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James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters
The basis for the Academy Award winning film "Gods and Monsters" Starring Ian McKellan and Brendan Fraser. James Curtis is the author of a well-received biography on Preston Sturges and a new book, W.C. FIELDS, just published by Knopf and favorably reviewed in the NYTBR.
472 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
May 15, 2019
”I did talk to James Whale about his films, but not at great length. It’s hard to describe his attitude toward his own work. He was a tremendous wit, and he treated anything like that very lightly. He had no great pose as an artist; to me, his films were much more artistic than anything about him, or the way he presented himself. If you praised his work, he was very self-disparaging, very modest, very unpretentious. It was hard to get anything serious about his work out of him.”
Of course, I knew who James Whale was, but I really didn’t know anything about him until I watched Gods and Monsters(1998), starring Ian McKellen as Whale and a very young Brendan Fraser as his gardener. I was really struck by the elegant portrait that McKellen was able to paint of this man, famed for creating monsters.
Whale was already on my mind from a recent trip to Scotland. I made a point of dropping by the Frankenstein Bar in Edinburgh. Whale’s masterpieces Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein were being played continuously on two humongous screens. As I sat there nursing a beer, enjoying the films, I wondered what other films James Whale made.
I opted for a beer at the Frankenstein Bar, despite the sales pitch by the bartender to try a Red Bull/ Jagermeister drink that all the college kids are swilling these days. Was he trying to see the monster that lurks within?
I was without internet in Scotland and spent some time musing about James Whale while walking the beautiful streets of Edinburgh, trying to think of another movie Whale had made. I finally dredged up The Invisible Man (1933), with Claude Rains, from my pre-google memories. I remembered that there were strange elements from that movie that had stuck with me. I was soon to learn that strange elements were a trademark of his movies, even the ones without monsters.
Inspired by Gods and Monsters, I decided that I really did need to watch more films by James Whale. I started at the beginning with his directorial debut,Journey’s End. Whale had also directed it on the stage in London and had been particularly taken by the actor who played Captain Stanhope. ”Colin Clive is like a beautiful pipe organ. All I have to do is pull out the stops and out comes this glorious music.” After much wrangling, nothing is ever straightforward in trying to bring an actor, director, and film together, he landed Clive for the film version.
I then watched Waterloo Bridge (1931) with Mae Clarke and her smashing smile, playing a down on her luck chorus girl. After just two films, Whale was given Frankenstein to direct, which unknown to everyone at the time was a very fortuitous matching of material and director. Whale landed Colin Clive for the role of Frankenstein and Boris Karloff as the Monster, and cinematography history was made.
By the time we met James Whale in Gods and Monsters he was washed up, not exactly banned from Hollywood, but certainly not welcome to work anywhere anymore. He had a good run, but with a string of box office failures towards the end of his career, he was out of the game. Whale composed a list to show a friend of the good movies he had made, compared to a list of the terrible movies he had made. ”The fucking producers--they wrecked this lot. The others I got my own way with.”
James wanted out of the horror picture business. He wanted to direct big budget films. No one really thought the monster horror films would be anything more than a fluke anyway. The public would soon tire of them, and the studios were very careful not to get burned by flooding the market with too many horror offerings. In retrospect, of course, I think Whale would have done quite well if he had stuck with his monsters. He had a knack for making us care about them. We see them as monsters, of course, but ones that we could feel some empathy for and even maybe see some of ourselves in them.
I love this publicity shot of Elsa Lancaster as the Bride.
The Bride of Frankenstein came along in 1935. The Invisible Man was released in 1933. People tend to pass over the other films that Whale made between his Monster flicks, but there was one little gem in there that I found to be a perfect treat. The Old Dark House(1932) certainly brought some chills, but also mixed in some well timed, off color humor that added levity to the horror. Karloff, some would argue, was underused as Morgan the brutish butler, but it just wasn’t necessary for him to be a larger presence in the movie. Gloria Stuart, who early in the film changed from her wet clothes into this lovely dressing gown, had a few questions of Whales as to why.
”’Why me, James? Nobody else is changing. Why am I changing? He said, ‘Because Boris is going to chase you up and down the corridors, up and down the stairs, and I want you to appear as a white flame.’ ‘So, all right, I put on the dress and Boris chased me up and down the corridors, and I was a white flame.’”
The lovely Gloria Stuart with the hand of Boris Karloff above her head about to shut the door.
Dare I say that The Old Dark House is my favorite James Whale movie? Well, I do have a few more to see, but there is no need for me to quibble...it is my favorite James Whale movie.
Whale, like all the directors of the period, had to deal with the Code era of Hollywood and frequently had to be creative to get his more “scandalous” ideas through the Code Board. When we allow censorship, the power of those censoring knows no bounds. Waterloo Bridge, for example, couldn’t have been made in the Code Era because Mae Clarke played a prostitute. Directors often had to reshoot scenes to get a picture approved that added unexpected costs to a film. It was hard to gauge what would pass and what would not because many of the decisions seemed arbitrary and even nonsensical.
I won’t tell how it all ends with James Whale. Some will want to read this biography, but maybe more of you will at least see the movie Gods and Monsters and have a chance to meet the dapper man who made monsters.
If you wish to see more of my most recent book and movie reviews, visit http://www.jeffreykeeten.com
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December 29, 2024
Many film lovers are familiar with the films,Frankenstein (1931), The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), The Invisible Man (1933),The Old Dark House (1932) and Showboat (1936). But how many know who directed these classics? This book explores the life of James Whale who was a genius at directing but then fell into obscurity. The 1998 film Gods and Monsters starring the wonderful Ian McKellen revived new attention to Whale, thus the sub-title of this biography.
Whale, an Englishman,began his career as an actor and director in plays and became interested in film as talkies became popular. He made one film in England which was not well received and decided to go to the US where film was more advanced. It was an excellent decision as he had some influential contacts in Hollywood and he hit the jackpot with his first film (Frankenstein) and went on to deliver popular classic films,mentioned in my first paragraph of this review.
He was a difficult man with whom to work, always went far over budget, and months behind the time authorized for the film's expected release. This was a problem for the studios and he was assigned to films unworthy of his talent which pretty much ended his career. He soon had no work and retreated to his home and seldom appeared in public.
This is an extremely interesting and well written book which will be enjoyed by both film mavens and those who like a good biography of a basically forgotten giant of film.
Whale, an Englishman,began his career as an actor and director in plays and became interested in film as talkies became popular. He made one film in England which was not well received and decided to go to the US where film was more advanced. It was an excellent decision as he had some influential contacts in Hollywood and he hit the jackpot with his first film (Frankenstein) and went on to deliver popular classic films,mentioned in my first paragraph of this review.
He was a difficult man with whom to work, always went far over budget, and months behind the time authorized for the film's expected release. This was a problem for the studios and he was assigned to films unworthy of his talent which pretty much ended his career. He soon had no work and retreated to his home and seldom appeared in public.
This is an extremely interesting and well written book which will be enjoyed by both film mavens and those who like a good biography of a basically forgotten giant of film.
September 9, 2023
A well-researched and well-written biography of James Whale, director of, most notably, Frankenstein, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, and The Bride of Frankenstein. It was perhaps a bit too detailed at times, though, particularly in regard to the material concerning his time in the theater. And okay, honestly, there was a little too much information on his later flops and post-Hollywood life as well. Yeah, I kinda only really wanted to know about his time spent on those four insanely cool Universal horror flicks. (Don’t even try to kid yourself as to why you’re reading this either.) But, all that said, overall this was certainly well worth reading, with many interesting Golden Age of Hollywood tidbits and trivia gleaned along the way, and some intriguing insights into Whale’s (basically endearingly oversensitive) personality as well. Definitely recommended for fans of his work.
Some fun facts from the book:
-In Frankenstein, Whale wanted the creature’s face to convey past history as well as character, and had the head designed like a cigar box with clasps in front to hold the lid in place. “We had to surmise,” said Karloff, “that brain after brain had been tried in that poor skull, inserted and taken out again. That is why we built up the forehead to convey the impression of demoniacal surgery. Then we found the eyes were too bright, seemed too understanding, where dumb bewilderment was so essential. So I waxed my eyes to make them heavy, half-seeing.”
-Karloff’s makeup took approximately four hours to apply, requiring him to report for work at four in the morning. Fueled by tea and cigarettes, he was on the set, padded and in costume, by nine o’clock and was often at work until six in the evening. It took another two hours to pry the stuff off, using acetone, a highly flammable solvent.
-The gestation of The Invisible Man was the lengthiest and most convoluted of all of James Whale’s films. It involved four directors, nine writers, six treatments, and ten separate screenplays—all for a film that emerged very much in harmony with the book on which it was based.
-When The Invisible Man was completed, there were still imperfections to be fixed by painting the film with an opaque dye. “Men with tiny brushes worked through microscopes,” said Whale, “adding touches to every single picture in the thousands of feet of film, and eliminating details which even the cameramen had not been able to overcome. This work cost hundreds of pounds and demanded such close application that the men could not work at it for more than about two hours at a time.” John Fulton later estimated that approximately 64 thousand frames (or roughly 45 minutes of film) had to be individually retouched in this manner.
-Whale effectively functioned as his own producer on Bride; the control he maintained is arguably the only way he could have achieved such a perverse—and captivating—mix of comedy and horror.
-The challenge for Whale in the climactic creation scene [of Bride] was to improve upon the original. […] When the sequence was ready for production, Whale departed liberally from the script, allowing the scene to build its own momentum with a minimum of dialogue.
-Calling his studio a “city” was not just hyperbole for Carl Laemmle. 13 miles from the center of Los Angeles, he envisioned the Universal ranch as a self-contained company town where employees could both live and work. The lot had its own police force, fire department, a hospital, stables, electrical plant, water power system, a huge artificial lake, over 10 miles of roads, 350 phones, 8 projection rooms, a gym, a nursery, and a set of school rooms. By the late teens there were more than 500 inhabitants, including 75 American Indians living in tepees. There were orange groves, a chicken ranch, a zoo with $600,000 worth of animals, and a stage equipped for filming with electric light.
And now, I’ll conclude by letting Pretorius cackle maniacally at you—cackling maniacally is of course his “only vice.”
-Dr. Pretorius, from Whale’s masterpiece The Bride of Frankenstein.
Some fun facts from the book:
-In Frankenstein, Whale wanted the creature’s face to convey past history as well as character, and had the head designed like a cigar box with clasps in front to hold the lid in place. “We had to surmise,” said Karloff, “that brain after brain had been tried in that poor skull, inserted and taken out again. That is why we built up the forehead to convey the impression of demoniacal surgery. Then we found the eyes were too bright, seemed too understanding, where dumb bewilderment was so essential. So I waxed my eyes to make them heavy, half-seeing.”
-Karloff’s makeup took approximately four hours to apply, requiring him to report for work at four in the morning. Fueled by tea and cigarettes, he was on the set, padded and in costume, by nine o’clock and was often at work until six in the evening. It took another two hours to pry the stuff off, using acetone, a highly flammable solvent.
-The gestation of The Invisible Man was the lengthiest and most convoluted of all of James Whale’s films. It involved four directors, nine writers, six treatments, and ten separate screenplays—all for a film that emerged very much in harmony with the book on which it was based.
-When The Invisible Man was completed, there were still imperfections to be fixed by painting the film with an opaque dye. “Men with tiny brushes worked through microscopes,” said Whale, “adding touches to every single picture in the thousands of feet of film, and eliminating details which even the cameramen had not been able to overcome. This work cost hundreds of pounds and demanded such close application that the men could not work at it for more than about two hours at a time.” John Fulton later estimated that approximately 64 thousand frames (or roughly 45 minutes of film) had to be individually retouched in this manner.
-Whale effectively functioned as his own producer on Bride; the control he maintained is arguably the only way he could have achieved such a perverse—and captivating—mix of comedy and horror.
-The challenge for Whale in the climactic creation scene [of Bride] was to improve upon the original. […] When the sequence was ready for production, Whale departed liberally from the script, allowing the scene to build its own momentum with a minimum of dialogue.
-Calling his studio a “city” was not just hyperbole for Carl Laemmle. 13 miles from the center of Los Angeles, he envisioned the Universal ranch as a self-contained company town where employees could both live and work. The lot had its own police force, fire department, a hospital, stables, electrical plant, water power system, a huge artificial lake, over 10 miles of roads, 350 phones, 8 projection rooms, a gym, a nursery, and a set of school rooms. By the late teens there were more than 500 inhabitants, including 75 American Indians living in tepees. There were orange groves, a chicken ranch, a zoo with $600,000 worth of animals, and a stage equipped for filming with electric light.
And now, I’ll conclude by letting Pretorius cackle maniacally at you—cackling maniacally is of course his “only vice.”
-Dr. Pretorius, from Whale’s masterpiece The Bride of Frankenstein.
June 27, 2016
In the late 70's I had the good fortune to study with William K. Everson who taught a course at NYU focusing on the Films of James Whale. I remember at the time Professor Everson mentioning a young man with whom he was acquainted that was working on a biography of the filmmaker. It's taken a lot of years, but I finally got my hands on James Curtis' biography of Whale and I must say, this is one of the best biographies from any genre that I have ever read.
From Whale's early days, Mr. Curtis does a magnificent job of relating how the director's skills as an artist, set designer, and actor meld to form his skills as a masterful director. The chapters of the book describing bringing Journey's End to the stage and subsequently to the screen would in itself make a terrific movie.
I have always been a fan of the Universal horror films, but the insight into how these films gained a foothold and the resistance they met is documented exceptionally well, as is Whale's love/hate relationship with gods and monsters.
But of most interest in how the author brings out the complexities of this very interesting, very talented man and shows us readers just how important he was in the history of cinema. It has been a long time since I took that class with Professor Everson during which I was able to see many of Whale's films. Yet the book was everything for which I could have hoped. Now, I'm going on a mission to unearth as many of these films as I can.
From Whale's early days, Mr. Curtis does a magnificent job of relating how the director's skills as an artist, set designer, and actor meld to form his skills as a masterful director. The chapters of the book describing bringing Journey's End to the stage and subsequently to the screen would in itself make a terrific movie.
I have always been a fan of the Universal horror films, but the insight into how these films gained a foothold and the resistance they met is documented exceptionally well, as is Whale's love/hate relationship with gods and monsters.
But of most interest in how the author brings out the complexities of this very interesting, very talented man and shows us readers just how important he was in the history of cinema. It has been a long time since I took that class with Professor Everson during which I was able to see many of Whale's films. Yet the book was everything for which I could have hoped. Now, I'm going on a mission to unearth as many of these films as I can.
February 5, 2011
Excellent biography of the director of Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The Old Dark House, Showboat (Irene Dunn version) and many others. Not just facts and film descriptions, but interesting, well written prose about the man. Fascinating background information on the films. I re-watched several as I was reading the book and saw things I had never noticed before. Highly recommended.
February 15, 2023
A fine biography of a director best known as the man who made FRANKENSTEIN (the movie, not the monster) and three other classic Universal horror films in the 1930s. The story of his life is largely the story of Hollywood in its "Golden Age," where an artist truly was only as good as his or her last picture. In more recent years, Whale has also been lauded as one of the first moviemakers who was openly gay, though the author here largely discounts the impact of Whale's sexuality on his art.
I've been a fan of Universal's monster films all my life so the history here was somewhat familiar to me. What impressed me anew was the realization of the influence, through Whale and other talents he brought with him to America (Ernest Thesiger, Colin Clive, Charles Laughton and his wife Elsa Lanchester), of the early 20th Century English stage on the genre Universal was busy inventing in the 1930s. Germany contributed a sense of visual style through emigrants like Leni, Ulmer, and Freund and Tod Browning brought carnivalesque sensation, but the mix of style, humor, and dramatics owed considerably to Whale and the other British stage veterans who emigrated to the US.
The last 100 pages of the book make sad reading, as Whale's successes gave way to badly chosen properties, studio politics, the Hays Office, and changing audience tastes. The final chapters, on Whale's descent into depression and suicide, are more tragic than any stage melodrama.
Recommended for any fan of the Universals or of Hollywood history.
I've been a fan of Universal's monster films all my life so the history here was somewhat familiar to me. What impressed me anew was the realization of the influence, through Whale and other talents he brought with him to America (Ernest Thesiger, Colin Clive, Charles Laughton and his wife Elsa Lanchester), of the early 20th Century English stage on the genre Universal was busy inventing in the 1930s. Germany contributed a sense of visual style through emigrants like Leni, Ulmer, and Freund and Tod Browning brought carnivalesque sensation, but the mix of style, humor, and dramatics owed considerably to Whale and the other British stage veterans who emigrated to the US.
The last 100 pages of the book make sad reading, as Whale's successes gave way to badly chosen properties, studio politics, the Hays Office, and changing audience tastes. The final chapters, on Whale's descent into depression and suicide, are more tragic than any stage melodrama.
Recommended for any fan of the Universals or of Hollywood history.
August 6, 2015
This book started and ended slowly; the accounts of the early life of James Whale and of his final days weren't all that interesting. The book began to get good around chapter 7, with Whale's stage success with Journey's End, and it kept getting better. The highlight for me was the behind-the-scenes stories of Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, and, to a lesser extent, The Invisible Man. (I do, however, wish that the chapter on Waterloo Bridge was a little bit longer.)
James Whale is also known for being an openly gay Hollywood director in a time when many gays were a lot less open. That, too, is covered in the book, but it's not the primary focus. The book is about a filmmaker who happened to be gay, not about a gay man who happened to make films. And that, I think, is the way it ought to be.
James Whale is also known for being an openly gay Hollywood director in a time when many gays were a lot less open. That, too, is covered in the book, but it's not the primary focus. The book is about a filmmaker who happened to be gay, not about a gay man who happened to make films. And that, I think, is the way it ought to be.
January 28, 2016
Really enjoyed this look at the life of James Whale and his films. It has me wanting to see or in some cases re-see the films of his I haven't. After reading the book I see how much of the film Gods And Monsters(about james whale) was fictionalized. I really liked the film, but now feel a bit disappointed in it. Not sure why they felt the need to fictionalize a story that was pretty interesting to begin with.
September 30, 2020
Exhaustive research by James Curtis can sometimes make for a dry read (occasionally I felt like I was reading the Old Testament, detailing who begot who while wishing the story would movie along), but it as the book unfolds it’s clear that all of Whales experiences in theater pay off in connections and his direction of film. Curtis managed to interview many of Whales peers and the first hand stories are amazing (particularly ones that highlight Whale’s humor). Of course, the film made in the late 90s takes a lot of liberties with his final days, and I’m glad a know the more accurate account. Highly recommend to anyone interested in classic film or the Frankenstein completest.
August 12, 2025
An exhaustively researched biography takes us from James Whale’s early hard life in industrial Dudley, England, to his creative blossoming as a designer, actor, and finally a celebrated movie director (Frankenstein, Showboat) in 1930s Hollywood. He made many more films you likely haven’t heard of, and each chapter covers them in detail. I’m particularly looking forward to seeing The Man In The Iron Mask (which Whale himself did not like, but others seemed to. Towards the end of his life he seemed to grow depressed, and cut friends out of his life, replacing them with others, who, though seeming to have his best interest at heart, were unable to stop his descent which ended in suicide.
March 3, 2024
This is a well researched biography. I appreciate that it is straightforward, Curtis isn't trying to be sensational. I love finding obscure stuff like this. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it unless you're, like me, in the midst of James Whale fanaticism.
February 27, 2023
Fascinating telling of the life of one of Hollywood’s most underrated directors and the father of what became the “horror” genre. An artist steadfast in his vision and in many ways ahead of his time.
February 15, 2008
I remember spotting this wonderful cover at Tower Records (R.I.P.) and just having to have it.
Admittedly, I wasn't at all familiar with James Whale or his work at the time. Curtis does an excellent job of painting a vivid picture of this interesting Hollywood life.
Admittedly, I wasn't at all familiar with James Whale or his work at the time. Curtis does an excellent job of painting a vivid picture of this interesting Hollywood life.
February 8, 2008
Extremely comprehensive look at the horror director's life. Friggin' amazin'
October 24, 2010
As if I didn't have enough to do. Picked this one up again and can't put it down.
October 22, 2015
Gave up after reading about half, liked the parts recounting Old Dark House and Bride of Frankenstein, his later years in Hollywood exile not so much.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews