DVD/150: BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (James Whale, 1935)

86 years on, James Whale's film re-generates with every viewing, just like his iconic Bride...

The greatest of all the Universal horror films crackles with invention, wit and a deliciously perverse subtext - all the more remarkable that James Whale wasn't interested in making the sequel.

The script went through seven writers before Whale was satisfied.

We start with Mary Godwin, Byron and Shelley discussing her novel followed by a FRANKENSTEIN montage to pick-up the storyline, swirling through to the final cataclysm - Elsa Lanchester playing both Mary and The Bride provides a wonderful symmetry.

Boris Karloff and Colin Clive return as monster and maker. Whale refused to give up on his alcoholic friend Clive who died two years afterwards from TB.

Karloff built on his performance to suggest the soul within the monster, oddly he disliked the idea of the monster learning to speak.

BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN lives....

Shelf or charity shop?  It's what shelves were made for... One of the rare sequels that outshines the original, Universal gave James Whale full artistic control after the success of FRANKENSTEIN and his vision was brought to vivid life by cinematographer John C Mescall, production designer Charles D Hall, costume designer Vera West, make-up artist Jack Pierce, Kenneth Strickfaden's electric laboratory props and composer Franz Waxman. Whale cast UK actors in all six lead roles: apart from Karloff, Clive and Lanchester, the film benefits from the lip-smacking eccentric campness of Ernest Thesiger's Doctor Pretorius, Henry's former professor who lures him back to the dark side. 17 year-old Valerie Hobson was cast as Elizabeth when Mae Clarke was too ill to reprise her role - Hobson is quite wonderful especially considering her age, and finally Belfast-born Una O'Connor plays the bustling, shrieking maid Minnie.  Australian actor OP Heggie is marvellous as the blind hermit who provides the monster with a few hours of understanding, while FRANKENSTEIN'S scuttling servant Dwight Frye returns to play another sniveling underling.  Elsa Lanchester's Bride is onscreen for only 3 and a half minutes but in that brief time a screen icon was born: swaying, imperious, scared and disdainful..

...and The Bride made a memorable reappearance at The Retro Bar in 2005...

DVD/150: FRANKENSTEIN (James Whale, 1931)

When DRACULA became a huge hit, Universal Pictures wanted another Gothic horror film so chose Mary Shelley's 1818 novel FRANKENSTEIN, already filmed three times during the silent era.

Universal had the rights to a 1927 stage version which formed the film's basis, only Shelley's premise remains.

 

FRANKENSTEIN's huge success confirmed Universal as *the* horror studio.  It's sequel THE BRIDE OF... is a rare instance of a sequel being better than the original, but susequent films dwindled into tawdry retreads.  After Universal, Hammer had a seven film run which also repeated declining quality.

 

 

Actor Bela Lugosi and director Robert Florey were first choices but after some make-up tests they were ousted when Univeral offered it to British director James Whale for only his third film.

Despite creakiness and Colin Clive's over-wrought Victor Frankenstein, Whale's influential film still delivers. with unsettling imagery that continues to haunt us down the decades.

Shelf or charity shop? A re-animated keeper.  If ever a performance can be said to have been iconic it's Boris Karloff's Creature: thanks to Jack Pierce's extraordinary make-up Karloff gave us a timeless Creature. Despite the diluting of the image down the years, his actual performance is still fantastic. Scenes that have stayed with me down the years: the tilted perspective of the opening graveyard scene, Karloff's first appearance walking backwards towards us, the fizzes and crackles of the laboratory equipment during the re-animation, the towering film sets, the knife-edge tension of the Creature playing with Little Maria by the lake, Mae Clarke's Elizabeth draped across her bed echoing Fuseli's "The Nightmare" and the moment in the mill where Victor and the Creature's faces are seen together through the spinning machinary.

50 Favourite Musicals: 15: SHOW BOAT (1927) (Jerome Kern / Oscar Hammerstein II, PG Wodehouse)

The 50 shows that have stood out down the years and, as we get up among the paint cards, the shows that have become the cast recording of my life:

 First performed: 1927, Ziegfeld Theatre, NY

First seen by me: London Palladium, 1991

Productions seen: two

Score: Jerome Kern / Oscar Hammerstein II, P.G. Wodehouse
Book: Oscar Hammerstein II

Plot: The lives and loves of the performers on Capt'n Andy's show boat "The Cotton Blossom" as it sails up and down the Mississippi River span 40 years and the evolving styles of American popular entertainment...

Five memorable numbers: OL' MAN RIVER, CAN'T HELP LOVIN' DAT MAN, MAKE BELIEVE, BILL, LIFE UPON THE WICKED STAGE

You would have thought that the show acknowledged to be the one that first presented a narrative with a fully integrated score and believable characters - not just an evening of skits, songs and production numbers or imported European operetta - would be handled with more respect but no, SHOW BOAT has been revised and rewritten with practically every revival on stage or screen.  Incidentally how interesting that the original SHOW BOAT was produced by Florenz Ziegfeld whose splashy revues were wiped away in the coming years by Musical Comedy productions.  The story stays the same - professional gambler Gaylord Ravanel meets aspiring actress Magnolia Hawks aboard her father's show boat and they marry unhappily ever after - but songs are dropped to be added to the film to be added to the revival to be dropped again etc. etc.  However, no matter what version you see the magic always happens - Edna Ferber's original characters are all sympathetically drawn by Hammerstein and you are never far away from a cracking song whatever the production. 

My first voyage on the SHOW BOAT was James Whale's 1936 film version with the excellent cast of Irene Dunne as Magnolia, Helen Morgan repeating her original stage role as Julie Laverne the Cotton Blossom's leading lady who has to leave when it is revealed that she is half-black, Hattie McDaniel as the boat's cook Queenie and the legendary Paul Robeson as her husband Joe.  Incidentally 'Joe' was written for Robeson but because Ziegfeld's production was delayed he had to withdraw because of other commitments, he played it instead in the original London production.  I first saw it onstage in 1991 when Ian Judge directed an RSC & Opera North co-production at the London Palladium with a memorable cast of Jan Hartley (Magnolia), Bruce Hubbard (Joe), Marilyn Cutts (Julie), David Healy (Cap'n Andy), Karla Burns (Queenie) and Margaret Courtenay (Parthy).  It was a wonderful production that made me realize the show's power.  Then in 2016 Daniel Evans directed an excellent revival for the Sheffield Crucible which later transferred to the New London Theatre for a shamefully short run.  At the Crucible the show had lovely performances from Michael Xavier (Gaylord), Gina Beck (Magnolia), Allan Corduner (Cap'n Andy), Emmanuel Kojo (Joe), Sandra Marvin (Queenie), Danny Collins (Frank) and particularly Rebecca Trehearn's haunting Julie - the character has my two favourite numbers from the show "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" and "Bill" (originally written by Kern with PG Wodehouse in 1917).  It was wonderful to experience SHOW BOAT on stage again, and it proved that a historical milestone from 1927 can be as vital, touching and entertaining as ever.

Again I am confronted with there being so many fabulous songs in SHOW BOAT over so many productions... which to choose?  I kept returning to this, a promo for the New London production with Rebecca Trehearn showing why she won the Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actress In A Musical for playing tragic Julie and delivering such a thrilling version of "Bill"...

Dvd/150: SHOW BOAT (James Whale, 1936)

The year after James Whale directed BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN he made something totally different but equally memorable, his adaptation of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein's 1927 landmark musical SHOW BOAT.

The musical, based on Edna Ferber's novel, was the first to mesh a plot and fully integrated score and had already been filmed in 1929 with a couple of sound scenes and music from the show included in it's prologue.

Whale cast several actors who had appeared in stage versions of the show: Irene Dunne as Magnolia, Helen Morgan as Julie, Charles Winninger as Cap'n Andy, Sammy White as Frank Schultz and the mighty Paul Robeson as Joe.

Also cast were Allan Jones as Gaylord Ravenal, Hattie McDaniel as Queenie and Helen Westley as Parthy.  They all give sparkling, memorable performances - a particular joy is to see Robeson and McDaniel effortlessly stealing the film with their larger-than-life personas. 

Shelf or charity shop?  My friend John went to such efforts to get me this Spanish dvd I have to keep it (I would anyways...)