Frankenstein's Windmill

A 1940 photo shows the Van de Kamp Dutch Bakery sitting at the corner of Ivar and Yucca in Los Angeles. That’s the Knickerbocker Hotel across the street, once a Hollywood hot spot that fell on hard times before being saved and converted into housing for senior citizens.

In the Spring of 1931, working with writer Garrett Fort, Robert Florey — the first director attached to Universal’s Frankenstein — wrote a script that would serve as a template for the shooting script reworked under James Whale, who took over the project in June. Among Florey’s surviving contributions were the crucial brain switch and the atmospheric denouement in an old windmill where The Monster dragged its creator, with bloodhounds and torch-wielding villagers in frantic pursuit. In later years, Florey would reveal that his windmill finale had been inspired by the Van de Kamp building seen from his apartment on Ivar Street.

The film’s now iconic windmill provided an improbable but perfect, exotic setting for the film’s frenzied finale, the building itself dangerous with its creaky cogs and forbidding sails. When Frankenstein is thrown off the high balcony, the brutal fall was originally meant to be fatal. After the film wrapped, actor Colin Clive headed home to England proud that Universal had been bold enough to kill off its title character, but soon thereafter, an additional scene was shot with Clive and Mae Clarke spelled by stand-ins, showing the faithful Elizabeth nursing her poor Henry back to health, and available for a sequel. As for The Monster, he is last seen panicked out of his mind, pinned under a heavy wooden beam as fire laps around him. The follow-up, Bride of Frankenstein (1935), picks up at the windmill in smoking ruins where The Monster, burned and bruised, was saved when the structure collapsed into an underground pool.

Frankenstein’s windmill has been referenced in films, notably in the rip-roaring black and white opening scenes of the otherwise ghastly Van Helsing (2004). Director Tim Burton evokes the windmill as a miniature golf set in the original Frankenweenie short of 1984 and again as a hilltop building in the 2012 feature film version. There is also a spectacular and unmistakably Frankensteinian windmill in Burton’s Sleepy Hollow (1999).

Van de Kamp’s Holland Dutch Bakers was founded in 1915, soon sprouting a chain of stores and coffee shops with distinctive windmill facades and waitresses dressed as Dutch maidens complete with starched caps and decorative aprons. In the Forties, new buildings were streamlined, its windmills outlined in neon. The kooky architecture was eventually abandoned altogether, the bakeries operating out of regular buildings with a blue windmill motif appearing on logos. Van de Kamp’s changed hands a couple of times before collapsing into bankruptcy in 1990. The name survives in some areas as a supermarket brand for frozen foods.        

The site of the “Frankenstein windmill” at Ivar and Yucca is currently occupied by Joseph’s Café, a restaurant and dance bar. In the Google Map photo above, the domed structure at left is where the Windmill originally stood.

Related: Frankenstein Wraps

Frankenstein in the Park

Colin Clive and Mae Clarke take five at a rare location outing for Frankenstein, shot between August 21 and October 3, 1931. Note the microphone hanging overhead.

Film historian Jack Theakson identifies the mike as a cylindrical Western Electric model, either the 47-A or the 53-A. The sturdy device swiveled at top and bottom, allowing the operator to aim the mike as needed. Introduced in 1928, the model proved enormously popular for broadcast and film applications and remained in use until the mid-thirties when condenser mikes were phased out in favor of the newer ribbon-type microphones.

The location here is the original Busch Gardens, the direct ancestor of today’s amusement park empire. Once the winter home of brewing magnate Adolphus Busch, the 32-acre spread was opened to the public in 1913 and became a prime tourist attraction, even getting its own Pacific Electric Railway stop. The park offered miles of scenic pathways, botanical wonders, fountains, manmade waterfalls, rare birds and a collection of vividly colored sculptures of fairy tale characters. Events included dog shows, boat rides, alfresco entertainment, and your admission ticket sometimes entitled you to free beer.

The park’s studio proximity translated into its frequent use for outdoor scenes, notably in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Gone With The Wind (1939). The Frankenstein crew stopped over on a beautiful summer day to shoot the brief, bucolic scene where the ever-patient Elisabeth tends to her convalescing fiancé, Borzois lounging at their feet. By the way, Borzois were also featured in the sequel, Bride of Frankenstein (1935), seen pulling maid Una O’Connor around in the opening scene at Villa Diodati.

Interestingly, another famous horror film, Rouben Mamoulian’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde had begun shooting on the same day as Frankenstein, August 21. The connection carried through to Busch Gardens, where Fredric March’s Jekyll would sit on a bench and, upon observing a cat attacking a nightingale, spontaneously transform into the monster Hyde.

The original Busch Gardens closed in 1937 and the city began cutting up the park for housing. A few artifacts such as terracing effects, treetrunk-shaped cement troughs, and bits of stone walls and fencing remain, scattered among the private homes in the area.

A technical description of the Western Electric 47-A Amplifier.

Remembering Busch Gardens, from Pasadena Living Magazine.

Pasadena Gardens, an illustrated history of the original Busch Gardens.

With thanks to Sally Stark for the wonderful photograph, and Jack Theakson for the technical information.

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

Time Out at Malibou Lake

Emerging from the grainy static of time, in a photograph taken 78 years ago today, two British gentlemen sit, as the saying goes, out in the midday sun.

Perhaps a soothing breeze wafted off Malibou Lake, affording Mr. Whale and Mr. Pratt (aka Karloff) a bit of respite on their cigarette break in the notoriously hot summer of 1931. Whale, Karloff and young Marilyn Harris traveled to Malibou Lake on September 28 and 29 to shoot the difficult scene where the confused Monster accidentally drowns little Maria.

I previously posted a history of Malibou Lake here. I have just now updated that post as information surfaces that Frankenstein cinematographer Arthur Edeson had built himself a house at the lake in 1926, making him the most likely candidate for suggesting the location and perhaps even guiding the crew with their cars and equipment trucks along the winding dirt roads to the site.

Be sure to return here tomorrow, Tuesday September 29, for a terrific Frankensteinia Exclusive Guest Post as screenwriter John Cox drives out to Malibou Lake, looking for the exact spot where the notorious scene was shot. It’s great detective reportage and a fascinating journey you won’t want to miss, as John takes us along on a RETURN TO MALIBOU LAKE.

Related:
The Lake of Frankenstein

Café Frankenstein

A legendary Beat era hangout in Laguna Beach, California, Café Frankenstein opened in 1958 under the stewardship of folk singer Doug Myres, writer George Clayton Johnson (of Twilight Zone fame) and artist Burt Shonberg. The building housed a “European” coffee shop, a bookstore and a leather goods and sandal shop.

Shonberg contributed an interior mural and a fabulous stained glass front window featuring the Frankenstein Monster. You can glimpse the window art in color, as seen from inside the club, in the picture here, if you can peel your eyes away from model Barbara Kellogg.

The nude photo session, in fact, brought charges of “lewd and obscene conduct” against the Café’s owners, just one of the many attacks by a very conservative community against the alternative club and its bohemian clientele of beatniks, surfers and folksies. It is said that two of the Café’s regular clients were undercover cops on the lookout for illegal activities and that both men eventually became supporters of the club.

Squaresville opposition to the hep establishment reached its hysterical apex when a local Church group protested against the window art on the grounds that stained glass was an art form exclusive to churches. Shonberg greeted them with a threat to erect a crucified Frankenstein.

Café Frankenstein was sold in 1960 and operated as Club 480 until 1962 when it was demolished, along with the Shonberg art, to make room for a parking lot.

The images here are from a wonderful article on early Pop Surf Culture posted on Dumb Angel. Click through to read the Café Frankenstein story in greater detail along with more pictures, including one of the building itself.

Burt Shonberg painted murals for coffee shops, bars, restaurants and Beat clubs up and down the coast. He contributed covers and illustrations to science fiction magazines. His art was also used on an album by Arthur Lee and Love and a commissioned set of paintings was famously featured in Roger Corman’s Fall of the House of Usher (1960).

Here’s Shonberg's website, with a gallery of paintings that includes the House of Usher art.

Mer de Glace

The glacier called Mer de glace — the Sea of Ice — carves its way through the Chamonix Valley north of Mont Blanc, the White Lady of the Alps. “This,” Mary Shelley wrote in her diary, “is the most desolate place in the world.”

Mary, eighteen years old, eloping with her future husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley, first set eyes on the Mer de Glace around noon on July 25th, 1816, on a trip away from their vacation residence in Cologny. There, a month earlier, visiting with their friend Lord Byron at the Villa Diodati, Mary had begun writing Frankenstein.

The Shelleys’ excursion to Montenvers and the Mer de Glace was a laborious one, hurried along by guides, riding mules along steep paths, always on the lookout for falling rocks. On the 24th, they were turned back by driving rain. Percy slipped and knocked himself out. On the 25th, reaching the glacier, they were so profoundly moved by the sights as to commit their impressions in several pieces of writing. Collaborating on a travelogue, History of a Six Week’s Tour (1817), they wrote of “a scene in truth of dizzying wonder… On all sides precipitous mountains, the abodes of unrelenting frost… they pierce the clouds like things not belonging to this earth.”

The Mer de Glace appeared as “a mass of undulating ice… as if frost had suddenly bound up the waves and whirlpools of a mighty torrent.” The ice needles, rising 12 or 15 feet high, were intersected by vast crevices “of unfathomable depth”.

Percy would write a poem, Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni and Mary would translate her experience there in a vivid, key scene of the book she was even then composing.

In Frankenstein, The Monster has murdered Frankenstein’s young brother and framed the innocent Justine, who is hanged for the crime. Victor Frankenstein, filled with “sullen despair”, seeking peace and relief from “intolerable sensations”, sets off for Chamonix.

In Chapter 9, the trip is described with the meticulous detail of Mary’s fresh, real-life experience. Victor reaches the Sea of Ice, like Mary, just before noon, “gazing on this wonderful and stupendous scene… my heart which was before sorrowful, now swelled with something like joy”. Then, Frankenstein observes “the figure of a man, at some distance, advancing towards me with superhuman speed. He bounded over the crevices in the ice, among which I had walked with caution; his stature, also, as he approached, seemed to exceed that of man… I perceived, as the shape came nearer (sight tremendous and abhorred!) that it was the wretch whom I had created.”

“Listen to my tale,” The Creature implores, “when you have heard that, abandon or commiserate me, as you shall judge that I deserve. But hear me.”

As they retreat to a nearby hut and the warmth of a fire, the book switches to The Monster’s narrative, of his awakening to life and abandonment, and how his cruel existence ignited his murderous revenge against his creator’s loved ones. Now, against the blackmail threat of more horrors, The Demon demands a mate. Upon Frankenstein’s reluctant agreement, The Creature dashes off across the traitorous terrain with supernatural ease. “I saw him descend the mountain with greater speed than the flight of an eagle, and quickly lost among the undulations of the sea of ice.”

Mary Shelley had chosen the dramatic setting of this “most desolate place in the world” as the stage for Victor and his Creation’s momentous meeting. With the forsaken islands of the Orkneys where Frankenstein retreats to create The Monster’s mate, and the stark Arctic expanses that bookend the tale, the frozen sea of the Alps, Mer de Glace — experienced firsthand by the author — is another puzzle piece that comprise the cold, unforgiving and bleak landscape of Frankenstein.

In October 1991, an avant-garde opera entitled Mer de Glace premiered in Sydney, Australia. Composed by Richard Meale, with a libretto by David Malouf, it fuses Mary’s experiences with Shelley and Byron and her writing of Frankenstein.

Image sources: Mer de Glace from Google Earth. Mont Blanc from Wikipedia.

Extracts from Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley’s History of a Six-Week’s Tour (1917)

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem, Mont Blanc: Lines Written in the Vale of Chamouni

Amateur video of the Mer de Glace.

Related books:
Frankenstein sur la Mer de Glace, ou le voyage de Genève à Chamounix (2007), a book of Mary Shelley’s letters.
A meeting on the Mer de Glace: Frankenstein and the history of alpine mountaineering, by Jane Nardin, in Women’s Writings (1999).

The Ghosts of Frankenstein's Castle

I noticed a significant bump in readership this week. Some of it is traceable to my new MySpace Frankensteinia presence (if you’re on MySpace, add me!) and some of it is due to interest generated by the broadcast on the Sci-Fi network of a Ghost Hunters International episode on Frankenstein’s Castle.

The show focuses on purported ghostly happenings at the Castle ruins in Darmstadt, Germany, with only a passing reference to Mary Shelley having supposedly been inspired by a visit there. Mary’s famous novel is described as being “about a mad scientist who created this monster out of body parts”. No kidding, that’s a direct quote. And this, by the way, seems to be the standard level of research expended for the entire program, which turns out to be something halfway between Scooby-Doo and Reality TV.

Legends, folklore and rumors are the hard facts upon which our intrepid reporters base their investigation. We are treated to lots of quick-edit fisheye shots of the rather nondescript castle (nothing at all like the one in the photograph above), accompanied by a mournful Halloween soundtrack. Most of the program is shot in spooky night-vision black and white, the player’s eyes glowing eerily as they stalk the castle overnight with their handheld digital ghostbuster equipment. “Entities” we are told, “communicate with sound that is beyond human hearing”.

The team’s Ludicrous Meter must have gone off the scale when they stood around asking questions out loud, trying to raise a medieval German knight and his ghost fiancée. I’m guessing that the “entities” present *have picked up some colloquial American over the 400 years they’ve spent haunting the premises and that they understand the concept of speaking up “so we can tape you”, and the meaning of the command to “rock the pews”. Best laugh in the show comes when one of the investigators shouts, “Yo, hey! Come on out! Let’s go!”.

Nothing much happens, except for host Donna Lacroix being “freaked out” by moving shadows. We visit a bare room billed as “Frankenstein’s Secret Laboratory” and a tiny chapel occupied by a statue of a bad luck knight who broke his neck and is said to have hung around forlornly ever since. He puts in an appearance of sorts, rattling a doorknob.

The Ghost Hunter team interview “Frankenstein expert” Walter Scheele, a charming man who’s excellent, slightly accented English is inexplicably subtitled. Mr. Scheele, by the way, is the historian who floated the disputed theory that Mary Shelley knew about the experiments of alchemist Konrad Dippel and used this as a springboard for her tale.

At the end of the program, Mr. Scheele identifies some recorded noise as a voice saying, “Arbo ist hier!”, and that’s the clincher. Ol’ Arbogast von Frankenstein himself checked in, so it’s case closed.

The team auto-pronounce their rather uneventful evening “a complete success!”. Mr. Scheele’s restrained, polite satisfaction is interpreted as “over the moon” and he is said to have been “totally taken aback and dumbfounded!”. The hosts are shamelessly self-congratulatory throughout the program and completely bowled over by their own “methodology and protocol”. In the end, your reaction to the program will depend on whether you judge it by what you’ve seen, or what the enthusiastic hosts tell you you’ve seen.

The program is viewable online on the Sci-Fi network’s Ghost Hunters International website. Streaming will not work if you’re outside the U.S., but you can see it in five chunks on YouTube, starting here.

I blogged previously about Castle Frankenstein here and here, and you can see the Castle itself live on the Burg Frankenstein webcam.

The Bride of Scapa Flow

When Frankenstein acquiesced to his Creature’s demand for a mate, more like blackmail than a request, he sought to work in total seclusion, as far from civilization as possible...

“I traversed the northern highlands and fixed on one of the remotest of the Orkneys as the scene of my labours. It was a place fitted for such a work, being hardly more than a rock whose high sides were continually beaten upon by the waves.”

Frankenstein chose well. His destination, off the northern tip of Scotland, is so far off the beaten track that even today, the all-seeing Google Earth can’t provide a complete picture of it.

The Isles of Orkney, over seventy in number, are sparsely populated, but have sustained inhabitants continuously for over five and half thousand years, going back to the late Stone Age. The name “Orkney” is derived from the Old Norse word for “Seal Island”. The main body of water within the island group is called Scapa Flow, and it has played an important role in wartime history.

Frankenstein’s laboratories were humble affairs, nothing like the electrical cathedrals of the movies. The original Monster was created in a small student’s garret in Ingolstadt. The Bride To Be would be shaped in a tiny, “miserable hut” on a windswept, stony beach. Again, there are no clues as to the methods of creation, save for the mention of “chemical instruments”.

Frankenstein labors by day and walks the beach at night, brooding. His work is almost done when, one evening, the potential for catastrophe finally dawns on him. The female Creature “might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness.” Frankenstein realizes that “They might even hate each other…” and the Bride could “turn in disgust” from the Creature “to the superior beauty of man; she might quit him, and he be again alone, exasperated by the fresh provocation of being deserted by one of his own species.” These lines would serve as inspiration for James Whale’s The Bride of Frankenstein.

Worse still, Frankenstein fears that “a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth who might make the very existence of the species of man a condition precarious and full of terror.”

The Monster watches, horrified, as Frankenstein, “trembling with passion” destroys his work, tearing the unfinished Bride to pieces. He packs the gruesome remains in a basket, weighs it down with stones and sets off for the mainland in a skiff, but not before The Monster delivers his terrible promise…

“You, my tyrant and tormentor, shall curse the sun that gazes on your misery… I shall be with you on your wedding-night."

Out at sea, at night, Frankenstein tosses he basket overboard… “I listened to the gurgling sound as it sank and then sailed away from the spot.”

Frankenstein flees, an implacable, vengeful Monster in murderous pursuit.

The lost Bride, the dismembered mermaid of Scapa Flow, sleeps beneath the cold waves, dreaming of a life that never came.

Orkney’s Official Tourism website.

Orkney Islands of Westray and Papa Westray.

Orkneyjar, the Heritage of the Orkneys.

Scapa Flow, including Wartime Maritime History.

Frankenstein's Volcano

Mount Tambora stands on the island of Sumbawa, south of Borneo. It is one of 150 active volcanoes that dot the 17,508 islands of Indonesia.

In early April of 1815, Tambora kicked into gear, spewing dark clouds, jets of fire and lava. After a week of heavy activity, Tambora detonated with a force estimated at four times that of the famous explosion of 1883 at Krakatoa. It is the most violent volcanic eruption ever recorded in human history. Roughly half of the mountains’ height of 4300 meters (14,000 feet) was pulverized and shot as hot ash 45 km (150,000 feet) straight up into the stratosphere where it began its slow slide around the planet.

Some 10 to 12,000 people died as a direct result of the explosion, the choking rain of ash and fire, and tsunamis it provoked. By the time its effects dissipated, some 5 years later, Tambora had killed an estimated 70,000 worldwide through extreme weather, famine and disease.

The sheer volume of ash from Tambora, along with that of lesser explosions that year at La Soufrière in the Caribbean and Mayon in the Philippines produced a volcanic winter, perverting the global climate. Beyond the immediate and catastrophic effects across Indonesia, the sulfurous shadow of Tambora reached around the globe.

Through summer and fall of 1815, England experienced brilliant red sunsets. In Italy, pumice floated on rivers and red snow fell. The snow was a muddy brown in Hungary.

In 1816, the Northern hemisphere would experience its coldest summer on record. The northeast United States was enveloped in a dry fog that neither rain nor wind could disperse. Through the veil, sunspots could be observed with the naked eye. Frost destroyed crops in New England and river ice appeared as far inland as Philadelphia. Up in Quebec City, a foot of snow fell in June.

Crops failed ‘round the world, spreading famine in China, then on to Ireland. Food was rare and prices rose across Europe, provoking riots in Britain, France and Germany. Rainfall that year was twice the annual average.

That summer, in 1816, in Switzerland, on Lake Leman, just outside Geneva, Lord Byron’s guests arrived at Villa Diodati. The vacationing party included Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Godwin (she and Percy would wed in December), Claire Claremont and John Polidori.

Mary Shelley wrote, “…it proved a wet, ungenial summer, and incessant rain often confined us for days to the house.” She remembered watching lightning storms marching across the mountains in the evening: “One night we enjoyed a finer storm than I had ever before beheld. The lake was lit up – the pines on Jura made visible, and all the scene illuminated for an instant, when a pitchy blackness succeeded, and the thunder came in frightful bursts over our heads amid the darkness.”

Trapped indoors, the party entertained themselves reading ghost stories. You know the rest.

Frankenstein was seeded in the heart of a volcano. Wrapped in dark clouds and catastrophe, it raced clear around the world to meet its mistress, signaling its presence in the electric scrawl of unnatural lightning. Today, through Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the explosion of Mount Tambora is still being felt.

On Wikipedia, read about Mount Tambora and The Year Without a Summer.

A fascinating discovery: The Lost Kingdom of Tambora.

Burg Frankenstein Today

We conclude our weekend visit to Castle Frankenstein with a view of the site as it appears today: Castle ruins against the sky, an old church spire and a beautiful crenellated tunnel entrance.

UPDATE: The Burg Frankenstein live webcam is back online. I captured the above picture with the red Railjet train zooming out of the tunnel a few days ago. 

Perhaps one day, we'll catch Fritz releasing the kites!

Castle Frankenstein

On this day, September 2nd, in 1814, sixteen-year old Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin and her lover, Percy Bysshe Shelley, landed at Gernsheim, in Germany. The European tour that found them sailing down the Rhine was not so much romantic elopement as flight from scandal, away from Mary’s angry father, Shelley’s abandoned wife, and a horde of creditors.

The couple (with Mary’s stepsister in tow) sailed again early that evening. What they did that afternoon, in the few hours of landfall, is unknown, but it has tantalized historians ever since. A short distance from Gernsheim lies Burg Frankenstein.

Many have conjectured that Mary visited the castle and drew crucial inspiration from stories about a former resident named Konrad Dippel, an experimenter, said to have been an alchemist, a grave robber and a resurrectionist. All in all, the perfect prototype for Victor Frankenstein. But there are problems with this account. For starters, collecting stories about Dippel implies that Mary either encountered English-speaking locals or relied on Percy’s grasp of German. Dippel is a fascinating character, but there are many other scientists and doctors of the era who have since been promoted as Mary’s model. Mary herself mentioned the experiments of Erasmus Darwin, an inventor and galvanist.

Some writers claim that Burg Frankenstein is “the castle in the book” but, of course, there is no castle in the book. Forbidding castles are a cinematic conceit. Frankenstein’s laboratory was a student’s garret in downtown Ingolstadt.

For all the letters, notes, journals and travel diaries Mary left behind, she never mentioned Burg Frankenstein or Konrad Dippel. In her introduction to the book, she credits her inspiration to ghost stories and conversations between Shelley and Lord Byron about “the nature of the principle of life” and electrically induced re-animation. Mary wrote that “galvanism had given token of such things: perhaps the component parts of a creature might be manufactured, brought together, and endured with vital warmth”.

It is certainly reasonable to think that Mary’s party went for a short tourist’s excursion that afternoon. It’s possible that Mary glimpsed the castle on the hill and heard its name. And yes, she might have heard about Konrad Dippel and his blasphemous experiments, but we’ll never know. We can only speculate. And that’s what makes this story endlessly fascinating.

References:

Burg Frankenstein Official Website (in German).

Frankenstein’s Castle, a site with pictures and legends about the castle.

A “virtual tour” of the castle.

On Wikipedia: Burg Frankenstein, Erasmus Darwin, Konrad Dippel.

Mary’s stopover in Gernsheim is mentioned in Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler’s The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein. The Konrad Dippel connection is the main theme of Radu Florecu’s classic In Search of Frankenstein: Exploring the Myth Behind Mary’s Monster.

The castle tower picture is from ouyea’s photostream on Flikr.

The Mask of Frankenstein

The ruins of Burg Frankenstein sit on a hill overlooking a small rural community just South of Darmstadt, in Germany.

I don’t know if the locals ever got together and mobbed around the countryside wielding torches and pitchforks, but they do celebrate Halloween every year. The custom was introduced here 30 years ago by American servicemen stationed nearby. It has since grown into a major tourist festival where guests can enjoy dinner-theater on the castle grounds and party all night with goth ghosts, grinning ghouls, sexy vampires and friendly monsters. Much Gluhwein is consumed.

Here’s the Burg Frankenstein Halloween site, and here’s a link to a striking and distinctly Karloffian Frankenstein Folding Mask. Download the PDF file, print it out and test your origami skills. It’s a little complicated if you can’t read the German instructions, but you’ll figure it out. This is a really cool mask!

Villa Diodati

"A menagerie, with eight enormous dogs, three monkeys, five cats, an eagle, a crow, and a falcon: and all these, except the horses, walk about the house, which every now and then resounds with their unarbitrated quarrels, as if they were masters of it."

— Percy Bysshe Shelley

In 1816, Lord Byron rented the manor known as the Villa Diodati, near Cologny, on Lake Geneva. The house already had solid literary credentials. Its original owner, Giovanni Diodati, had translated the Bible into Italian and French, and the poet John Milton (whom Mary would quote in Frankenstein) vacationed there in 1639.

Byron was joined that fateful summer by his personal physician, John Polidori, and his guests: Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Godwin (soon to be Shelley), and Claire Claremont. It was here, or perhaps at the nearby guesthouse where she resided, that Mary conceived of Frankenstein and first wrote these words that would eventually open chapter five of the book: “It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld my man completed…”

The villa still stands. It is the square building, right of center, in the GoogleEarth image below.

http://www.english.upenn.edu/Projects/knarf/Places/diodati.html

http://www.rc.umd.edu/reference/misc/shelleysites/tours/tour1816.html