“You can never have too many Frankenstein pictures” says artist Kevin Nowlan on his blog, a treasury of gorgeous illustrations.
The pencil and gouache Frankenstein here is a work in progress. Though several steps away from a final, fully realized portrait, the classic Monster’s unsettling presence has already been captured, mute and solemn, with a flinty, dead-eye stare.
Kevin Nowlan’s blog, his website, and a gallery of his comic book art.
Related:
Kevin Nowlan’s Frankenstein Meets Vampirella
I love old behind-the-scenes photos, like this glorious shot of the Frankenstein laboratory set, taken in the sweltering summer of 1931. DVDs today always seem to come with a “making of” documentary, but there are very few backstage photos from bygone films, and a mere handful from this particular title, one of the most important and influential films ever made. These rare photos are silent witnesses, privileged glimpses into a distant, black and white past, laden with information and tantalizing clues.
A rickety ramp leads to a raised platform, and down again to the heart of the tall set, the tower laboratory where The Monster will ride up to the stormy sky on an elevator slab. At front, left, someone is standing in the dark. A technician, perhaps, or director James Whale? In the light beyond, a stagehand crouches under the tubular microphone hanging from its extension arm. To the right of the picture, wooden scaffolding, freestanding lights, and a pile of sandbags.
Who is the man standing at center? He looks like the camera operator seen in another backstage shot. Could it be cinematographer Arthur Edeson? High above, another man stands amidst overhead lights on an elaborate rig, the camera boom used extensively by Whale. This, probably, is an operator filming the lab from on high, though one is reminded of a quote from Boris Karloff, “In Frankenstein, during the laboratory scenes, I was never as nervous as when I lay half naked, strapped to the operating table. Above me, I could see the special effects men shaking the white-hot scissor-like carbons that simulated the lightning. I prayed very hard that no one got butterfingers.”
At center, the image is blown out by the intense lights focused on the set crowded with Kenneth Strickfaden’s electrical gizmos. Someone is glimpsed there, perhaps Strickfaden adjusting his equipment, or Frankenstein himself, Colin Clive, dialing up the life-giving rays.
The set photo comes from the wonderful Universal Monster Legacy site, launched to promote the new version of The Wolfman, coming out in February. The navigation is sometimes balky, and fans will note a couple of minor mistakes — Lon Chaney’s 1923 Hunchback of Notre Dame is illustrated with a poster from the 1939 RKO version with Charles Laughton, and a picture of Boris Karloff in his 1935 Bride of Frankenstein burn makeup is mixed in with the 1931 Frankenstein stills — but overall it’s a very handsome site with film clips and some truly eye-popping photo galleries. Most definitely worth a visit.
The Universal Monster Legacy site.
An interview with Boris Karloff.
James Arness cuts a distinctly Frankensteinian figure as The Thing, in 1951. There’s even a bit of a diagonal fold across the forehead, reminiscent of The Monster’s scar.
As the Fifties dawned, Hollywood embraced science fiction. Space aliens and atom age monsters — mutants, giant insects and one very famous radioactive dinosaur — took their place alongside the classic movie monsters of gothic origin.
The Thing (from Another World) was inspired by a 1938 novella, Who Goes There?, by John W. Campbell, Jr. (writing as Don A. Stuart). The paranoid story of a shape-shifting alien who assumes the appearance of his victims was considerably simplified by screenwriter Charles Lederer (with an assist by an uncredited Ben Hecht). The science fiction trappings fall away after the creature is loose, the film playing out as an “Old Dark House” thriller, substituting a remote arctic station socked in by a blizzard for the classic haunted mansion, and featuring an bullet-proof vegetable-man as stand-in for the usual killer, ghost or gorilla menace. The same story device was used for It! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958), and Alien (1979), with its space monsters stalking victims trapped in a spaceship.
A reluctant James Arness, all of 6’6”, was cast as the title creature. He would become a household name in America as the star of the long-running Gunsmoke TV series. Shots here show Arness, sans makeup, testing his torn spacesuit fitted for the smoke effect that accompanied the monster’s climactic electrocution. You can see more photos of the test run on the remarkable Life magazine online archives. Note that the date given, March 1951, if correct, means that this was an absolute last minute job. The film premiered on April 6 and went into release on April 29.
The Thing’s Frankenstein profile was no coincidence. Makeup supervisor Lee Greenway worked for months on the project, submitting numerous sketches and sculpts — 18 different versions in all — to producer Howard Hawks. Eventually, Greenway would put makeup on Arness and the two men would drive over to Hawks’ home to show it off. As the shooting date approached, Hawks, frustrated, told Greenway to “make him look like Frankenstein!”
What makes Hawks’ instructions particularly interesting is that earlier on, in the film’s development stage, Hawks had sent memos to RKO boss Howard Hughes assuring him that The Thing would be a modern horror story and its monster nothing like “the usual Frankenstein”. Hawks’ change of heart suggests a realization that the general profile of the iconic Jack Pierce-designed Frankenstein Monster, 20 years after it was first seen, was still a truly scary and potent symbol of alienness. Many critics, including the New York Times reviewer, alluded to Frankenstein in their assessment of the film.
The Thing from Another World was a worldwide box-office hit and a hugely influential film. Among its admirers, director John Carpenter referenced the film in Halloween (1978) and went on to shoot his own extraordinary version, The Thing (1982), hewing very close to the original Campbell story, with creature shape-shifting made possible by the elaborate and stunning special effect makeups devised by Rob Bottin.
Life Magazine online archives: The Thing.
References from Howard Hawks: Hollywood's Grey Fox (Grove Press, 1997) by Todd McCarthy.
Who Goes There? print and audio versions available from Rocket Ride Books.
Young Frankenstein celebrates its 35th anniversary today. The film was first released in North America on December 15, 1974.
Much like that other Frankenstein comedy, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), which became a literal template for monster movie comedies, Young Frankenstein was such an inspired spoof — and a worldwide box-office hit — that it triggered a slew of decidedly minor copies including at least one soft-core version, Frankenstein All’Italiana (1975), and an outright scene-for-scene clone, the notorious “Turkish Young Frankenstein”, Sevimli Frankestayn (1975).
Assembled in a color shot from the set of the black and white film: Director Mel Brooks, Peter Boyle in blue/green makeup, Marty ‘Eye-Gor’ Feldman, Gene Wilder (who wrote the film), and Terry ‘Inga” Garr.
Brooks adapted Young Frankenstein as a Broadway musical in 2007. The go-for-broke production played 14 tumultuous months, shutting down on January 4, 2009, its expensive trappings at odds with a collapsing economy. After some retooling, the show is now touring with its highly acclaimed original leads, Roger Bart as Dr. Fronkensteen, and Shuler Hensley as the tap-dancing Monster.
Young Frankenstein Musical website.
Related:
Posts about the Young Frankenstein Musical
Don’t let the name fool you, Bob Canada hails from Evansville, Indiana. He is a cartoonist and graphic designer who keeps a fine blog where he posts his hilarious illustrations and holds forth, with tongue somewhere in cheek, on pop culture.
Bob’s “all time favorite monster” is Frankenstein’s “because,” he says, “deep down he's not really a monster, he's just misunderstood and wants to be loved and accepted like everyone else. Or maybe it's because he's got green skin and a flat head and throws little girls into the lake.”
Recently, Bob challenged himself to draw 100 different versions of The Monster, and there’s a handful of those already posted. They include a diapered baby Frankenstein, a Fred Flintstone Frankenstein, and a fine, properly muscle-bound Teenage Frankenstein. I got a kick out of the caricatured Christopher Lee from Curse of Frankenstein, complete with Moe haircut, dead eye, pea coat and dangling chains. The bloody background burst suits the character, star of the first Frankenstein movie made in color and originally notorious for its gore.
I’ll be keeping an eye on Bob Canada’s blog for all the Frankenstein goodness to come.
Bob Canada’s blog, posts under the 100 Frankensteins Project tag, and a large Flickr set.
Here are two variants in an elegant series of posters for Yoshihiro Nishimura‘s Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl (2009).
Poster above features a highly romanticized image of the two protagonists. The second poster focuses on Shôjo Furanken (Frankenstein Girl) in Geisha costume, a companion piece to the film’s original poster that showcased Vampire Girl in her schoolgirl outfit, also with the Tokyo Tower as background.
Related:
Original poster, and Alternate poster for Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl
I’m still pulling myself together after hosting the Blogathon last week. It was a great and thoroughly overwhelming experience. When you’re in it, you’re sort of running on adrenaline, just getting all the links posted and trying not to mess up, and when you’re done, you’re happy and you’re fried.
I tried writing a wrap-up post this week, my own thoughts about Boris Karloff, but it wasn’t happening. I realized that so many others had said it so much better than I ever could. Go click some links, see for yourself. There’s tons of info posted, new ways of looking at Karloff’s pictures, fresh perspectives on an incredible career, and sincere, touching tributes.
Here are a few stats, for the record…
There were 105 participating blogs, many of them making multiple posts, a few contributing on a daily basis. We had bloggers participating from France, Denmark, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Japan, Spain, Canada and the USA.
In total, I posted 292 links. I’m still finding the odd blog who either contributed without telling me, or promoted the Blogathon with a few lines of original text and a photo, so there are actually a few more Karloff-related posts out there. It’s impossible to actually tabulate everything, but with over 100 bloggers and certainly more than 300 individual posts, I think we can pronounce the Boris Karloff Blogathon a success!
Reader-wise, this blog recorded well over 8,000 hits between November 23 and 29. My hits are sky high this week as visitors are still discovering the Blogathon or returning to catch up with everything. There’s so much to read!
As to content, we had posts about Karloff in movies, radio, TV, recording and advertising work. A number of bloggers posted original art inspired by Boris. Sorting it out, I find that a lot of fans, it turns out, were first introduced to Boris through the Gold Key comic books*. We had the most posts of any category about those, 9 in all.
The films that got the most coverage were The Mummy (1932), and Targets (1968), with 7 posts apiece, and the Val Lewton trio from 1945-46 combined for 13 posts: 5 posts for The Body Snatcher and 4 each for Isle of the Dead, and Bedlam. The Mr. Wong series also got a lot of attention, mostly due to the films being freely available on the net. In all, fifty-eight films were reviewed.
I knew going in that Boris Karloff was a beloved actor. Through the Blogathon, I learned that the admiration ran deep. Karloff was an intensely charismatic actor who earned himself lifelong fans. Digging through the Blogathon posts, I found an actor with the chops to impress the toughest critics. I read about an artist who was versatile and enormously talented in all his endeavors. I saw how he charmed us with humor, generosity and genuine humility. I’m glad we paid homage to this extraordinary man.
The only thing left for me to say is Thank You to all the participating bloggers and Thank You to everyone who visited here, who clicked around, read about Boris Karloff and discovered great blogs. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did.
I’ll keep a link to the Blogathon archives on my sidebar. Click the Boris image and see all the posts that were made.
Illustration above: A Karloff caricature by Hirschfeld.
* Dark Horse Comics have collected the entire Boris Karloff Thriller/Tales of Mystery comics, available through (plug!) the Frankenstore: Volume One, Volume Two.
