iPhrankenstein

Here’s a neat Frankenstein sketch, perhaps the first ever done on an iPhone.

Comic book writer/artist Otis Frampton painted this using a Pogo stylus and an application called Brushes.

See more of Otis’ delirious art on his blog, and check out the links to all of his activities.

Thanks to writer Michael May for spotting this. Michael's spirited Adventureblog often features our favorite monster.

Discover more Frankenstein art here on Frankensteinia using the Art & Illustration label.

The Covers of Frankenstein : Mad No. 89

A classic Mad cover from 1964 spoofs the monster mania of its time with the Frankenstein Monster assembling an Alfred E. Neuman model kit.

Artist Norman Mingo was first hired on in 1956 to provide painted covers, a necessary style upgrade after the title had converted from comic book to magazine format. Mingo, then 60 years old, with a long and illustrious career already behind him, would go on to produce a lion’s share of magazine and paperback covers for Mad until 1979. He passed away in 1980.

Over the last decade, the venerable magazine has undergone profound and perhaps inevitable changes, notably the introduction of color content and — gasp! — advertising. Now comes the news that with issue #500, this coming April, Mad will shrink from a monthly to a quarterly schedule. Blame so-so sales complicated by a slumping economy and the slow-motion collapse of print media. What, me worry, indeed.

Mad official website.

Mad cover gallery.

Norman Mingo on American Art Archives.

Reclining Frankenstein

Boris Karloff in burn makeup and distressed costume, and Colin Clive in dapper tweeds take five on the set of Bride of Frankenstein (1935). This and other backstage shots show the two British-born actors kicking back, quietly sharing a smoke, as opposed to the violent, often bruising opposition of their onscreen personae. Among other bumps and bruises, Karloff reportedly injured his back lugging Clive around in the 1931 Frankenstein.

Here, we get another good look at the Frankenstein chair (also used on Son of Frankenstein), with upholstered seat and arm rests, allowing an exhausted Monster to stretch out between takes.

Related
Dr. Frankenstein: Colin Clive

Dick Briefer's Frankenstein Gets Clobbered

Here’s another vintage comic book treat, this one an unusual Dick Briefer Frankenstein story that awkwardly combines three different styles: Horror, superhero comics, and the so-called ‘bigfoot’ school of cartooning.

First introduced in 1940, Briefer’s celebrated Frankenstein character would, over the years, switch back and forth between gruesome horror and Munsters-like humor. In this incarnation, circa 1942, the early, monstrous Frankenstein is beset by an inclusive who’s who of Prize Comics heroes, bringing together — jarringly — the righteous and the ridiculous, the grim Green Lama and his costume hero kin working in tandem with the comedic General and the Corporal.

The “evil wicked” Monster seems to be minding his own business, happy in his forest retreat, when he’s jumped by the assembled do-gooders and left comatose in the final panel. Dialogue is jingoistically typical of the era, with Frankenstein said to be “the size of twenty japs”. The issue, No. 25, had the patriotic duo Yank and Doodle on the cover, punching out Nazis attempting a homeland invasion by U-Boat.

The energetic strip, eight color pages, is a good, head-scratching read. It is reproduced in its entirety — and properly skewered — on Brian Hughes’s excellent and very entertaining blog, Again With the Comics.

Related
Dick Briefer’s Frankenstein

Son of Frankenstein Comic Book Adaptation

Here’s a real treat, courtesy of the excellent Golden Age Comic Book Stories blog: A full reprint of the legendary comic book adaptation of Son of Frankenstein, then currently in release, from Movie Comics No. 1, April 1939.

The so-called "fumetti" (actually the Italian word for “comics”, but used in America to denote photo-based comics) compresses the feature film into eight brisk pages.

The layout uses a mix of film stills and publicity shots that were chopped up, retouched and rearranged without too much concern for perspective or scale. The image reproduced here at the top uses several elements, including with a crude, out of scale cutout of The Monster — originally standing but tilted into recline — and a shot of Basil Rathbone repurposed and retouched, painting out the flaming torch he was holding. The background is suggested with a few drawn-in lines. The whole comic is given a flat four-color treatment, and the final panels of The Monster knocked into the sulfur pit are illustrated with small drawings.

Published by National Periodicals (today’s DC Comics), Movie Comics was a novelty title that promised “a full movie show for 10 cents”, including shorts, serials and newsreels, all in “natural colors”. Though the cover was given over to Gunga Din, this first ever comic book adaptation of a Frankenstein film is what made this issue a highly sought collectable.

See the entire story on Golden Age Comic Book Stories, and stay and have a look around while you’re there. It’s a fabulous picture blog.

Related
Frankenstein y el hombre lobo
The Monster Lives! The Dell Comics Frankenstein

Dr. Frankenstein : Colin Clive

Colin Clive was born January 20, 1900, in St-Malo, France. A direct descendant of the colonial hero Clive of India, young Colin’s aspirations for a military career of his own were shattered when, thrown from a horse, he broke his leg. The sensitive Clive turned to theater and unlikely stardom in 1929 when he was chosen by director James Whale to replace Laurence Olivier, no less, in the difficult part of Stanhope, the tragic hero of Journey’s End.

Rehearsals did not go well, the agitated Clive struggling hopelessly until playwright R.C.Sherriff suggested that a shot of whiskey, administered before he climbed onstage, might calm his nerves. It worked. On opening day, despite having been knocked down by a bus on The Strand (too much whiskey?), the actor showed up at the Savoy Theater unharmed to deliver a brilliant, career-making performance. The success of Journey’s End carried Clive, Whale and Sherriff to Hollywood where they committed the play to film in 1930. A year later, Whale would call on Clive to star in Frankenstein.

The plum part of the scientist, the title role, had been coveted by Bela Lugosi, fresh off his hit Dracula. The studio later suggested Leslie Howard for the part, but Whale insisted on using Clive. “It is a grand part and I think it will fit you as well as Stanhope” Whale wrote his friend. “I see Frankenstein as an intensely sane person, at times rather fanatical and in one or two scenes a little hysterical… Frankenstein’s nerves are all to pieces… I know you are absolutely right for it.”

Whale’s description fits Clive’s performance perfectly. Clive’s Frankenstein is an edgy, hand-wringing wreck on an emotional roller coaster, given flights of delirious exultation and bouts of paralyzing doubt and despair. A moment’s triumph, when the thing he assembled comes to life, quickly turns into a tragedy that Clive’s Frankenstein is unable to deal with. The Monster’s fate is left to his mentor, Dr. Waldman, while Frankenstein blithely attends to his wedding plans as if nothing had happened. When confronting his Monster on a dreary mountainside, Frankenstein is easily bested and carried away on the giant’s back like a sack of potatoes. Ultimately, The Monster’s prisoner in an old windmill, Frankenstein musters a desperate escape attempt, only to be captured, mauled and thrown off a balcony to his apparent death as flames consume the mill and The Monster.

As soon as the film wrapped, in early October of 1931, Clive headed cross country and on back to England, stopping for an interview with The New York Times, saying, “I think Frankenstein has an intense dramatic quality that continues throughout the play and culminates when I, in the title role, am killed by the Monster that I have created. This is a rather unusual ending for a talking picture, as the producers generally prefer that the play end happily with the hero and heroine clasped in each other’s arms.”

As it happened, the producers did prevail after all. A new ending was shot with the elderly Baron toasting his miraculously surviving son, seen in the distance through a doorway, recuperating in bed, ministered by his faithful Elizabeth. Unidentified actors stood in for Clive and Mae Clarke. By the time Frankenstein opened, Clive was back in England. In fact, on the very day Frankenstein went into wide release, December 6, the apparently accident-prone Clive fell off a horse, breaking his hip.

Clive, director Whale and writer Sherriff would assemble again in 1934 to shoot One More River in which Clive, as a villain, first appears in a series of staccato close-ups, like Karloff’s Monster introduction in Frankenstein. A year earlier, when he was preparing to shoot The Invisible Man, Whale had called on Clive for a favor. Originally cast in the title role, Boris Karloff was no longer available, but Universal was unreceptive to Whale’s choice of the unknown Claude Rains. Whale submitted Clive’s name for the part, which was fine with the studio, but Clive — conspiring with Whale — refused the part, clearing the way for Rains.

In 1935, James Whale called Clive back to Universal for the long-gestated sequel to Frankenstein.

Bride of Frankenstein picks up where the original ended, the ailing Frankenstein carried from the smoking ruins of the windmill to his castle home and the care of his doting Elizabeth, now played by Valerie Hobson. Again, Clive's Frankenstein is an enervated, sickly, distracted man, forced to create a mate for The Monster, mercilessly exploited by the nefarious Dr. Pretorius (the excellent Ernest Thesiger) and even bossed around by The Monster. In the end, against all hope, he is saved by The Monster, allowed to escape the exploding laboratory with his loved one.

Also in 1935, Clive played the haunted Stephen Orlac, a man possessed with the grafted hands of a murderer, in Karl Freund’s Mad Love.

Clive enjoyed working in Hollywood. He would play opposite Katharine Hepburn in Christopher Strong, Virginia Bruce in Jane Eyre, and he appeared in Clive of India, though the part of his ancestor went to Ronald Coleman. His fellow actors remembered him as a kind and clever man, but also taciturn and melancholy. “He was the handsomest man I ever saw” Mae Clarke recalled, “and also the saddest.”

David Manners, who appeared with Clive in Journey’s End said, “His face was a tragic mask… He was a fantastically sensitive actor, and, as with many great actors, this sensitivity bred addiction to drugs and alcohol in order to cope with the very insensitive world around them.”

By the mid thirties, Clive was deeply addicted to alcohol. Just as he had relied on the fortitude of whiskey to overcome stage fright, he came to use alcohol to combat his inner demons. In 1937, Clive contracted pneumonia. His condition complicated by alcoholism, he suffered a rapid and alarming loss of weight and he died on June 25. He was only 37 years old.

His acting career covered a bare eight years from his first triumph on the London stage to his untimely death. Except for the two Frankenstein pictures, Colin Clive’s films are rarely if ever shown anymore and he might have been forgotten today, as so many of his contemporaries are.

But Colin Clive survives, his troubled Frankenstein providing a glimpse, perhaps, into the tragic life of the man who played him. Today, Colin Clive is forever busying about in his lab coat, harnessing thunder and striking dangerous animation into The Monster he has created, and uttering one of the most famous lines in cinema history…

It’s alive!

Related
Frankenstein BeginsFrankenstein WrapsFrankenstein PremieresOff With The Kites!

Frankenparts

It’s all here in glorious black and white: The desolate landscape, the ominous skies, the isolated windmill, the fleeing Monster — topped off with a comic twist — and delivered in one minute, flat.

Frankenparts is a 3D animated student film made at the Vancouver Film School in 2006 by Peter Crafts. The short was a finalist in the 2008 Aniboom Awards.

Enjoy!

 

Frankenparts on Aniboom.

Peter Crafts’ website.

Son of Frankenstein Turns 70

Boris Karloff poses with visitors — an inscription on the back of the photo identifies them as “Family Friends, The Browns” — on the set of Son of Frankenstein, Karloff’s third and final appearance as The Monster. The film was released 70 years ago this week, on January 13, 1939.

The photograph, which surfaced recently at a Heritage auction, gives us a good look at the special reclining chair used by Karloff. With a short seat, footboard and arms rests, the device allowed the actor to relax between takes despite his stiff, bulky costume.

Note the huge Monster boots and the unusual pants laced up the sides. Missing here is the caveman-style sheep’s wool vest that Karloff wore in this picture. He was no doubt glad to be temporarily rid of what he called “furs and muck”.

The Dart Prize

Ray Young of the superlative Flickhead has honored this blog with a Dardos Award, described as follows:

The Dardos Awards is given for recognition of cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values transmitted in the form of creative and original writing. These stamps were created with the intention of promoting fraternization between bloggers, a way of showing affection and gratitude for work that adds value to the Web.



The Rules are:
1) Accept the award by posting it on your blog along with the name of the person that has granted the award and a link to his/her blog.
2) Pass the award to another five blogs that are worthy of this acknowledgement, remembering to contact each of them to let them know they have been selected for this award.

I am delighted to pass this on to a quintet of blogs I admire…

John McElwee’s Greenbriar Picture Shows is a rich source of film lore illustrated with rare stills, posters and vintage movie ballyhoo. Pure pleasure.

Kate, at Love Train for the Tenebrous Empire, pans for gold among what the snooty would sniff at as the dregs of genre films. Enlightening and hilarious.

David Cairns is one of the most entertaining film writers to be found on the web. Shadowplay manages to be both giddily in love with movies and perfectly sensible in its opinions.

Tim Lucas’ formula is simple: Start with a spectacular knowledge of world cinema, back it up with impeccable research and then write about it with genuine passion. His observations are acute and revelatory. Video WatchBlog is, in a word, essential.

Jeff Cohen’s Vitaphone Varieties is devoted to the rescue, preservation and restoration of early sound films. You have to wait a while, sometimes a whole month between posts, but then you are rewarded with what amounts to a new chapter in a book you can’t put down. Captivating stories about early filmmakers and now forgotten musical stars, complete with fabulous vintage music clips.

And those are my choices, made, as the Dardos credo states, with affection and gratitude.

The Covers of Frankenstein: Famous Monsters of Filmland No.94

Spanish painter Sanjulian (Manuel Pérez Clemente) was recruited by publisher James Warren in 1970. The Barcelona-based artist would produce some of the most memorable and atmospheric covers ever to grace the Warren magazines, with a special emphasis on Vampirella titles. Sanjulian’s oils would also appear on paperback covers, including Harlequin romances, and a celebrated run on Ace Book’s Conan series.

Sanjulian contributed an intense, monochromatic portrait of Karloff’s Frankenstein for Famous Monsters of Filmland number 94 (1972). The image was later reused, cropped and spliced in with other painted images, as the cover of FM number 188, in 1983. 

 

Sanjulian’s official website.

A collection of Sanjulian’s spectacular art, Sanjulian: Master Visionary. 

The Yellow Leaf

Actors portray Claire Clairmont, John Polidori, Lord Byron, Mary Shelley and Percy Bysshe Shelley in The Yellow Leaf, a play that just now premiered, on January 9, at the Pioneer Theatre in Salt Lake City.

The extraordinary gathering at Villa Diodati in the stormy summer of 1816 — an event that resonates to this day — has inspired numerous plays and films. This new interpretation by playwright Charles Morey had been percolating in his mind for some 20 years. “I find these people absolutely fascinating,” Morey says. "Lord Byron, at that time, was certainly one of the most famous people in the entire world, perhaps only behind Napoleon. Here he is embroiled in all these sexual scandals and these intertwined relationships. Then you add the incredible works of Gothic fiction and poetry that came out of this very short time, and there's something very juicy there."

Director Geoffrey Sherman enthuses, "That's one of the divine forces — how and why did this young woman come up with the myth that is still around. It's a play about the creation of great art in the most unlikely circumstances.”

Interesting connections: Director Sherman co-wrote and directed The Doom of Frankenstein, a stage version of Mary’s novel, in 1984. The actress who plays Mary Shelley, Ellen Adair, once wrote a thesis on Shelley and The Romantics.

Besides Mary’s Frankenstein, the legendary writing contest at Villa Diodati also yielded Polidori’s The Vampyre, a precursor of Dracula. Fittingly, one of writer Charles Morey’s earlier plays was a straight adaptation of the Bram Stoker novel and, later on, he wrote an original play called Laughing Stock that dealt with a theater troupe’s uproarious attempt at mounting their version of Dracula.

The Yellow Leaf runs until January 24.

The Pioneer Theatre Company’s website features a video clip from the production and several pages of information including photos and the Playwright’s notes.

Of special interest: An excellent one hour University of Utah Public Radio program, Radio West, devoted to the play, featuring author Morey, director Sherman, and cast members who perform excerpts.

The Salt Lake Tribune carries an article entitled “Affairs, Egos and the birth of a monster”, featuring a quote from this very blog.

An article in Salt Lake’s Deseret News, and coverage in Playbill.

Related
Genesis of Frankenstein
Frankenstein’s Volcano
Villa Diodati

Covers of Frankenstein : Tales from the Harbor, Volume Four

This one should be painted on velvet!

The classic monsters put on their best poker faces in Calgary-based illustrator and comic book artist Fiona Staples’ wraparound cover for the anthology title Tales From The Harbor, Volume Four.

 

Fiona Staples’ website and blog showing the illustration in rough and finished stages.

Happy Harbor Comics website.