The Return of Frankenstein

The Monster casts a tall shadow in an otherwise sparse December 1934 Universal Weekly trade paper ad for The Return of Frankenstein, the working title for a film that would be released as Bride of Frankenstein. No details, no hint of content except to get the word out: Frankenstein was coming back, and James Whale was aboard.

The phenomenal success of the 1931 original had Universal eager for a sequel, but director James Whale wanted no part of it. Several scripts and screen treatments were floated and other directors were considered until Whale finally came around and supervised a brilliant and perverse script written to his specifications. He would oversee all aspects of the production, from casting — with his friends Ernest Thesiger and Elsa Lanchester assisting the returning Colin Clive and Boris Karloff — to sitting in on the orchestra recording of the sumptuous score.

With Bride of Frankenstein, Whale would create his undisputed masterpiece.

The ad plugs Carl Laemmle’s Anniversary Jubilee, and Universal’s patriarch was featured on the cover of this issue. It seemed like papa Laemmle was celebrating something of other every few months, front and center, although his son Julius, aka Carl Jr., was now head of production — if not for much longer. The horror movies did well, but the studio accumulated a series of expensive flops and the Laemmles were bought out in 1936.

Scoring The Bride

Here’s a great photo of director James Whale sitting in on an orchestral recording session for Bride of Frankenstein (1935).

That’s Whale, dapper as ever in a dark suit, sitting cross-legged in a wicker chaise. On the podium is Russian-born conductor Constantin Romanovich Bakaleinikoff, often billed by his last name alone, former director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and one of a large family of noted musicians, composers and conductors.

Standing directly in front of Bakaleinikoff, looking up at him, is the Polish-born composer Franz Waxman. Bride of Frankenstein was his first score for an American film. He would go on to score such films as the 1941 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and several Hitchcock titles including Rear Window (1954). He garnered twelve Oscar nominations, winning twice, for Sunset Boulevard (1950) and A Place in the Sun (1951).

Seen between Waxman and Bakaleinikoff, sitting at the pipe organ, is British-born Oliver Wallace who would go on to write music for some 150 Walt Disney productions from 1936 until his death in 1963. Wallace wrote the immensely popular WWII propaganda song, Der Fuhrer’s Face, for a 1942 Donald Duck short, and he picked up an Academy Award for his contribution to Dumbo (1941).

The recording studio is Universal’s famous Stage 10, built in 1929. After frequent and considerable remodeling, it is still in use today. It is here, in ’29, that sound editor Jack Foley first began adding ambient sound effects such as footsteps, crackling fire and creaky doors to films. The procedure is now called Foley Art, performed by Foley Artists on Foley Stages.

The photograph attests to James Whale’s deep involvement in Bride of Frankenstein, which began with his having the script tailored to his wishes, and all the way to attending a scoring session.

The photo and participant identification is from a fascinating, must-read History of Stage 10 article on TheStudioTour.com.

The Director: James Whale

James Whale was born on this day, July 22, 1889, in Dudley, Worcestershire, England. In a short but spectacular career in Hollywood he, of course, would direct Frankenstein (1931) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935).

Whale first worked in theater as an actor, garnering good reviews in supporting roles. Of particular interest, in 1928, he appeared in a rare British attempt at capturing the lurid thrills of the French Grand Guignol tradition. The play was called After Death, and the man who would go on to make Frankenstein was cast as a dead man returned to life by electricity!

Here’s another interesting story: Whale, as a young man, had a talent for mimicry and he would entertain friends with pitch perfect imitations. Now zoom forward to 1952. Whale, on a European holiday, stops in London. Upon hearing that the then mostly forgotten director was in town — with only ten days to go before he sailed back to America — a young film writer, Gavin Lambert of Sight and Sound magazine, hurriedly arranged for a tribute at the British Film Institute. Whale was surprised and flattered, and attended an evening showing of his two Frankenstein pictures. It is the only such homage ever given James Whale while he lived.

On that most unique evening, Whale was invited to speak and he made a short presentation about making Frankenstein that, according to Lambert, “included a brilliant impression of Boris Karloff. The audience applauded appreciatively and the film began with an appropriate mix of laughter and horror.”

The speech was not recorded on film or sound. Whale’s few but precious words and his fleeting take on Karloff are lost to us, but what a moment it must have been.

In 2002, the city of Dudley erected a memorial to James Whale. The monument, by sculptor Charles Haddock, features a concrete stack of film cans embossed with the titles of Whale’s films. On top of this is a looping filmstrip of cast iron, with film scenes etched into its frames.

James Whale’s tragic last days were fictionalized by Christopher Bram in his excellent novel Father of Frankenstein. A superb and highly decorated film adaptation, Gods and Monsters, earned its writer-director, Bill Condon, an Oscar for Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium and actor Ian McKellen won several international awards and an Oscar nomination as Best Actor.

Related: Other posts concerning James Whale. 

James Whale biographies: James Whale, A New World of Gods and Monsters, by James Curtis (University of Minnesota Press, 2003), and James Whale: A Biography or The Would-Be Gentleman, by Mark Gatiss (Cassell Lesbian and Gay Studies, 1997).

James Whale website: The James Whale Nexus.

Frankenstein and Fiancée Re-Released

James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935) are currently enjoying a new theatrical release (as of June 25) in France, accompanied by new, beautifully designed computer-colored posters.

Critic Jean-Baptiste Morain of Les Inrocks notes that “Eighty years after they were made, these two popular and legendary works still fascinate thanks to their principal actors, Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester… and their expressionistic imagery of leaning sets, painted backdrops and chiaroscuro.”

On Critikat.com, Vincent Avenel celebrates James Whale’s influence on the horror genre, Boris Karloff’s performance as the “desperately naïve and inexperienced monster¨, and Jack Pierce’s “eternally recognizable” makeup. Fellow critic Clément Graminiès admires the “eccentric” director James Whale and his “highly subversive” treatment of the subject matter.

Virgile Dumez of Allo-Ciné, reviewing Bride of Frankenstein, writes, “Wandering like ghosts in giant castles, through foggy cemeteries and down into cobwebbed crypts, the characters are all seeking love or some form of recognition, only to find death and incomprehension… The Bride of Frankenstein remains the undisputed masterpiece of Universal Studios… (and) a major masterpiece of gothic cinema”.

Another James Whale classic, The Invisible Man (1933) gets its French theatrical re-release in August.

The films are distributed by Carlotta Films of Paris.

A follow-up: More reviews of the French re-release.

The Covers of Frankenstein : Bizarre No. 24-25

A forlorn Frankenstein on the cover of Bizarre no. 24-25, from 1962. Karloff in his Bride of Frankenstein makeup graces more book covers than any other Frankenstein Monster of the movies. Perhaps it’s simply a question of ready access to a cache of good studio photographs, but I think that the burn effects, the signed hair and exposed forehead clamps make this Monster the most photogenic of all.

Not to be confused with the current magazine of the same name, or the legendary fetish title published by John “Willie” Coutts, THIS Bizarre was an intellectual literary and arts magazine with a surrealist bent, first launched in Paris by maverick publisher Eric Losfeld in 1953.

Abandoned after just two issues, the title and concept were revived by editor Michel Laclos for publisher J.J.Pauvert in 1955 and ran until 1968. Subject matter ran from the provocative to the weird and profane, with special thematic issues devoted to such names as Boris Vian and Arthur Rimbaud, edgy cartoonists like Wolinki and Chaval, and pop culture subjects like Monsters in myth and real-life “freaks”, horror and mystery writer Gaston Leroux, and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan.

In the late summer of 1962, this double issue, numbered 24-25, was entirely devoted to the work of four men: James Whale, Tod Browning, Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Midi-Minuit Fantastique editor Jean-Claude Romer profiled the directors, and avant-garde writer Jean Boullet handled the actors. The short bios were followed by exhaustive filmographies, including cast and crew, detailed synopsis and, when available, excerpts from contemporary reviews.

The filmographies have long since been improved on, but at the time, it was a stunning piece of research coming early in the new, nascent era of horror film study and criticism. The only disappointment with the issue lies with Boullet’s opinionated “biographies”. He gives short shrift to Karloff’s abilities, essentially reducing him to an interchangeable actor who “owed everything” to the genius of makeup man Jack Pierce. As for the Lugosi profile, it veers to the ridiculous, with the actor, in drugged old age, “becoming Dracula” and living in a house with live bats. Writing partner Romer, famously rigorous, was incensed by Boullet’s sensationalistic exploitation of “every cliché in the book” about Lugosi. The men remained friends, but there were no further published collaborations, despite editor Laclos’ introduction saying that Romer and Boullet were planning bio-filmographies of the Chaneys, father and son.

The 98-page magazine includes 36 pages of photographs. You can see 16 of those pages scanned here on the excellent zine blog. Once you get there, be sure to scroll around. The site reproduces wonderful covers and content from older French magazines devoted mostly to b-movies, science fiction and horror, and mild erotica. If you’ve never seen an issue, you can get eye-popping glimpses inside the legendary horror film magazine Midi-Minuit Fantastique, like this interview and layout on Christopher Lee, and a great photo essay on actress Barbara Steele, from 1967.

Oh, and an anecdote about that issue of Bizarre… The day I bought my copy, late ’62, in Montreal, I went directly from the store to the Cinematheque Québécoise where film historian William K. Everson was appearing that evening. After his lecture, he stepped offstage to sign books and meet people. I went up and I pulled out my new copy of Bizarre Nos. 24-25 with the Frankenstein cover. Everson’s eyes bugged out. He looked inside and stopped on the Karloff filmography. Turning the pages slowly, he said, “This is incredibly complete!”. I offered him my copy, he wouldn’t hear of it, but he had me write down the name of the bookstore for him.

The French literary blog, l’Alamblog, ran a lenghty series of posts detailing the history of Bizarre magazine, with covers.

Frankenstein Premieres

"James Whale… has wrought a stirring grand-guignol type of picture, one that aroused so much excitement at the Mayfair… that many in the audience laughed to cover their true feelings.”

— Mordaunt Hall, New York Times.

On this day, December 4, in 1931, James Whale’s Frankenstein premiered at the Mayfair Theater in New York City. Crowds lined up in Times Square despite the cold rain. A week later, the Mayfair reported box office earnings of $53,000, and a record-breaking seven-day attendance of 76,360. The film went into wide release on December 6 with similar success in every market.

Frankenstein clocked in at a tense 67 minutes. It has been well documented how the film had been trimmed, prior to release, of a few seconds worth of perceived excesses. The cuts included supposed blasphemy in invoking God, a violent struggle when The Monster is first subdued, a hard blow to The Monster’s head, close-ups of Fritz terrorizing The Monster with a torch, an hypodermic stab, and the notorious drowning scene, all of which were miraculously preserved and edited back into the film 58 years later.

It appears that there are a few more cuts belonging on that list. An early trailer for the film — visible on YouTube — includes two brief scenes that have been called “outtakes”, arguably trimmed for length or pacing, yet these scenes are distinctly violent moments and they might have been culled for the same reason the other, better-known scenes were removed, i.e. to tone down the mayhem. For example, the trailer shows a brief but nasty struggle as a grimacing Monster throttles Frankenstein when they meet on the mountaintop.

Another scene shows The Monster rising from the dissecting room floor and rapidly exiting the frame. This last take suggests that the sequence where The Monster sits up and grabs Dr. Waldman by the throat, which cuts there, actually continued, morbidly, as The Monster fought or strangled the old man to the ground.

Reporting on Universal’s restoration efforts in the June/July 1989 issue of Films in Review, Greg Mank wrote, “The restored version… adds only about a minute to Frankenstein. Still, the new footage gives an eccentric, strangely sadistic spice to a beloved film…”. The scenes in the trailer support that statement. The restored cuts and the still missing elements glimpsed in the trailer suggest that James Whale’s original vision called for rougher action and a more vicious Monster.

Yet for all the cuts made, still more were demanded by civic and religious groups as the film rolled out across North America and the World. In England, among other censored scenes, the entire sequence where The Monster menaces Elizabeth in the bedroom was removed. The film was banned outright or delayed pending severe censorship in many countries, including Austria, Germany, Czechoslovakia and Australia.

Such was the power of James Whale’s Frankenstein, unleashed 76 years ago today.

Read the original review by Mordaunt Hall in The New York Times, December 4, 1931.

Read the original review by Alfred Rushford Gleason in Variety, December 8, 1931.

Poster image courtesy of Jean-Claude Michel.

Off With The Kites!

This is post is part of the Close-Up Blogathon run by Matt Zoller Seitz at The House Next Door.

Colin Clive, aureoled by a huge, glowing vacuum tube, calls for the kites to be released, and the raising of The Bride begins.

I had not planned on doing another Close-Up post, but stepping through Bride of Frankenstein’s creation sequence this week, I was transfixed by the gorgeous images.

Director James Whale made the best of a rare chance to revisit and improve upon the creation scene from the original picture. The lab has been upgraded, the crackling super-science machinery multiplied and augmented with extra gizmos. Broom handle switches are thrown with a deafening bang, a flash of magnesium and a shower of sparks. Go look: Shahn over at Six Martinis and the Seventh Art has posted screencaps showing some of the white-hot flares and the washed out, ghostly afterimages that punctuate the action.

The genius of the sequence is its busy, vertiginous montage, quick-cutting between weird angle shots of the intense scientists, their frenetic topside helpers, the forbidding mechanical devices, and the slab rushing upwards to meet the lightning, all of it backed by a musical soundtrack that pulsates like a heartbeat. The Bride’s creation sequence, edited by Whale and Ted Kent, would merit as close and careful an analysis as, say, the shower scene in Psycho.

I have isolated a handful of shots, all close-ups of the principals in the creation scene…

In a brief, unsettling moment, shadows transform half of Clive’s face into a death’s head skull.

Ernest Thesiger, rattled by electrical detonations, registers fear.

Stark lighting transforms Clive and Thesiger’s faces into grotesque masks, eyes punched out.

Skull clamps glistening in the torchlight, the impatient Monster (Boris Karloff) cranes to see his promised Bride cradled high overhead, waiting for the lightning to blast her to life.

Thesiger’s Pretorius, momentarily robbed of his frigid, pompous composure, creeps out in grimacing rapture as The Bride comes alive.

My other Close-Up Blogathon posts:

The Monster is introduced Into The Light.

The Short, Apocalyptic Life of The Bride of Frankenstein.

The Short, Apocalyptic Life of The Bride of Frankenstein

This is my second contribution to the Close-up Blogathon run by Matt Zoller Seitz at The House Next Door.

In terms of technique, James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) is sometimes crude. Its canvas night skies droop; a microphone throws a shadow across the scene at the dungeon door where Frankenstein and Waldman prepare to ambush The Monster. Four years later, Whale traded the original’s raw, claustrophobic expressionism for lavish Hollywood Golden Age glamour.

Bride of Frankenstein (1935) is awash is pearly grays and deep focus photography. The sets have grown cavernous and meticulously detailed. Heroic music punctuates every scene. Colin Clive is at his manic-depressive best and he gets to interact with the formidable Ernest Thesiger as the most eccentric, eldritch mad scientist of them all. The Monster has lost his malevolent gauntness. He speaks, cultivates a taste for wine and cigars, sheds tears, and pines for a friend.

Into this heady mix is introduced The Bride, only to signal a quick, catastrophic end to this macabre fairy tale.

The story goes that iconic actresses like Brigitte Helm and Louise Brooks were considered for the role. In the end, it fell, magnificently, to Elsa Lanchester, who also played Mary Shelley in the film’s prologue, connecting Mary and The Bride. The comparison is made clear and unmistakable: In the opening sequence, a delicate Mary reaches for her beloved Percy, turning her back to the obnoxious Lord Byron, a balletic move directly echoed when the frightened Bride reaches for Henry Frankenstein, turning away from the lugubrious Dr. Pretorius.

The entire lifespan of the Monster’s betrothed, from the moment we see her fingers move until The Monster pulls the Deus Ex Power Switch that blows everything to atoms, is almost exactly 12 minutes. Add a few moments, unshown, while Frankenstein and Pretorius remove the head bandages and slip her into a tent-like shroud. I’d like to think that The Bride’s electrostatic hairdo sprang up on its own as soon as the bandages unraveled. Otherwise, the entire, short existence of the thunderstruck Bride is chronicled on screen, most of it in tight, loving close-up.

The Bride’s profile was inspired by a bust of Nefertiti, which is appropriate for a Monster Queen. She is unforgettable, with her electrified hair, bee stung lips, lightning bolt scars and big eyes, irises the size of dimes, that never seem to blink.

Halloween may be just around the corner, but I’m skipping ahead to Valentine’s Day. Here’s my homage to The Bride, as she appeared in close-up, from the shot of her bandaged head with its crown of safety pins to her final, defiant hiss.

I give you The Beautiful Monster: The Bride of Frankenstein.

Directed by James Whale. Makeup by Jack Pierce. Cinematography by John Mescall.

My first contribution to the Close-Up Blogathon, about James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931), is here.

Into The Light

This post is part of the Close-up Blogathon under the auspices of Matt Zoller Seitz at The House Next Door.

The first significant close-up in James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) is that of the Monster’s hand. For all the energy, the sparking fireworks and thunderous cacophony of the spectacular creation scene, the one sign that life has been kindled in the artificial man is the slow movement of the gruesome hand, with its darkened fingertips and an ugly scar carving the wrist. It’s alive.

The classic “bolt head” Frankenstein is an icon of the 20^th Century. Today, the image so permeates popular culture that it is almost impossible to imagine its power when it was first flashed on cinema screens 76 years ago. One scene, in its terrible beauty, still evokes how disconcerting, how utterly alien the first sight of this incredible face must have been, and that is in The Reveal.

The Monster is announced with a groan and the sound of shuffling feet. Waiting in the lab, quiet now, its equipment stowed under dust covers, doctors Frankenstein and Waldman hurriedly turn down the lights. Down, not up. The Creature will be brought out in luminous penumbra.

The door opens and the Monster stands, confused, with it’s back to us.

Next, in close-up, the inexplicably square head slowly rotates. We glimpse, progressively, an overhanging brow, a tall forehead. Stitches, skull clamps and neck plugs. Turning, the face’s cubistic angles catches the low light, now faces us, and The Monster is revealed.

Then, in complete, breathless silence, a sort of staccato zoom-in: Two successively closer shots with the camera curiously unmoored, trembling slighty, as if hand-held. We are given a Good Look and The Monster stares back at us, too close, with his dull dead man’s eyes.

Boris Karloff’s brilliant pantomime would make his Monster unforgettable, but never again would the character appear so mysterious, so utterly primal as here, in its introduction, when that impossible face came into the light and was seared into the collective consciousness.

Directed by James Whale. Makeup by Jack Pierce. Cinematography by Arthur Edeson.

Part Two: The Short, Apocalyptic Life of The Bride of Frankenstein, is here.

Frankenstein Wraps

ON THIS DAY, October 3^rd, in 1931, James Whale did some pickup scenes in around the laboratory set and said “Cut!” for the last time on Frankenstein. The film had shot for 35 days at a final cost of $291,129.13.

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

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

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

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

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

After the film wrapped, on this day, 76 years ago, James Whale moved on to film the largely forgotten Impatient Maiden, with Mae Clarke. Colin Clive quickly returned to London, leaving Hollywood on the 27th. Boris Karloff went back to being a character actor. He had to buy a ticket to see Frankenstein in a movie house. In the opening credits, his name was replaced with a gimmick interrogation point.

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

The Lake of Frankenstein

On this day, September 28, and on the 29^th, in 1931, director James Whale and his crew, with actors Boris Karloff, Michael Mark, and 7-year old Marilyn Harris, shot the controversial drowning scene at Malibou Lake (not ‘Malibu'), about 30 miles west of Universal studios.

Karloff was uneasy with the scene, but Whale insisted it was necessary. A few weeks later, preview audiences were appalled and the scene was removed. Ironically, the resulting jarring cut, just as The Monster reaches for the little girl, suggests a fate worse than drowning for poor Maria. The scene, thought lost, was found in the late 70s and restored to the film.

The location, a man-made lake, had filled up in 1926 after sitting dry for 3 years. Frankenstein was only the second motion picture to visit there, but the location was soon to become a movie favorite. Films shot there include Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator (1940) and Monsieur Verdoux (1947), the Noir classic The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), and the cult science-fiction I Married a Monster from Outer Space (1958).

In the 30’s, The Malibu Club charged $1000 a day “for the use of the lake and adjoining property” and extra for lodging and food. A local newspaper reported that Hollywood money had gotten “the lake and its members out of serious debt. In eight short years the lake reduced its debt from $235,000 to a mere $20,000.”

UPDATE: The Maliboulake.net site reports that Frankenstein’s cinematographer, Arthur Edeson, built himself a home on South Lakeshore overlooking the dam at Malibou Lake in 1926. He may very well be the one who suggested the location for The Monster's only outdoor scene in an otherwise stage-bound film.