COLOR (and B&W) SUPPLEMENT, parts A and B
COLOR (and B&W) SUPPLEMENT, PART B
LET’S “BOO” THIS …
POSTERS, LOBBY CARDS, AND FILM-RELATED ART
Haunted Spooks (1920): Harold Lloyd (left) made nearly 500 movies, more than any other silent comedian, including Charles Chaplin. At lower right is Edgar “Blue” Washington, who was also in John Wayne’s mystery/Western Haunted Gold (1932). Second from right is child star Ernest “Sunshine Sammy” Morrison, future Little Rascal, future East Side Kid, and, as a child, the first African American to have a contract with a major film studio.
On the subject of the Little Rascals/Our Gang: Johnny Arthur (left) was in that franchise’s Anniversary Trouble, Night ’n’ Gales, and Feed ’Em and Weep in the 1930s. In this 1925 silent, blacked-up Walter James is Caliban. (“Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself.”)
UNIVERSAL STUDIOS HOUSE ARTISTS
A different version of this 1931 promotional graphic had a caption reading, “Six famous artists give their conceptions of The Monster that FRANKENSTEIN made,” along with the surnames of the production company’s painters. “Famous” was a stretch. I could only identify two: Karoly Grosz and Fred Kulz. The labels on the six prospective Frankenstein heads have Grosz’s name in the wrong place; Kulz’s name accompanies the image on the right of the top row.
The germ of the idea of the monster’s “neck bolts” lies with Grosz, who created the robotic cranium at bottom left. Here are renderings he did of Karloff in Frankenstein and the actor and Zita Johann in The Mummy:
This is a detail from an illustration Kulz did, tied to Bride of Frankenstein (1935):
As many readers know, the man responsible for the looks of Universal’s pantheon of monsters from the 1930s through the mid-’40s was Greek-born Jack Pierce (né Janus Piccoulas, also transliterated as Yiannis Pikoulas). Buy a Halloween costume in his honor!
WALK LIKE AN INVISIBLE EGYPTIAN
From left: The stars of The Body Disappears (1941), Jeffrey Lynn, Jane Wyman, and Edward Everett Horton. At the time, Wyman was Ronald Reagan’s first lady – that is, his first wife. I never watched Falcon Crest (1981-90), but I’m sure she was radiant in her role on that nighttime soap. Horton narrated “Fractured Fairy Tales” on the Rocky & Bullwinkle series.
MY LAST DATE:
Why does this photo remind me of Julie Newmar? A 1942 “standee” in front of L.A.’s Rialto Theater:
Wow! Movies only cost a quarter in ’42, meaning that ticket prices have risen by 9,900% or more since then! A feature film, a Fleischer Brothers Superman cartoon (in which an accidentally defrosted dinosaur attacks Metropolis), and a newsreel – all for 25 cents.
From 1960:
An artist’s representations of Valerie Gaunt and John Van Eyssen in Hammer Film’s Horror of Dracula (1958), simply called Dracula in the U.K. Here it’s The Nightmare of Dracula, in French and Dutch:
How could Hammer or anyone release a poster as tasteless as the one below? But isn’t she a beauty? (I’m referring to the Chevy Camaro.):
My main man Christopher Lee graces the cover of a 1969 copy of the Japanese magazine whose full name is Kinema Junpo (Cinema Seasonal News), and which has been around since 1919. The issue was at least in part devoted to kaiki eiga (horror films):
As a birthday gift this year, one of my Dallas movie buddies (who is 18 days younger than I) sent me a deck of cards emblazoned with Hammer Film posters from various countries.
The jack of diamonds and the 10 of spades depict the same motion picture, whose U.S. title is The Devil’s Bride; the latter card has titles in French and Dutch. The Netherlandic lingo translates as The Devil’s Chosen One.
(The Texas friend tells me she plans to visit Transylvania in the spring for a “Dracula tour.” Some people really know how to live! Let’s give her a big hand.)
STILL PHOTOS
THE AURORA BORIS-ALIS
Karloff is all aglow in The Invisible Ray (1936), inflicted with radiation poisoning from an alien element that gives him the touch of death:
No, it’s not Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man. It’s Karloff again, in Universal’s The Invisible Ray. Footage from the actor’s hazmat gear sequence was recycled in the wildly memorable Bela Lugosi serial The Phantom Creeps (1939). Thus, in a sense, Karloff was once a stand-in for Lugosi:
SCANNERS (1981)
Dr. Angie O’Plasty (right) reassures an anxious mom that vaccines will not give her child autism. Actually, this is a sculpture in the David Cronenberg film; the work was created by Montreal artist Tom Coulter, who later joined the crews of Cronenberg’s Videodrome and The Dead Zone and of Ronny Yu’s Bride of Chucky.
KNIVES OUCH!
DIE! DIE! MY DARLING! (1965)
Top, from left: Yootha Joyce, Stefanie Powers, Tallulah Bankhead. After a three-woman tussle, Bankhead, holding a shard from a broken antique lamp, has a heart-to-heart with Powers: “Shall I slash your face, child? Shall I cut it up? No man will ever have you then”:
NIGHTMARE (1964)
In yet another Hammer psychological thriller, teen Jennie Linden has a supposed nocturnal vision linked to a traumatic experience that occurred on her 11th birthday. Clytie Jessop is supine:
THE MUMMY (1932)
The mummy’s hand belongs to Karloff, as he prepares to kill his reincarnated love (Zita Johann) and turn her into a living corpse like himself. But the real sorcery came when the Universal moviemakers managed to get Johann’s skimpy costume past the censors.
PUBLICITY SHOTS
“I’d walk a mile for a Camel,” the old cigarette ad said. An extra gives Karloff (left) a light. The star is in his pre-resurrection costume, circa third century BCE, for a flashback segment of The Mummy:
THE TINGLER (1959)
Director William Castle, Judith Evelyn, and her screen husband Philip Coolidge, whose monstrous masquerade scares his wife to death:
A Salon.com article this month perfectly describes Lee’s Frankenstein monster makeup, designed by Philip Leakey, and his body language in the 1957 picture: “a decomposing custard face, one eye, a Madchester fringe and the eerie, erratic movements of Cesare the somnambulist from The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.”
“Oh, the fact’ries may be roaring
With a boomalacka-zoomalacka-wee
But there isn’t any roar when the clocks strike four
Everything stops for tea.”
Fredric March, director Rouben Mamoulian, and Miriam Hopkins on the set of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931).
HYDE AND BEAK
Below – This isn’t a publicity pic for 1960’s The Birds; it was shot on a Danish beach in 1966:
SCARE-IFICATION
The Ghost of Yotsuya (1959): Katsuko Wakasugi, as Iwa, has been disfigured by poisoned face cream given to her by her evil husband, a samurai.
The Giant Behemoth (1959): A Mexican lobby card pictures Henri Vidon. His character is a fisherman who mysteriously dies on a Cornish beach from radiation exposure.
Nightmare (1964): Clytie Jessop takes in some Raymond Chandler. Note the fake scar on her face. One of the characters in the novel The Long Goodbye, a wealthy man suspected of murdering his wife, is also scarred.
DISC & VIDEOCASSETTE COVERS
Top left: Matthew Betz, as a museum worker, tends to a figure of Jean-Paul Marat…
Eyes Without a Face (1960):
MUSIC
The linked song about Hammer Film cornerstone Peter Cushing was written by a band from his town, Whitstable, on the coast, southeast of London. The riff seems to owe a debt to Ray Charles’s “What’d I Say”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deTGYinacYg
And here are Boris Karloff and Ted “Lurch” Cassidy on a 1965 installment of ABC-TV rock-and-roll program Shindig. You can stop watching at 54 seconds, where B.K.’s “Monster Mash” recitative ends:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hbl6kKMI9g&list=RD7hbl6kKMI9g&start_radio=1
TOON TIME
From MAD:
From THE NEW YORKER:
I won’t attempt here to name the several friends who helped me answer questions I posed while writing the reviews – pals from such far-flung regions as Osaka, London, and New Jersey. I will say I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the good folks at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center. They’re gonna have to start charging me!
Witching you all a happy Halloween!
