This episode describes the dramatic filming of the 1931 version Frankenstein - how the studio felt making it was a very risky move - and how the creature became a cultural icon. This podcast also deals with the connection between Mary Shelley, Edgar Poe and Fuseli's The Nightmare!
Link to 1910 Silent Version of Frankenstein from 1910
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67ENQibFW9w
Link to The Magician - In Hell clip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DAgnvcSwLw
Link to The Magician - Entire movie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl0dc5cB-8w
Clips from James Whale’s 1931 Frankenstein
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4Ntv7DJURM&list=PLZbXA4lyCtqo54KKGUtHDmD98-musuj6l&index=1
00:00 Introduction
02:14 Health issues
04:30 Frankenstein invades the theatre/cartoons
08:34 1910 Silent version of Frankenstein
10:05 Concerns from Universal Studios
15:27 Director James Whale and his background
17:55 Movie influences
20:50 Casting for Frankenstein
24:05 Boris Karloff and Frankenstein
27:53 Look and makeup for the monster
32:59 Creation scene
34:41 Notorious or censored sections
36:52 More problems with the movie
39:23 Similarity to The Nightmare and dreams
42:02 Poe and incubus
44:31 Frankenstein’s first screening
47:42 Success of the movie
50:11 Conclusion
52:01 Sources and Outro
This episode describes the dramatic filming of the 1931 version Frankenstein - how the studio felt making it was a very risky move - and how the creature became a cultural icon. This podcast also deals with the connection between Mary Shelley, Edgar Poe and Fuseli's The Nightmare!
Link to 1910 Silent Version of Frankenstein from 1910
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67ENQibFW9w
Link to The Magician - In Hell clip
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DAgnvcSwLw
Link to The Magician - Entire movie
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl0dc5cB-8w
Clips from James Whale’s 1931 Frankenstein
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4Ntv7DJURM&list=PLZbXA4lyCtqo54KKGUtHDmD98-musuj6l&index=1
00:00 Introduction
02:14 Health issues
04:30 Frankenstein invades the theatre/cartoons
08:34 1910 Silent version of Frankenstein
10:05 Concerns from Universal Studios
15:27 Director James Whale and his background
17:55 Movie influences
20:50 Casting for Frankenstein
24:05 Boris Karloff and Frankenstein
27:53 Look and makeup for the monster
32:59 Creation scene
34:41 Notorious or censored sections
36:52 More problems with the movie
39:23 Similarity to The Nightmare and dreams
42:02 Poe and incubus
44:31 Frankenstein’s first screening
47:42 Success of the movie
50:11 Conclusion
52:01 Sources and Outro
00:00 INTRODUCTION
COME REST IN THIS BOSOM INTRO
How do you do?
Mr. George Bartley feels it would be a little unkind to present this podcast without just a word of friendly warning. We are about to unfold the story of Frankenstein. It deals with the two great mysteries of creation - life and death. I think it will thrill you. It may shock you. It may even horrify you. So if any of you feel that you do not care to subject your nerves to such strain, now is your chance to …….. well, I’ve warned you.
The first words of this episode are a shortened and somewhat altered version of the introduction to the 1931 movie adaption of Frankenstein. It appeared that Universal studio felt that a warning was necessary at the beginning of the movie to basically cover themselves - they were just not sure how people would react to Frankenstein. Stayed tuned for the complete version of the introduction, the making of the movie, and the audience’s reaction.
And welcome to Celebrate Poe, Episode Fifty Four - Gods and Monsters - Now just to let you know - plans are to release this podcast every Monday night at 12:00 Midnight. This episode zeros in on what is arguably the most important literary contribution of the Romantic writers - Frankenstein. And most people would agree that the most well known adaptation based on Mary Shelley’s novel is the 1931 film version. This will probably be the longest episode of this podcast so far at hopefully around an hour - there is just so much I want to get in.
02:14 Health issues
First, I want to tell you about a health issue of mine, that may seem way off topic - but I promise it will lead back to the subject of Frankenstein.
Back around the middle of December last year - seems like eons ago - I had a what turned out to be a minor operation to remove some cancerous cells on my forehead caused by basically running outside out in the sun too much. It took a while to heal, but the worst part was not being able to exercise like the way I was accustomed - I used to bench press 200 pounds - during the healing process I couldn’t lift over 5 pounds. I used to be a marathon runner and swimmer, but as a result of inactivity during the recovery, I gained almost 40 pounds.
And this week, the doctor told me that my blood pressure had shot up and needed to be controlled. So I am back into really exercising, using two medicines, and taking the steps that are necessary to bring blood pressure down. Almost half of the population of the United States has high blood pressure - and one-fifth of that group does not know it. So I am concentrating on maintaining a healthy lifestyle, lots of physical activity, and restricting sodium. And stress can also be a contributing factor. I came to the conclusion that three podcast episodes a week - with all the research necessary - was just too much - and the quality suffered. So - at least for now - I am going to continue with one episode a week released each Monday at midnight. That will give me the week to do research, and I intend to record each episode on Sunday afternoon. Of course, the episodes about Poe should be a lot easier - And with Frankenstein and Dracula movie,s the research is a lot more enjoyable. The doctor said the blood pressure medicine is not going to start working right away - so it looks like I am going to be watching my share of horror films.
04:30 Frankenstein invades the theatre
When I was a kid, I used to go to the local theatre with my sister downtown and watch special double features of Frankenstein. These had probably been released and re released - this was not when they were first came out in the 1930s. - I am not THAT old. So the theatre obviously wanted to do something to boost the popularity of movies that had been shown there many times before. The theatre hired a man to dress as Frankenstein on Saturdays, and the place was always packed that day. I will never forget sitting in a darkened theatre when the door in the back opened and a man in a shabby Frankenstein outfit and boots entered the theatre. He would begin howling, and slowly lumbered down the aisle - occasionally holding out his arms as though he was going to grab someone. But when a kid screamed (and of course they always did) he shook all over as though he was scared and very confused. Then he continued acting as though he was going to terrorize some other kid. The audience loved it! And at this point, we were screaming at the top of our lungs. We knew it was just a man in ragged clothes, but to us it was a real monster. We knew that nothing bad was going to happen to us, and we enjoyed being scared.
It was something about that group of kids acting as one community in our shared fears.
Many scholars believe that horror films are indirectly descended from the mind of Poe - and we will certainly see that influence throughout this podcast, but for right now, watching old horror movies is just plain mindless fun.
For example, for this episode I spent hours doing research, reading about Frankenstein, and watching old movies, But it got to the point that I was torn between learning more about dealing with my high blood pressure - after all it was my LIFE - and enjoying old horror movies - but of course I had a reason to watch old movies - it was to do this podcast. But I forced myself away from the subject of Frankenstein, and started reading the book “High Blood Pressure for Dummies” - a comparatively interesting and even funny treatment of a subject that is often dry as dust. Part of my mindset was to get totally away from anything dealing with Frankenstein. Well, on the title page of a section of the book called Considering the Medical Consequences was a cartoon by Rich Tennant set in a doctor’s office. The doctor had a stethoscope around his neck and was speaking to a patient seated on a table. Sure enough - the patient was the creature from Frankenstein - complete with large, heavy boots, bolts in his neck, and a flat head.
And the caption had the doctor saying, “It is important that you get your high blood pressure under control. It could not only affect your kidney and heart, but also your current brain.”
The story of Frankenstein - especially that of the movie version - has become such an important and recognized part of our culture - that the image of the creature can be used to communicate even medical concepts to the general public.
My favorite cartoons along this lines include one of Edgar Allan Poe - who also has become a recognized part of our culture - holding a raven in a cage in a pet shop. He is speaking to a salesperson and the caption reads, “I want to return this bird. He only says one word.”
And then of course, there is the passive aggressive raven - he only says “never mind.”
But I digress ….
08:34 1910 Silent version of Frankenstein
The first movie version of Frankenstein was a 15-minute silent short, and is considered the first horror film. It was filmed by Thomas Edison’s studios in 1910. Shot in three or four days in the Bronx (New York City, not Hollywood, was then the center of the movie business), the film tried, in the words of an Edison spokesman, to “eliminate all actual repulsive situations and to concentrate its endeavors upon the mystic and psychological problems that are to be found in this weird tale.”
I have a link to that 15 minute movie in the show notes and transcript for this episode. Of course, being filmed in 1910, the original would have been in black and white, and was restored by the Library of Congress National Audio Visual Conservation Center in 2017. And like most movies of that period, the acting is quite melodramatic but you get an idea of how the first cinematic version of Frankenstein came across on youtube.
10:05 Concerns from Universal Studios
This would obviously been a silent movie in 1910, but it is interesting to experience the sound quality of the 1931 version of Frankenstein - just 21 years later. And it could be said that the 1931 version film came to be partially because of Dracula. You see, at the time, Universal Pictures released a risky horror film starring a Hungarian-American actor named Bela Lugosi. The interesting part is that Bela Lugosi was basically an unknown, and the studio did not expect much. Hard to believe when you look at the movie today - it seems rather cheesy - but Dracula was a critical favorite and one of the biggest moneymakers of the year. After this podcast has several episodes on Frankenstein, I plan to look at John Polidari’s The Vampyre and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. And while the movie adaptation of Dracula did not become as popular overall as Frankenstein, I want to include the vampire/undead legend because it played such an important part in several of Poe’s stories.
Of course, with Hollywood, if they find that a certain genre or type of movie can make a lot of money, you immediately have lots of followups and/or imitators. But this did not really apply to horror in the early 1930s - except for Dracula, horror was an unproven genre. At the time Variety reported, “Producers are not certain whether nightmare pictures have a box office pull or whether Dracula is just a freak,”
That’s why Universal Pictures was really worried about adapting Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Dracula had been based on a book that was only 34 years old at that time. On the other hand, Frankenstein had been first published in 1818, had a comparatively complicated structure, and was filled with archaic language.
I think it is interesting when the idea of making Frankenstein into a move arose, Carl Laemmle Sr., the founder of Universal Studios, was initially not eager to make Mary Shelley’s novel into a movie - He had grave reservations.
A little sidebar here - the founded of Universal Pictures was Carl Laemmle. The name is spelled L A E M M L E - If you are like me, when you first saw the word, you had no idea how to pronounce it. So I watched an interesting video on youtube by a member of the Lemlee family - and she talked about how she has heard the name said all kinds of ways - when people would see the name in writing, they are frequently confused. But the correct way of pronouncing the word is LEM LEE - I use a memory aid - you know me and my memory aids - LEM like lemon and LEE like Annabelle Lee - LEM LEE Apparently the Lemlee name is an important one in Hollywood history. So, unless you are from southern California or a die-hard movie nerd, yesterday you probably did not know how to correctly pronunce LAEMMLE So at least you can say that you have learned something today.
But back to Frankenstein -
Carl LEM LEE was reported to have said about filming Frankenstein, “I know that most of the studios in town have turned [the story] down” “I don’t believe in horror pictures. It’s morbid. None of our officers are for it. People don’t want that sort of thing.” But fortunately, his son, simply known as Junior, pushed for the movie with Bela Lagosi as the creature.
Now Mary Shelley’s book was in the public domain, but when the decision was made to make Frankenstein into a movie in 1931, Lemlee Sr. tried to cover his legal bases by buying the film rights to a popular stage play version of Frankenstein written by Peggy Webling in 1927. The play was called Frankenstein: An Adventure in the Macabre. Critics had called the play illiterate and inconceivably crude, but the public seemed to feel differently.
There were several changes in the play version. For one, the play eliminates Mary Shelley’s multiple narratives - where she tells the story from three different viewpoints. This obviously would not have worked in a play - much less a movie. And the play liked to emphasize Dr. Frankenstein and the creature as almost two sides to the same person - thus the doctor was called Frankenstein, and the monster was also called Frankenstein. Many Frankenstein scholars - and yes there is such a thing - believe this is why many people use Frankenstein to refer to the doctor, as well as the creature. - where in the novel Mary Shelley refers to the creator as Dr.Victor Frankenstein and his creation as simply the creature.
15:27 Director James Whale and his background
Universal Studios hired James Whale to direct Frankenstein. Though he liked to put on aristocratic airs, Whale’s beginnings were actually very humble. He was the son of a blast furnace man in Dudley, England, and was constantly reminded by those around him that he was a low class worker, and always would be. He first worked as a cobbler, but he made so little money that he had to sell the nails he burned out of old soles, Apparently he did have a great deal of artistic talent, but working as an artist was out of the question for someone of his economic class. When World War I broke out, Whale enlisted in the army. In August 1917, he was taken prisoner on the western front in Belgium, which is where his future career began. In a Prisoner Of War camp, he wrote, directed, and acted in amateur theatrical productions, and realized that he had found his calling.
James Whale first directed an unknown Laurence Olivier (later Sir Laurence Olivier) in 1928’s Journey’s End, a play about World War I. That production was wildly successful, and when Olivier left the role for another play, he was replaced by English actor Colin Clive - now stick in pin in that name - this episode will come back to Colin Clive as the actor who was to play Dr. Frankenstein in the 1931 movie.
Journey’s End later came to New York, was a huge success on Broadway for James Whale, and soon Hollywood came calling.
Now when Universal Studios chose James Whale as the director for Frankenstein, he thought the idea was a bit of a joke. Then after a great deal of thought, he threw himself into the project like the seasoned pro he was. “I thought it would be amusing to try and make what everybody knows as a physical impossibility seem believable,” he said. “Also it offered fine pictorial chances, had two grand characterizations, and a subject matter that might go anywhere. And that’s part of the fun of making motion pictures.”
17:55 Movie influences
James Whale was an erudite Englishman, and brought a tremendous sense of style to the production of a horror film. He was certainly influenced by German Expressionist films of the time. German Expressionism was a movement that favored highly stylized, often dreamlike visuals over flat realism. Whale was certainly influenced by such films from the 1920’s as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Golem, and Metropolis. You can find snippets, excerpts, and even entire movie versions on youtube of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Golem, and Metropolis. Movie scholar Rex Ingram writes that much of Frankenstein was greatly influenced by The Magician - which he knows Whale saw. Accord to Ingram,“But nobody had done it quite so artfully.”
I am including a link to a colorized version of In Hell section from The Magician, as well as a link to the entire film on youtube in the show notes and transcript for this episode.
The Magician is about an alchemist who like Dr. Frankenstein, wants to create life. He finds that he needs the blood of a virgin to complete his experiments, and sends out his dwarf assistant to find the right girl.
As far as some of the visuals that might have influenced Frankenstein go -
First, there are multiple shots of the medieval castle on a mountaintop while the lightning flashes in a storm.
Second, there are interior scenes showing the alchemist bent over his test tubes while preparing new laboratory life.
Third, the magician’s dwarf assistant (which looks like it could have been an inspiration for the lab assistant character in Whale’s film) ambles down a stairway to admit three people to the castle - very reminiscent of the three characters (Elizabeth, the professor, and Victor) being admitted to a windmill. And finally, there’s Alice Terry strapped to what looks like a hospital gurney. If you substitute Boris Karloff for Terry, this and the previous scenes comprise some of the core ingredients of “Frankenstein.”
By the way, the character of Victor is NOT the Victor Frankenstein of Mary Shelley’s novel. This Victor is Victor Moritz - a friend of Dr. Frankenstein and a fellow university student. The character of Dr. Frankenstein in Whale’s adaptation is known as HENRY Frankenstein
There are among the sections of The Magician that could have served as a visual template for many scenes of Frankenstein.
20:50 Casting for Frankenstein
To establish believability in the film Whale understood that casting was everything. He chose Colin Clive (who had performed in Journey’s End) as Dr. Henry Frankenstein. Regarding Colin Clive, Whale said that he had “exactly the right kind of tenacity to go through with anything”
Colin Clive was an excellent actor, and had played a well-received Hamlet at the Haymarket Theatre in London. After several years in Hollywood he was an in demand leading man for many of the major film actresses of the time, such as Katharine Hepburn and Bette Davis.
Mae Clark, his co star in Frankenstein, said he was the most handsome man she ever knew, and he was also the saddest. Clive had an intensity, but also suffered from severe chronic alcoholism. His alcoholism became obvious to his co-stars, because they he often saw him napping on movie set. Clive sometimes was so intoxicated that he had to be held upright for over-the-shoulder shots. He was also tormented by the medical threat of amputating his long-damaged leg. Collin Clive died from complications of tuberculosis and alcoholism in 1937 when he was just 37.
Whale first considered Bette Davis for the role of Elizabeth, Frankenstein’s finance, but she was rejected for her supposed lack of sex appeal. Imagine! Turning down Bette Davis. Instead Whale chose Mae Clarke. Now Mae Clark was then best known for being smacked with a grapefruit by James Cagney in 1931’s Public Enemy. I still can’t believe that they turned down Bette Davis. But I guess Mae Clark was more popular at the time. But there was another actor that really impressed Universal executive David Lewis. And that actor was Boris Karloff - who Lewis had seen perform as a convict in the play “The Criminal Code.”
David Lewis was a influential executive at the studio who also happened to have been romantically involved with James Whale and lived with him for several years. This was a comparatively controversial thing to do especially in the 1920s. In the movie Gods and Monsters, the character of James Whale as played by Ian McCellan, says that the studios did not really care about your private life as long as you made money for them and were not blatant. That pretty much summed up Hollywood’s attitude during that period.
24:05 Boris Karloff and Frankenstein
Now Boris Karloff was born in the London suburb of Camberwell in 1887, as William Henry Pratt. He changed his name to Boris Karloff while acting on the stage in Canada. Karloff was forced to take on manual labor to make ends meet. Eventually, Karloff took a risk and moved to Los Angeles, during the early days of motion pictures. By 1931, he had performed in dozens of films but finally came to the conclusion that he was destined to be a starving actor - barely surviving on orange juice and raw eggs.
As I mentioned before, David Lewis had seen Karloff, and eventually suggested that he would be perfect for the role of the creature. Lewis said that Karloff was powerful, and you had to have a powerful monster.”
So Whale contacted the 43-year-old Karloff, and planned to meet him for . According to Karloff, he was in the Universal commissary “Someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Mr. Whale would like to see you at his table,’” They were both quite cultured men, and talked about the problems of being an English actor or director in the United States. When the director told Karloff that he wanted him to do a screen test for the Frankenstein monster, the actor was taken somewhat aback. “I was wearing a new set of clothes which I’d bought especially for the interview,” and I thought I was looking rather smart. Monster indeed!”
Karloff got the part but Whale’s challenges were far from over. For one thing, he strongly felt that the movie should be even scarier. “I thought it might just as well be as horrible as possible,” he said. For one thing, the film’s creature is unable to speak, unlike Mary Shelley’s creature, who becomes quite articulate. And in obtaining a brain from a university classroom, Fritz drops the container with the NORMAL brain in it - the glass shattering and preservative liquid flowing all over the floor. So he grabs the ABnormal brain - the creature therefore is deranged because that abnormal brain is used. In the book, the monster’s homicidal impulses are driven by society’s rejection.
Even so, James Whale wanted the monster to have a human side. This is one reason why Lugosi had earlier lost the role. Not surprisingly, the actor claimed that he did not want the part because it did not have any dialogue. Whale later said “Lugosi was basically scary.” - no one would feel sorry for him.
Now some actors today will bemoan the fact that they have become famous because of a specific role, and are afraid of becoming typecast. Karloff, on the other hand, was extremely grateful for the role of Frankenstein and turned what some actors might consider a one note role into a career. I guess he was also glad that he had a part that made him a cultural figure that everyone recognized - especially after all those years of living the part of a starving artist.
Karloff’s role was physically demanding in the extreme. He would actually have to recline on a board between scenes— most likely to take the heavy costume’s weight off his bad back And after filming the film’s climax, in which he carries Dr. Frankenstein uphill to a windmill, the actor had to be hospitalized.
27:53 Look and makeup for the monster
His makeup for the Frankenstein monster weighed about 35 pounds. During the filming of the movie, he would have to show up at Universal’s makeup department before 4:00 in the morning because the makeup took almost four hours to apply. At one point, Karloff said that his eyes looked too alive - so they applied morticians wax to his eyelids which gave him kind of a dull look. Apparently this morticians wax was quite painful.
The complicated makeup was designed by Jack Pierce - the head of Universal’s makeup department. Pierce had designed Bela Lugosi’s look for Dracula, and went on to create the looks for the 1932 The Mummy and 1941 The Wolf Man (my personal favorite.)
But none of his future work would equal the effect of his makeup for the Frankenstein monster.
A note about the creature’s look -
James Whale felt that the monster’s appearance was essential to the public’s acceptance of the creature. As for the creatures look, well in Mary Shelley’s novel, she had written (and you may recognize some of this text from Episode 54 - True to the Original) Some of you may have even memorized it!
His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same color as the dun white sockets in which they were set,
Now imagine what that might look like on screen - I’m going to read that again, and ask your to figure out how you would go about getting similar effects
His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same color as the dun white sockets in which they were set,
Mary Shelley certainly did a good job describing his face (without saying too much) but I don’t think she was writing for the screen. She just didn’t leave a lot to go on.
So like many movies, months of preparation had to go into the planning for the movie before the cameras started rolling.
In the case of the creature’s appearance, James Whale and Jack Pierce, basically had to start from scratch. It was important to Whale to make the monster both frightening, as well as pitiful. For inspiration, Pierce said he spent three months studying “anatomy, surgery, medicine, criminal history, criminology, ancient and modern burial customs, and electrodynamics,” In the process, he learned that a surgeon can remove a brain from a skull in six ways. “I figured that Frankenstein, who was a scientist but no practicing surgeon, would take the simplest surgical way,” he added. “He would cut through the top of the skull off straight across like a potlid, hinge it, pop the brain in, and then clamp it on tight. That is the reason I decided to make the Monster’s head square and flat like a shoe box and dig that big scar across his forehead with the metal clamps holding it together.”
Pierce also put bolts to represent electrodes on the actor’s neck - you know, one side negative and the other side positive. He also coated Karloff’s skin with cheesecloth, putty, and bluish-green makeup. In black and white, the skin came across as deathly grey. Karloff actually contributed to the creature’s look himself. “We said that we found the eyes were too bright and seemed too understanding, where dumb bewilderment was so essential,”“So I waxed my eyes to make them heavy, half- seeing.”
James Whale was concerned that the actor’s frame might be too slight. Whale gave him a heavy coat, and a great deal of padding. I have read that his boots weighed 13 pounds each - certainly enough to prevent comfortable walking and help create the Monster’s lumbering movements. As a result, Karloff’s chronic back pain worsened.
32:59 Creation scene
For James Whale, the famous creation scene - where Dr. Frankenstein exclaims “It’s alive!” “It’s alive”) was a pivotal point in the movie, but once again there was no inspiration to go on. Webling’s play had avoided the scene entirely, and Mary Shelley wrote. “With an anxiety that almost amounted to agony, I collected the instruments of life around me, that I might infuse a spark of being into the lifeless thing that lay at my feet. It was already one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes, and my candle was nearly burnt out, when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs.” I think it is interesting that this description, according to Leslie S. Klinger, editor of The New Annotated Frankenstein, “matches exactly the experience of professor Giovanni Aldini, who attempted to revive a hanged man by applying electricity.” This podcast will later delve into Edgar Allan Poe’s interest in similar pseudo sciences of his day - especially galvanism.
But it doesn’t really explain the nuts and bolts - no pun intended - of how the monster was created - I guess Mary Shelley realized it was more powerful to leave the details to the reader’s imagination.
34:41 Notorious or censored sections
Frankenstein was a movie that really did a lot of things that no movie had ever shown or done before, such as a body hanging down from a tree and being cut down, or the loud thumping of ground being shoveled onto the top of a coffin. Audiences had never seen cadavers on screen. They were especially shocked by the closeup of the creature being stuck with a hypodermic needle. Such sights would be G-rated on TV today, but had never been seen before when Frankenstein was released.
The most notorious episode shows the Monster murdering a little girl (Marilyn Harris) while picking flowers.Frankenstein sees a little girl - she is one of the few people who is not afraid of him, and he does not really understand what he is doing. His appearance does not scare her, and she and accepts him unconditionally. Frankenstein and the little girl start picking daisies and throwing the flowers in the water to watch them float. Frankenstein eventually runs out of flowers, and picks up the little girl to throw her in the water and watch her float. He throws her in the water, and she drowns. That scene was frequently censored, along with other cuts. For example, censors in Kansas City, Missouri, demanded 32 cuts, and some scenes that had appeared in the original version were cut from its 1937 rerelease, resulting in multiple versions of the movie. It wasn’t until 1985 that a wholly restored version of the original was released. Even so, censored versions are still sometimes shown on TV. To be completely fair, if I had seen such a version on TV when I was - say a 6 year old - years ago, I would have been very upset to see a child killed, and probably couldn’t have handled it at that age.
36:52 More problems with the movie
The movie had a 30-day schedule, and a budget of $262,000. Whale began filming on August 24, 1931. The shoot was easy enough for Karloff—until the tenth day, when he was first put into full monster makeup and costume. “I spent three and a half hours in the makeup chair getting ready for that day’s work,” the actor later said. “The makeup itself was quite painful, particularly the putty on my eyes. There were days when I thought I would never be able to hold out until the end of the day.” Karloff had to arrive at the studio at four am. Fueled by lots of cigarettes and tea - not coffee - after all, he WAS English - Karloff was on the set after several hours of going through makeup. And of course he had to be in costume and padded by nine o’clock and usually worked until six in the evening. Then it took at least two hours to pry the makeup off - using acetone - an extremely flammable solvent In its entirety this was at least a 16 hour day, and the only things he had time for when he went home were a rubdown and a light dinner before going to bed. By the way, a rubdown was necessary because of all the wear and tear on his feet and legs from the boots.
39:23 Similarity to The Nightmare and dreams
Near the end of the movie, Now after Frankenstein attacks Elizabeth when she is temporarily alone on her wedding night. The film shows her on a bed face up with her head and hands hanging down - a very weird position.
When I saw the film, I was struck by the similarity of Elizabeth’s position to a painting by John Henry FuSELli’s (And I’ve heard John Henry fuSELi and John Henry fusiLEE.) But I’ll go with John Henry fuSELi. Anyway, The painting by John Henry fuSELi is called The Nightmare and was painted in 1781. The Nightmare is a painting of a sleeping woman lying on her back on a bed with her arms thrown below her - very similar to the position of Elizabeth after the creature had attacked her. Now in the painting, a demonic and apelike incubus is crouched on the woman’s chest. By the way, according to mythology, an incubus was a demon in male form who lies upon sleeping woman in order to have sex with them. The female form of the demon is called a succubus - very popular in the paranormal romance genre. The belief was that repeated sexual activity with either an incubus or succubus could result in the deterioration of health, mental illness, or even death - not exactly the kind of creatures you want to have hanging around at night.
You know - I found that there seems to be a tradition of incubus or succubus all over the world throughout history - such as the gods who come at night to chew off children’s toes in South Africa. That would make a cool off topic episode, and I think I will do one in the future - but I digress.
I did some research to see if the painting had any possible connection to Frankenstein, and found that the painting The Nightmare most likely influenced Mary Shelley in a scene from her novel.
Now follow me on this one -
Mary Shelley would have been familiar with the painting; her parents, Mary Wollstonecraft and William Godwin, KNEW Henry Fuseli. It is not too big a stretch to imagine that Mary Shelley drew on the imagery of the canvas - whether consciously or subconsciously. Mary Shelley wrote in describing Elizabeth’s death - “She was there, lifeless and inanimate, thrown across the bed, her head hanging down, and her pale and distorted features half covered by hair.”
In the New Annotated Frankenstein by Sylvia Leslie, the author also says that the painting of The Nightmare is believed to be an inspiration for that portion of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. The author points out that FuSELi was Swiss but actually lived most of his life in England. He was a fixture in the circle of radical artists and thinkers that included Mary Shelley’s parents, William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin. There is even evidence - and this surprised me - of an romantic relationship between Fuseli and Wollstonecraft. Mary Shelley would have definitely known about this amorous relationship, and she certainly knew Fuseli’s work.
42:02 Poe, Fuseli, incubus, and dreams
I thought that was rather interesting, and was wondering whether to include this connection - and then I accidentally ran across the fact that: Edgar Allan Poe may have evoked FuSELi’s The Nightmare in his short story "The Fall of the House of Usher” of 1839.
You can easily imagine that my heart started beating faster when I saw that . the narrator in a Poe story compared a painting hanging in Roderick Usher’s house to a Fuseli work. Poe has the narrator state that an "irrepressible tremor gradually pervaded my frame; and, at length, there sat upon my heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm" - Well, my first reaction was that’s an ominous choice of words - there sat upon my heart an incubus of utterly causeless alarm - Apparently incubus was also an archaic word for night terrors - and Poe sure did like his archaic words - giving them a sense of timelessness and dread that you couldn’t quite put your finger on.
And to further deepen the meaning of incubus - the word incubus, in addition to having an archaic sense all its own - has an even more archaic meaning - incubus as apprehension or dread.
Now Poe and Fuseli both shared an interest in the subconscious; Fuseli is often quoted as saying, "One of the most unexplored regions of art is dreams”. It is said that as a painter, Fuseli favoured the supernatural, as well as characters and situations with a dreamlike quality.
And in A Dream Within a Dream from 1849, Poe wrote
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now
,
Thus much let me avow—
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none
,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
Frankenstein’ voice saying IT”S ALIVE!
44:31 Frankenstein’s first screening
Universal finally finished filming Frankenstein on October 3 - five days past schedule and $30,000 over budget. It was too late to back out now, but Universal executives were extremely nervous. Had Dracula been a fluke? Would audiences find Frankenstein too scary and avoid it altogether. Even worse, would they find it funny - a silly film of no import. To minimize bad publicity, the first screening was held in Santa Barbara, away from the prying eyes of the press.
Universal was so concerned that they began the movie with a character coming out behind a curtain and introducing the film with a warming. They were afraid that the movie just might be to much for audiences of the Great Depression.
The movie began with an actor coming out from behind a curtain.
How do you do?
Mr. Carl Lemlee feels it would be a little unkind to present this picture without just a word of friendly warning. We are about to unfold the story of Frankenstein, a man of science who sought to create a man after his own image without reckoning upon God. It is one of the strangest tales ever told. It deals with the two great mysteries of creation - life and death. I think it will thrill you. It may shock you. It may even horrify you. So if any of you feel that you do not care to subject your nerves to such strain, now is your chance to well, we’ve warned you.
In the opening credits, Karloff was billed only as “ ? ” He later said that he wasn’t even invited to the premiere, since he was considered “an unimportant freelance actor” During the first scene, which showed a graveyard funeral procession, David Lewis said “You could hear the whole audience gasp,” As the film progressed, the audience became increasingly unsettled. “People got up, walked out, came back in, walked out again,” he continued. “It was an alarming thing.” When the film ended, there was no applause— just stunned silence.”
Now Universal was really worried. They considered cutting even more of what might be considered disturbing scenes—until Eddie Montagne, a studio director, reassured everyone. His insight was the recognition that the audience’s reaction showed that they were totally immersed in the movie and moved by its effects. He summed up the situation with, “You’ve got the hit of all time!”
47:42 Success of the movie
Surprisingly, even the federal censor didn’t demand cuts, though a few states made their own. Some of Frankenstein’s more troubling elements including the scene in which the creature drowns a young girl were cut, as well as dialogue that was considered blasphemous - such as Victor exclaiming, (“Now I know what it’s like to be God!”.)
Of course, there is no substitute for watching the original 1931 Frankenstein in its entirety.- taking in the flow of the story, the innovated camera work, and character development. James Whale did an incredible job in putting the elements together both from an audience and artistic standpoint. For example, in one scene, instead of showing the standard long shot, James Whale quickly switches from a closeup of one character, then three more closeups of characters to establish tension. Then we see a long shot of the characters together. Your first instinct is to try and figure out what you are seeing in the seemingly unrelated closeups and how they go together. That involves the audience more because you have had to figure out what the closeups mean. And that is just a small example showing that a great deal of thought went into the making of the movie.
Now Even if you can’t get the movie from your library, youtube has some fantastic clips, and I put a link on the show notes and transcript for this episode that will give you a taste of the best of the 1931 Frankenstein.
It is said that James Whale even had a formula for Frankenstein - audiences were supposed to receive a “chill’ every 45 seconds. The film featured 95 chills, which at 1931 admission prices worked out to approximately three chills to a penny. No wonder Frankenstein became such a successful movie. Frankenstein was exactly the right film for the times. It break box office records all over the United States. Ambulances were parked next to theaters and nurses were stationed in theatre lobbies where Frankenstein was playing - a gimmick that really worked. Psychologists say that people like tragic deaths when their own spirits are depressed - and remember this was the time of the Great Depression - a time when the economy was even more depressed that that of last year.
50:11 Conclusion
I’d like to end with a section from Frankenstein Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds. This was written in reference to Mary Shelley’s novel, but also applies to James Whale’s adaptation.
The science fiction stories that we remember—such as Frankenstein—are ones that resonate with the public imagination. Most science fiction is forgotten shortly after it’s published, but a few of those tales live on for years, decades—even centuries in the case of Frankenstein. The fact that a story captures the public imagination doesn’t mean that it will come true in the future, but it tells you something about the present. You learn something about the world when a vision of the future becomes a subject of controversy or delight.
If some poor English teacher has demanded that you identify the “themes” of Frankenstein, the obvious correct answer is that she is referring to ambition and hubris. Ambition because Victor Frankenstein has challenged death itself, one of the universe’s eternal verities. Everything dies: whales and humans and dogs and cats and stars and galaxies. Hubris—“extreme pride or self-confidence” (thanks, Wikipedia!)—because as Victor brings his creature to life, he is so blinded by his own ambition that he fails to consider the moral consequences of his actions. He fails to ask himself how the thinking, living being he is creating will feel about being stitched together, imbued with life force, and ushered into the uncaring universe.
Sources and Outro
Sources for this episode include Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, Monstrous Progeny: A History of the Frankenstein Narratives, It’s the Pictures from Film School Rejects by Max Covill, Frankenstein Annotated for Scientists, Engineers, and Creators of All Kinds, edited by David H. Guston, Ed Finn, and Jason Scott Robert, the New Annotated Frankenstein by Sylvia Leslie, the LIFE special of 2018,, Frankenstein, The Man, The Monster, The Legacy, and the documentary The Frankenstein Files.
Why not visit my podcast web site at celebratepoe.buzzsprout.com - and click on the episode you want to learn more about to see its show notes and a transcript. I know on Apple podcast, the show notes show up directly below the cover art for an episode, and you can go directly to a youtube link.
Join me for the next episode of Celebrate Poe - The Best Horror Film Ever.
I had originally intended to deal with the book Frankenstein’s Father, and the movie version Gods and Monsters in THIS episode, but ended up having to save that for next week. And the next episode will also cover a movie sequel that is generally agreed to be even better than the original.
Join me for the next episode “The Best Horror Film Ever.”