The Silent Frankenstein's Roving Props

The Edison Kinetograph Company’s Frankenstein was released 102 years ago today, on March 18, in 1910. It is the only one of three Frankenstein films from the silent era to have survived for us to appreciate. It has been heavily studied, interpreted and analyzed, yet we find that we can still discover new things about it. Case in point, props from Frankenstein were used in at least one other Edison film, and therein might hide a clue to the singular appearance of The Monster in Frankenstein.

The film in question, embedded here, is A Trip to Mars, released on February 18, exactly one month before Frankenstein.

Director Ashley Miller made over 100 short films, many for Edison’s company, eventually working in different productions with Frankenstein alumni Augustus Phillips, Mary Fuller and Charles Ogle (in a film intriguingly called Van Bibber’s Experiment (1911). A Trip to Mars was no doubt inspired by Georges Méliès’ wildly successful A Trip to the Moon of 1902, still influential after nearly a decade. A Trip to Mars, however, is not a copy of the earlier film. Its Martian tableaus are whimsical, but its photographic tricks are not nearly as elaborate or magical as those staged by Méliès.

Both films borrow from H.G.Wells’ “The First Men in the Moon”. Méliès’ lunar explorers encountered Wells’ flowering moonscape and insect-like Selenites, while the Edison film used Wells’ propulsion system, Cavorite, here called “Reverse Gravity”. Like Wells’ Professor Cavor, Edison’s scientist tests his chemicals on a chair, causing it to hit to the ceiling. The scientist then douses himself with Reverse Gravity Powder and floats out the window and across space to Mars.

The obvious shared prop is a laboratory skeleton. It is prominent in Frankenstein, providing a touch of the macabre, sitting like a long forgotten guest in the foreground, in front of the witches’ cabinet where the scientist boils up his Monster. The same skeleton, with its distinctive ribcage and flat pelvis, hangs decoratively on the back wall of the Mars Voyager’s lab. Probably papier-mâché, it resembles a Dia de Muertos figure. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this skeleton used in other films as a standard prop for experimental labs and doctor’s offices.

The second shared prop is more of a guess, a possibility, but the evidence is compelling…

On Mars, the Voyager encounters fantastical sights. One short scene has him stumbling through a forest of grotesque, giant Ent-like living trees. They sway and waved their claw-like hands in mild menace. On the left-hand side, highlighted here in a screen cap, one of the tree giants has long, branch-like fingers that are strikingly similar to the Frankenstein Monster’s bizarre hands. Note the shape and length of the fingers, and the curiously bent thumb. Are these the Frankenstein Monster’s hands?

Both films were shot close together, this much is certain. Kinetograph films were routinely shot, edited and in release within a few short weeks. Frankenstein lensed in January, but I could not find any shooting details for A Trip to Mars. Mars was released before Frankenstein, suggesting but not proving that it was made before Frankenstein. The question, of course, is which film came first, providing ready-made props for the other.

I have always thought of The Monster’s inexplicably curious hands as branch-like, and it would certainly explain things if actor Charles Ogle, donning his extreme makeup for Frankenstein, used the recently made and readily available Mars prop gloves for effect.

Compare images, compare films, A Trip to Mars posted above, and Frankenstein here. The question is posed: Were the Frankenstein Monster’s curious hands really Martian appendages?

Next up this week, information and rare photographs from the 1915 Frankenstein epic: LIFE WITHOUT SOUL.

Bela's 129th

Happy Halloween-time Birthday to Bela Lugosi, born October 20, 1882.

Related:
When Frankenstein Met the Wolf Man

Frankenstein Wraps

ON THIS DAY, October 3, in 1931, James Whale did some pickup scenes in around the laboratory set and said “Cut!” for the last time, after 35 days of shooting, on Frankenstein.

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.

James Whale moved on to film the largely forgotten Impatient Maiden, with Mae Clarke. Colin Clive returned to London, leaving Hollywood on the 27th. Boris Karloff 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. Within a few months, Frankenstein would make him a full-fledged name-above-the-title movie star.

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.

Repost, with minor rewriting.

James Whale's Frankenstein Turns 80

“He’s just resting, waiting for a new life to come!”

On this very day, August 24, in 1931, Frankenstein began shooting. Eighty years on, its influence is still operating and its central character, The Monster, is an icon of the twentieth century.

Among other things, in the months to come, right up to December, we’ll be celebrating James Whale’s Frankenstein here on Frankensteinia, the blog it inspired. Speaking of which, we’re celebrating our own little anniversary, as this blog turned four years old on the weekend. It’s been a good year for Frankensteinia, with the wonderful Rondo Award and a still growing readership, which are two things that thoroughly amaze me.

In the weeks to come, as posting promises to increase dramatically, I’ll be making some minor changes to the blog design and corrections or additions to the menu bars. I’ll be making the film label list correctly alphabetical and I’ll rebuild the Mary Shelley/Frankenstein resources list that has somehow disappeared.

With August rapidly fading, Halloween is suddenly in sight and I’m already planning a series of daily posts all through October. I also have some surprises coming up, stuff that will blow your neck bolts right off. Proper announcements coming soon!

Remembering Peter Cushing

Fond thoughts today for Peter Cushing who passed away August 11, in 1994.

In a backstage shot from The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), “Saint Peter” poses with Melvyn Hayes, who played the younger Baron. The two actors would share another credit —playing different parts — with 1960’s The Flesh and the Fiends.

There was another actor who would “play” Peter Cushing, a stand-in, if you will. Of all his roles, and he played such remarkable characters as Baron Frankenstein, Dracula’s Van Helsing, Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Who — you name it — perhaps the best-known and certainly the most widely seen of all Cushing’s interpretations was his turn as the supremely villainous Grand Moff Tarkin, a character so profoundly nasty that he even bosses Darth Vader around, in Star Wars (1977). When George Lucas made Revenge of the Sith (2005), completing the prequel trilogy that led to the events in the original 1977 Star Wars (aka Star Wars: A New Hope), the character of Tarkin was seen very briefly with the newly minted Darth Vader and the cowled Palpatine, all gazing out a spaceship’s picture window at the dreaded Death Star under construction.

Lucas considered the possibility of using outtakes of Cushing from the original film and animating his lips to new dialog, or even constructing a full digital model of Cushing but, in the end, actor Wayne Pygram was called in, his resemblance to Cushing augmented with prosthetic makeup. He is seen very briefly, and from some distance away, but it was nice to have a recognizable Cushing as Tarkin — first name Wilhuff, don’t you know — bookending the series. A Cushing-like Tarkin — killer cheekbones and all — also appears as an animated figure in the Clone Wars television series.

Peter Cushing is not about to be forgotten anytime soon. Later this month, in the seaside town of Whitstable where he resided from 1959 onwards, Cushing will be honored — after a fashion —with the inauguration of a new pub, The Peter Cushing.

The venue is the venerable Oxford building, once — appropriately — a cinema. I wonder if it ever played a Cushing film, or if Peter and his beloved Helen attended showings there. Bingo was introduced in 1962 and took over permanently in 1984. Now, the JD Wetherspoon chain of pubs is renovating and repurposing the building. One assumes that the decor will include Cushing memorabilia, and hopes it’s as tasteful as Cushing would have liked. The Peter Cushing opens August 23.

An exhaustive and entertaining biography, and tons of background info about the character of Grand Moff Tarkin on the Star Wars Wookieepedia.

Photos of the Oxford building in disrepair, prior to its renovation.

The JD Wetherspoon web page and Facebook page for The Peter Cushing pub.

Bit of a controversy over the naming of The Peter Cushing pub, from This is Kent.

Happy Birthday, Boris and Sara

Boris Karloff is treated to a birthday surprise on the set of Son of Frankenstein, November 23, 1938. Before the day was over, there would be another reason to celebrate as Boris’ daughter, Sara, was born.

Here’s to fond memories of Boris, and a Happy Birthday to Sara!

More pictures from Karloff’s 1938 Birthday party here and here.

Check out the Frankensteinia archives for Boris Karloff posts, and there’s TONS more to discover in the Boris Karloff Blogathon Archives.

Blog Update

Posting has been sparse lately due to urgent, real/life obligations. I’ve got a lot of material lined up and some exciting posts that I can’t wait to get to, but my partial hiatus will have to run into December. See you then.

Cheers!

The Cemetery Skeleton

On August 24, 1931, James Whale began shooting Frankenstein, starting with the opening scene from the movie.

The camera pans across a row of mourners at a gravesite. Old women sobbing, a child lost in thought, grief-stricken men. The camera slides past them to the last figure, a hooded skeleton.

The skeleton is an ancient and enduring symbol of death. Death’s Head skulls and crossed bones were often carved into headstones and full skeletal figures appeared as statuary alongside trumpeting angels and weeping stone maidens. Skeletons might appear in sad repose or leaping heavenward, shrouds dropping from their shoulders. In the Middle Ages, the image of the dancing skeleton mocked life’s brevity.

Frankenstein's cemetery skeleton stands off to the side, boxed in with pickets, its bony hands resting on the hilt of a sword. The bleak, sparse set suggests a pauper’s graveyard, with an expressionistic dead tree, a plaster Christ on his calvary cross and a few wooden grave markers stuck at crazy angles. Behind a rickety fence, Frankenstein and his impatient assistant crouch in hiding. As soon as the ceremony is over, the funeral party gone and the gravedigger retreating downhill, Frankenstein and Fritz spring into action, undoing the burial, liberating the fresh corpse from its all too brief interment.

The cemetery skeleton is the first hint of frights to come, yet it is more than just a lugubrious prop. The grim sentinel stands prominently screen right, a witness to desecration, through the entire sequence where Frankenstein and Fritz dig up and raise the coffin. In a telling gesture, Colin Clive’s Frankenstein, concentrated on his urgent task, blithely throws a shovelful of graveyard dirt square into the skeleton’s face. It’s a James Whale moment, of course, darkly humorous, but it is also a signal of Frankenstein’s maniacal focus on the job at hand, unconcerned with the consequences of his acts. As a symbolic gesture, it illustrates Frankenstein’s disrespect for Death itself.

The cemetery skeleton returned for a cameo in the 1935 sequel, Bride of Frankenstein. It is seen briefly in the graveyard when the agitated Monster upends a tall gravestone and climbs down into a crypt, seeking refuge among the dead where he feels he belongs, only to encounter that other famous graverobber, Dr. Pretorius. The crucified Christ statue is also seen, a case of props re-used, unless this is meant to be the same cemetery as the one that opens Frankenstein.

I wonder if the cemetery skeleton was trotted out for bit parts in other movies, or if it quietly haunted the Universal prop department, undisturbed, between Frankenstein assignments. I wonder what became of it.

The Funeral of Shelley: The Art and the Reality

An 1889 oil painting by Louis Édouard Fournier, The Funeral of Shelley, depicts a somber ceremony as the body of Percy Bysshe Shelley is cremated on a Tuscany beach, July 18, 1822.

The scene is wildly inaccurate in all its details.

Death shadowed Mary Shelley’s life. Her very birth came at a terrible cost as her mother died within ten days. As a young woman, Mary would lose three of her four children to childhood illness, and she was still recuperating from a miscarriage that almost killed her when her beloved Percy drowned at sea.

The Shelleys, in perpetual flight from political reprobation, scandal and persistent debt, had settled in Italy by 1819. There, though he had no experience as a sailor — he couldn’t even swim — Percy had purchased a boat. In early July of 1822, he sailed to Livorno to meet with Lord Byron and Leigh Hunt to discuss a project for a new radical magazine. On the 8th, Percy and three other men set out on their return trip to Lerici. They never arrived.

The official story has Percy’s boat caught and sunk in a sudden squall. Mary would attribute the tragedy to a faulty design that capsized the vessel. Another story circulated that the boat was deliberately rammed, Shelley’s assassination for holding subversive views.

On July 12, Percy’s body washed ashore on a beach near Viareggio and was promptly buried there by locals. Italian health laws prescribed cremation and on July 18, Shelley’s friends and fellow authors carried out the grim ceremony.

Fournier’s 1889 painting depicts a bleak, windswept beach, the witnesses swaddled in heavy coats against the cold. At the back, Mary Shelley kneels in prayer. In the foreground, friends and fellow authors Edward John Trelawny, Hunt and Byron strike dramatic, grieving poses. A peaceful Shelley, as if asleep, is stretched out on his smoking pyre. But it’s all wrong.

July 18 was actually a hot, sunny day. Mary Shelley, as was the custom of the times, did not attend. Leigh Hunt sat out the event in a nearby carriage. Byron, upset at the proceedings and suffering from the heat, cooled off in the surf, eventually to swim out to his own boat, leaving Trelawny alone on the beach. Shelley’s body, badly decomposed, the face and hands gone, was burned in a metal furnace lugged out to the shore by hired help.

In the end, Trelawny plucked Shelley’s carbonized heart from the ashes as a gruesome souvenir for himself, but he was eventually persuaded to give it to Mary, who preserved the relic for the rest of her life. Contrary to various reports, the heart was not returned to Shelley’s grave or buried with Mary, in 1851. It was interred with their son, Percy Florence Shelley, in 1889, the very year that Fournier painted The Funeral of Shelley.

There was nothing of the romantic gesture, suggested by Fournier’s art, in the actual cremation of Shelley’s remains. His friends had gathered in respect and duty, to oversee the proper and speedy disposal of his body. In life, Percy Shelley had been ostracized and censored as a subversive. The news of his demise was reported in the conservative Courier of London with cold sarcasm: “Shelley, the writer of some infidel poetry, has been drowned, now he knows whether there is a God or not.”

By 1889, almost seventy years on, Shelley’s disrepute had faded from popular memory and he was now acclaimed as one of the great poets, his works studied and revered. Shelley’s deserved fame was largely due to Mary having tirelessly spent the second half of her life collecting, editing, praising and promoting his writings. It was this Shelley, the poet genius who died tragically young, that Fournier elevated with his highly imaginative interpretation.

The Funeral of Shelley (sometimes referred to as The Cremation of Shelley) is Louis Édouard Fournier’s most famous painting. Fournier (1857-1917) was best known for his large-scale frescoes, notably the superb mosaic friezes — recently restored — decorating the Grand Palais on the Champs-Élysées, in Paris.

The painting currently resides at the Walker Art Gallery, an institution of the Art Museums of Liverpool.

The Bride of Frankenstein, 75th Anniversary

It was 75 years ago today, April 22, in 1935, that Bride of Frankenstein was released to critical and popular acclaim. In time, this extraordinary film has only grown in stature, now considered by many as the best horror film ever made, and certainly one of the jewels of Hollywood’s Golden Age.

Back in 1931, the phenomenal success of Frankenstein made a sequel inevitable, but director James Whale, feeling he had done everything he could with the story, wanted no part of it. Universal turned, ironically, to Robert Florey.

The French-born writer-director had originated the Frankenstein project, writing a script and filming the now legendary, lost screen test with Bela Lugosi as The Monster, only to be pushed aside when Whale stepped in and took over. Florey would be denied again. His screen treatment, The New Adventures of Frankenstein: The Monster Lives!, was unceremoniously shelved, and the writing chores passed on to a succession of writers, a list that would grow to eleven in all.

Storylines in various states of development would include one where The Monster took over his creator’s work, and another in which Dr. Frankenstein builds a death ray. German expatriate director Kurt Neumann was briefly involved in the project, now titled The Return of Frankenstein.

By mid-1933, news of the proposed film started appearing in newspapers. In July, the New York Times announced that Universal was producing The Return of Frankenstein with Boris Karloff, "who was the original what-is-it that frightened children" with The Ottawa Citizen adding, if incorrectly, "practically the entire cast of the original being kept for this one."

On July 28, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette carried a short piece by syndicated showbiz columnist Harriet Parsons on Karloff and the new Frankenstein film (see at left).

The film’s phalanx of uncredited scribes included Josef Berne, whose cinematic output was coming up with settings for 3-minute “Soundies”, the early film equivalent of today’s music videos. Then there was Philip MacDonald, writer of Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto films, the Karloff-Lugosi vehicle The Body Snatcher (1945), and several TV dramas including episodes of Perry Mason, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Fantasy Island. Tom Reed was an early contributor whose first screen job was writing the title cards for The Phantom of the Opera (1925). He also collaborated on Florey’s Murders in the Rue Morgue. Another uncredited writer was Lawrence Blochman, a prolific mystery and detective writer who translated the works of George Simenon and served as president of the Mystery Writers of America.

One particularly interesting contributor was Edmund Pearson, who came up with the scene where Dr. Pretorius reveals his living doll creations. His only other screenwriting gig was an assist, again uncredited, on Werewolf of London (1935). Pearson made up for his poor screen creds with a phenomenal career as a true crime writer. His books, notably his essays on the Lizzie Borden case, are considered classics of the genre.

By 1934, James Whale was finally persuaded to return, with the understanding that he would have complete control over the production. A new script was tailored to his wishes. R.C.Sherriff, who had beautifully adapted H.G.Wells’ The Invisible Man for Whale, was briefly involved, as was John L. Balderston, who had co-scripted Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy. It was Balderston’s idea to use Mary Shelley’s concept of The Monster demanding a mate. In the end, the shooting script was delivered by veteran playwright and screenwriter William Hurlbut. The title change, to Bride of Frankenstein, was only confirmed once shooting started.

The working title stuck around a bit. When writer Edmund Pearson and actor O.P.Heggie (the blind hermit) passed away, both in 1937, their obituaries listed The Return of Frankenstein among their credits. The title was also used, briefly, in the early stages of the making of Son of Frankenstein (1939).

Amazingly, considering the scale of the production, barely four months elapsed between the film starting up and its theatrical release. Shooting began on January 2, 1935 and completed March 7, running ten days over schedule and a whopping 30% over budget. Less than a month after wrapping, a first edit was being previewed even as James Whale was busy retooling, dropping scenes and shooting new ones, right up to the release date. Notably, Colin Clive’s Henry Frankenstein was again saved from extermination.

In the original film, Frankenstein was to be killed when thrown from the burning windmill by The Monster. The producers thought better of it and a new closing scene showed the scientist being nursed back to health by his fiancée. In the sequel, as originally shot, Frankenstein perished in the exploding castle laboratory along with the evil Dr. Pretorius and his two monstrous creations but, again, a reprieve was given and a new scene was shot with Colin Clive’s Frankenstein and Valerie Hobson’s Elizabeth escaping the conflagration. Actually, Clive had it both ways: Despite the modified ending, a reshoot of the spectacular lab explosion was out of the question and Clive’s Frankenstein, whom we’ve just seen booking to safety on the castle path, is still visible inside the lab, at left, backed up to the wall as the tower comes crashing down.

Bride of Frankenstein’s engrossing tale unfolds on massive sets. Its superlative cast is given splendid, highly quotable dialogue, accompanied by a lavish wall-to-wall score. The film is filled all through its brisk, 75-minute run time with unforgettable scenes, none so glorious, perhaps, as the climactic birth of the fiercely independent Bride.

Bride of Frankenstein was an instant classic and has proven an enduring one.

Tomorrow: What did the critics say?

The Edison Frankenstein: 100 Years Ago Today

If you’ve never seen it, now’s the time. Here, 100 years to the day after it was first released, is the Edison Frankenstein. Hang in, the picture quality gets better after the first few moments.

As would become usual for a Frankenstein film, The Monster steals the show. Its ingredients mixed in a saucepan, and eerily burned to life in a tub, Charles Ogle shuffles around on big bandaged feet, skulks menacingly, rears up in surprise and strikes hieroglyphic poses. With crooked claw pantomime, he points towards Elizabeth just gone offscreen, then to himself. The Monster demands a mate.

The film is theatrical, you almost expect a curtain to go up and down between tableaux, but the mirror scene is very inventive, characters appearing in the mirror before they step onscreen, and the dissolving reflections are simple, early, but very effective special effects.

Enjoy.

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.

Gods, Monsters, and Ernest Thesiger

Dr. Pretorius pulls the switch that electrified the Bride of Frankenstein to life. Careful of that overhead lever, please. That one’ll blast everyone to atoms!

Ernest Thesiger was born on January 15, in 1879. His family was a storied one, with barons, war heroes and a famous explorer among his ancestors. As a young man, Thesiger worked or socialized with some of the great British artists, among them George Bernard Shaw, Somerset Maugham and Noel Coward. The famous American-born painter John Singer Sargent, the leading portrait painter of his era, captured a smiling 32-year old Thesiger in a charcoal sketch in 1911.

In addition to his work as an actor on stage and in films, Thesiger was an accomplished painter and an expert at needlework, eventually writing an important book on the subject, Adventures in Embroidery (1941). A wounded veteran of the Great War, Thesiger joined the Church Army League of Friends of the Poor, helping to form the Disabled Soldiers Embroidery Industry and earning the humorous title of Honorary Secretary Cross-Stitch. His work teaching needlework to severely disabled men was admired by Queen Mary (consort of King George V), no less, and Thesiger became a frequent visitor to Buckingham Palace.

Thesiger’s first film part came in 1916, playing a comical witch in The Real Thing At Last, a film that mercilessly spoofed how Hollywood would stage Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The now lost epic was written and largely directed by Peter Pan creator J.M.Barrie. A showing at the London Coliseum was held on March 7 with King and Queen in attendance and proceeds going towards the YMCA fund. A smattering of silent film roles over the next few years would include a part in Number 13, an abandoned project directed by Alfred Hitchcock in 1922.

By the early Thirties, Thesiger was in America, appearing on Broadway, when he was called to Hollywood by an old acquaintance from the London days, director James Whale. The part offered was that of Horace Femm, the archly sinister patriarch of The Old Dark House (1932), perhaps the most sophisticated horror comedy ever made. The largely British company included Boris Karloff, fresh off his success in Frankenstein, now cast as a brutish, disfigured menace. Thesiger and Karloff would work together twice more. First came The Ghoul (1933), marking Karloff’s triumphant return to England. Here, Thesiger plays a devious butler who steals an amulet, provoking Karloff’s gruesome rise from the grave. Their next collaboration came in 1935 with The Bride of Frankenstein.

Universal had originally penciled in Claude Rains as Frankenstein’s one-time mentor, Dr. Septimus Pretorius, but Whale held out for Thesiger, a brilliant piece of casting. Spider-like, sardonic and sinister, dominating all his scenes, this maddest of scientists plays off the actor’s sometimes flamboyant gay persona. Writer Mark Gatiss (James Whale: A Biography or, The Would-Be Gentleman, 1995), describes Thesiger’s Pretorius as “a desiccated homosexual imp” displaying “waspish malevolence”. Driving the story forward, Pretorius manipulates Colin Clive’s Frankenstein and Karloff’s Monster with equal aplomb. He first calls on Frankenstein’s sense of wonder, seducing him with alchemical creations, including a doll-like mermaid in jar — “an experiment with seaweed” — then proceeds to more robust methods as needed, having Frankenstein’s wife, Elizabeth, kidnapped and held hostage. Unlike Frankenstein who was awkward and impatient with his creation, Pretorius immediately understands The Monster’s simple-minded outlook and simple needs, providing him with friendship, food, drink, and a promise to build him a mate.

The script by William Hurlbut, closely supervised by Whale, provides Thesiger with wonderful and sometimes loaded lines, like “Leave the charnel house and follow the lead of nature, or of God… if you like your Bible stories.” Best remembered is a running gag line “It’s my ONLY weakness!”, applied first to a glass of gin and later to a fine cigar, and a famous, unforgettable toast to success, “Here’s to a new world of Gods and Monsters!”

In the film’s feverish climax, Frankenstein and Pretorius’ magnificent Bride rejects her betrothed on first sight, and Pretorius as well, pushing him away and launching herself into Frankenstein’s arms. The heartbroken Monster grabs the doomsday leeeever, orders Frankenstein and Elizabeth to leave, “You live!”, and brings down final, terrible judgment upon the hissing Bride and the grimacing Pretorius, “You stay... We belong dead!”.

A marvelous backstage photo shows the English actors, Colin Clive and the two monsters, Karloff and Elsa Lanchester, enjoying afternoon tea while Thesiger displays some of his recent paintings. Thesiger also transformed his hotel suite into an impromptu art gallery and was known to work on his embroideries during breaks in filming.

Bride of Frankenstein would be Thesiger’s last American film. His output from then on would be exclusively British, including several mystery and light fantasy films like The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936), The Ghosts of Berkeley Square (1947), The Man in the White Suit (1951) and Meet Mr. Lucifer (1953). Most notably, Thesiger played “the silk stocking murderer” in They Drive by Night (1938), a rarely seen but highly praised thriller said to provide Thesiger with one of his best roles.

As a writer, Thesiger produced an early biography, Practically True, in 1927. A second biography, presumably including a mention of his horror films of the Thirties, remained unpublished upon his death. The manuscript resides in the Thesiger collection at Bristol University. Thesiger also provided an introduction to an edition of T.W.Bamford’s Practical Make-up for the Stage (first published in 1940). In 1957, he contributed to the London Times obituary of James Whale.

Thesiger worked until the end, appearing on stage a few months before he passed away on January 14, 1961, the eve of his 82nd birthday.

Quentin Crisp would pay homage to Thesiger as a Pretorius-like assistant in the opening sequence of Franc Roddam’s The Bride (1935), and Australian actor Arthur Dignam appears briefly as Thesiger in the James Whale biopic, God and Monsters (1998).

An excellent overview of Thesiger’s genre films on The Missing Link.

The Ernest Thesiger Collection catalogue, University of Bristol.

Happy Birthday, Elsa Lanchester

The Bride of Frankenstein was a redhead.

Elsa Lanchester was born in London on this day, October 28, in 1902. As a child, she studied dance with Isadora Duncan and by the time she turned 20, she was active in cabaret and avant-garde theater. She appeared in a handful of silent films, notably a trio of shorts written for her by H.G.Wells. She married actor Charles Laughton in 1929, their parallel careers crossing now and then, notably in a 1936 stage production where Lanchester was Peter Pan to Laughton’s Captain Hook.

Relocated to Hollywood, Lanchester was celebrated as a character actress able to handle any type of part, and she was twice nominated for an Oscar. Some of her best-remembered performances include the Golden Globe-winning part of Miss Plimsoll in Witness for the Prosecution (1957), a comic witch in Bell, Book and Candle (1958) and a Nanny in Mary Poppins (1964). Lanchester appeared extensively on television in comedy, drama and variety programs, and she pursued a singing career, recording bawdy British music-halls songs and even performing a duet with Elvis Presley in Easy Come, Easy Go (1967). Her career extended well into her seventies. She passed away in 1986.

Elsa Lanchester’s most famous role, of course, was her brief but spectacular turn as the Bride of Frankenstein in 1935. Though she is on screen, all told, for barely 12 minutes, The Bride’s appearance is indelible. Late in life, Lanchester would joke, “Can you imagine an actress being overexposed by a picture she made 40 years ago?” She was a good sport about it, even revealing in a 1975 interview that she would have gladly returned to the part had there been a sequel.

Makeup man Jack Pierce constructed Lanchester’s Nefertiti hairdo by combing the actress’ own hair over a light wire cage. Witness Lanchester’s blazing hair color in a detail from a 1925 portrait by her friend Doris Clare Zinkiesen, a costume designer who, by the way, was engaged for some time to director James Whale. Lanchester’s flamboyant hair is also on display on one of her album covers.

There are no color photos from the Bride set to prove it, but it does seems like Karloff’s Monster fell for a redhead.

The Zinkeisen painting of Elsa Lanchester at the National Portrait Gallery.

Related:
The Short, Apocalyptic Life of The Bride of Frankenstein
The Bride Speaks
The Bride Foreseen
Posts tagged “Bride of Frankenstein”

Happy Birthday, Bela Lugosi

Bela Lugosi’s Monster gets jacked up to full power — “The strength of ten men!” — in a scene from Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943).

It’s Bela’s birthday today, October 20. In 1942, he celebrated his 60^th on a Universal set, playing the very part he had famously refused in 1931.

It was a harrowing shoot for the actor. Poor health and the exhausting makeup and costume led to his collapse on November 5, with ten days left in the shooting schedule. A tag team of stuntmen and stand-ins helped to fill out The Monster’s scenes.

Adding insult to injury, Lugosi’s dialog was ultimately edited out, leaving The Monster mute. Without dialog to explain that The Monster is blind, Lugosi’s stiff walk and cartwheeling arms appear awkward. In the photo above, The Monster’s curious, canny smile originally indicated that the climactic experiment had succeeded and The Monster’s sight had been restored.

In a rare moment of reprieve from the difficult shoot, Lugosi got a loving hug from his visiting five-year old son, Bela Jr.

Related:
When Frankenstein Met the Wolf Man

EXCLUSIVE! Return to Malibou Lake by John Cox

It is a scene etched in film history.

Shot at a mountain lake location on September 28 and 29 in 1931, the drowning of the little girl in Frankenstein was a truly transgressive moment in a film already overloaded with gruesome happenings. Actor Boris Karloff protested, as did audiences and critics when the film previewed. The scene was jettisoned, cutting off suddenly as The Monster reaches for the child.

Unseen for fifty years, the film clip miraculously survived and was eventually restored to continuity. Because of its impact and its enduring notoriety, and the only sequence with The Monster to be shot away from the confines of the soundstage at Universal studios, fans and film historians have long speculated about where the Maria scene was actually shot.

In January this year, screenwriter John Cox, armed with recent information and photo references, went looking for the spot where film history was made.

Come along with John as we Return to Malibou Lake...

Where did Universal shoot the famous Maria meets the Monster scene in the classic 1931 Frankenstein? For years I could never get a straight answer. Some claimed it was shot on the Universal backlot along with the rest of the movie. But it’s clear from the size of the lake and the rugged mountains in the distance that this can’t be true. My go-to source for all things Frankenstein — MagicImage’s Universal Filmscripts Series Vol. 1 — says only that it was shot at “a mountainous lake.” Rudy Behlmer’s superb commentary on the special edition DVD says it was “almost certainly Lake Sherwood in the Santa Monica Mountains.” Jack P. Pierce bizarrely claimed that it was shot at Malibu Beach. Unable to get a definitive answer, I came up with my own theory. Why would Universal travel so far from the lot when they had Toluca Lake in their front yard? I decided the scene must have been shot somewhere on Toluca Lake and the mountains in the distance were Glendale/Burbank.

But then one Sunday morning, while browsing the Internet, I stumbled on the Frankensteinia blog and the article The Lake of Frankenstein. Here at last was an authoritative answer (sourced to an article by Gregory Mank in Midnight Marquee, No. 60). The scene was shot at Malibou Lake on September 28, 1931. (Yes, Malibou, not Malibu.) There was even a map. That’s when I looked up from my computer screen and saw it was 11:00 am on this beautiful Sunday and Malibou Lake was an easy 30-40 minute drive from my house. Should I go? Follow-up comments on the article noted that the exact spot where the scene was shot (which it did not pinpoint) was now “a private home”; so I wouldn’t be able to stand in the footsteps of the monster. But maybe I could still get close. Armed with the map, my camera, and a photo of the scene that gave a good look at the topography, I set out to find the place where Little Maria met her fate.

As I drove, I wondered how the crew from Universal traveled to the lake that September day. Certainly in 1931 they were not blasting along the 134 Freeway at 70mph as I now was. It’s possible they traveled along Mulholland Hwy., which begins at Universal City and ends near the Los Angeles/Ventura county line. Or maybe they took Pacific Coast Highway and approached the lake from the opposite side of the canyon. Whatever route they took, in 1931 it would not have been a quick journey. Even today the lake is isolated deep in the coastal mountains of Las Virgenes.

As I pulled into Malibou Lake, I was surprised to find such an idyllic setting, a true mountain hideaway resort. Expensive homes and boat slips rimmed a central lake with a small island sitting in the center. Pretty, yes, but nothing looked familiar. This was hardly the rugged “Bavarian” mountain lake of the film.

Just over a bridge sat a clubhouse and realtor — the only public buildings — so I pulled off and parked at the clubhouse. Maybe inside I could get some guidance. The door was open, but the clubhouse was empty. On the walls hung photos from famous movies that had been shot on the lake, but Frankenstein was not among them. Not a good sign. I then walked to the realtor, but they were closed on this Sunday. Looked like I would have to find the spot on my own.

Dismissing this populated area, I climbed back into my car and drove west along the edge of the lake. Here it became more mountainous and isolated. Several times I pulled over to compare some mountain peaks with my printout of the scene. There was one very clear landmark — a rock outcrop with a bare peak, not unlike the mountain in the Paramount logo. Certainly that would not have changed, and if I could find it, I could use the angle to zero in on the location. As the road wrapped around to the other side of the lake, I found an area that looked very promising. Here there were several rock outcrops that could be the “Paramount peak” in my picture, just from a different angle. The rocks towered over what appeared to be a dry lake bed -- perhaps this could have been the original lake before being diverted to the town entrance, which all seemed quite new. But I could find nothing conclusive. I took some photos, then continued around the lake. Here I started to ascend into the mountains. I certainly wasn’t going to find a lakeside setting up here; so I turned around. At least now I had a range to search.

I traveled back down the main road, again stopping to examine some peaks. After taking a few more photos, I decided I had pretty much covered the area and I wasn’t going to find the exact spot. But I had found some possibilities and photographed them and that would have to suffice. And it wasn’t like I’d be able to stand on the exact spot anyway. I drove back into town and again parked at the empty clubhouse. I figured I’d get one last photo of the main lake, which was certainly the most scenic part of the area. This time I walked out onto the town bridge, where I could get the best shot. I raised the camera to my eye and froze.

There it was!

It was the Paramount peak, clear as a bell, sitting directly across the lake at almost the exact angle as the scene photo in my hands. Trees had grown up around it, and there was a house now sitting at its base, but there was no mistaking it. This WAS the lake all along! I was so excited, I stopped a couple who were coming across the bridge at that moment and asked them whether I was crazy or whether that rock outcrop in the photo was the same as the one across the lake. They agreed and, even though they were locals, had no idea of the Frankenstein connection. But what was still throwing me was the island in the center of the lake. That was what had obscured my view of the rock peak when I first arrived in town. It was nowhere to be seen in my photo or the film. The scene must have been shot at an angle that somehow omitted the island. But with the rock peak in my sights, I now had a way to find the spot.

Looking around, I saw there was a private gated road of homes that ran alone the lake. Recalling the information that the spot was now on private property, I figured it must have been shot somewhere along that stretch of road. Sure, I would need to trespass, but I would do so conspicuously, holding my camera and printout so I appeared to be exactly what I was — a nosy harmless tourist. I entered via a pedestrian entry and walked along the road with one eye on the photo and one on my Paramount peak, waiting for the magic alignment. But it didn’t happen. If anything, it was now looking less promising than the angle from the bridge. It hadn’t been shot over here after all.

I stopped and turned and saw an older gentleman sitting on his sundeck looking out over the road and lake. I went up to him, apologized for the intrusion, and I explained I was a fan of Frankenstein. Before I could finish, he nodded and said “And you’re looking for where they shot the movie?” Yes! He stood and pointed back across the lake, back toward the boat slips across from the clubhouse. “They shot it right there,” he said as he pointed out a grassy spot between two slips. Ironically, it was just yards from where I first stopped when I arrived at the lake. I explained how the island had confused me. He said the island was a relatively new addition to this man-made lake. The area he was pointing to was also private, but he said it was no problem if I went over and had a look. I thanked him and set off.

Crossing back over the bridge, I hopped over a picket fence that cordoned off the area and approached the boat slips. As I neared, I instantly recognized an unruly collection of reeds, exactly like those that frame the famous scene. Amazing that they were still here! I then passed a boat slip made of stone with spiked iron gates. Is it too poetic to think this slip was built in a “Frankenstein style” to commemorate the location? I stepped to the right of the slip and walked down a grassy incline to the lake, exactly as Maria and the Monster had, hand in hand, 78 years ago.

I raised my photo printout to the horizon and everything lined up perfectly. While tree growth has changed the look of the shoreline quite a bit, the silhouette of the mountains was unmistakable. I was standing on the spot where Boris Karloff and Marilyn Harris, with director James Whales and a full Universal crew, filmed one of the most famous scenes in horror movie history.

Thank you for sharing your wonderful adventure, John. I felt as if I was right there with you! Someday, someone must visit again and perhaps float some daisies on the lake, in honor of James Whale, Boris Karloff, and Marilyn Harris.

JOHN COX is a professional screenwriter who lives in Studio City, CA. Besides Universal horror, he is also a fan and expert on the legendary magician Harry Houdini and runs the website Wild About Houdini.

Related:
Time Out at Malibou Lake
The Lake of Frankenstein, a history of Malibou Lake