What a Sensation!

A unique, original ad in the Courier-Mail heralded the Easter weekend release of SON OF FRANKENSTEIN at the Tivoli Theater — misspelled at the top of the ad! — in Brisbane. Appearing in the Thursday, April 6 edition of the Courier-Mail, the large ad features a striking full-length Monster in charcoal.

The film was double-billed with a minor Universal musical, FRESHMAN YEAR (1938), starring the perky Dixie Dunbar in what turned out to be her final feature. The dancer quit her uneventful six-year Hollywood career playing showgirls, dancing co-eds and characters named Pasty, Mitzi, Ginger, Goldie, Polly and Tiny. She’s called Dotty in this one. Dunbar returned to better parts and real success on Broadway. In 1949, Dunbar achieved pop culture fame as the dancing Old Gold Cigarette box — only her shapely legs could be seen — on early TV, circa 1949.

Brisbane’s Sunday Mail critic gave SON OF FRANKENSTEIN and its cast his good-humored approval, noting, “The Monster has his spine-chilling moments… But he still looks heavily wooden enough to be harmless to anyone with a good pair of running shoes.” Spoilers weren’t an issue, the reviewer stating, “The Monster gets out of hand and eventually has to be tossed into a boiling sulphur pit for apparent lasting destruction.”

SON OF FRANKENSTEIN ran for a week and moved on across Australia throughout the year. Unlike FRANKENSTEIN in 1931, the film suffered no territorial bans to limit its release. SON would circle back across the continent over the next two years for second-run engagements including a 1941 stint that saw it packaged with another Karloff/Lugosi thriller, THE INVISIBLE RAY (1936).

An historical side note: By Saturday morning’s first showing, most Australians had something besides Frankenstein movies on the minds. On the first page of Thursday’s paper, a small notice had read, “Mr. Lyons Ill: Wife’s Dash to Hospital”, noting that the Prime Minister, in recent bad health and “suffering from a severe chill” had been taken to St-Vincent’s Hospital. On Saturday morning, the headline read, “Nation Mourns Death of Mr. J.A.Lyons”. The Prime Minister, suffering a series of heart attacks, had died on Good Friday.

Related:
Frankenstein in Brisbane series.

Loose Again in Brisbane

Bolt your windows, lock your doors! This dire warning appeared in Brisbane’s Courier-Mail on Monday, April 3rd, 1939. The Monster was “loose again” and heading straight for the city’s storied Tivoli Theater.

We couldn’t let the 2014 run out without celebrating this year’s 75^th Anniversary of SON OF FRANKENSTEIN, and these great newspaper ads from Australia make for very original Ballyhoo.

On April 5, this next ad ran, proclaiming The Monster as “the screen’s most sensational character” and SON as “easily the best of the ‘Frankenstein’ films”.

Back in 1932, when the first Universal FRANKENSTEIN came to Brisbane and the same Tivoli Theater, the PR went into overdrive with handsomely illustrated ads, “we dare you” hype, nurses in attendance, and a Lloyds of London insurance policy covering the first person who might croak during a showing. The festivities included a live event — a “Frankenstein Night” — at the Carlton Cabaret, with The Monster putting in a personal appearance!

In 1939, the PR was toned down but, still, the ad copy was wildly enthusiastic, patrons were urged to book seats in advance against the expected crowds, and another live event was scheduled. Note, at bottom left of the ad, on that Wednesday, a “Frankenstein Thrill Night Dance” was to be held at the vast Trocadero dance hall. The venue was known to roll out elaborate displays on theme nights — various charity events or the annual Police Ball — and one wonders how the hall was decorated in celebration of a Frankenstein Thrill Night. There is no record of a Monster stalking the dance floor this time. 

Coming up: Another beautifully illustrated SON OF FRANKENSTEIN ad from the Brisbane papers of April 1939.

Related:
Frankenstein in Brisbane series.

The Art of Frankenstein : Feg Murray (Part 7)

Boris Karloff made a number of appearances, in and out of Frankenstein Monster makeup, in cartoonist Feg Murray’s celebrated Seein’ Stars strip. This late entry, on 16 April 1944, for 1939’s SON OF FRANKENSTEIN, was nothing more than an excuse for a fun anecdote — that is also pure hype, no doubt.

On 25 May 1947, Karloff put in a non-horror appearance decked in feathers and longhair wig as Guyasuta of the Senecas from Cecil B. DeMille’s UNCONQUERED. Boris also shared space in November 1940 with Bela Lugosi and Peter Lorre as the triple-threat menaces in the horror-comedy-musical YOU’LL FIND OUT, a Kay Kyser vehicle.

Click the thumbnails below to see the complete features.  

Color features from the collection of George Chastain. Black and White feature from The Fabulous Fifties.

The Art of Frankenstein : Feg Murray (Part 1)

Here’s a repost, tweaked and updated, of my original introduction to cartoonist Feg Murray, whose work I’ll be showcasing here over the next ten days or so. Lots of beautiful illustration art coming up, and we’ll meet Feg in person later this week! 

Helping kick off the series are Boris And Bela, no less, singing together! Read on…


These yellowed clippings are not just from any old scrapbook. This is a page from makeup master Jack Pierce’s personal scrapbook, circa 1939.

The short article pasted at left documents the first haircut, courtesy Pierce, given one-year old Baby Sandy, Universal’s answer to Shirley Temple. “Sandy”, born Alexandra Lee Henville, generated tons of press and merchandising, but she only made eight films and was out of showbiz by the time she turned five.

The large drawing of Boris Karloff in Son of Frankenstein was clipped from Feg Murray’s Seein’ Stars newspaper feature. 

Frederic “Feg” Murray (1894-1973) was a popular cartoonist and radio personality of the Thirties and Forties. As a young man, he had served in the First World War, then shined as an Olympic athlete, winning a bronze medal in the 110-meter hurdle race at Antwerp, Belgium.

As an illustrator, Murray did a stint as a sports cartoonist with The Los Angeles Times before launching his long-running Seein’ Stars cartoon series, syndicated nationwide by King Features. Modeled on the Believe It or Not format of a large portrait done in pen and ink (in color on Sundays), surrounded by smaller filler pieces, Seein’ Stars was pure movie star trivia: 

Fay Wray spends her spare time making sketches in charcoal and weaving Tapestries. She also collects rare perfumes… Ralph Bellamy was once driven by a dead man!! His car swerved erratically into a field and finally ended up against a tree, several minutes after the driver had died of heart failure!... Jean Harlow has a 15-minute workout on a rowing machine before her dip in the pool every morning.

Studio publicity departments routinely fed stories to newspapers and Murray’s weekly feature was an ideal outlet for PR. Case in point, the Son of Frankenstein piece ran on January 1st, just as Universal was rolling out the ballyhoo for a January 13 release. Interestingly, Murray displayed a soft spot for monster movies, with frequent coverage of Universal’s output and that of other studios as well including appearances by various Jekylls and Hydes, gorilla-suit actors and Republic’s Crimson Ghost.

Feg Murray parlayed his success as a famous “stargazer” into a radio career as the host of an interview and variety show called Seein’ Stars in Hollywood, also known as Baker’s Broadcast. In a celebrated episode, on March 13, 1938, Murray’s guests were Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.

Karloff performed a dramatic reading of Rudyard Kipling’s “The Supplication of the Black Aberdeen” and then joined Lugosi in a memorable if awkward duet, the two horror icons warbling, “We’re Horrible, Horrible Men”. Karloff’s lines went, “Though the movies would make me a terrible brute, when my makeup is off I am really quite cute.”

Boris, Bela and the Nelsons posed for a gag shot, and here's a YouTube sound clip of that momentous occasion…

Son of Frankenstein fotobusta

Karloff’s Monster — holding the son of the Son of Frankenstein (1939) — strikes a commanding pose on this fotobusta, a large-format Italian lobby card. The photo insert shows The Monster mourning his felled friend, Lugosi’s Igor.

The monochromatic art is by the Corsican-born Francesco Giammari (1908-1973) who first came to prominence with his superb woodcuts illustrating the history and ethnography of his homeland. Moving to Italy, Giammari’s produced highly-charged symbolic art promoting the annexation of Corsica, a fascist ideal of the time. Today, Giammari, is regarded as one of the great Corsican artists for his early woodcuts as well as his fine art paintings and atmospheric landscapes.

Giammari’s movie poster art, running from the Thirties into the late Sixties, is quite traditional, generally featuring large portraits of the film’s principals. The striking, expressionistic Figlio di Frankenstein art shown here is a bit of a departure. Some of Giammari’s poster work is signed, simply, “Giam”. Note that he is sometimes misidentified in listings as “Gian Mari”.

Image source

A Date with Frankenstein

Back in the Thirties and Forties, when promoting a new Frankenstein film, exhibitors used every trick in the ballyhoo book. Park an ambulance out front, have nurses patrol the lobby, send a man in a mask around the block. Then there was the Date With Frankenstein, a Dare You trick where, for a cash prize, a woman was challenged to sit alone through a midnight showing of the latest scary picture. The gag was promoted in newspapers or radio, a drawing was held and, with a little luck, the event would make the papers, good for free publicity for the movie and the local theater.

“Creepy business,” reported the Pittsburgh Press on January 1939, running a photo of Miss Martha Schwall of 3303 Christy Street, a good sport picked among 350 volunteers, seen reacting to “Son of Frankenstein which stars those two proponents of horror, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi”. Miss Schwall claimed she had no fear of Frankenstein “or any other monster — as long as it was on the screen”. The reporter suggested that “maybe her slight evidence of fear is traceable to the photographer’s flash.”

Under the title Brave Woman, an April 1943 issue of Life magazine showed Margaret McHale sitting alone, dead center in the cavernous Fox Theater of St. Louis, waiting for Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man to unspool. “If Frankenstein and the Wolfman were here in person it wouldn’t make a difference to me,” she declared. “You could get Dracula and the Werewolf of London, too, and I’d sit down with them and we’d have a good poker game. I’m not squeamish and I like to play poker.”

Ms McHale earned a $25 War Bond and Universal scored priceless exposure in a national magazine. 

The Art of Frankenstein : Rich Kelly

The most original, the most imaginative movie posters created today aren’t displayed on theater fronts. The best work, by far, is found in the limited edition art prints for films, contemporary or classics, such as those offered by Mondo of Austin, Texas. Case in point, this Son of Frankenstein poster by Rich Kelly.

The Karloff Monster, roped to its slab, is lifted to the laboratory by Lugosi’s Ygor. Baron Wolf von Frankenstein is seen reading by the light of a vast fireplace while Inspector Krogh explores the recesses of the Frankenstein premises. The title logo evokes the modern gothic letters carved over the door to the Frankenstein mansion.

The poster was offered in three versions, the variants using different colors and glow in the dark inks. One version added a menacing Monster’s silhouette hovering over Lionel Atwill’s Krogh. The set, as with most of the Mondo poster offerings, sold out within minutes of being offered.

Rich Kelly’s work is, in a word, spectacular. The Son of Frankenstein posters are shown in closeup details here. Kelly’s art appears in the gallery on his website and on his Tumblr.

Karloff on the Radio

The Monster steps up to the microphone in this cartoon illustration by Vernon Lind displayed large and very prominently in The Pittsburgh Press’ Radio News and Gossip section of January 15, 1939. Caption: “Boris Karloff will try to scare Eddie Cantor and his Mad Russian, Monday night, which is some undertaking even for Frankenstein...”

Artist Lind’s barrel-cheated Monster, with tiny head, big boots and dangling hands prefigures Dick Briefer’s “Merry Monster” from the 40s.

Boris Karloff enjoyed a prolific career on radio, performing drama and guesting on quiz shows and many comedy and variety programs. This appearance on Camel Cavalcade, broadcast out of Hollywood on CBS stations at 7:30 EST, January 16, 1939, came just 3 days after Son of Frankenstein’s Friday the 13th release.

Guest host Eddie Cantor, an energetic songster and comic, filled the show’s brisk 30-minutes with upbeat songs and patter with announcer Bert Parks — who slips in a couple of Camel cigarette commercials — and comic “foils" Sydney ‘Mister Guffy’ Fields and Bert ‘The Mad Russian’ Gordon. Karloff is introduced thirteen and a half minutes into the half-hour show. Unfortunately, the show is lost, but a script survives.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” Cantor announces, “You are about to hear the voice of the man whose tones chill the marrow of your bones… A man whose actions are much more frightening than even thunder and lightning… The gruesome guy who makes you jump in bed and pull the covers over your head… The Monster Man in person… Boris Karloff!”

Karloff banters with Cantor, playing off his “boogie man” reputation…

KARLOFF: Come to my house tonight… At midnight I’m having a few friends-- Bela Lugosi --

CANTOR: Dracula --

KARLOFF: Peter Lorre --

CANTOR: The guy with the eyes and no body?

KARLOFF: Yes – and the Invisible Man… We’ll turn out all the lights and tell ghost stories!

Later on, when Cantor says Karloff is “really a home-loving man”, Karloff says, “I have a very lovely wife – and just of late I became father of a baby.” Karloff is referring to Sara Jane, born on his birthday, November 23.

As the show races to a finish, the cast does a quick courtroom sketch with Karloff as defendant, forced to admit murder just to stop The Mad Russian from telling any more bad jokes. Cantor plugs Son of Frankenstein a couple of times and wraps up with a pitch for the March of Dimes, a term he had coined for his favorite charity.

It’s a shame this show is lost, but another Cantor and Karloff show survives, from December 1941, and it gives a good idea of how the two men worked together, alternating as each other’s straight man and both landing some good punch lines. Listen to the Christmastime Time To Smile show as an audio file on YouTube. 

Son of Frankenstein trade ad, 1939

The Monster swoops like a greenish ghost out of a foreboding castle and flies over a desolate landscape in an unusual trade magazine ad for Son of Frankenstein (1939). Most curious of all is The Monster’s smile. Was the studio downplaying the horror aspect, or is The Monster happy with his success as he “Scares the country into Box office records…”?

Produced and directed by Rowland V. Lee, Son of Frankenstein was put into production soon after a revival double-bill of the 1931 classics, Dracula and Frankenstein, did exceptional business. The film signaled the beginning of a new wave of Universal horrors that would return Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy to the screen along with a new player, the Wolf Man, culminating in the multiple-monster rallies of the mid-Forties and a momentous 1948 meeting with Abbott and Costello.

Son of Frankenstein starred Boris Karloff in his third and last appearance as The Monster and introduced Bela Lugosi as the scruffy, scene-stealing Igor. The film also features Basil Rathbone, who would make his first Sherlock Holmes film the same year, and Lionel Atwill as the wooden-armed Inspector Krogh. Son would go on to be the main inspiration for Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks’ Young Frankenstein (1974). 

Image source

The Posters of Frankenstein : French Son of Frankenstein Re-release

Little Peter von Frankenstein (Donnie Dunagan) is hostage to his granddad’s rampaging Monster on this French 1970s re-release poster for Son of Frankenstein (1939). The photo, as it turns out, is a clever composite image.

The photo combines two stills from the film’s climax. The main image shows The Monster in action, hands blurred, with a guide rope cutting diagonally across his left shoulder and arm. The second image has Karloff’s Monster holding the child under one arm in a scene where he confronts Rathbone’s Frankenstein and Atwill’s Inspector Krogh.

The child and Karloff’s arm holding him were cut from one photo, then scaled and pasted onto the other. In pre-Photoshop days, the trick involved careful outlining of the characters in white gouache, painting out the background. The photos were cut, the pieces brought together, carefully aligned and re-photographed. Finally, probably using a Photo Retouch Kit — once standard equipment in a graphic artist’s tool kit — special gouaches were mixed to replicate the grays and blend the two images seamlessly. The background effect was either airbrushed or pencil tones, and the photo looks like it was screened for effect as it went to press.

In a career spanning five decades, artist and designer Xarrie (here credited as “Xarrié”) produced movie posters in a wide range of styles including caricature, classic painted scenes and photo manipulation. His genre contributions include posters for George Franju’s Judex (1963) and George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968). He produced another strong photo-poster for the re-release of Island of Lost Souls (1933) by simply and very effectively applying a bright yellow to a Karl Struss publicity still.

With its austere design, its dominant, wholly original image and bold, straightforward typesetting, Xarrie’s Le Fils de Frankenstein is one of the more unconventional of all Frankenstein movie posters.

Photo Retouch Kit, image source.

The Posters of Frankenstein : Le Fils de Frankenstein

The Monster appears twice on this 1947 Belgian poster in French and Flemish, celebrating the WWII-delayed release of 1939’s Son of Frankenstein.

The lithograph is typical of painterly Belgian movie posters. Unfortunately, the artists are never identified, forbidden to sign their work by orders from on high. In this article (in French), legendary poster artist Ernest Godst reveals that film distributors would hire freelance illustrators, providing them with black and white stills and specifics as to which actors would be featured and the size of title and credit lettering. Artists produced two or three rough layouts for approval before executing the final painted artwork. Printing was usually turned over to movie poster specialists J. Lichtert & Fils, a company that dominated the field throughout the Twentieth century. Print runs hovered around 5000 copies, for display not only in hundreds of theaters — Belgium boasted one of the highest number of movie houses in the world — but also in neighborhood bars and boutiques.

The Cinemax theater — originally called the Cineum — and its prestigious next-door neighbor, the Plaza Hotel, both opened on rue de Malines in 1930. According to Cinema Treasures, the storied venue operated as the Cinemax until 1957 when it switched name and vocation, briefly, playing German features as the Rubens. In 1959, as the Apollo, it specialized in horror films, hosting Hammer Films releases at the height of the studio’s popularity. After a series of further name changes and restorations in the Seventies, the old theater became the first-run Acropole Center in 1980 before closing in ’85, the building finally absorbed into the Plaza Hotel complex.

The Australian Frankenstein

It’s Bride of Frankenstein Ballyhoo halfway ‘round the world as The Monster and his Mate put in a personal appearance at the Regent Theater in Sydney, Australia, on July 22, 1935.

The Monster is suggested by an unidentified actor in the requisite dark suit, with a tight skullcap revealing a high forehead and face streaked with greasepaint to grim effect. An approximate Monster, if you will, but at least they got the boots right. The Monster’s mate is a lovely gowned bride, sans special makeup. Her stiff hand replicates a pose by Valerie Hobson on the film's poster.

Another photo shows another Sydney theater, the Plaza’s box-office, wrapped in a large painted Frankenstein head. The Bride appears on the marquee and a paper skeleton hangs in the doorway.

These photos, by Sam Hood and his assistant, Jack Lazern, are part of a wonderful set archived on the State Library of New South Wales website. The Monster and Bride performers are seen posing outside the theater and in a store, the Bride apparently shopping for a new hat. Other photos show the long queue that stretched “up George Street and around into Wilmott Street”. Note patrons wearing heavy coats, July being the dead of winter in Australia.

Inaugurated in 1928, the palatial Regent Theater was a Sydney landmark for over 60 years. Boasting an elegant façade, a swooping marquee and a high lobby with a crystal waterfall chandelier, the 2200-seat auditorium hosted films, concerts and gala premieres. It was adapted for Cinerama in 1953. The ignominious end came in 1990. A victim of its prime location, the theater was purposely shuttered, abandoned and — despite being submitted as a heritage site — razed by developers to massive public outcry. The bitter loss was compounded when the property market promptly crashed and the downtown site lay undeveloped for 16 years, an eyesore until 2006.

The State Library of New South Wales archive also carries photographs of a large banner promotion — "Coming Soon" — for Son of Frankenstein, outside the Amusu Theater (identified in a caption as the Balmain), dated June 1939. The other film advertised is She Married an Artist, a 1937 romantic comedy starring John Boles, the stalwart Victor Moritz of Frankenstein (1931), and Frances Drake, of Mad Love (1935) and The Invisible Ray (1936).

For more great pictures of the Australian Frankenstein, click through to the State Library of New South Wales Search Page and enter “Frankenstein” in the search field.

The State Library of New South Wales site is a wonderful resource, and a major time sink! Clicking around, I found a snapshot of theater advertising Dracula in 1929, and the Three Stooges on a late career tour. Go explore!

Theatre information found on the absolutely indispensable Cinema Treasures website.

Scrapbook Frankenstein

These yellowed clippings are not just from any old scrapbook. This is a page from makeup master Jack Pierce’s personal scrapbook, circa 1939.

The short article pasted at left (click the scrapbook image to enlarge) documents the first haircut, courtesy Pierce, given one-year old Baby Sandy for her role in Unexpected Father (1939), also known as Sandy Takes a Bow. It was the child actress’ second film appearance in her short career as Universal’s answer to Shirley Temple. “Sandy” , born Alexandra Lee Henville, generated tons of press and merchandising, but she only made eight films and was out of showbiz by the time she turned five.

The large drawing of Boris Karloff in Son of Frankenstein was clipped from Feg Murray’s Seein’ Stars newspaper feature.

Frederic “Feg” Murray (1894-1973) was a popular cartoonist and radio personality of the Thirties and Forties. As a young man, he had served in the First World War, then shined as an Olympic athlete, winning a bronze medal in the 110-meter hurdle race at Antwerp, Belgium.

As an illustrator, Murray did a stint as a sports cartoonist with The Los Angeles Times before launching his long-running Seein’ Stars cartoon series, syndicated nationwide by King Features. Modeled on the Believe It or Not format of a large portrait done in pen and ink (in color on Sundays), surrounded by smaller filler pieces, Seein’ Stars was pure movie star trivia:

Fay Wray spends her spare time making sketches in charcoal and weaving Tapestries. She also collects rare perfumes… Ralph Bellamy was once driven by a dead man!! His car swerved erratically into a field and finally ended up against a tree, several minutes after the driver had died of heart failure!... Jean Harlow has a 15-minute workout on a rowing machine before her dip in the pool every morning.

No doubt, studio publicity departments must have fed stories to Murray. Case in point, the Son of Frankenstein piece ran on January first, just as Universal was rolling out the ballyhoo for a January 13 release.

Feg Murray parlayed his success as a famous “stargazer” into a radio career as the host of an interview and variety show called Seein’ Stars in Hollywood, also known as Baker’s Broadcast. In a celebrated episode, on March 13, 1938, Murray’s guests were Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi.

Karloff performed a dramatic reading of Rudyard Kipling’s “The Supplication of the Black Aberdeen” and then joined Lugosi in a memorable if awkward duet, the two horror icons warbling, “We’re Horrible, Horrible Men”. Karloff’s lines went, “Though the movies would make me a terrible brute, when my makeup is off I am really quite cute.”

Boris, Bela and the Nelsons posed for a gag shot, and here's a YouTube sound clip of that momentous occasion…

A profile of Feg Murray in The Alpha Kappa Journal.

Jack Pierce, 1889-1968

Today, May 5^th, marks Jack Pierce’s 121^st birthday.

Bela Lugosi’s Ygor, Boris Karloff’s Monster and director Rowland V. Lee gang up on the legendary makeup man in a delightful, atmospheric gag shot from late 1938, on the set of Son of Frankenstein (1939).

The photo, erroneously dated “1940”, comes from Jack Pierce's personal scrapbook.

Related:
The Make-Up Man: Jack Pierce
Posts about Jack Pierce

The Frankenstein Chair, Continued...

A tuckered Boris Karloff rests backstage on the Son of Frankenstein (1939) set.

A number of readers have expressed interest whenever I’ve posted pictures of Boris and his “Frankenstein chair”, so let’s do a little prop archeology, so to speak.

There was no special chair built for the first film, Frankenstein, in 1931. Behind-the-scenes shots show Boris leaning against a table, perched on a fence, or stretched out in a lawn chair.

There are numerous photos of the recliner used during the Bride shoot, in 1935 (see "related" links at the bottom of this post). It’s a very distinctive chair, with heavily padded armrests. A new and somewhat different chair was assembled by the time Karloff did Son, in ’39. It’s not entirely clear if Boris is using the recliner in the shot above, or if this is a regular chair and footstool combination. Comparison with the recliner seen here (also from Son) is inconclusive. It’s worth noting that, even with the recliner available, Boris often sat in a plain chair. Also of interest: It seems that no other Frankenstein actor used a slab recliner.

The special chair wasn’t created for the Frankenstein movies. Similar contraptions had been used before in the theater for performers wearing rigid or tight costumes, long dresses or delicate materials that couldn’t be folded or crushed. The device is still used by ballerinas and runway models in elaborate dresses. It can be seen on the set of Star Wars (1977), used by Anthony Daniels in his C3P0 robot suit.

Here’s a picture of Myrna Loy in a ball gown using a “rest chair”. No date given, but this one is obviously from the Thirties. One thing all these chairs have in common is that they appear to have been slapped together by the wood shop guys as needed. Arm and head padding varies, seat shelf is optional, and some of the chairs are plainly designed to be folded either for carrying around or stashing away when unused.

More Frankenstein Chair pictures if and when they are found.

Myrna Loy photo source.

Related:
Reclining Frankenstein
On the Bride of Frankenstein set

The Gentlemanly Madness of Lionel Atwill

Lionel Atwill was born in Croyden, England, 125 years ago today, March 1^st 1885.

The British-born actor became a Broadway sensation in 1918, starring in no less than five top productions that year. An April New York Times article, entitled The Rise of Lionel Atwill, stated, “Atwill is riveting his position as one of the most valuable stage importations from England in several seasons.”

Despite his success on stage, often directing and producing in addition to his performing, Atwill abruptly turned his back on New York in 1931. Reprising his part as a lawyer from his last play, Silent Witness, in a 1932 film, he would, from then on, work exclusively in Hollywood. His very next film, Doctor X, introduced him to horror films. He appeared in six horror and mystery titles released in quick succession, literally within a year, outpacing rivals Karloff and Lugosi. Of these, Murders in the Zoo (1933) with its grisly revenge plot, opened notoriously with Atwill sewing a man’s lips together. “You’ll never lie to a friend again," he cackles. "You'll never kiss another man’s wife!”

Paired in three films with the incandescent Fay Wray, their encounter in The Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) proved the most memorable, captured in warm, two-strip Technicolor, with Wray punching and cracking Atwill’s wax face to reveal the burned monster underneath. Her scream still resonates.

Atwill returned to the genre in 1939, going on to appear in five consecutive Frankenstein films, opposite every actor who played The Monster at Universal: Boris Karloff, Lon Chaney Jr, Bela Lugosi and Glenn Strange.

Uniformed and ramrod-straight, manipulating a monocle and an articulated wooden arm with Teutonic precision, and delivering his lines in machine-gun, clipped tones, Atwill forged one of the most iconic and memorable characters in the Frankenstein film canon as Inspector Krogh in Son of Frankenstein (1939), a part beautifully spoofed 35 years later by Kenneth Mars in Young Frankenstein (1974).

In The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), Atwill was the mad scientist who catastrophically swapped Ygor’s brain into the Monster’s flat skull, and in Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943), he appeared in a small supporting role as a the Mayor of monster-infested Vasaria. Finally, Atwill returned to his trademark Inspector parts, called Arnz in House of Frankenstein (1944), and Holtz in House of Dracula (1945).

Among his many menace and mystery roles, Atwill played opposite Basil Rathbone’s Sherlock Holmes twice, most notably as Professor Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1943). He specialized, typecast perhaps, as a mad scientist in numerous programmers. As the Frankensteinian Dr. Rigas in Man Made Monster, a sleeper hit in 1941, he turned Lon Chaney Jr’s Lennie-like Dynamo Dan McCormick into a glowing electrical zombie, exclaiming "Of course I'm mad!"

Atwill’s private life would provide newspaper fodder throughout his career, starting with a sensational divorce case in 1925, while at the peak of his Broadway years. In 1930, Atwill married the stunning and very opinionated Louise Cromwell Brooks, a famous socialite, recently divorced from General Douglas McArthur. “I traded four little stars for one big Hollywood star” she quipped. Her Palm Beach lifestyle, her political connections and frequent one-liners made “Mrs. Lionel Atwill” a gossip column favorite.

Movie press agents fed Atwill stories to the papers. A 1934 article boldly credited Atwill as having “discovered” director Joseph Sternberg. In 1936, a plug for the spy drama Till We Meet Again made the papers as “Papa Atwill Stumps Sonny With Monocle”. The item related how Atwill had amused his family by wearing his movie monocle at a family dinner, supposedly prompting his son Walter to ask, “Why is it that in the pictures your monocle always stays on, but at home it always falls in the soup?”

The Atwill’s opulent homes made the news, too. A mansion evaluated at $42,000 burned to the ground in the California fires of October 1935, and coastal storm in December 1936 destroyed two of Atwill’s homes, said to be undermined and sliding into the ocean along with $12,000 worth of antique furniture. The Atwills’ estate in Green Springs, Maryland, where they had married, was burglarized twice in August 1937. The house had served as a honeymoon retreat for the Duke and Duchess of Windsor.

All the press attention turned sour shortly after the Atwills separated in 1939, the Mrs. retiring to a mansion in Palm Springs. Atwill became the focus of a highly publicized, career-crippling scandal over a Christmas 1940 party held at his Malibu home. Guests, some possibly underaged, were said to have cavorted in the nude on a tiger skin rug while stag movies were screened. In a court appearance, an emphatic Atwill claimed that he was “absolutely not guilty”, resulting in a felony charge for perjury. Then came the tragic news, in 1941, that his 26-year old son, John Arthur, had been killed in action.

Atwill’s perjury case would be dismissed in 1943, after the actor came clean and said he had “lied like a gentleman” to protect his family and friends from embarrassment. The judge recognized that the American censor board, the Hays Office, had restricted the actor’s appearance in films. “It would constitute unusual punishment to continue this situation,” Judge McKay noted, “which would prevent the defendant from earning a living.” But the damage was done, with Atwill already relegated to B-pictures and threadbare serials.

Lionel Atwill remarried in 1944 and fathered a son, Anthony, but the actor’s health declined and he died on April 22, 1946, after a long, debilitating battle with pneumonia. He was 61.

On YouTube: The grisly opening sequence from Murders in the Zoo, the complete Mystery of the Wax Museum, and Atwill in full Mad Doctor mode in Man Made Monster.

Lobby cards: Heritage Auctions.

Son of Frankenstein, 70th Anniversary Year

Ygor cowers in the grip of the immense, fur-clad Frankenstein Monster. Horror icons Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi are reunited in this publicity still from Son of Frankenstein (1939).

It’s barely a week now since I announced that I would be hosting a Boris Karloff Blogathon in November, and the response has been fantastic. It’s going to be huge. We already have well over 40 bloggers signed up, with more to come, and there is much diversity. Not only do we have the expected horror and film blogs, we have actors and filmmakers, writers and artists participating. We have bloggers from all over the world who will be posting in several languages.

A Blogathon is a great way to discover new blogs, but you don’t have to wait until November 23 to start exploring. Just click around the list of Scheduled Participants on the sidebar. I’ll be updating the list as new blogs come aboard.

If you have a blog and you want to join the Karloff celebrations, check the Blogathon post for info and send me an email. Simple as that.

Dr. Frankenstein : Basil Rathbone

Born June 13 in South Africa, raised in England, Basil Rathbone (1892-1967) was an established Shakespearean by the time he first came to America in 1923, eventually to marry (a second time) and settle in New York. The couple would relocate to Hollywood in 1935 where they came to be known for their lavish parties.

Rathbone played heroes and villains, often in elaborate costume dramas, with nervous energy, delivering lines in a clipped accent as cutting as his profile. He was twice nominated for an Academy Award in serious minded supporting roles, but he is best remembered for popular fare, notably his villainous turns opposite Errol Flynn in Captain Blood (1935) and the magnificent The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938).

His most famous role was that of Sherlock Holmes, beginning in 1939 with big budget period pieces made at 20th Century Fox and continuing in programmers from Universal, fourteen pictures in all (and a radio series, too) over a period of seven years. Aided by Nigel Bruce as an elderly, bumbling Watson, Rathbone’s Sherlock would match wits with George Zucco’s Moriarty, Gale Sondergaard’s Spider Woman and Rondo Hatton’s Creeper.

In the late Forties, Rathbone returned to New York and his first love, the stage. In the Fifties, his popularity sustained by the Sherlock films released to television, he would appear often on the new medium in dramas and variety shows. By 1955, he returned to film, though sporadically. Horror titles included the all-star vehicles The Black Sleep (1956), with Lon Chaney, John Carradine, Thor Johnson and Bela Lugosi, and Comedy of Terrors (1964) with Vincent Price, Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre.

Back in 1939, Rathbone was cast as the first in Universal’s long line of science-meddling Frankenstein heirs with Son of Frankenstein, a film that inaugurated the studio’s second wave of monster movies. As Baron Wolf von Frankenstein, with wife (Josephine Hutchison) and young son (Donnie Dunagan) in tow, Rathbone reclaims his family’s castle estate against the protest of distrustful locals for whom the family name is synonymous with “Maker of Monsters”. Exploring the shattered remains of his father’s laboratory, Rathbone’s Baron encounters the broken-necked Ygor (Bela Lugosi) and his “friend”, the comatose Monster (Boris Karloff).

In a memorable scene, Rathbone examines The Monster, measuring its superhuman strength, noting the peculiar composition of its blood, and counting the bullets lodged in its beating heart. Re-energized, The Monster is used by Ygor to settle accounts with the men who had ordered his botched hanging.

The film was Karloff’s last pass at playing The Monster, the part largely robotic, performing Ygor’s commissioned deeds. Lugosi, cast against type in scruffy, snaggletooth makeup, and obviously enjoying himself, fairly steals the show. Lionel Atwill is also excellent as the ramrod Inspector Krogh, with an artificial arm replacing that which was ripped from its socket years before, when he was but a child, by the rampaging Monster.

As Frankenstein’s son, Rathbone displays naïve enthusiasm and genuine wonder at his father’s monumental achievement, mimicking The Monster’s gait and raising his glass to a large painting of Colin Clive. Facing the revived Monster, Rathbone is terrified as he comes to understand the danger personified by a giant he can never hope to control. In a swashbuckling climax, his child in jeopardy, Rathbone’s Wolf von Frankenstein finds his courage and, swinging from a rope, he kicks The Monster into a boiling sulfur pit.

Son of Frankenstein was the template for Gene Wilder and Mel Brook’s Young Frankenstein.

Basil Rathbone, Master of Stage and Screen, an excellent fansite loaded with information and candid photos.

Related:
Previous posts about Son of Frankenstein
Portrayals of the Dr. Frankenstein character

The Posters of Frankenstein : Spanish Son of Frankenstein

Here’s another beautiful foreign poster with vivid colors and wonderful hand-drawn lettering for Son of Frankenstein (1939), known in Spain under the evocative title of The Shadow of Frankenstein.

This one uses elements from the American advertising campaign, featuring the gesticulating Monster with figures in the foreground, either Basil Rathbone and Josephine Hutchison as shown here, sometimes accompanied by Bela Lugosi’s grimacing Ygor, or a laboratory scene of Rathbone and Lugosi attending a resting, comatose Karloff.

Related:
French Son of Frankenstein Poster

The Posters of Frankenstein : French Son of Frankenstein

Another sensational foreign release poster for Son of Frankenstein (1939), this one by Guy Berjab for the French version, advertised as one of Universal’s “Gold Series” of films. A seal at the bottom reads, “See this Universal Super Production!”

The stylish and dynamic illustration, taken from the film’s action-packed climax, has The Monster literally straddling the poster. It’s a nice change from the usual static cameos of characters gazing anxiously into the distance. Artist Berjab uses an unusual palette, with a green glow at the top suggesting the smoking sulfur pit, and a cool blue base and purple logo at the bottom. Likenesses are excellent, with Atwill’s Krogh recognizable in profile and the terrified child emoting more than Donnie Dunagan did in the film.

Guy Berjab was an accomplished artist who, from the late Thirties onward, painted several movie posters and illustrated children’s books.