Olsen and Johnson Meet Frankenstein

The Frankenstein Monster creeps up on Olsen and Johnson on their Halloween television show of 1949. It was actually the comedy duo’s second encounter with The Monster.

Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson first teamed up in 1914, touring the Vaudeville circuit, honing their own special brand of chaotic comedy based on fast patter, blackout jokes and sight gags. By the late Twenties, the duo scored radio gigs and appeared in some early Warner talkies, but Hollywood wasn’t quite ready yet for Olsen and Johnson’s patented hysterics. As an example of the team’s inspired lunacy, their segment on Rudy Vallee’s radio program was called The Padded Cell of the Air.

In 1938, the boys opened on Broadway with a relentlessly manic revue entitled Hellzapoppin’, combining jokes and prop gags, wild improv and surrealistic musical numbers, all way over-the-top. It was a sensation, playing over 1000 performances before taking to the road for years to come — with no two shows ever exactly alike.

Hollywood came calling again. Universal tackled Hellzapoppin’ in 1941, inserting movie star cameos and a spectacular musical number by the legendary Slim Gaillard. This being Universal, the Frankenstein Monster also appears, throwing Martha Ray across the set in an elaborate wire gag. Legendary stuntman Dale Van Sickle donned full Monster makeup for the bit. An All-American athlete, Van Sickle became one of Hollywood’s busiest and most respected stuntmen, eventually serving as first president for the Stuntmen’s Association. Tragically, he died in 1977 after a long illness provoked by a movie car crash gone wrong.

It is believed that Van Sickle played The Monster again, spelling for Lon Chaney in Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) and as one of a tag team of doubles for Bela Lugosi in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943).

According to The Frankenstein Film Sourcebook, screenwriter Edward Cline wrote The Monster into Olsen and Johnson’s next two pictures, Crazy House (1943) and Ghost Catchers (1944), but the gags were dropped in pre-production. It is very unlikely that they were filmed and cut. Still, The Monster wasn’t done with Olsen and Johnson.

In 1949, the boys took their act to the nascent medium of television with Fireball Fun For All, good for 13 one-hour episodes of certified craziness that practically overwhelmed the small screen. The final program, broadcast on October 27, was built on Halloween themes. The last sketch, a haunted house number called 13 Bleak Street, featured creaky floors, howling noises, ghostly appearances and a mummy, then a door opens and our old friend, The Monster, appears. He creeps up on Ole and Chic and asks, “Are you Abbott and Costello?” — “No!” says Chic, “We’re Olsen and Johnson!” Whereupon The Monster shrieks in horror and runs away.

The gag was topical, obviously referencing Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, the wildly successful comedy hit of 1948. Another neat thing about the Monster cameo is that the actor is wearing an original Don Post over-the-head Frankenstein mask. Introduced just a year earlier, this is very likely the first use of the Frankenstein mask on television.

The Frankenstein rubber mask would prove to be a great substitute to elaborate, time-consuming makeup jobs whenever Franky was needed for a quick gag. It would become downright ubiquitous with the onset of TV Horror Hosts in the late Fifties.

The Halloween episode of Olsen and Johnson’s Fireball Free For All is up on YouTube. The Bleak House sketch kicks in at 41:27, and the Frankenstein Monster appears at 48:57. You can also download the episode from Archive.org.

Related:
Dance Hall Frankenstein, perhaps the first use of the Don Post Frankenstein mask in a movie.
Ole Olsen meets Frankenstein (Glenn Strange).

Shock Theater Frankenstein

Originally posted in three parts, here's my SHOCK THEATER FRANKENSTEIN article collected in a single convenient post for easy reading. Enjoy!

Part One: Hard Sell

San Francisco TV execs look on as Screen Gems’ Jerry Hyams and his towering silent partner, the Frankenstein Monster, set a macabre mood for this contract signing.

The gag shot, from the September 7, 1957 issue of Sponsor — a trade publication for radio and TV advertisers — celebrated KRON-TV’s buying up the Shock! syndication package that would bring classic horror films to television. Shock! offered a whopping 52 films — including Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Dracula, The Mummy, The Invisible Man and The Wolf Man — a treasure trove of mystery and monster movies that would find a whole new generation of fans.

Station managers did not have to be coerced with knives or stand-ins in Don Post Frankenstein masks. They were well aware of the teenage demographic packing drive-ins for AIP horror films, and Hammer Films of England had recently entered the field with a bang. Sponsor magazine contributing editor Joe Csida reported, “The overwhelming success at the box office of the New York Paramount Theater of the English-made ‘The Curse of Frankenstein’ is a fairly good sign that the ‘Shock’package will be a rating success.”

By the time the series aired in October ’57, twenty-seven stations were aboard, including all the major TV markets. Flagship stations in New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco geared up for “National Weird Week”, an October coordinated launch that would, according to Sponsor, “telepremiere the Shock films, most likely with the original Boris Karloff  Frankenstein.”

The Monster was a key player, with the 1931 Frankenstein spearheading the Shock! package and rubber mask ‘Frankensteins’ putting in personal appearances across the continent. And if it wasn’t already obvious that The Monster was your go-to guy, station managers who flipped opened the handsome, spiral-bound Shock! promotional catalog were treated to a pop-up cardboard cutout of The Monster.

Part Two: The Ratings Are In

There’s nothing to it: Find a tall employee, or stand some skinny guy up on a box, slap on a joke-shop Frankenstein facemask, throw in a rubber shrunken head — scary enough for ya? — and snap a photo with TV station execs. It’s a simple gag, and it gets you a spot in the October 12, 1957, issue of Sponsor, a trade magazine for Radio and TV advertisers.

The first real taste of horror business on TV harked back to the week of March 5, 1956, when WOR of New York booked King Kong on its Million Dollar Movie program, drawing what Sponsor called “the almost unbelievable rating of 79.7.” Could the Shock! collection pull those kinds of numbers? WABC pumped up the promotion. On October 5, 1957, Sponsor reported, “three ‘monsters’ are parading about the city, with a special one assigned to visit advertising agencies. There’s also a menu contest based on what viewers think is tasty monster fare.”

Frankenstein hit the air on October 13, inaugurating the Shock! series. The impact was measured in the October 19 issue of Sponsor: “First Trendex ratings on Screen Gems ‘Shock’ package were as startling as the film itself — they were enormous.” Focusing on premiere markets in New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, San Antonio and Los Angeles, “the thrillers 1) Boosted ratings anywhere from 38% to several hundred percent, and 2) Increased sets in use by 24% to 150%." Citing “astronomical statistics”, Sponsor suggested that “The shocker may be the key to opening the advertising door in the late evening”, and noted “the current Screen Gems sponsors are no penny-whistle lot. It’s a pretty impressive list with such representation as American Chicle, Hit Parade cigarettes, P&G, Whitehall Pharmaceuticals, and Block Drug.”

The floodgates opened and new stations eagerly signed up. Reporting on December 14, Sponsor noted the addition of Cleveland, and WKBK Chicago’s first showing at 10PM on a Saturday night scoring, “a 24.7 rating and a 46.4 audience share, topping all competition in that time period.” Stations in Phoenix and Fort Worth tested earlier time slots, late afternoon or early evening, to determine “whether stations and sponsors would be content to confine this tempting fare to ‘fringe’ time.” One announcer reported tons of phone call from excited kids “who wanted to know when the next installment was coming.”

The Shock! package, and a follow-up Son of Shock offering 20 more titles, would be a syndication sensation and a ratings phenomenon for years to come, with new stations joining in well into the Sixties.

For all its corny simplicity, the October ’57 WABC photo stunt, masked Monster, shrunken head and all, shot on the eve of the first broadcast, marked a momentous occasion. It was the signal, true and clear, that the Monster Kid era was kicking into high gear.

Part Three: Shock Theater Frankenstein
Horror Host Warren Reed of Seattle’s KTNT entertains his sidekick, “Frankie”, with a reading of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in this shot from the May 26, 1958 issue of Life, as the fabled picture magazine reported on the rise of the “ghoulish announcers” introducing horror movies on late night TV.

Right from the start, in October ’57, many stations running the Shock! Package dressed up their broadcasts with humorous voiceover introductions or short sketches with comically macabre hosts in cheap dungeon sets and flashing bulb castle labs, attended by rubber-mask assistants. As Monster mania began to spread across America, the Frankenstein Monster stomped front and center.

Things had been percolating for some time. Back in March of ‘57, Boris Karloff had guested on The Rosemary Clooney Show, with Clooney’s backup singers pulling a gag in Don Post Frankenstein masks. At the movies, Hammer Films had scored a major summer hit with The Curse of Frankenstein, and AIP was set to release I Was a Teenage Frankenstein by year’s end.

In September ‘57, the advertisers’ trade magazine Sponsor reported on deals that would “highlight the trend in the so-called ‘horror’ field.” The befuddled columnist announced two new series in the works: “Screen Gems will produce a tv series called Tales of Frankenstein, with Boris Karloff as host. Hammer Films Productions is readying a half-hour Baron Frankenstein program… this is the same company that made Curse of Frankenstein for Warner Bros.” These turned out to be one and the same, a doomed transatlantic effort between Hammer and Screen Gem, Tales of Frankenstein, sans Karloff. The pilot, The Face in the Tombstone Mirror, was an uncomfortable hybrid of classic and contemporary movie Frankensteins, with Anton Diffring as a Cushing-style scientist and Don Megowan as a lumbering flattop Monster in Glenn Strange mode.

In February 1958, publisher Jim Warren posed in a Frankenstein mask on the cover of the inaugural issue of Famous Monster of Filmland, the instant touchstone title of the Monster Kid era, its punning editor, Forry Ackerman, providing a pitch-perfect mix of information and humor, a Horror Host in print. By year’s end, Zacherley, the most famous of all TV Horror Hosts, expanded his reach with Dinner with Drac, a pop-chart top ten novelty record. A rash of Frankenstein movies released in 1958 included Hammer’s The Revenge of Frankenstein, AIP’s Teenage Frankenstein and Teenage Werewolf meeting in How to Make a Monster, a schlockfest Frankenstein’s Daughter and Boris Karloff as the Monster-making Baron in Frankenstein 1970.

The monster boom, fanned by Shock! showings that brought the classic horror films to home screens, ruled through the Sixties, translating into an avalanche of merchandising that would include monster bubblegum cards, plastic kits, puzzles, toys, monster fan mags and comics. And on it went. Bobby Pickett scored a number one hit with Monster Mash and The Monster was reconfigured to comic effect in a sitcom, The Munsters.

Through it all, TV’s Horror Hosts, dubbed “harbingers of horror” by Life magazine, were the first-line facilitators who introduced countless new fans to classic horror movies. They made monsters cool and, for many of us First Generation Monster Kids, “Frankenstein” was the coolest monster of them all.

A comprehensive list of Horror Hosts, compiled by George Chastain.

Shock Theater, Part Three Shock Theater Frankenstein

Horror Host Warren Reed of Seattle’s KTNT entertains his sidekick, “Frankie”, with a reading of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer in this shot from the May 26, 1958 issue of Life, as the fabled picture magazine reported on the rise of the “ghoulish announcers” introducing horror movies on late night TV.

Right from the start, in October ’57, many stations running the Shock! Package dressed up their broadcasts with humorous voiceover introductions or short sketches with comically macabre hosts in cheap dungeon sets and flashing bulb castle labs, attended by rubber-mask assistants. As Monster mania began to spread across America, the Frankenstein Monster stomped front and center.

Things had been percolating for some time. Back in March of ‘57, Boris Karloff had guested on The Rosemary Clooney Show, with Clooney’s backup singers pulling a gag in Don Post Frankenstein masks. At the movies, Hammer Films had scored a major summer hit with The Curse of Frankenstein, and AIP was set to release I Was a Teenage Frankenstein by year’s end.

In September ‘57, the advertisers’ trade magazine Sponsor reported on deals that would “highlight the trend in the so-called ‘horror’ field. The befuddled columnist announced two new series in the works: “Screen Gems will produce a tv series called Tales of Frankenstein, with Boris Karloff as host. Hammer Films Productions is readying a half-hour Baron Frankenstein program… this is the same company that made Curse of Frankenstein for Warner Bros.” These turned out to be one and the same, a doomed transatlantic effort between Hammer and Screen Gem, Tales of Frankenstein, sans Karloff. The pilot, The Face in the Tombstone Mirror, was an uncomfortable hybrid of classic and contemporary movie Frankensteins, with Anton Diffring as a Cushing-style scientist and Don Megowan as a lumbering flattop Monster in Glenn Strange mode.

In February 1958, publisher Jim Warren posed in a Frankenstein mask on the cover of the inaugural issue of Famous Monster of Filmland, the instant touchstone title of the Monster Kid era, its punning editor, Forry Ackerman, providing a pitch-perfect mix of information and humor, a Horror Host in print. By year’s end, Zacherley, the most famous of all TV Horror Hosts, expanded his reach with Dinner with Drac, a pop-chart top ten novelty record. A rash of Frankenstein movies released in 1958 included Hammer’s The Revenge of Frankenstein, AIP’s Teenage Frankenstein and Teenage Werewolf meeting in How to Make a Monster, a schlockfest Frankenstein’s Daughter and Boris Karloff as the Monster-making Baron in Frankenstein 1970.

The monster fad, fanned by Shock! showings that brought the classic horror films to home screens, ruled through the Sixties, translating into an avalanche of merchandising that would include monster bubblegum cards, plastic kits, puzzles, toys, monster fan mags and comics. And on it went. Bobby Pickett scored a number one hit with Monster Mash and The Monster was reconfigured to comic effect in a sitcom, The Munsters.

Through it all, TV’s Horror Hosts, dubbed “harbingers of horror” by Life magazine, were the first-line facilitators who introduced countless new fans to classic horror movies. They made monsters cool and, for many of us First Generation Monster Kids, “Frankenstein” was the coolest monster of them all.

A comprehensive list of Horror Hosts, compiled by George Chastain.

Shock Theater, Part One Hard Sell Frankenstein

San Francisco TV execs look on as Screen Gems’ Jerry Hyams and his towering silent partner, the Frankenstein Monster, set a macabre mood for this contract signing.

The gag shot, from the September 7, 1957 issue of Sponsor — a trade publication for radio and TV advertisers — celebrated KRON-TV’s buying up the Shock! syndication package that would bring classic horror films to television. Shock! offered a whopping 52 films — including Frankenstein, Son of Frankenstein, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Dracula, The Mummy, The Invisible Man and The Wolf Man — a treasure trove of mystery and monster movies that would find a whole new generation of fans.

Station managers did not have to be coerced with knives or stand-ins in Don Post Frankenstein masks. They were well aware of the teenage demographic packing drive-ins for AIP horror films, and Hammer Films of England had recently entered the field with a bang. Sponsor magazine contributing editor Joe Csida reported, “The overwhelming success at the box office of the New York Paramount Theater of the English-made ‘The Curse of Frankenstein’ is a fairly good sign that the ‘Shock’ package will be a rating success.”

By the time the series aired in October ’57, twenty-seven stations were aboard, including all the major TV markets. Flagship stations in New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco geared up for “National Weird Week”, an October coordinated launch that would, according to Sponsor, “telepremiere the Shock films, most likely with the original Boris Karloff Frankenstein.”

The Monster was a key player, with the 1931 Frankenstein spearheading the Shock! package and rubber mask ‘Frankensteins’ putting in personal appearances across the continent. And if it wasn’t already obvious that The Monster was your go-to guy, station managers who flipped opened the handsome, spiral-bound Shock! promotional catalog were treated to a pop-up cardboard cutout of The Monster.


It’s Shock Theater Frankenstein Week on Frankensteinia.
Coming up next: Frankenstein hits New York, and the ratings are in!

Dance Hall Frankenstein

A musician is glimpsed wearing a classic over-the-head Don Post Frankenstein mask in a wild New Year’s Eve party scene — everyone else in party hats under flying confetti and a soap bubble machine working overtime — in Ealing Studios’ Dance Hall, in 1950.

Directed by Charles Crichton, the film chronicles the lives and loves of young working-class women in postwar London, set to big band music against the adolescent drama of a dance competition. The cast includes British Bombshell Diana Dors in an early, showy role, and Petula Clark, a former child star once known as “Britain’s Shirley Temple”, here in her breakthrough performance as a young adult lead, clinching the deal with her first romantic screen kiss. Clark would go from British popularity to European success as a multi-lingual entertainer and, eventually, worldwide super-stardom as a British Invasion Diva with a string of pop chart hits starting with Downtown in 1964.

Back to Frankenstein Monster’s surprise appearance, there’s a direct connection to be noted: Eunice Gayson, who has a supporting role in Dance Hall, would go on to play opposite Peter Cushing in Hammer’s The Revenge of Frankenstein in 1958. Gayson is perhaps best remembered as the first Bond Girl, playing James Bond’s girlfriend in Dr. No (1962) and From Russia With Love (1963).

The Monster mask used here is the absolute keystone of Monster collectibles, created under license from Universal Pictures in 1948 by the Don Post studios of California, purveyors of generic Halloween masks — pirates, witches, cowboys and indians —  sold in joke shops and novelty counters across America. In an era before there was any official monster merchandising, it was the first commercially available Frankenstein mask. “This Frankenstein mask is so real,” Post Studio promotions read, “it immediately runs anyone into a monster… Just pull it over your head as you would a bathing cap, and watch what happens.” It would prove immediately and phenomenally successful, with Post claiming that “seventy percent of all masks sold today are Frankenstein’s Monster Masks.”

Soon, men in Don Post Frankenstein masks popped up in touring “Spook Shows”, or worked sidewalks and theater lobbies, ballyhooing new monster movies. The mask would be featured on TV, notably worn by Rosemary Clooney’s backup singers in a 1957 episode of her variety show, when Boris Karloff guest-starred. That same year, the Shock Theatre package of Universal’s horror films syndicated to TV stations saw the emergence of horror hosts, with Don Post Frankensteins putting in guest appearances. In 1958, publisher James Warren donned a tuxedo and a Don Post Frankenstein mask, and posed with a blonde model for the cover of the first issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. It was a defining moment, with the Don Post mask in attendance: The Shock package had ignited Monster Mania, and FMOF became its herald.

Cheaply made and inexpensive, packaged in distinctive green boxes, untold thousands of the Don Post Frankenstein masks were sold for Halloween parties or one-time gags, then thrown away. The thin rubber tore easily and nothing short of museum-grade storage would keep the flimsy masks from disintegrating over time. Today, only a couple of the original 1948 model are known to exist, commanding stratospheric prices.

Back in 1950, way over there in England, the Don Post Frankenstein mask made what is likely its first-ever feature-film cameo. It was just a throwaway gag, the musical Monster seen as fun and, as such, a harbinger of things to come. 


Image source: Rattlingdjs, with big thanks to David Rattigan.

Have a Cool Yule!

I’ve run this cover before, appropriate to the Season, from the January 1966 issue of Warren and Ackerman’s Monster World. It’s interesting how, 46 years later, this simple image, a no-budget cover mashing a Don Post rubber mask with a Santa Suit, has become near ubiquitous on the Net.

As the year winds down, allow me to pause one moment to note how, at some point back in October, this blog welcomed its one-millionth visitor. Page loads total well above 1.6 million. These astounding numbers, accumulated over five years of Frankensteinia, speak to the iconic nature and, nearly 200 years on, the perennial attraction of Frankenstein.

Thank you for stopping in, stand by for much more.

Freeway Frankenstein

No fancy ribbon cutting here. Frankenstein smashes a barricade to inaugurate a new access ramp to the Hollywood Freeway off Lankershim Boulevard. Universal sits right at the intersection. The photo is dated March 25, 1970.

An unidentified actor in a Don Post mask does the honors, surrounded by members of the North Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and the Los Angeles Country Board of Supervisors. The lady is Elena Verdugo, then appearing in the hit series Marcus Welby, M.D.

Ms Verdugo had a direct Frankenstein connection, having played the ill-starred Ilonka, the Esmeralda-like Gypsy Girl caught in a monster love triangle with unrequited hunchback J. Carrol Naish and the infelicitously lycanthropic Lon Chaney, Jr. in House of Frankenstein (1944).

Thanks for the wonderful find to Greg of Cinema Styles, The Invisible Edge, and Unexplained Cinema.

Related:
Universal Tour Frankenstein

The Monster : Glenn Strange

Glenn Strange is a contemplative Monster in this striking portrait, which recently appeared in a Heritage auction.

Glenn Strange (1899-1973) first came to Hollywood in 1930 as a singing cowboy with The Arizona Wranglers. With rugged good looks and the strapping six-five frame that earned him the nickname “Pee Wee”, Strange was immediately cast in horse operas, embarking on a career that would span 40 years and over 300 films, almost all of them westerns.

Sporting names like Slim, Bull, Bat, Bart, Blackie, Tex or Stu-Bum, Strange’s characters operated both sides of the law, equally reliable in lynch mobs or a sheriff’s posse. He was just as likely to appear as a dirty low-down rustler or some poker-faced gunman as he was a stalwart Marshal, a steadfast stagecoach driver, or an easygoing harmonica-playing cowhand. A standout part was that of the murderous Butch Cavendish, The Lone Ranger’s nemesis, which he repeated in movies and on TV between 1949 and 1955.

In the Fifties, when westerns were a television staple, Strange worked all the classic series from Hopalong Cassidy and Gene Autry to The Rifleman, Cheyenne, and Rawhide, eventually earning a regular spot, starting in 1961, on Gunsmoke, quietly polishing shot glasses through 210 episodes as the rock steady, mustachioed bartender, Sam.

For all the interchangeable cowpokes he portrayed, Strange fairly shined in his rare appearances outside the western genre. He showed great flair for comedy as a memorable Hillbilly character, Devil Dan Winfield, in the otherwise minor Abbott and Costello vehicle Comin’ Round the Mountain (1951). In fantasy films, Strange first appeared, briefly and uncredited, as one of Ming’s minions in a 1936 Flash Gordon serial. In 1942’s The Mad Monster, a Poverty Row B-movie devised to cash in on the runaway success of Universal’s The Wolf Man (1941), Strange’s size served the part of Petro, a hulking, simple-minded handyman who turns into a hairy, fanged monster. In 1944, Strange played a hulking orderly in the bizarre acromegaly horror film The Monster Maker, and he was back in heavy makeup — created by Jack Pierce, freelancing after being dumped by Universal — as Atlas, a hairy giant whose brains get switched with Huntz Hall’s in Master Minds, a 1949 Bowery Boys comedy.

Glenn Strange’s most famous and enduringly popular role, no doubt, was playing the last of Universal’s Frankenstein Monsters. By 1944, the Monster had become a stock character, trotted out with Dracula and The Wolf Man in kitchen sink monster rallies. In House of Frankenstein (1944) and House of Dracula (1945), the monsters, with attendant hunchbacks and mad doctors, were displayed and quickly dispatched in what amounts to individual vignettes, with little or no interaction. Strange’s Frankenstein, after spending most of the show strapped to a slab, was activated in time for a short, climactic walkabout and a quick, catastrophic end.

Without a lot of screen time and very little to do besides glowering at torch-bearing villagers, Strange’s contributions might have been a footnote to Frankenstein film history if not for an unlikely third film, the brilliant Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). With a stellar cast that included Chaney as The Wolf Man and Bela Lugosi as Dracula, Strange’s Monster was a central character, interacting with the principals and chasing The Boys in a wild, genuinely funny romp that became one of the most influential movie comedies ever made.

Strange would go on to promote the film with a number of personal appearances wearing an over-the-head mask made for him by Don Post, eventually appearing again with Abbott and Costello, with The Creature from the Black Lagoon thrown in for good measure, in a 1954 episode of The Colgate Comedy Hour on TV. The affable actor even participated in one of fan-filmmaker Don Glut’s 16mm epics, the Frankenstein’s Fury episode of Adventures of The Spirit, in 1963.

The Frankenstein makeup worked very well with Strange’s craggy deadpan. With a boxy head, big shoulders and his trademark windup-toy thread, Glenn Strange gave the Frankenstein Monster its definitive pop culture profile. It was Glenn Strange’s features that would be sampled for a best-selling Frankenstein rubber mask, and his face that was repeatedly used on toy packaging. Significantly, perhaps inevitably, when Boris Karloff died in 1969, most newspaper obits were illustrated with a photo of Glenn Strange in Frankenstein makeup.

Trailers: House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

An excerpt from The Bowery Boys’ Master Minds

A look at Glenn Strange's career in westerns.

     

Related: 
Making Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein 
Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein gets knocked off : Frank Dietz on the legacy of Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein

Universal Tour Frankenstein

Wearing a ratty suit, built-up boots and Don Post mask, a Universal tour employee channels Glenn Strange and greets visitors as a friendly Frankenstein’s Monster.

The picture appears in a 1968 edition of the Inside Universal Studios souvenir and guide book. The same image was reprinted in the 1970 brochure with an added caption, “You see the most interesting people at Universal Studios!”

Big thanks to Karswell of the ever awesome The Horrors of It All blog for sharing this dandy piece of Frankenstein memorabilia from his personal collection.

The Covers of Frankenstein : Monster World No. 6

From the fall of 1965 (with a January ’66 cover date), a Don Post mask of Glenn Strange as the Frankenstein Monster made festive for Warren & Ackerman’s Monster World number 6.

I want to take this opportunity to thank all of you who visited Frankensteinia this year. Readership is still growing (!) and that is very gratifying to me. Thanks to all of you who left comments — much appreciated! — and all of you who became “Friends of Frankensteinia”. If you are a regular reader and you have a blogger account, click “Follow This Blog” on the right-hand menu and make yourself known. You can also hook up with Frankensteinia on MySpace and/or Facebook. Come on, us Frankenstein fans have to stick together!

And may I say thanks, also, to those who follow my picture blog, Monster Crazy. I’ve posted every day there since launching back in August. Having a lot of fun with it, too. Check it out, won’t you? There’s a prominent link at right.

Here’s to a great Holiday Season, and may the New Year be your best one ever.

Have a Cool Yule!

Frankenstein Friday Round Up

Don Megowan kicks back and chills on the set of Tales of Frankenstein (see previous post) while we round up recent Frankenstein sightings on the net.

Frankenstein Elected

On the news front, Frankenstein won his elections in the Indian northeastern state of Meghalaya. Other candidates for Congress included Hitler, Newton, Kennedy, Rockefeller, and Tony Curtis. Read all about it in the Hindustan Times.

The Frankenswizzler

On the novelty front, Frankensteinia reader Tony Lee spotted a Mon-Stir Frankenstein swizzlestick on eBay. Produced by Zoo-Piks in 1964, it was part of a Universal-licensed set that included the Mummy, Wolfman and the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

The red Frankenstein swizzlestick is shown here with a Frankenstein iron-on transfer, a Mister Softee Ice Cream premium, also from 1964. Stick and iron-on are offered by Mpgstuff.

Thanks, Tony!

Frankenstein Mask

Also on eBay recently, this one from Toy Ranch, is Herman, a rare Don Post Frankenstein mask from 1989. It’s a full-head job with real hair and a yellow-tooth grin.

Don Post created the very first commercially available Frankenstein rubber mask sixty years ago. His studio produced several Frankenstein models through the years, either licensed likenesses or generics, like Herman. It is said that back in the 50s and 60s, Frankenstein masks accounted for 70% of all monster mask sales.

Plug-In Frankenstein

Another Toy Ranch offering is the Telco Frankenstein Motionette, a 24-inch statue with a big green head and a melancholic expression. Plug it in and it rattles its chains. These were produced in the early 90s and available in various sizes and your choice of A/C or battery versions.

Frankenstein Legion

And finally, those of you who enjoyed David Lee Ingersoll’s fabulous Legion of Frankensteins illustration that I originally posted about here, should check out his Skook blog where he is currently sharing some of the preliminary sketches for that piece.