The Heart of an Actor: Why I Love Boris Karloff

When we're younger we have less respect for hard work and dedication and more appreciation of the cliched and showy. We make grand pronouncements about what's great in this area, what's great in that and through it all hold fast that our youthful convictions are not only accurate and correct but always will be. As a parent to four children ranging in age from 8 to 20 I've seen the black and white certitude of youthful judgment firsthand from the other side as well. When we get older however we learn to, as the cliche states, appreciate the finer things, those things not necessarily thrown in front of our collective faces with lights flashing and bells ringing. Since childhood I have acted, played and composed music, drawn and painted and worked on short films. I love the arts and my view of the arts has changed as dramatically as my view of most other things in life.



I find myself now reacting with cringes and bristles to much of what I accepted without question in my youth. In youth I would have ranked Jimi Hendrix as the greatest guitarist ever and probably did but as an adult who loves the guitar I can now see the foolishness of such a proclamation. Oh it's not that Hendrix wasn't great and didn't know his way around a six-string, it's that in his short time here he didn't leave enough of a record and never grew as I know he would have beyond the basic trappings and limitations of the blues and rock and roll form. I'd still rank him pretty high but now find myself much more impressed with the fretwork of Wes Montgomery or Django Reinhardt or Les Paul. Hell, if I had to rank the 25 greatest guitarists of all time probably no more than two or three rock and roll guitarists would even make the list. But rock and roll is showy and rock and roll critics never grow much older than seventeen intellectually so don't expect much of a shakeup next time you stumble across a "Best Guitarists of All Time" list. Expect Hendrix near the top. Again. Look for the incredibly rich, expansive and mature stylings of Wes, Les and Django much further down the list and don't bother looking for geniuses like Barney Kessel or Jim Hall at all. Most twenty-something rock critics don't even know who they are.

Same goes with most of the other arts and certainly acting is no exception. When I was a teen studying acting and learning my craft it's probably an easy guess who I spent a lot of time brooding over as the all-time great. Brando. Of course. And again, as with Hendrix, I'm certainly not here to tell you that Brando wasn't great. Like Hendrix, he was. But something happened to me with acting as I watched thousands and thousands of movies and became a figure of authority and responsibility to four children getting ready to face the world. I began to greatly appreciate hard work. Greatly. Let's face it, Brando phoned in more than his allotted share of performances throughout his career and while that amuses me most of the time there arrives a point when it irritates me as well. I love Marlon Brando in many ways but it also feels like he never quite matured as he should have. Willaim Redfield, known to most people, if at all, as the chain-smoking patient Dale Harding in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, was an actor working in theatre since the thirties and he had great hope for Brando. He felt Brando could bring to America the theatrical tradition that existed in Britain. But it was not to be. Redfield repeated in interviews later in life how disappointed he was in Brando's lack of dedication and his abandonment of the theatre. As a youth I might not have understood that but as an adult I feel Redfield's disappointment.

And all of this brings us around to a conversation I had with my wife just two days ago. We were talking about Peter Cushing and I remarked that when Cushing was making Star Wars, just one year after making At the Earth's Core, he had no idea of the magnitude of the success that Star Wars would have. Working on a soundstage in front of odd, futuristic looking sets he must have imagined this film would result in roughly the same level of technical quality as his previous Amicus production and probably around the same fate financially. And yet there he was turning in a goddamned performance, a real performance, despite it all. Peter Cushing did not phone it in. And neither did Boris Karloff, but more than that, Karloff was the one who set the standard.

Boris Karloff came to prominence in the most stepped on, beaten about and disrespected genre of filmmaking there is, horror. He played Frankenstein's monster and played it supremely well. So well that he became the standard bearer for the genre for most of the next two decades. He played the monsters, the mad scientists and even the dangerous butler and he played them all at the top of his form. Karloff must have known that despite his fame and popularity he was being sneered at by lesser known actors of the legitimate theater and he didn't care. He never stated it publicly, at least not to any direct degree, and never let it affect a performance. Hell, he even gave his all in this lighter commercial!



While other actors complained about being typecast Karloff revelled in it (as noted in the quote in the banner above - seen here for those using a reader view) and never let it affect his attitude. Whatever part he was given he would devote to it all of the skills and tools he had accumulated in learning the craft of acting. Karloff lent respect and credence to the growing success story of the horror genre in the thirties. The fact that such a fine actor happened to be where he was at the time Universal was casting Frankenstein, preventing the role from going to a lesser actor who may never have filled the role with the necessary pathos, is an act of supreme historical luck and a great gift to the genre and all fans of it.

And another stroke of incredible luck was that this actor of such awe-inspiring talent was also an actor of hark work and dedication. The genre not only needed someone with talent to lend it respect but someone willing to be a refined and well-spoken cheerleader inviting in the masses that might otherwise turn away.

As for myself, I came to realize all of this much later in life. As a youth I saw all the Universal classics and loved them through and through. I knew Karloff was a good actor but never thought of him as a great actor, so blind was I to the brilliantly mimed performance of Frankenstein. Then, years later, older and hopefully wiser in the ways of film, I saw The Body Snatcher. It was a revelation. I was immediately struck by the supreme artistry on display as I watched Karloff's murderous John Gray weave webs of cunning charm and sinister pseudo-sincerity all the while hypnotizing the viewer. It was a brilliant performance, sadly and unfairly ignored for consideration for an Oscar during the time of its release.



Not long after seeing The Body Snatcher Karloff began to elevate in my mind as an actor and soon, very soon, he was among my favorites. And his hard work and dedication to the genre that he helped achieve its greatest success inspired other actors of dedication to follow, such as Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.

I can offer up many accolades to Boris Karloff as an actor but for me, personally, it is his hard work in honing his skils to complete his craft that stands above all else and says something to me about him as a person. There are and will continue to be several great actors in the world of film and I like many of them but as I get older I love Boris more and more and it's only natural. Karloff goes better with age, or better put, age goes better with Karloff. Boris Karloff was and is an actor for grown-ups, and that's the highest praise I can offer.

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This post has been a contribution to Pierre Fournier's Boris Karloff Blogathon taking place at Frankensteinia this week.

The Lost Frankenstein Film

Rare still from Frankenstein Meets the Jazz Singer, produced and abandoned by Universal and Warners in the mid-thirties. In this shot the monster performs "Mammy" in Green-Face.

A Birthday Salute to Junior

Carl's 26th Birthday Party in 1934.

I neglected to mention it last year and almost forgot again this year but yesterday, April 28th, marked the 101st birthday of Carl Laemmle, Jr, son of Carl Laemmle, founder of Universal Pictures and Head of Production from 1928 to 1936, the Golden Years of the studio. I'm sorry I didn't write it up last year on his 100th but this year he was fresh on my mind thanks to a post by Arbogast concerning two little movies done under his guidance, Frankenstein (1931) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), both directed by the great James Whale. Carl, known as Junior to friends and family, died of a stroke in 1979 but his legacy will live on forever.

During his years as Head of Production, Universal produced an amazing output of film art with a fraction of the money a studio like MGM had to throw around. And while that included some big award winning prestige films like All Quiet on the Western Front and Waterloo Bridge, the main thing Junior did was make Horror a respectable genre for a studio to hang its hat on. The Cat Creeps (1930), Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), and Bride of Frankenstein (1935) all came under Junior's supervision. In 1935 the studio was losing money despite the box office results of the Horror hits and Junior put favorite director James Whale at the helm of Show Boat (1936). It was a huge success but not enough to save the studio. The two Laemmles were bought out and Junior never produced again. But while he was producing he gave us some of the great works of thirties cinema (and of all time) and helped define the look and feel of Horror for years to come. Happy Belated Birthday Junior, and thanks for the movies.

Carl and Junior in 1931, the year both DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN were released.

Beautiful Monsters

I love Universal horror movies of the early thirties. Absolutely love them. And my wife and I (who also loves them - and me) have passed that love on to the youngest in our family, my wife's daughter of seven, who adores The Bride of Frankenstein. She loves horror and mystery overall but her favorites are The Bride and Margaret Rutherford's Miss Marple movies from the sixties. My God, I must've seen each one of those ten times by now, in their entirety or just in parts here and there. The youngest wishes they had made more than four, and given how much I love Margeret Rutherford myself, despite the mediocrity of the films, I wish they had made more too. But Universal did make more horror movies, one after another, in the thirties and forties, and it was their early forays into the genre that have become personal favorites over the years.

Even though I don't particularly care for the play version of Bram Stoker's Dracula, which the 1931 movie was based on, and Tod Browning's static direction leaves much to be desired, I do love Bela Lugosi in the lead. It gives me great pleasure to watch him in those early scenes in the castle with Renfield, played by the wonderfully over the top Dwight Frye. And I enjoy his famous scene with Van Helsing later ("For one who has not lived even a single lifetime, you're a wise man, Van Helsing."). The movie's a bit on the creaky side but still a pleasure to sit down to and watch Lugosi work his magic.

Then there's James Whale. Now that man could direct. His movies are beautiful to behold and the two Frankenstein films for which he is most famous are masterpieces of Gothic mood and design. His camera flows through the landscape and settles itself into perfectly framed paintings of light and shadow. I could watch them over and over and have, especially The Bride of Frankenstein if only because the youngest won't let me avoid it. But he also did The Old Dark House, another personal favorite to be written up a little later this month, and The Invisible Man, a movie of a madman scientist played by Claude Rains that stands as one of my favorite movies ever.

Then there's Boris Karloff, one of the great English actors, who should have several Oscar nominations listed on his bio but does not. Richard Dix received a nomination for Cimarron in the same year that Frankenstein was eligible, and it's unfortunate that the voting members of the Academy couldn't recognize how masterly Karloff was in his portrayal of the monster, and how ham-fisted Dix was in Cimarron. But playing a murmuring monster wasn't something the Academy was ready to notice. Karloff was magnificent as the monster but also terrific in his portrayal of Ardath Bey in The Mummy, directed by Karl Freund, in 1932. The Mummy is another personal favorite of mine that I watch every October.

Finally, there is Elsa Lanchester, responsible for so many wonderful and eccentric performances in the movies for decades (my personal favorite of hers is in The Big Clock) but forever branded onto the minds of the movie going public as the re-animated, iconic Bride. Her performance occupies but minutes of screen time and yet I can't imagine anyone else ever properly tackling the role like she did. In just a few minutes she covers an amazing array of facial expressions that convey fear, disgust, confusion and even satisfaction as in those last moments when the monster decides everyone but the good doctor Frankenstein and his wife will die and Elsa gives a delightfully and demonically satisfied sneer.

In tribute to those early Universal favorites, here is a short and sweet montage of Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester in their four most famous roles (Dracula, the monster, the bride of the monster and Ardath Bey/Im-ho-tep). This is the last montage until the Kill Fest finale on the 31st. Enjoy.

Available on YouTube here.

Feet of Clay: The First Movie Monster?

When the movies began to tell stories they almost immediately migrated to the genre. The first movies beyond a couple of minutes long to actually tell a story, A Trip to the Moon (Le Voyage dans la Lune 1902)and The Great Train Robbery (1903), belonged to what we would now call the Science Fiction film and The Western. Although The Great Train Robbery did not have the classic cowboys and indians setup, it did have outlaws on horses pursued by a posse with a shootout for a climax.

The first film mentioned, A Trip to the Moon, was directed by Georges Méliès, one of the pioneers of film, a stage magician who discovered through double exposure and stop-action photography how to make magic tricks work on the screen as well. Melies had also dabbled with elements of horror early on with such works as The House of the Devil (1896). It was only a couple of minutes long and really didn't tell any kind of a story to speak of except that Mephistopheles produces skeletons and goblins from a cauldron until someone appears with a cross and he disappears. Okie dokie.

As for the birth of true horror, that is to say, a feature film with a story, most film books will tell you that it is The Golem. Of course, I have discovered through years of film study that "History of the Movies" books are often poorly researched and repeat the same legends they've heard elsewhere without any verification. For instance, all the Oscars books I own (and I own quite a few) remark that Ben-Hur was the first remake to win Best Picture, despite the fact that as far back as 1935 the winning Mutiny on the Bounty had been made two times prior to the Oscar winning production and two other winners before 1959 were also remakes. And so it is with The Golem. Prior to 1915 Thomas Edison did Frankenstein in 1910. It wasn't good by any means but it was a full one-reeler with a story and horror elements. But Edison's Frankenstein did not capture the public's imagination and spawn a popular trilogy of movies. Also, to split hairs one could claim that Frankenstein is really science fiction although personally I've always placed mad scientists squarely in the horror genre even though I realize that the argument can clearly be made for Frankenstein belonging to science fiction.

With The Golem there are no such quibbles. The clay statue is brought to life not in a laboratory but through magic although once he is "alive" his travails follow Frankenstein's monster closely. The legend existed long before Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein although it was nearly thirty years after Frankenstein was published that the first narrative Golem story was published so it's possible they both took a little something from each other.

The story of the Golem character was first made into a film in 1915 with Paul Wegener as the title character. Most of this film has been lost with only a precious few stills and frames remaining. In it the original Golem statue, imbued with life in the sixteenth century by Rabbi Loew, is found by an antiques dealer who uses the Golem as a servant. But the Golem has eyes for his wife and when he can't have her, he gets a little mad. That's when he starts killing people. It was popular enough to have a sequel and a prequel, with the prequel, Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (The Golem: How He Came into Being) proving to be the most popular of all. Paul Wegener directed this time as well and unlike the first movie this one is not lost. A clip of it accompanied by the recent score done by acclaimed guitarist Gary Lucas can be seen here. It tells the creation story of the Golem, how he was given life by Rabbi Loew in the sixteenth century to protect Jews in Prague from persecution.

Despite the film's success no fourth movie was made and once the world was introduced to vampires (Nosferatu, Dracula) monsters (Frankenstein) and mummies there was no going back. Large clay statues brought to life by Rabbi's scrolls and incantations just didn't seem that scary. Although the Golem did return briefly, years later in 1966, in the delightfully ridiculous It (aka: Curse of the Golem) with Roddy McDowall. It's not available on video or dvd so you'll just have to get lucky and catch it on tv. But it is there. Turner Classic Movies ran it just last year, much to my delight. You really haven't seen unrequited love until you've seen Roddy McDowell order his Golem to tear down a bridge crossing the Thames to impress the woman he loves, to no avail.

And so as we celebrate all the ghouls and goblins, the vampires and monsters, the mummies and zombies and all the mad-slashers in between let's not forget that mindless statue with the feet of clay. Even Golems need love.