here, that’s Gourmelin — center — helping actor André Reybaz, who also played the lead role of the gem-cutter, Athanase Pernath.

Le Golem was as a bold experiment in le fantastique, the producers giving veteran director Kerchbron and his team complete control over the project. It is also remembered as one of the last French TV-movies made in black and white — which suited the film perfectly. Within a few months, the network had switched to full-time color broadcasting.

Working with Kerchbron again, Gourmelin designed sets and costumes for the 1971 TV adaptation of Victor Hugo’s The Man Who Laughs. In 1977, he created the theatre sets for Andrée Chedid’s Nefertiti and he designed the poster for the original theatrical run of Les Misérables, directed by Robert Hossein.

Sadly, over the last decade, Gourmelin suffered from failing health, but he lived long enough to see his work honored in major retrospectives at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, the prestigious Centre-Pompidou in Paris and, just one month before his death, the city of Vendôme where stained-glass art created in his younger days adorn the chapels of two local castles.

There’s a ten-minute excerpt of Le Golem — in French, and unfortunately sans title creature — on Ina.fr, where whole film can be downloaded for a very reasonable 4 Euros.

Images from Midi-Minuit Fantastique No. 15-16, December 1966.

Jean Gourmelin’s official website.
A collection of drawings from Planète Magazine, on Art Maniac.

Bela's 129th

2011-10-20T03:45:00.000-04:00

Happy Halloween-time Birthday to Bela Lugosi, born October 20, 1882.

The Bride Countdown

2011-10-17T21:45:00.000-04:00

Of all the sites celebrating Halloween all this month, one of the most original and beautifully executed is artist Thomas Boatwright’s sketch-a-day homage to Bride of Frankenstein on his Sequential Matinee blog.

Boatwright, a cartoonist and comic book creator, is stepping through the classic film with quick digital drawings, one key scene after another, that capture the characters and the sweep of the film, all done in pitch perfect black, white and grays.

I can’t wait for The Bride to show up!

The Posters of Frankenstein : Joseph Koutachy

2011-10-15T00:01:00.001-04:00

The Monster courts his fiancée, a doomed proposition, on this gorgeous French poster from 1935 by Joseph Koutachy.

There’s precious little information to be found about this prolific poster artist. Art sites note Koutachy’s birth as 1907 either in Yugoslavia or in France, of Yugoslav descent. He is often listed, simply, as “European”. He is believed to have passed away in the late 70s or early 80s. As a fine artist, he is remembered for his atmospheric forest landscapes often featuring, upon careful examination, the single small figure of a woman in black skirt and red blouse. He is also remembered for an iconic poster for the French Lottery showing a horn of plenty spilling gold coins.

As a film poster artist, Koutachy’s career spanned at least four decades. In the horror genre, his work begins with Universal classics such as The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and Dracula’s Daughter (1936), and runs all the way to Hammer’s Brides of Dracula (1960). Here, rectangular posters for The Invisible Ray (1936) and the Karloff thriller Night Key (1936) show off Koutachy’s bold compositions and striking color choices.

Koutachy’s Bride poster is another beautifully composed image, its two figures creating balance. With heavily textured, ruddy complexions, Bride and Monster are warmly alive, their joined hands becoming part of the film’s title. Note the sketched-in background with lab glassware and Dr. Pretorius’ tiny ballerina in a jar, lending a note of whimsy and surreal poetry.

The Fiancée de Frankenstein poster was sold at auction through Christies of London for a hefty $35,730, an amount bound to appreciate considering the subject matter — golden age horror classics being highly desirable — and the sheer beauty of this particular poster.

The Art of Frankenstein : Derek Charm

2011-10-12T21:30:00.000-04:00

The Baron and his monsters, a wonderful cartoon portrait by Derek Charm.

A Manhattan-based illustrator and comic book artist, Charm captures Peter Cushing’s cold and cool, crazy and charismatic Frankenstein, surrounded by his creations, cruel experiments in full-body reconfiguration, brain transplantation and even soul transference. All spectacular failures, spurring the Baron to keep trying, whatever the body count.

Derek Charm keeps a blog and his comic book, Trip Fantastic, is serialized online.

The Art of Frankenstein: Alvaro Tapia Hidalgo (2)

2011-10-11T18:30:00.001-04:00

Based in Granada, Spain, Alvaro Tapia Hidalgo lists such artists as Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud as influences, and classic horror film icons as inspiration. I previously posted Mr. Hidalgo’s striking, paint-splattered Bride of Frankenstein, now here’s the companion piece, Boris Karloff’s Frankenstein Monster, celebrating his 80th anniversary year.

This piece, called “Frankie”, is offered as a very affordable quality art print through Society6.

Alvaro Tapia Hidalgo’s website.

The Monster's Alemite Cups

2011-10-09T17:00:00.000-04:00

We know Universal’s patented Frankenstein Monster for his tabletop skull, the dusty black suit, clubfoot boots and, of course, those neck bolts, ostensible electrodes, as if The Monster ran on AC/DC.

Boris Karloff had a name for them.

On November 20, 1957, Karloff appeared on This Is Your Life, a hugely popular show where host Ralph Edwards literally ambushed an unsuspecting celebrity on live TV, parading out acquaintances and family members, and piecing together a superficial biography of his surprised guest. Karloff was dismayed at first, but he played along like the good sport he was, eventually warming up to the proceedings. One of the show’s best moments came when makeup man Jack Pierce showed up. You can see the genuine fondness Boris and Jack had for each other, with Karloff calling his friend “the best makeup man in the world!”.

When Jack Pierce comes out, he hands Karloff a souvenir, one of The Monster’s electrodes. Karloff playfully holds it up to his neck and says, “I used to call it the Alemite cup”.

The Alemite company, founded in 1916, manufactures grease guns, pumps and oil mist systems for the lubrication industry. Among related accessories are a number of pins, couplings and fittings that could very well stand in for The Monster’s neck bolts. Three of these are shown in the photograph above.

The first one is a brass-colored Alemite fitting with locking cross pins that any Monster would wear with pride. The second item is a valved pressure cup that provides lubrication while bearings are in motion. It’s an Alemite cup, but too fancy a design for our purposes. The third one, though, is a good match. It’s an Alemite grease cup, very similar, with its flat, flanged end, to The Monster’s iconic neck ornament.

In the early days, Karloff worked a variety of side jobs, supplementing his meager income as a stage actor. On This Is Your Life, he mentions a stint in a building materials yard. There, or in any number of odd jobs held through the Twenties, Karloff could have handled the Alemite products he’d come to associate, jokingly, with The Monster’s neck bolts.

In the video below, from the middle third of the show, Jack Pierce comes on at the 4:25 mark.

Related:
The Makeup Man: Jack Pierce

The Art of Frankenstein: Jim Warren

2011-10-07T23:30:00.002-04:00

A striking portrait of The Monster in a pensive mood. The painting, by American artist Jim Warren, served as the cover to The Monster Wakes, a 1993 anthology of new stories on the Frankenstein theme, edited by Martin H. Greenberg.

It must be noted that Jim Warren’s soft-focus illustrations and portraits, as delicate as airbrushed art, are all painted with traditional brushes in oils on stretched canvas, attesting to the artist’s exquisite control of the medium.

Warren has painted over 200 book cover illustrations, many of them in the fantasy, science fiction and horror genres, as well as numerous album covers and film posters. He currently paints nature scenes and elaborate celebrity portraits.

A wide selection of Mr. Warren’s art is displayed on his website.

The Art of Frankenstein: Steve Hui

2011-10-05T12:45:00.000-04:00

Digitial illustrator Steve Hui’s Frankenstein Monster is all raw muscle and gruesome gristle on a heavy metal skeleton. The California-based artist works in the video game industry, notably contributing to World Of Warcraft at Blizzard Entertainment.

Here’s a portfolio on Concept Art World featuring Hui’s character designs and his re-imagining of Dracula and the Wolf Man.

Cinebeats Go-Goes Frankenstein

2011-10-04T12:05:00.001-04:00

Hurry over to Cinebeats, the fabulous blog by the fabulous Kimberly Lindbergs, and swing along with Frankenstein!

Kimberly has compiled a mix-tape of Frankenstein-flavored tunes that you can stream with a single click. It swings from Soupy Sales to France Gall, with The New York Dolls and Edgar Winter in between. A great soundtrack for your pumpkin carving!

Frankenstein-A-Go-Go on Cinebeats.

Frankenstein Wraps

2011-10-03T13:05:00.000-04:00

ON THIS DAY, October 3, in 1931, James Whale did some pickup scenes in around the laboratory set and said “Cut!” for the last time, after 35 days of shooting, on Frankenstein.

The film was edited and a first preview held in Santa Barbara on October 29. By all accounts, the audience was shocked and Universal understood they had a powerful, unnerving and potentially problematic film on their hands.

Cuts were made. The infamous drowning sequence was chopped in half. Brief moments thought too violent were trimmed: Close-ups of the hunchback assistant taunting The Monster with a torch, a struggle and a hard blow to The Monster’s head, and a shot of an hypodermic needle jabbed into The Monster’s back. A line of dialog where Colin Clive exclaims, “Now I know what it feels like to BE God!” was buried under the sound of thunder.

New scenes were ordered, bookending the film. An introductory sequence was filmed with actor Edward Van Sloan stepping out from behind a curtain and delivering a “friendly warning”. Frankenstein, we are told, “sought to create a man after his own image, without reckoning upon God”, as if the film was meant as a lesson in divine morality.

Van Sloan cautions the audience that the film might thrill, shock or even horrify, and invites the nervously disposed to leave. The scene was obviously meant to head off critics, censor boards and religious groups who might — and did — take issue with the film. It also serves as good old hype, like parking an ambulance in front of a theater and planting nurses in the lobby.

A new closing scene was tacked on after the original ending, a shot of the burning windmill. Clive’s Henry Frankenstein, meant to be killed in his fall, was given a reprieve. James Whale shot a happily-ever-after epilogue featuring Frederick Kerr toasting his son’s survival, and the Frankenstein lineage. Colin Clive and Mae Clarke are replaced with stand-ins, far from the camera. Henry Frankenstein is bedridden, head turned away.

James Whale moved on to film the largely forgotten Impatient Maiden, with Mae Clarke. Colin Clive returned to London, leaving Hollywood on the 27th. Boris Karloff had to buy a ticket to see Frankenstein in a movie house. In the opening credits, his name was replaced with a gimmick interrogation point. Within a few months, Frankenstein would make him a full-fledged name-above-the-title movie star.

No doubt, everyone involved hoped Frankenstein would do good business, maybe as good as Dracula, the Bela Lugosi film released earlier that year. Nobody, then, could have known that they had just created what would become the most famous horror movie of all times.

Repost, with minor rewriting.

Counting Down to Halloween

2011-10-01T21:30:00.000-04:00

Temps dipped way down last night, right on cue. Then the wind picked up, caught in a window with an eerie ghost moan and I thought, yeah, that makes it official: Autumn is here, and Halloween season is underway.

This is a time for cultivating goosebumps and embracing fears. Time to shake our skeletons loose and send them out to dance in the moonlight. This is when we stand up to Death itself, shining a flashlight under our chins and scaring it right back.

I like to think it’s Halloween everyday on Frankensteinia but, still, things get busier and the posting cranks up here in October. And once again, I am participating in the big Countdown to Halloween event organized by — and with congratulations to — John Rozum, Jon K. and Shawn Robare. Thanks, guys!

Click the Countdown badge on the menu and you’ll be taken to a jaw-dropping list of blogs, well over 200!, gone trick or treatin’ and celebrating Halloween all month long. Go look, you’ll have a blast. And check back here now and then. Boris and I are cooking up some scares for you all.

Maria and The Monster

2011-09-28T19:30:00.001-04:00

It was 80 years ago, on September 28 and 29, 1931, that the notorious drowning scene in Frankenstein was filmed.

Radiating innocence, the child Maria stops The Monster in his errant tracks and forces the only smile ever to cross his hideous face. He is thrilled by a simple game of floating daisies and, when he runs out of flowers, he reaches for the girl.

Young Marilyn Harris (1924-1999) would encounter The Monster again, appearing briefly in Bride of Frankenstein (1935) among a group of schoolgirls sent squealing in fright when The Monster stumbles across their path. Director James Whale was fond of Marilyn as she also plays small roles in Show Boat (1936) and The Road Back (1937). Sadly, Marilyn Harris’s childhood was an unhappy one, due to parental discord and a domineering stage mother. Her short film career, playing bit parts and often uncredited, petered out in 1944.

No doubt Marilyn Harris would be forgotten today, but for a short scene with Boris Karloff, shot 80 years ago, out at Malibou Lake. Today, Marilyn as Little Maria is a movie legend.

Related:

Return to Malibou Lake: In a FRANKENSTEINIA Exclusive, John Cox visits the mountain lake location where the scene was filmed.

James Whale and Boris Karloff take a Time Out at Malibou Lake.

The History of Malibou Lake.

Mary's Dream, a Tell-Tale Moon and the Creation of Frankenstein

2011-09-27T05:00:00.001-04:00

An article in the new, November 2011 issue of Sky & Telescope reveals the precise moment, down to date and hour, when Mary Shelley conceived of Frankenstein.

In her introduction to the 1831 edition of the novel, Mary described a dream in which she saw “the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together”, and how “the hideous phantasm of a man” came alive “on the working of some powerful engine”. Brought awake by the startling vision, Mary wrote, “I see them still; the very room, the dark parquet, the closed shutters, with the moonlight struggling through, and the sense I had that the glassy lake and white high Alps were beyond.

Now, the moment of revelation has been pinpointed.

Dr. Don Olson, an astrophysicist at Texas State University-San Marcos, practices the unconventional science of “forensic astronomy”. Working with fellow scientists and students, matching the tantalizing clues found in text, archives and maps with the irrefutable logic of star charts, tide schedules and field expeditions, Dr. Olson has solved historical puzzles, revealing new information, new layers of meaning and a new appreciation for famous moments in history and art.

Among other discoveries, Olson and his team have re-dated Caesar’s invasion of Britain in 55 BC; explained how a rare low tide doomed the Marines at Tarawa Beach in 1943, and how a rising moon led to the tragic sinking of the USS Indianapolis in 1945. In significant contributions to art history, Olson has pinpointed the exact locations and the precise moments captured in paintings by such artists as William Blake, Vincent Van Gogh and Edvard Munch, notably identifying the tortured sky in Munch’s The Scream as the planet-spanning effect of the Krakatoa eruption. Olson can even tell the exact instant when Ansel Adams clicked the shutter on his most famous photograph.

In literature, Olson has studied Chaucer, Whitman and identified Hamlet’s star as a supernova. Now, turning to Mary Shelley, Olsen and his collaborators have settled the issue of when, exactly, Frankenstein was conceived.

The clue lay in Mary’s description of moonlight “struggling” through closed shutters. Based on lunar cycles and confirming results on a field trip to Villa Diodati at Cologny, Switzerland, Olson was able to determine which of two recorded dates for Mary’s inspiration was the correct one. On June 22, 1816, a waning moon rode too low to illuminate Mary’s room, but the other documented date, June 16, proved just right as a gibbous moon rose high and bright enough to be noticed by the awakened Mary. Working out the angles, Olson is also able to attest that the moon shone into Mary’s bedroom at 2 AM.

As morning came, Mary writes, “I announced that I had thought of a story. I began that day with the words, ‘It was on a dreary night of November,’ making only a transcript of the grim terrors of my waking dream.”

Thus confirmed, Mary Shelley began Frankenstein on June 16, 1816. The moon tells us so.

Sky & Telescope magazine, and a digital preview of the November 2011 issue.

Don Olson’s website at Texas State University.

The Posters of Frankenstein : La Maison de Dracula

2011-09-23T03:30:00.000-04:00

A followup to House of Frankenstein (1944), House of Dracula (1945) used a similar formula, each of its all-star monster cast characters featured in individual segments, with little or no interaction. Tying everything together is Onslow Stevens as an intense doctor — soon made mad — who proposes cures for vampirism, lycanthropy and, er, hunchbackism. A bit of a novelty, the hunchback assistant is female, nurse Nina, played by Jane Adams.

In the waning moments of this 67-minute thriller, poisoned by Dracula’s blood, the now Jekyll/Hyde-like doc reanimates Frankenstein’s Monster, but his plans for world domination are quickly thwarted by a handful of townspeople, the heroics of Larry Talbot — a Wolf Man cured of his full-moon addiction — and a catastrophic house fire.

Posters for Universal’s Monster Rallies typically feature its creature stars as a parade of floating heads around a central image. Here, on a luminous — almost radioactive — poster for the 1947 French release, we have John Carradine as Dracula with a pencil mustache, Glenn Strange as The Monster, Lon Chaney as The Wolf Man and Mad Doctor Onslow Stevens. The balletic central image has the titular vampire, in top hat and a sweeping crimson-lined cape, menacing the stunning Martha O’Driscoll.

The Art of Frankenstein: Mike Mignola

2011-09-16T01:50:00.002-04:00

Brief encounter: Bride and Betrothed are united in a blast of electricity.

Artist Mike Mignola revisits a favorite subject in 1999, having previously illustrated a superb series of Bride of Frankenstein cards for Topp’s Universal Monsters Illustrated collector’s set of ‘94.

Bride and Beau never looked so good.

With a fond Happy Birthday to Mike Mignola!

Absolut Frankenstein

2011-09-13T05:30:00.001-04:00

Launched in 1980, the advertising series for the Swedish-made, French-owned Absolut vodka brand is the world’s longest running ad campaign, yielding over 1500 variations based, simply, on the distinctive shape of its bottle.

The Absolut Shelley Frankenstein bottle and the Absolut Karloff ad were both created by the campaign’s original photographer, Steve Bronstein, who would produce some 200 ads for the campaign. From a pre-computer era, these are actual photographed props.

Among other genre references, an Absolut Wells ad shows an invisible bottle (!), and the Absolut Transylvania ad features a mountaintop castle with a bottle-shaped turret.

Steve Bronstein’s website.
A fabulous gallery of Absolut ads.

Related:
The Beer of Frankenstein

The Covers of Frankenstein : Routledge Edition, 1882

2011-09-08T18:55:00.000-04:00

“His stature… seemed to exceed that of man… I perceived, as the shape came nearer (sight tremendous and abhorred!) that it was the wretch whom I had created.”

Frankenstein, seeking solace and solitude, retires to Chamonix and on to the remote Mer de glace, the Sea of Ice where, sight tremendous and abhorred, the thing he created appears and confronts him. The scene, with The Monster standing a full eight-feet tall as described in the novel, inspired the cover to this 1882 British edition, No. 159 of Routledge and Sons’ Sixpenny Series.

London bookseller George Routledge (1812-1888) began publishing in 1836, eventually founding the company that bears his name in 1851, the year Mary Shelley died. The imprint still operates today as a division of the Swiss publisher Informa.

A rare copy of this edition, from the Jerry Weist collection, is currently on offer through Heritage Auctions.

Related:
Mer de glace

The Posters of Frankenstein : Italian I Was a Teenage Frankenstein

2011-09-05T20:00:00.000-04:00

I’ve blogged previously about the stupendously prolific poster artist Sandro Simeoni (aka Symeoni), here delivering another typically dynamic illustration for I Was a Teenage Frankenstein (1957), released in Italy as The Massacre of Frankenstein.

Simeoni layers the action with a voluptuous blonde up front and background characters engaged in violent action. The ragged, golfball-eyed Teenage Frankenstein swings a club at his overpowered victims against a glowing field of red. Simeoni would use the same funky Frankenstein logo on his poster for The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958).

Image source: The ever-excellent Wrong Side of the Art.

Dial B for Frankenstein

2011-09-02T16:30:00.000-04:00

It’s Halloween in September, and Frankenstein is in the haunted house over at the fabulous Dial B for Blog, self-proclaimed — with tongue in cheeky cheek — as the “World’s Greatest Comic Blogazine”. It's run with palpable enthusiasm by blogger Kirk Kimball — writing as Robby Reed, "the boy who can change into 1,000 superheroes!"

Starting today, and posting daily through, count ‘em, 18 installments, Dial B is running a series entirely devoted to Frankenstein. I was given a sneak peek and I can report that every episode is chockablock with fun and fun facts relating to classic Frankenstein films, and everything from Mary Shelley to Frankenstein comics, Teenage Frankenstein and beyond, all wrapped up with choice images and eye-popping graphics.

When you visit Dial B for Blog, be sure to click the “back issues” link to access a cornucopia of posts mostly devoted to Silver Age comics, with pop culture thrown in. Dig around for a post on Shakespearian comic book heroes, or the one about the Superman episode of I Love Lucy. There’s also a very revealing series on “The Secret Origins of Batman” complete with direct movie and pulp magazine references, and a swipe file. There’s tons of good stuff here but, be warned, you could get stuck for hours, digging through one great post after another.

Remember, there’s a new chapter of The Secret Origins of the Frankenstein Monster posted every day over the next two weeks on Dial B for Blog!

The Defeat of General Frankenstein at Bunker Hill

2011-08-31T01:10:00.000-04:00

Here depicted, General Albertus Frankenstein is felled by Colonial forces at the Battle of Bunker Hill, whereupon his mysterious, hulking personal valet flies into a rage as if a monster unleashed!

Pittsburgh-based artist Matthew Buchholz creates alternate histories, with monsters! Buchholz appropriates and transforms historical art, creating new stories of fun and fright. A giant octopus attacks the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883; Martian saucers ignite the Great Chicago Fire of 1871; A map of Pittsburgh outlines the zombie invasion of 1875; Godzilla marches on Santa Monica in 1912, and Ro-Man is sworn in as President in 1925.

In the illustration shown here, American Revolutionary War artist John Trumbull’s The Death of General Warren at the Battle of Bunker Hill is transformed into a Frankenstein story, its Creature sampled from Hammer Films’ Evil of Frankenstein.

Buchholz' Alternate Histories are available from the artist as very affordable prints through his Etsy Shop.

The alternate history of Frankenstein.
A profile of the artist on Artists On-Air.

The Botanical Frankenstein A Guest Post by Niels K. Petersen

2011-08-29T00:55:00.001-04:00

Guest Blogger Niels K. Petersen reports on a Frankenstein plant, and a botanical homage to Boris Karloff!

Vienna is associated with a great number of historical persons, scientists, artists and authors. I had, however, not expected to bump into Frankenstein and Boris Karloff in, of all places, a flower bed in the Viennese Botanical Gardens.

But to understand how the two of them, or rather their names, ended up in that place, we need to become acquainted with a gentleman called Nikolaus Thomas Host, who was born in Croatia 250 years ago, in 1761.

Host graduated in medicine from the University of Vienna in 1786, and six years later became the personal physician to Emperor Franz I. His passion, however, was botany, and he carried out botanical field work and published books on the subject until his death in 1834. Today he is primarily known for this work. In particular, the well-known genus of lily-like plants Hosta is named after him.

Another European student of medicine and natural philosophy, Mary Shelley’s fictional Victor Frankenstein studied at the university in Ingolstadt in Bavaria. Although he certainly didn’t specialize in botanics, we may imagine young Frankenstein walking around the botanical garden that had been founded in 1685 by Ingolstadt’s medical faculty to collect and grow plants for medicinal purposes.

The Botanical Gardens in Vienna weren’t founded until 1754, when the personal physician to Empress Maria Theresia, Gerard van Swieten, proposed the idea. Emperor Franz I also listened to his physician, when Host proposed that he should found a Garden of the Crownlands next to the Botanical Gardens. Nowadays, this garden has become a part of the Botanical Gardens which the tourist will find next to the Belvedere Palace.

To commemorate the 250th birthday of Host, the Botanical Gardens invited the artist and landscape designer, or so-called “avant-gardener”, Tony Heywood to celebrate Host with a horticultural installation called Hosta Superstar.

The central part of the installation is shaped as a star with blue edges of artifical material. A green house is placed at the edge of the star, and outside the star there are triangular flower beds. The flower beds contain plants that aren’t simply hosta (or hostaceae), but superhosta (superhostaceae): hybrids plants that are partly natural, and partly artificial. One of them is named after CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, and combines a plant with an electrical device that is plugged into a socket!

Apparently, Tony Heywood wants the viewer not only to contemplate the legacy of Host, but also the dichotomies of nature versus artifice, chaos versus order, and art versus science. At the same time, the viewer is forced to consider the differences between the science of Host’s day and that of today.

So it is perhaps not a surprise that another of these hybrid plants is a Aspiratzihosta frankensteinia called Boris Karloff! This particular plant has natural stems and leaves, but plastic tubes protrude from it along with some kind of metallic circuit. The flowers, which are yellow, orange and lilac, are all artificial, probably made of plastic, but inside them are cacti, so the natural and the artificial blend to become a whole, we might say: ‘monster’ of a plant.

This way Heywood, the garden designer, has transcended the borders between nature and artifice, between life and death, and created a new species to bless him as its creator and source, to paraphrase Frankenstein. In terms of so many horror movies, he has probably meddled with things that man is perhaps meant to leave alone, but so has modern science at CERN or at labs, where scientists today can e.g. develop new crops. Where Host collected plants, the modern scientist alters and creates.

So if you happen to be in Vienna, stroll around the Botanical Gardens, take a look at the trees and flowers, and then visit the Superhosta installation to contemplate the border between the natural and the articifial, between science and art, and the development of science.

Niels K. Petersen hails from Køge, Denmark. He holds a degree in physics, works in the field of meteorology and, in his spare time, traces the historical roots of the vampire on his superlative blog, Magia Posthuma.

University of Vienna Botanical Gardens (site in German)

Tony Heywood's Conceptual Gardens website.

Frankenstein Re-release Program Book, Austria 1957

2011-08-26T19:50:00.000-04:00

Inimitable. Nobody ever wore the Frankenstein Monster makeup better than Boris Karloff, here on the cover of a 4-page program book for a 1957 Austrian re-release of the 1931 classic.

The inside spread features a selection of stills and a synopsis for the film. Credits list Colin Clive’s character as “Herbert v.” instead of Henry, and The Monster is tagged as “Das Ungeheuer”!

A curious back cover montage has The Monster and Little Maria playing the flower game in the cemetery where Clive and Dwight Frye dig for spare parts.

Via Heritage Auctions.

James Whale's Frankenstein Turns 80

2011-08-24T01:30:00.000-04:00

“He’s just resting, waiting for a new life to come!”

On this very day, August 24, in 1931, Frankenstein began shooting. Eighty years on, its influence is still operating and its central character, The Monster, is an icon of the twentieth century.

Among other things, in the months to come, right up to December, we’ll be celebrating James Whale’s Frankenstein here on Frankensteinia, the blog it inspired. Speaking of which, we’re celebrating our own little anniversary, as this blog turned four years old on the weekend. It’s been a good year for Frankensteinia, with the wonderful Rondo Award and a still growing readership, which are two things that thoroughly amaze me.

In the weeks to come, as posting promises to increase dramatically, I’ll be making some minor changes to the blog design and corrections or additions to the menu bars. I’ll be making the film label list correctly alphabetical and I’ll rebuild the Mary Shelley/Frankenstein resources list that has somehow disappeared.

With August rapidly fading, Halloween is suddenly in sight and I’m already planning a series of daily posts all through October. I also have some surprises coming up, stuff that will blow your neck bolts right off. Proper announcements coming soon!

Thank You, Jimmy Sangster

2011-08-20T00:45:00.002-04:00

Screenwriter Jimmy Sangster passed away on Friday, August 29. He was 83.

I’ve told the story before, about a faithful summer day in ’61 or ’62 when I fell in love with movies at a neighborhood theatre running a triple bill of The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), Horror of Dracula (1958) and The Mummy (1959). A few weeks later, they played The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958) and I was dazzled again. All these films were made by Hammer Films of England, with the same casts and crews. They all starred Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee, all shared the distinctive production design of Bernard Robinson and the magical photography of Jack Asher. They were all directed with uncommon intelligence by Terence Fisher, and they were all written by Jimmy Sangster. No question, these films were driven by the extraordinary collaboration of all these men, but it was Sangster who provided the raw material, the basic scripts that gave Fisher and company something to chew on.

Sangster was, I think, underappreciated. Sangster’s contributions to the horror genre were monumental, yet he was often tagged as a hack, just batting out his scripts, and he didn’t help the impression with his flippantly titled bio, Do You Want It Good, or Tuesday? It reads like a rough draft and Sangster frustratingly glosses over the Hammer years, dwelling on his later work for American television. Yet, he had done so much more. Over time, having seen waves of horror films, I came to appreciate how profoundly original and perfectly subversive films like, say, The Revenge of Frankenstein or Brides of Dracula (1960) had been.

I often thought of Jimmy Sangster throughout my career. I began as a cartoonist and illustrator, writing comics for myself and others. I remembered and tried to replicate how Sangster had told straightforward stories with something original and new at their core. In the mid-90’s, when the illustration field crashed, I became a mostly full-time writer, contributing countless sketches to TV and fixing movie scripts, and I found myself referencing Sangster again.

A few years ago, I stumbled upon an address for Jimmy Sangster and I sent in the only fan letter I ever wrote. I don’t know if it ever got to him, it was neither acknowledged nor replied to. I’ve come to think of it as a message in a bottle, but I’m glad I wrote it. I did not gush, did not embarrass. I simply said thanks. Jimmy Sangster had taught me that you could take a classic story and tweak it into something new. You could take well-worn characters and make them fresh again. I simply thanked him for entertaining and challenging me with his stories. I said thank you for being a model and lighting my way. Simple as that.

Thank You, Jimmy Sangster.

Tim Lucas has written a wonderful piece about Jimmy Sangster. Read Pass the Marmalade!

A fascinating interview with Jimmy Sangster on Cinema Retro.

The Art of Frankenstein : Alvaro Tapia Hidalgo

2011-08-15T02:45:00.002-04:00

Born in Chile, moved to Spain, and recently operating out of Manchester, England, Alvaro Tapia Hidalgo is a much traveled, multitasking artist who has worked in film, graphic design and illustration. His art references pop culture with interpretations of classic fashions, famous figures of film, music and the arts, and horror icons.

The paint-spattered Bride is just one of the many movie monsters vividly illustrated by Hidalgo.

This monster grouping is, in the artist’s words, “an allegory of fear, represented by a girl’s dream of horror as she is threatened by the shadows of monsters and other creatures of the night. It is a nostalgic vision in which monsters are represented by icons of the classical horror movies…” Present are a Wolfman, Christopher Lee’s blood-drenched Dracula and the classic Boris Monster. Note the bats and a baying wolf in watercolor silhouette.

The film and TV gallery on Hidalgo’s website is crowded with stunning illustrations. Poke around, you’ll find, among many others, Nosferatu, Bela Lugosi’s Dracula, and portraits of Boris Karloff, Vincent Price and Rondo Hatton.

Alvaro Tapia Hidalgo’s website.

A short interview with the artist on VforVlog.

Hidalgo’s Vimeo page, including his remix of the 1962 film, The Brain That Wouldn’t Die.

Remembering Peter Cushing

2011-08-11T21:10:00.001-04:00

Fond thoughts today for Peter Cushing who passed away August 11, in 1994.

In a backstage shot from The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), “Saint Peter” poses with Melvyn Hayes, who played the younger Baron. The two actors would share another credit —playing different parts — with 1960’s The Flesh and the Fiends.

There was another actor who would “play” Peter Cushing, a stand-in, if you will. Of all his roles, and he played such remarkable characters as Baron Frankenstein, Dracula’s Van Helsing, Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Who — you name it — perhaps the best-known and certainly the most widely seen of all Cushing’s interpretations was his turn as the supremely villainous Grand Moff Tarkin, a character so profoundly nasty that he even bosses Darth Vader around, in Star Wars (1977). When George Lucas made Revenge of the Sith (2005), completing the prequel trilogy that led to the events in the original 1977 Star Wars (aka Star Wars: A New Hope), the character of Tarkin was seen very briefly with the newly minted Darth Vader and the cowled Palpatine, all gazing out a spaceship’s picture window at the dreaded Death Star under construction.

Lucas considered the possibility of using outtakes of Cushing from the original film and animating his lips to new dialog, or even constructing a full digital model of Cushing but, in the end, actor Wayne Pygram was called in, his resemblance to Cushing augmented with prosthetic makeup. He is seen very briefly, and from some distance away, but it was nice to have a recognizable Cushing as Tarkin — first name Wilhuff, don’t you know — bookending the series. A Cushing-like Tarkin — killer cheekbones and all — also appears as an animated figure in the Clone Wars television series.

Peter Cushing is not about to be forgotten anytime soon. Later this month, in the seaside town of Whitstable where he resided from 1959 onwards, Cushing will be honored — after a fashion —with the inauguration of a new pub, The Peter Cushing.

The venue is the venerable Oxford building, once — appropriately — a cinema. I wonder if it ever played a Cushing film, or if Peter and his beloved Helen attended showings there. Bingo was introduced in 1962 and took over permanently in 1984. Now, the JD Wetherspoon chain of pubs is renovating and repurposing the building. One assumes that the decor will include Cushing memorabilia, and hopes it’s as tasteful as Cushing would have liked. The Peter Cushing opens August 23.

An exhaustive and entertaining biography, and tons of background info about the character of Grand Moff Tarkin on the Star Wars Wookieepedia.

Photos of the Oxford building in disrepair, prior to its renovation.

The JD Wetherspoon web page and Facebook page for The Peter Cushing pub.

Bit of a controversy over the naming of The Peter Cushing pub, from This is Kent.

Announcing Monsterpalooza Magazine!

2011-08-08T20:30:00.002-04:00

The Monster enjoys a little downtime in the dungeon, catching up on his pumpkin carving and getting a first look at Monsterpalooza Magazine, heading our way just in time for Halloween. The fabulous art is by Jeff Preston.

Otherwise independent, the new magazine shares its name and its love of monsters with Eliot Brodsky’s super convention held every spring in California. Monsterpalooza, the magazine, will be published and edited by Mark Redfield and Michael Heisler. The debut issue can be pre-ordered now through the Monsterpalooza Magazine website, launched today. Check the site for a list of eye-popping contents and contributor profiles. I’m delighted to report that I’ll be doing a piece celebrating the 80th Anniversary of Universal’s Frankenstein!

Monsterpalooza Magazine website and Facebook page.

The Art of Frankenstein : Donald Caron

2011-08-04T02:45:00.000-04:00

The Monster springs to sudden life in Premature Birth, a digital painting by Donald Caron. Who is more surprised, Creator or Creation?

The beautifully detailed art is worth a closeup look...

Caron’s fantasy illustrations have graced film posters, games, advertising and comics. He has produced a number of posters for Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival, including this year’s 15th Anniversary edition depicting the Cheval Noir of Québécois legend, the festival’s prize for Best Film.

As a double treat, Caron also produced a spectacular poster for Fantasia’s gala showing of 1925’s The Phantom of the Opera, screening this coming weekend at the prestigious Place des Arts concert hall. The film will be accompanied by a 30-piece orchestra performing an original score by Gabriel Thibodeau.

Here’s a shot of the Concordia University lobby, home base for Fantasia, dominated by a giant copy of Caron’s Phantom. You can see the poster in all its considerable glory on my companion blog, Monster Crazy.

Donald Caron’s website and gallery.

The Covers of Frankenstein : Famous Monsters of Filmland No. 257

2011-08-01T02:30:00.000-04:00

Here’s makeup wizard Rick Baker’s digital art cover for the new issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland, No. 257, celebrating the first anniversary since the venerable title rebooted.

Baker, who grew up on FM, pays homage with a portrait of Boris Karloff roped to his lab slab against the burning glow of the sulfur pit in 1939’s Son of Frankenstein, done in the vivid portrait style of artist Basil Gogos. Baker adds extra stitches and clamps to The Monster’s face, making this version both referential and original. Universal’s makeup genius, Jack Pierce, whom Baker acknowledges as a vital influence, would have approved.

This cover is one of three alternates. There’s a different newsstand cover, and another one for comic shops. Baker’s Frankenstein cover was offered at the recent San Diego Comicon. There are copies available directly from the publisher, but if you’re interested hurry up, quantities are very limited. The issue is also available as a digital download, with expanded content, including all three covers.

If it’s just the art you want, the Baker illustration is available as a limited edition print.

An interview with Rick Baker about his digital art, on Pixologic.

A FRANKENSTEINIA EXCLUSIVE Being Scared: Jason Zinoman on his book Shock Value

2011-07-27T03:00:00.003-04:00

Carrie White’s hand explodes out of the grave, an appropriately iconic image for the cover of Shock Value, a new book chronicling how a handful of young filmmakers revolutionized the horror film genre in the Seventies.
Investigating a generational shift in the understanding of what scares us, author Jason Zinoman tracks the lives and early careers of, among others, George Romero, John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, Brian De Palma, Dan O’Bannon and Wes Craven, and examines the genesis and impact of such films as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, The Exorcist and Night of the Living Dead.

Frankenstein films are hardly mentioned in the book, if only to note the failing fortunes of Hammer Films, whose polite gothic chills were being superseded by a new breed of brutal, modern horror films.

I asked author Jason Zinoman if he might reflect on his inspiration and motive for writing Shock Value and the work involved. I asked him what he had learned from his research and if he would revisit or expand on the horror genre in the future. His answers are fascinating.
I am delighted to have Jason Zinoman as a Guest Blogger…

When I asked George Romero what part of making his debut hit Night of the Living Dead was he most proud of, he responded instantly: Finishing. Considering the impact the movie had on the world, that answer seemed strange when I first heard it, but no longer. Doing anything for the first time is hard, and while I had tried writing books several times over the past decade, I always hit a dead end. I recall being particularly disappointed after abandoning a biography of Shel Silverstein, which I think would make for a wonderful book. I am convinced that Shock Value was the first book I completed because of the reason I wrote it in the first place. It was a book that I desperately wanted to read.

To be more specific, I wanted to read a book about the great scary movies of this fertile period rooted first and foremost in reporting. I am a critic who has a strong perspective on these films, but in talking to those who made them, I tried to keep an open mind and follow my curiosity. So I did not set out to redress the fact that Dan O’Bannon’s contributions have been overlooked or to explain that the influence of Hitchcock is more complicated than has been presented or argue that Brian De Palma’s movies are more personal than critics have given him credit for. That’s just where my reporting led me. As I talked to more and more actors, writers, directors, producers, publicity people, etc, certain narratives started to emerge and I developed stronger opinions about what made these movies great or scary. But they began with on the ground interviews plus a deep immersion in the journalism about horror movies from the 60s and 70s. I read as many books and articles about the genre as I could, but the material that I really focused on first was what was written at the time. My goal was to tell a story that recreated the business, cultural and intellectual climate that gave rise to Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween.

The biggest challenge and frustration is that some of the key players had died (William Castle) and others were very difficult to get a hold of. Getting in the same room with a few of the main characters was very tough. And then figuring out a way to get them to recall events from long ago that had in some cases hardened into lore could be even harder. There were many road-blocks. Some of the directors I needed to interview three or four times and others I really worked hard to talk to those who knew them when they were young: Family members, girlfriends, classmates, etc.

I probably ended up interviewing half of the USC Film School class that included John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon to get a sense of what they were like. What kept me going throughout the process of working on the book, which took four years of off and on again work, was that I was never at one moment bored of the subject or anything less than excited to work on it. Horror is endlessly fascinating to me, but also personal, since some of my most vivid and pleasing memories are of being scared. This is a book that aims to tell other people’s stories, but it’s rooted in an interest in my own, which is to say: Why do I like these movies so much? What scares are the most potent? And why?

What I learned is that the truth can often be elusive, but you can get closer to it the more perspectives that you have. And while these artists were working in very different circumstances, they shared many of the same pool of ideas and influences. Generally speaking, I think these movies are far more personal than many critics think they are, and while the auteur theory is a helpful prism to analyze horror, it has limitations. In many cases, I found the tensions between two artists or traditions more revealing the intentions of just one. Over the course of writing this book, many of its sources passed away (Forrest Ackerman, Dan O’Bannon, William Fraker), so I was glad to have worked on the book when I did. That said, it’s not the final word on this period of horror at all. The subject is far too complex and rich for that. And I am not done with horror. I love getting scared as much as I ever did and horror is growing larger every day. I can’t wait to see what comes next.

Brooklyn-based, Jason Zinoman is a theatre critic for The New York Times and he has written on various topics for Vanity Fair and The Guardian. Recently, Mr. Zinoman wrote an insightful and highly recommended series called How To Fix Horror for the web magazine Slate.

Shock Value: How a few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood and Invented Modern Horror, published by The Penguin Press, is in bookstores now, and available from Amazon through The Frankenstore.

With Thanks to Trish Collins of TLC Book Tours.

Fantasia Fest Premiere: Monster Brawl

2011-07-23T02:00:00.002-04:00

In an abandoned and cursed cemetery, eight legendary monsters go skull to skull in the squared circle. Who will be left standing as the most powerful monster of all time?

Here’s a trailer, narrated by a gravel-gargling Lance Henricksen, for Monster Brawl, the Canadian-made horror-comedy that gets its world premiere today, July 23, at Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

That’s New Brunswick-born Robert Maillet as “Frankenstein”. A WWF star turned actor, he was the giant Uber Immortal in 300 (2006) and Dredger, the juggernaut who smashes Robert Downey around in Sherlock Holmes (2009). As our favorite monster, he’ll be using his special Monster Chokehold and Ogre Rampage moves against the brain-eating Zombie Man. It’s a rastling match where one combatant will go from Undead to just plain Dead.

The Official Website for Monster Brawl is well done, with lots of info and a nice photo gallery. Early Concept Art shows The Monster in classic flattop and bolts mode.

Report from Fantasia

2011-07-22T15:15:00.001-04:00

Proud to say I’ve got a guest post up at the Love Train for the Tenebrous Empire, covering the Fantasia Film Festival in Montréal and my review of Jean Rollin, The Stray Dreamer.

More from Fantasia coming up here and elsewhere. I’ll keep you posted.

Frankensteined Girl

2011-07-18T19:00:00.000-04:00

Killed in a lab accident, a girl is frankensteined back to life by Victor, her mad scientist boyfriend. Problems ensue.

Here’s a lovely stop-motion short, a fresh take on an oft-told story, directed by David Cowles, Jeremy Galante and Brad Pattullo. It’s set to (Baby) It’s You, written by Danny Shonerd and Allen Havicek, performed by The Boys.

Enjoy!

Baby, It’s a Blog, the official blog and production diary of the film.
Found on Danny Shonerd’s Tumblr.

The Art of Frankenstein : Noah Klocek

2011-07-15T19:00:00.000-04:00

Pursued by agitated villagers, Frankenstein’s Monster is stopped in his tracks by a little girl. She just wants to play with the friendly-looking giant.

Over the last decade, New Jersey-born artist Noah Klocek has devoted his considerable talent to animation, working at ILM, PDI/Dreamworks and, currently, as an Art Director for Pixar. Recent credits include production art for Ratatouille (2007), WALL-E (2008) and Up (2009).

The Frankenstein illustration reflects Klocek’s personal illustration work, with meticulous character design and atmospheric backgrounds rendered with an impressionist’s eye for light and open space drenched in color. Klocek’s blog is a wonder to behold.

Noah Klocek’s website, blog, and an interview with the artist.

Fantasia Festival 2011

2011-07-14T05:00:00.002-04:00

The world class and world-beating Fantasia International Film Festival opens its fifteenth anniversary edition in Montréal today, July 14, and runs an incredible three weeks through August 7.

You can begin to appreciate the scope of this event by scanning the jaw-dropping schedule of features and shorts on view, all wrapped up in panels, live events and parties. Some of the highly anticipated films this year include Finland’s Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale — you’ll never think of Santa Claus the same way ever again — and Norway’s The Troll Hunter —you’ll never think of trolls the same way ever again, either. Director John Landis will present Burke and Hare, whose cast includes Christopher Lee, Jenny Agutter, and Ray Harryhausen! Robin Hardy will also be on hand to present The Wicker Tree, also featuring Sir Christopher, evoking — 38 years later — the spirit of the classic The Wicker Man.

Among the major events of Fantasia 2011 will be the world premiere of The Theatre Bizarre, a Grand Guignol anthology, in the presence of its seven directors (including Tom Savini) and cult star Udo Kier, and the feverishly anticipated official closing film, Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, produced by Guillermo del Toro. This last one, in fact, is already sold out!

The Festival’s penultimate event is a showing of The Phantom of the Opera, with Lon Chaney, quote the Festival program: “Special gala event featuring a pristine 35mm print screened with a live original score composed by Gabriel Thibaudeau and performed by a 30-piece orchestra at the prestigious Théâtre Maisonneuve concert hall at Place des Arts!”

Frankenstein will pop up a few times through the festival. I’ll be reporting later this month on the Canadian-made Monster Brawl, a wrestling horror-comedy where our Monster goes up against a who’s who of horror creatures. Then there's a panel on “Hammer Film Mythology” followed by Terence Fisher’s Frankenstein Created Woman (1967).

An extended tribute honoring Canadian producers John Dunning and André Link will include a rare big-screen showing of Frankenstein 2000/The Vindicator (1986). Other Dunning & Link films shown include cult classics Shivers (1975), Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS (1975) and Les lèvres rouges/Daughters of Darkness (1971).

Too much to see — three weeks is too short a time! — but I’ll definitely get in line to catch the new documentary about director Jean Rollin, Le rêveur égaré (The Lost Dreamer). The screening includes a three-minute promo reel of Throat Sprockets, directed by the formidable Tim Lucas!

Time and sanity permitting, I’ll be reporting back on Fantasia 2011 in the days to come.

Wish you were here!

The Fantasia International Film Festival website carries the full schedule, film info and trailers.

Dick Briefer's Lost Frankenstein

2011-07-11T01:10:00.006-04:00

A rare, unpublished page of Dick Briefer’s Frankenstein comics shows the Merry Monster making a blood bank delivery, unaware of a vampire stowaway. Note the pencils still showing and the squiggles in the margins where the artist brought a freshly ink-dipped brush to a fine point. Click the art to see it large.

Another page from this story appears in Craig Yoe’s book, Dick Briefer’s Frankenstein, showing “Duke Tracer”, Briefer’s take on Chester Gould’s the oft-lampooned straight arrow detective Dick Tracy.

According to Yoe, this story was one of three orphaned episodes, finished but never to appear, after the publisher pulled the plug on the Frankenstein comic book in 1949. When the title rebooted in 1952, it was as a horror comic, bringing Briefer’s Frankenstein series full circle.

Briefer had first introduced his version of Frankenstein as a horror strip in Prize Comics number 7, in 1940, creating the first ongoing horror series in comic book history. Briefer’s gruesome, angular Monster rained panic and mayhem on New York, fighting superheroes, and terrorizing Nazis during WW2. After the war, Briefer surprised his readers with a bold switcharoo, turning the nasty, snarling, split-faced monster into a lovable lunk with his nose up on his forehead.

The sublimely silly, surrealistic, so-called “Merry Monster” version ran concurrently in Prize Comics — until the title folded in February 1948 — and its own comic book, Frankenstein, through 17 issues, from 1945 to February 1949. There followed a three-year hiatus until Frankenstein started back up as a horror series, again, with No.18 in March 1952. It ran 16 issues until its final demise, with No.33 in October 1954, the year Frederic Wertham published Seduction of the Innocents, setting the stage for the notorious Congressional inquiry that would sweep horror comics from the nation’s newsstands.

In the mid-50’s, Briefer drew up some samples for a funny Frankenstein daily strip that prefigured The Munsters, but when syndicates passed on the project, Briefer quit comics and went into commercial illustration.

Dick Briefer always preferred the strip’s funny version, and he was obviously enjoying himself creating wildly inventive and genuinely funny storylines, drawn in a loose and elegant brush style evident in the examples shown here. This is Briefer at his peak, at once exuberant and confident.

Thanks go out to comics writer John Arcudi for generously sharing this wonderful original art with Frankensteinia readers, and Craig Yoe, author of Dick Briefer's Frankenstein, for expert information.

Related:
Previous posts about Dick Briefer.

A Premiere in Perth

2011-07-07T04:10:00.001-04:00

He sought to be a god… using modern science he made a frightful monster from dead bodies… he sewed in an abnormal brain and sleeked down the hair over the purple furrow… When it stirred with life, he became a screaming madman and let it escape, snarling, gibbering and roaring with murderous frenzy upon a peaceful countryside… until the monster that had never felt a woman’s kiss turned upon him.

Frankenstein’s arrival in Western Australia was trumpeted with this striking, verbose and highly original newspaper ad in the April 10, 1932 edition of Perth’s Sunday Times. The mysterious Monster appears dead center as a menacing, knockout silhouette.

By the time Frankenstein made it Down Under, the film was already a blockbuster in America, it’s heady reputation preceding it. On March 1st, 1932, Perth’s West Australian met with Dan Casey, a local businessman newly appointed as Universal’s General Manager in Australia. The article stated that “the present types of film most in demand by the public were witty comedies and mystery thrillers of the eerie type.” Universal, according to Casey, “had always been keen on securing good attractions and well-known works likely to be even more valuable when adapted to the screen. The outstanding Universal film for the year would be “Frankenstein”, an eerie drama, written by the wife of the poet Shelley over a hundred years ago. It would be released about April in Perth. The cast includes Boris Karloff, who had been acclaimed as the successor of Lon Chaney, Colin Clive, Mae Clarke and John Boles.”

In a golden era when films still vied with vaudeville, long before the days of corporate advertising and strict “on message” campaigns that make all advertising exactly the same worldwide, local exhibitors were free to create their own ballyhoo. The studios provided an array of posters and promotional materials that could be creatively mixed and matched. Print ads, as seen here, would sometimes feature original art, locally commissioned.

The Ambassadors’ ad uses a couple of Universal’s well-worn tag lines, Dare You See It? and To have seen “Frankenstein” is to wear a badge of courage, otherwise there’s a large block of original copy of pulp prose selling the concept. Nice to know that Frankenstein carefully combed over the scars where the abnormal brain was “sewed in”! The blurb about The Monster’s lips “that had never felt a woman’s kiss” was another line from Universal’s original campaign.

On the same page as the ad, the paper ran a still of Karloff and Clive, with a caption referring to “The widely-discussed film...”, and a short review, shown here at left. The part about the makeup weighing in at 48 pounds was repeated whenever the film was mentioned in Australia.

For all the enthusiastic hype of its Perth release, Frankenstein’s Australian career would be cut short. On June 12, 1932, the Sunday Times published a short, terse notice…

Frankenstein had enjoyed a terrific showcase in the sumptuous Ambassadors Theatre. Built in 1928, it was modeled after the Riviera Theatre of Omaha, Nebraska, a delirious “atmospheric” designed by the legendary playhouse architect John Eberson. The massive, 1993-seat auditorium was ringed with Greek statues, pergolas and Mediterranean courtyards, painted trees on the back wall and a starlit night sky overhead. It boasted Australia’s largest Wurlitzer organ.

Alas, the wedding cake decorations of the silent era-built theatres fell out of favor and by 1938, a mere decade after it first opened, the Ambassadors was given a thourough streamlining, its statues retired and the Moorish façade reworked in a sleek Moderne style. The organ was shipped to Melbourne in 1946 where, after modifications, it would be featured in several recordings. By the Seventies, the theatres of yesteryear could no longer fill their cavernous auditoriums. A few “grand old ladies” were saved, refurbished and repurposed as concert halls, but the storied Ambassadors Theater of Perth was not so lucky. It was closed and quickly demolished in February 1972.

The Posters of Frankenstein : El Fantasma de Frankenstein

2011-07-04T03:45:00.000-04:00

An Argentinean poster for The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) trades stylish art for the American original’s photo cutouts.

The layout is improved, with The Monster’s red head — gaining a neck electrode that looks like a radio knob — fully dominating. Ygor is made bigger, and the crowded cast of supporting characters is simply done away with.

Ghost was Universal’s fourth Frankenstein film and the first without Boris Karloff in his signature role.

Lon Chaney Jr. stepped in as The Monster, with Bela Lugosi’s Ygor held over from the previous Son of Frankenstein (1939) providing series continuity.

Fore-Edge Frankenstein

2011-06-29T22:35:00.001-04:00

From a description on the Boston Public Library’s The Lost Art of Fore-Edge Book Painting website, “Fore-edge painting is where the page block is fanned and an image applied to the stepped surface. If the page edges are themselves gilded or marbled, this results in the image disappearing when the book is relaxed. When re-fanned, the painting magically re-appears.”

The concept is perhaps best illustrated with this simple, short video.

The art of fore-edge painting, once very fashionable, now mostly forgotten, survives through the amazing work of British artist Martin Frost who has decorated over 3,000 books with fore-edge art and its variations such as two-way, split and all-edges paintings.

The Frankenstein piece, recently valued on eBay at over $1,600, is part of a set painted on three volumes of an 1856 British Poets anthology. The other books feature Burke and Hare, and the Elephant Man.

Interestingly, the art here is entirely inspired by classic Frankenstein films, as opposed to Mary Shelley’s vastly different descriptions. Framed at center, we recognize the movies’ boxhead, bolt-necked Monster. To the left, that’s Colin Clive operating Kenneth Strickfaden’s mad lab equipment as The Monster rests on his elevator slab. At right, Karloff’s Monster toppling the Bishop statue is from the cemetery scene in Bride of Frankenstein.

Martin Frost’s fore-edge art makes for an unusual and unique contribution to Frankenstein art.

Martin Frost’s very comprehensive website.

A Martin Frost workshop on John Hopkins University’s Sheridan Libraries website.

The Boston Public Library’s fascinating On the Edge website, featuring a large gallery of historical examples.

The Posters of Frankenstein : Jacques Faria

2011-06-27T04:55:00.000-04:00

Celebrating the 80^th Anniversary of James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931), here’s a re-write, with upgraded images, of a previous post about “The Selling of Frankenstein”.

The release of James Whale’s Frankenstein in 1931, with its unique lead character, yielded some of the most original and splendid art ever engraved on movie posters. While American artists often toiled uncredited, French distributors hired well-known artists who boldly signed their paintings. Case in point, the posters of Roland Coudon and Jacques Faria, author of the posters shown here.

Faria (1898-1856) was the French-born son of another famous artist, Brazil’s Candido Aragonez de Faria (1849-1911). Both men had prolific careers as illustrators of circus, travel, music hall and film posters. Candido de Faria is, in fact, recognized as one of the pioneer film poster artists, working as early as 1902 on Ferdinand Zecca’s Alcohol and its Victims. Both father and son's art is highly collectible today.

Jacques Faria’s main Frankenstein poster has an elongated Monster front and center, surrounded by lab equipment, with signature straight arms and hands fanned out. Electricity dances between his neck electrodes.

Of special note here is the prominent writing credit given Robert Florey and Garrett Fort (misspelled on the poster). Florey was originally commissioned to write and direct the film, contributing elements such as the brain swap and the windmill finale, only to be shunted aside and deprived of his screenplay credit when James Whale stepped up and took over. Florey protested but it was, arguably, too late to fix the American release print. Universal restored Florey’s deserved credit on foreign releases.

Artist Faria’s other Frankenstein poster recycles elements found in the original American ad campaign. Against a solid red background, the striding Monster with bolted arms punches through the poster, surrounded by pencil sketches of significant scenes: Creator and the Created face off across the width of the poster, a lab scene with The Monster on its elevator slab, and agitated villagers storming the burning windmill.

Jacques Faria’s bracing take on The Monster, standing tall, and Roland Coudon’s uncommon, large-size portrait of Clive and Karloff are among the very best of all the outstanding art created to promote Frankenstein around the world in the early 30s. By the way, check the stunning, singular Swedish poster I blogged earlier.

Hellboy Meets Frankenstein

2011-06-22T04:00:00.005-04:00

Hellboy turns wrestler and goes up against a battling Frankenstein Monster in House of the Living Dead, a graphic novel to coming in November.

If you only know the character from the films, fine as they are, you don’t know Hellboy. Mike Mignola’s comic books are much darker and more complex, evoking Lovecraft, Machen and Poe. Here, eerie Victorian ghost stories, ancient mythology and supernatural folk tales collide with Vernian technology, pulse-pounding pulp sensibilities and b-movie tropes.

The success of Hellboy has spawned a mini-universe of spinoff titles featuring imaginative characters such as the amphibian Abe Sapien and the Nazi-busting Lobster Johnson. Among these, B.P.R.D., about a team or paranormal investigators, is a singularly brilliant horror comic. I urge you to seek out the B.P.R.D. collections plotted by Mignola, with superlative scripts by John Arcudi and outstanding art by Guy Davis.

In recent years, Mignola has been concentrating on writing, reserving his elegant, much-copied but unequaled art for covers and leaving the insides to other artists. Such is the case with Hellboy: House of the Living Dead, with story and cover (above) by Mignola, and the rest entrusted to the great Richard Corben.

Mignola has stated that House of the Living Dead takes its thematic cue from the classic Universal Monster Rallies, House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula, where a parade of monsters take their turn in the spotlight. The story picks up from Hellboy in Mexico (or, A Drunken Blur), a one-shot comic from 2010 by Mignola and Corben in which Hellboy teamed up with a trio of monster-hunting luchadores. This time, Hellboy, in full Santo mode, goes head to head with a patchwork Frankenstein wrestler.

Hellboy: House of the Living Dead, published by Dark Horse, will hit stores on November 9.

An interview with Mike Mignola about House of the Living Dead, on Comic Book Resources.

Publisher’s page for Hellboy: House of the Living Dead.

Publisher’s page for Hellboy in Mexico, featuring sample pages.

Mike Mignola’s website.

Richard Corben’s website.

From the Frankensteinia Archives:Genesis of Frankenstein

2011-06-18T19:15:00.000-04:00

Significant anniversaries this past week: It was 195 years ago that Mary Shelley first conceived of Frankenstein, and it was 80 years ago that Robert Florey filmed a now legendary and famously lost test reel, with Bela Lugosi, for Frankenstein at Universal Studios. Here, from our Archives, is a post celebrating these events.

June 15, 16 and 17 are important dates in Frankenstein history.

In 1816, on the evening of June 16 and late into the night, the very concept of Frankenstein was first seeded.

In the spring and summer of that year, the extreme weather conditions created by the massive Tambora volcano explosion blanketed Europe with violent thunderstorms. Out on Lake Geneva, at Cologny, the vacationing Lord Byron and his guests were confined within the walls of the Villa Diodati. As rain poured and thunder cannonaded across the Jura, Byron, his physician John Polidori, his friend Percy Shelley, Shelley’s companion and wife to be Mary Godwin, and Mary’s stepsister Claire Clairmont gathered around the fireplace and entertained themselves as best they could.

On that appropriately stormy night of June 16, Byron read aloud from a book called Fantasmagoriana, a 1812 French translation of a German collection of ghost tales. Influenced by the stories — as described in the book’s subtitle, of specters, revenants and phantoms — Byron suggested a game. “We will each write a ghost story”, he said.

As Mary wrote in the 1831 introduction to Frankenstein, “I busied myself to think of a story, a story to rival those which had excited us to this task.” It would take a few days before inspiration struck, as Mary claimed, in a waking dream. The first reference to Frankenstein would appear in her diary on June 24.

One hundred and fifteen years later, in 1931, writer-director Robert Florey and a skeleton crew assembled on the leftover sets from Dracula, the stairs cleaned of their cobwebs and the parquet redressed with lab equipment, to shoot the legendary — and lost — Frankenstein test reel, with Bela Lugosi as The Monster. Rehearsals were held on June 15, filming proceeded on the 16th and 17th. Though accounts differ wildly as to Lugosi’s appearance in makeup, the test, reportedly twenty minutes long, was the talk of Universal. Within ten days, James Whale had exercised his power at the studio and taken over from Florey, and the project was on its way.

Frankenstein was inspired by a book of quaint ghost stories and a parlor game for bored and excitable intellectuals. On the very same day, one hundred and fifteen years later, Robert Florey directed the screen test for the first talking Frankenstein picture. The first event was the genesis for Frankenstein. The second one made Frankenstein an icon.

Fantasmagoria is available again, complete and in a new English translation.

The Covers of Frankenstein : Hebdo September 1935

2011-06-15T02:15:00.000-04:00

The Bride in proud profile on the cover of the Belgian Hebdo (“Weekly”) for Friday the 13^th (!) of September, 1935. The orange and black duotone gives The Bride a plausible skin tone, lipstick and a nasty red scar.

The Bride was previously featured on the cover of Universal Weekly in March of ’35 (see here), but that was a studio publication meant exclusively for exhibitors. This wonderful find, courtesy of artist, collector and classic horror film expert George Chastain, appears to be the first mass-market magazine cover for Frankenstein’s Fiancée.

The long-running Hebdo featured movie news and reviews, entertainment, fashion and sports information, radio listings, as well as short stories and Otto Soglow’s Little King comic strip. This issue, running some 80 pages, carried a spread on Greta Garbo, photos of Clark Gable, Joan Crawford and opera star Grace Moore, a Science against Crime feature, an ad for Charlie Chan in Paris and short reviews of then current films Chu Chin Chow and Murder on a Honeymoon.

Here, the release of La Fiancée de Frankenstein is singled out as the week’s main event, with no corresponding feature inside. All the info is right there on the cover: A Universal film with Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester, playing at La Scala in Brussels. This electrifying image of a beautiful, swan-necked Bride, the world’s most unusual movie star, must have jumped off the newsstands. No extra ballyhoo was needed.

I previously posted a vintage newspaper ad for La fiancée at La Scala here.

With many thanks to George Chastain who wanted to share this rare, unique cover with Frankensteinia readers.

Monster Money

2011-06-12T01:30:00.000-04:00

Artist James Charles uses American currency, five and ten dollar bills, as his canvas, transforming their engraved likenesses to that of celebrities and famous fictional characters. There’s Iggy Pop, Jimi Hendrix and Joey Ramone alongside Ronald MacDonald, Frida Kahlo and a melting Walt Disney.

The collection includes a fair share of monsters, from The Wolf Man, the Creature from the Black Lagoon and the Phantom of the Opera to Pinhead, Alien’s face-hugger and The Terminator.

Here, Alexander Hamilton turns into The Bride and Abe Lincoln makes a fine Frankenstein.

James Charles’ altered currency was recently on display at The Shooting Gallery in San Francisco and there’s a large selection of images on their website.

The Posters of Frankenstein : The Mechanical by Dave Plunkert

2011-06-08T02:30:00.000-04:00

A superb poster by Dave Plunkert for The Mechanical, Michael McGuigan’s play that introduces Mary Shelley and her fictional Monster into the extraordinary true-life tale of The Turk, a chess-playing automaton that thrilled and bamboozled observers in Europe and North America from the late 1700s until its fiery destruction in the mid 1800s. The Turk’s dumbfounded opponents included kings and assorted Grand Dukes, as well as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin. It inspired Edgar Poe into writing a famous essay.

Inevitably, this turbaned automaton would be exposed as an elaborate hoax. McGuigan’s intriguing play recruits Frankenstein’s Monster as the Turks’ operator, hiding inside its magician’s cabinet pedestal.

Dave Plunkert is a prolific illustrator and fine artist working out of Baltimore where, as it happens, the original Turk was displayed in the 1820s and a copycat device, the Walker Chess-Player, was assembled. Plunkert’s brilliant Dadaist collages have attracted top magazines such as Time, Playboy, Esquire and Rolling Stone, and an A-list of clients that include MTV and Nike.

Plunkert’s poster of The Mechanical was created for the Baltimore Theatre Project and the Bond Street Theatre where the play premiered in 2009.

Dave Plunkert’s website, blog, and Print Store.

The Art of Frankenstein : Fernando Vicente

2011-06-06T04:20:00.000-04:00

A wonderful likeness of Karloff’s Monster dominates this montage illustration of famous characters grouped on the March 2011 cover of the Spanish literary magazine Mercurio.

Artist Fernando Vicente is a superlative illustrator of books, CD covers and magazines. His books for children and young adults includes illustrations for J.M.Barrie’s Peter Pan. For adults, he has published a collection of his elegant pinup art. As a painter, he is perhaps best known his disquieting paintings of characters with their skin and muscle peeled back to reveal the precise anatomical features beneath.

Feast your eyes on Vicente’s art on his generous website. Navigation is easy even if you don’t speak Spanish. I also recommend his excellent blogs, devoted to different aspects of his art. The main blog, with links to the others, is here.

The March issue of Mercurio is available as a free PDF download.