James Whale
Encyclopedia
James Whale was an English
film director, theatre director and actor. He is best remembered for his work in the horror film
genre, having directed such classics as Frankenstein
(1931), The Old Dark House
(1932), The Invisible Man
(1933) and Bride of Frankenstein
(1935). Whale directed over a dozen films in other genres, including what is considered the definitive film version
of the musical Show Boat
(1936). He became increasingly disenchanted with his association with horror, but many of his non-horror films have fallen into obscurity.
Born into a large family in Dudley, England, Whale early discovered his artistic talent and studied art. With the outbreak of World War I
, Whale enlisted in the British Army
and became an officer. He was captured by the Germans and during his time as a prisoner of war
he realized he was interested in drama. Following his release at the end of the war he became an actor, set designer and director. His success directing the 1928 play Journey's End
led to his move to the United States, first to direct the play on Broadway
and then to Hollywood to direct motion pictures. Whale lived in Hollywood for the rest of his life, most of that time with his longtime companion, producer David Lewis
. Including Journey's End
(1930), Whale directed a dozen films for Universal Studios
between 1930 and 1936 (his uncredited work on the war epic Hell's Angels
having been done for United Artists
), developing a style characterized by the influence of German Expressionism
and a highly mobile camera.
At the height of his popularity as a director, Whale directed The Road Back
, a sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front, in 1937. Studio interference, possibly spurred by political pressure from Nazi Germany
, led to the film's being altered from Whale's vision and The Road Back was a critical and commercial failure. A string of commercial failures followed and, while Whale would make one final short film in 1950, by 1941 his film directing career was over. Whale continued to direct for the stage and also rediscovered his love for painting and travel. His investments made him wealthy and he lived a comfortable retirement until suffering stroke
s in 1956 that robbed him of his vigor and left him in pain. Whale committed suicide on 29 May 1957 by drowning himself in his backyard swimming pool.
Whale was openly gay throughout his career, something that was very unusual in the 1920s and 1930s. As knowledge of his sexual orientation has become more common, some of his films, Bride of Frankenstein in particular, have been interpreted as having a gay subtext
and it has been claimed that Whale's refusal to remain in the closet led to the end of his career. However, Whale's associates dismissed the notions that Whale's sexuality informed his work or that it cost him his career.
, England
, the sixth of the seven children of William, a blast furnace
man, and Sarah, a nurse. He attended Kates Hill Board School, followed by Bayliss Charity School
and finally Dudley Blue Coat School
. His attendance stopped in his teenage years because the cost would have been prohibitive and his labor was needed to help support the family. Thought not physically strong enough to follow his brothers into the local heavy industries, Whale started work as a cobbler, reclaiming the nails he recovered from replaced soles and selling them for scrap for extra money. He discovered he had some artistic ability and earned additional money lettering signs and price tags for his neighbors. Whale used his additional income to pay for evening classes at the Dudley School of Arts and Crafts.
World War I
broke out in 1914. Although Whale had little interest in the politics behind the war, he realized that conscription
was inevitable so he enlisted in the Army. Considered because of his age a good candidate for officer training, Whale joined the "Inns of Court" cadet corps in October 1915 and was stationed in Bristol. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Worcestershire Regiment
in July 1916. He was taken a prisoner of war
during the course of the Flanders Campaign in August 1917 and was housed at the Holzminden
prison camp. Whale was held for two years. While imprisoned, he discovered a talent for staging theatrical productions as he produced shows for the guards and fellow prisoners. Whale also developed a talent for poker and after the war he cashed in the chits and IOUs from his fellow prisoners to serve as a nest egg. During his imprisonment, Whale conceived an abiding hatred of Germany.
he returned to Birmingham
and tried to find work as a cartoonist. He sold two cartoons to the Bystander
in 1919 but was unable to secure a permanent position. Later in 1919 Whale embarked on a professional stage career. Under the tutelage of actor-manager Nigel Playfair
, Whale worked as an actor, set designer and builder, "stage director" (akin to a stage manager) and director. In 1922, while with Playfair, Whale met Doris Zinkeisen
. The two were considered a couple for some two years, despite Whale's living as an openly gay man. The couple was reportedly engaged in 1924 but by 1925 the engagement was off.
In 1928 Whale was offered the opportunity to direct two private performances of R. C. Sherriff
's then-unknown play Journey's End
for the Incorporated Stage Society
, a theatre society that mounted private Sunday performances of plays. Set over a four-day period in March 1918 in the trenches at Saint-Quentin, France, Journey's End gives a glimpse into the experiences of the officers of a British Army infantry company in World War I. The key conflict is between Captain Stanhope, the company commander, and Lieutenant Raleigh, the brother of Stanhope's fiancée. Whale offered the part of Stanhope to the then-barely known Laurence Olivier
. Olivier initially declined the role, but after meeting with the playwright agreed to take it on. Maurice Evans
was cast as Raleigh. The play was well-received and transferred to the Savoy Theatre
in London's West End
, opening on 21 January 1929. A young Colin Clive
was now in the lead role, Olivier having accepted an offer to take the lead in a production of Beau Geste
. The play was a tremendous success, with critics uniform and effusive in their praise and with audiences sometimes sitting in stunned silence following its conclusion only to burst into thunderous ovations. As Whale biographer James Curtis wrote, the play "managed to coalesce, at the right time and in the right manner, the impressions of a whole generation of men who were in the war and who had found it impossible, through words or deeds, to adequately express to their friends and families what the trenches had been like". After three weeks at the Savoy, Journey's End transferred to the Prince of Wales Theatre
, where it ran for the next two years.
With the success of Journey's End at home, Broadway
producer Gilbert Miller
acquired the rights to mount a New York production with an all-British cast headed by Colin Keith-Johnston
as Stanhope and Derek Williams as Raleigh. Whale also directed this version, which premiered at Henry Miller's Theatre
on 22 March 1929. The play ran for over a year and cemented its reputation as the greatest play about World War I.
. He was assigned as "dialogue director" for a film called The Love Doctor (1929). Whale completed work on the film in 15 days and his contract was allowed to expire. It was at around this time that Whale met David Lewis
.
Whale next went to work for independent film producer and aviation pioneer Howard Hughes
, who planned to turn the previously-silent Hughes production Hell's Angels
(1930) into a talkie
. Hughes hired Whale to direct the dialogue sequences. With work completed, Whale headed to Chicago
to direct another company of Journey's End.
Having purchased the film rights to Journey's End, British producers Michael Balcon
and Thomas Welsh agreed that Whale's experience directing the London and Broadway productions of the play made him the best choice to direct the film. The two partnered with a small American studio, Tiffany-Stahl
, to shoot the film in New York. Colin Clive
reprised his role as Stanhope, and David Manners
was cast as Raleigh. Filming got underway on 6 December 1929 and wrapped on 22 January 1930. Journey's End was released in Great Britain on 14 April and in the United States on 15 April. On both sides of the Atlantic the film was a tremendous critical and commercial success and placed Whale at the top of the British film industry.
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Universal Studios
signed Whale to a five-year contract in 1931 and his first project was Waterloo Bridge
. Based on the Broadway play by Robert E. Sherwood
, the film stars Mae Clarke
as Myra, a chorus girl in World War I London who becomes a prostitute. It too was a critical and popular success. At around this time, Whale and Lewis began living together.
In 1931, Universal chief Carl Laemmle, Jr. offered Whale his choice of any property the studio owned. Whale chose Frankenstein
, mostly because none of Universal's other properties particularly interested him and he wanted to make something other than a war picture. Casting the familiar Colin Clive as Henry Frankenstein and Mae Clarke
as his fiancée Elizabeth, Whale turned to an unknown actor named Boris Karloff
to play the Monster
. Shooting began on 24 August 1931 and wrapped on 3 October. Previews were held 29 October, with wide release on 21 November. Frankenstein was an instant hit with critics and the public. The film received glowing reviews and shattered box office records across the country, earning Universal $12 million on first release. It is one of only a few of Whale's films that has remained in the public eye and is regarded as a classic of the horror genre.
Next from Whale were Impatient Maiden
and The Old Dark House
, both in 1932. Impatient Maiden made little impression but The Old Dark House is credited with reinventing the "dark house" subgenre of horror films. Thought lost
for decades, a print was found by filmmaker Curtis Harrington
in the Universal vaults in 1968 and restored by George Eastman House
.
Whale's next film was The Kiss Before the Mirror
(1933), a critical success but a box office failure. Whale next turned his attention to The Invisible Man (1933). Shot from a script approved by H. G. Wells
, the film was a blend of horror, humor and confounding visual effects. The film was critically acclaimed, with The New York Times
listing it as one of the ten best films of the year, and broke box office records in cities across the country. So highly regarded was the film that France, which restricted the number of theatres in which undubbed American films could play, granted it a special waiver because of its "extraordinary artistic merit".
Also in 1933 Whale directed the romantic comedy By Candlelight which got good reviews and was a modest box office hit. In 1934 he directed One More River, an adaptation of the novel of the same name by John Galsworthy
. The film tells the story of a woman desperate to escape her abusive marriage to a member of the British aristocracy. This was the first of Whale's films for which Production Code Administration
approval was required and Universal had a difficult time securing that approval because of the elements of sexual sadism implicit in the husband's abusive behavior.
Bride of Frankenstein
was Whale's next project. Whale had long resisted doing a sequel to Frankenstein as he feared being pigeonholed as a horror director. Bride hearkened back to an episode from Mary Shelley
's original novel in which the Monster promises to leave Frankenstein and humanity alone if Frankenstein makes him a mate. He does, but then destroys the female without bringing it to life. The film was a critical success and a box office sensation, having earned some $2 million for Universal by 1943. Lauded as "the finest of all gothic horror movies", Bride is frequently hailed as Whale's masterpiece.
With the success of Bride Laemmle was eager to put Whale to work on Dracula's Daughter
, the sequel to Universal's first big horror hit. Whale, wary of doing two horror films in a row and concerned that directing Dracula's Daughter could interfere with his plans for the remake of Show Boat, instead convinced Laemmle to buy the rights to a novel called The Hangover Murders. The novel is a comedy-mystery in the style of The Thin Man
, about a group of friends who were so drunk the night one of them was murdered that none can remember anything. Retitled Remember Last Night?
, the film was one of Whale's personal favorites, but met with sharply divided reviews and commercial disinterest.
With the completion of Remember Last Night? Whale immediately went to work on Show Boat
(1936). Whale gathered as many of those as he could who had been involved in one production or another of the musical, including Helen Morgan
, Paul Robeson
, Charles Winninger
, and, as Magnolia, Irene Dunne
, who believed that Whale was the wrong director for the piece. The 1936 Show Boat is considered the definitive film version of the musical, but became unavailable following the 1951 remake
. This was the last of Whale's films to be produced under the Laemmle family; the Laemmles lost control of the studio to J. Cheever Cowdin, head of the Standard Capital Corporation, and Charles R. Rogers, who was installed in Junior Laemmle's old job.
(1937). The sequel to Erich Maria Remarque
's All Quiet on the Western Front
, which Universal had filmed in 1930, the novel and film follow the lives of several young German men who have returned from the trenches of World War I and their struggles to re-integrate into society. The Los Angeles consul
for Nazi Germany, George Gyssling, learned that the film was in production. He protested to PCA enforcer Joseph Breen
, arguing that the film gave an "untrue and distorted picture of the German people". Gyssling eventually met with Whale but nothing came of it. Gyssling then sent letters to members of the cast, threatening that their participation in the film might lead to difficulties in obtaining German filming permits for them and for anyone associated in a film with them. While the low volume of business conducted by Universal in Germany made such threats largely hollow, the State Department
, under pressure from the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and the Screen Actors Guild
, stepped in and the German government backed down. Whale's original cut of the film was given generally positive reviews but sometime between preview screenings and the film's general release Rogers capitulated to the Germans, ordering that cuts be made and additional scenes be shot and inserted. Whale was furious, and the altered film was banned in Germany anyway. The Germans were successful in persuading China, Greece, Italy and Switzerland to ban the film as well.
Following the debacle with The Road Back, Charles Rogers tried to get out of his contract with Whale; Whale refused. Rogers then assigned him to a string of B movie
s to run out his contractual obligation. Whale only made one additional successful feature film, The Man in the Iron Mask
(1939), before retiring from the film industry in 1941.
for David O. Selznick
, but turned them down. Lewis, meanwhile, was busier than ever with his production duties and often worked late hours, leaving Whale lonely and bored. Lewis bought him a supply of paint and canvasses and Whale re-discovered his love of painting. Eventually he built a large studio for himself.
With the outbreak of World War II
, Whale volunteered his services to make a training film
for the United States Army
. Whale shot the film, called Personnel Placement in the Army, in February 1942. Later that year, in association with actress Claire DuBrey, Whale created the Brentwood Service Players. The Players took over a 100–seat theatre. Sixty seats were provided free of charge to service personnel; the remaining were sold to the public, with the box office proceeds donated to wartime charities. The group expanded to the Playtime Theatre during the summer, where a series of shows ran through October.
Whale returned to Broadway in 1944 to direct the psychological thriller Hand in Glove. It was his first return to Broadway since his failed One, Two, Three! in 1930. Hand in Glove would fare no better than his earlier play, running the same number of performances, 40.
Whale directed his final film in 1950, a short subject based on the William Saroyan
one-act play Hello Out There. The film, financed by supermarket heir Huntington Hartford
, was the story of a man in a Texas jail falsely accused of rape and the woman who cleans the jail. Hartford intended for the short to be part of an anthology film
along the lines of Quartet. However, attempts to find appropriate short fiction companion pieces to adapt were unsuccessful and Hello Out There was never commercially released.
Whale's last professional engagement was directing Pagan in the Parlour, a farce about two New England spinster sisters who are visited by a Polynesian whom their father, when shipwrecked years earlier, had married. The production was mounted in Pasadena
for two weeks in 1951. Plans were made to take it to New York, but Whale suggested taking the play to London first. Before opening the play in England, Whale decided to tour the art museums of Europe. In France he renewed his acquaintanceship with Curtis Harrington
, whom Whale had met in 1947. While visiting Harrington in Paris, Whale went to some gay bars. At one he met a 25-year-old bartender named Pierre Foegel, who Harrington believed was nothing but "a hustler out for what he could get". The 62-year-old Whale was smitten with the younger man and hired him as his chauffeur.
A provincial tour of Pagan in the Parlour began in September 1952 and it appeared that the play would be a hit. However, Hermione Baddeley
, starring in the play as the cannibal "Noo-ga," was drinking heavily and began engaging in bizarre antics and disrupting performances. Because she had a run of the play contract she could not be replaced and so producers were forced to close the show.
Whale returned to California in November 1952 and advised David Lewis that he planned to bring Foegel over early the following year. Appalled, Lewis moved out of their home. While this ended their 23-year romantic relationship, the two men remained friends. Lewis bought a small house and dug a swimming pool, prompting Whale to have his own pool dug, although he did not himself swim in it. Whale began throwing all-male swim parties and would watch the young men cavort in and around the pool. Foegel moved in with Whale in early 1953 and remained there for several months before returning to France. He returned in 1954 permanently, and Whale installed him as manager of a gas station that he owned.
Whale and Foegel settled into a quiet routine until the spring of 1956, when Whale suffered a small stroke
. A few months later he suffered a larger stroke and was hospitalized. While in the hospital he was treated for depression
with shock treatments
.
Upon his release, Whale hired one of the male nurses from the hospital to be his personal live-in nurse. A jealous Foegel maneuvered the nurse out of the house and hired a female nurse as a non live-in replacement. Whale suffered from mood swings and grew increasingly and frustratingly more dependent on others and his mental faculties were diminishing. Whale committed suicide by drowning himself in his swimming pool on 29 May 1957 at the age of 67. He left a suicide note, which Lewis withheld until shortly before his own death decades later. Because the note was suppressed, the death was initially ruled accidental. The note read in part:
Whale was cremated per his request and his ashes were interred in the Columbarium
of Memory at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale
. Because of Whale's habit of periodically revising his date of birth, his niche lists the incorrect date of 1893. When his longtime companion David Lewis died in 1987, his executor and Whale biographer James Curtis had his ashes interred in a niche across from Whale's.
, and Whale was supposedly dubbed "The Queen of Hollywood", Harrington states that "nobody made a thing out of it as far as I could perceive".
With knowledge of his sexuality becoming more common beginning in the 1970s, some film historians and gay studies scholars have detected homosexual themes in Whale's work, particularly in Bride of Frankenstein
in which a number of the creative people associated with the cast, including Ernest Thesiger
and Colin Clive, were alleged to be gay or bisexual. Scholars have identified a gay sensibility suffused through the film, especially a camp
sensibility, particularly embodied in the character of Pretorius
(Thesiger) and his relationship with Henry Frankenstein
(Clive).
Gay film historian Vito Russo
, in considering Pretorius, stops short of identifying the character as gay, instead referring to him as "sissified" ("sissy" itself being Hollywood code for "homosexual"). Pretorius serves as a "gay Mephistopheles
", a figure of seduction and temptation, going so far as to pull Frankenstein away from his bride on their wedding night to engage in the unnatural act of non-procreative life. A novelisation of the film published in England made the implication clear, having Pretorius say to Frankenstein "'Be fruitful and multiply.' Let us obey the Biblical injunction: you of course, have the choice of natural means; but as for me, I am afraid that there is no course open to me but the scientific way." Russo goes so far as to suggest that Whale's homosexuality is expressed in both Frankenstein and Bride as "a vision both films had of the monster as an antisocial figure in the same way that gay people were 'things' that should not have happened".
The Monster, whose affections for the male hermit and the female Bride he discusses with identical language ("friend"), has been read as sexually "unsettled" and bisexual. Writes gender studies author Elizabeth Young: "He has no innate understanding that the male-female bond he is to forge with the bride is assumed to be the primary one or that it carries a different sexual valence from his relationships with [Pretorius and the hermit]: all affective relationships are as easily 'friendships' as 'marriages'." Indeed, his relationship with the hermit has been interpreted as a same-sex marriage that heterosexual society will not tolerate: "No mistake—this is a marriage, and a viable one", writes cultural critic Gary Morris for Bright Lights Film Journal. "But Whale reminds us quickly that society does not approve. The monster—the outsider—is driven from his scene of domestic pleasure by two gun-toting rubes who happen upon this startling alliance and quickly, instinctively, proceed to destroy it." The creation of the Bride scene has been called "Whale's reminder to the audience—his Hollywood bosses, peers, and everyone watching—of the majesty and power of the homosexual creator".
However, Harrington dismisses this as "a younger critic’s evaluation. All artists do work that comes out of the unconscious mind and later on you can analyze it and say the symbolism may mean something, but artists don’t think that way and I would bet my life that James Whale would never have had such concepts in mind." Specifically in response to the "majesty and power" reading, Harrington states "My opinion is that’s just pure bullshit. That’s a critical interpretation that has nothing to do with the original inspiration." He concludes, "I think the closest you can come to a homosexual metaphor in his films is to identify that certain sort of camp humor."
Whale's companion David Lewis stated flatly that Whale's sexual orientation was "not germane" to his filmmaking. "Jimmy was first and foremost an artist, and his films represent the work of an artist—not a gay artist, but an artist." Whale's biographer Curtis rejects the notion that Whale would have identified with the Monster from a homosexual perspective, stating that if the highly class-conscious Whale felt himself to be an antisocial figure, it would have been based not in his sexuality but in his origin in the lower classes.
Whale was heavily influenced by German Expressionism
. He was a particular admirer of the films of Paul Leni
, combining as they did elements of gothic horror and comedy. This influence was most evident in Bride of Frankenstein. Expressionist influence is also in evidence in Frankenstein, drawn in part from the work of Paul Wegener
and his films The Golem
(1915) and The Golem: How He Came into the World
(1920) along with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
(1920) from Robert Wiene
, which Whale reportedly screened repeatedly while preparing to shoot Frankenstein. Frankenstein roughly alternates between distorted expressionistic shots and more conventional styles, with the character of Dr. Waldman serving as "a bridge between everyday and expressionist spaces". Expressionist influence is also evident in the acting, costuming and the design of the Monster. Whale and makeup artist Jack Pierce may also have been influenced by the Bauhaus
school of design. The expressionist influence lasted throughout Whale's career, with Whale's final film, Hello Out There, praised by Sight & Sound
as "a virtuoso pattern of light and shade, a piece of fully blown expressionist filmmaking plonked down unceremoniously in the midst of neo-realism's heyday".
Whale was known for his use of camera movement. He is credited with being the first director to use a 360-degree panning
shot in a feature film, included in Frankenstein. Whale used a similar technique during the Ol' Man River
sequence in Show Boat, in which the camera tracked around Paul Robeson
as he sang the song. Often singled out for praise in Frankenstein is the series of shots used to introduce the Monster: "Nothing can ever quite efface the thrill of watching the successive views Whale's mobile camera allows us of the lumbering figure". These shots, starting with a medium shot and culminating in two close-ups of the Monster's face, were repeated by Whale to introduce Griffin in The Invisible Man and the abusive husband in One More River. Modified to a single cut rather than two, Whale uses the same technique in The Road Back to signal the instability of a returning World War I veteran.
, in his 1968 ranking of directors, lists Whale as "lightly likable". Noting that Whale's reputation has been subsumed by the "Karloff cult", Sarris cites Bride of Frankenstein as the "true gem" of the Frankenstein series and concludes that Whale's career "reflects the stylistic ambitions and dramatic disappointments of an expressionist in the studio-controlled Hollywood of the thirties".
Whale's final months are the subject of the 1995 novel Father of Frankenstein
by Christopher Bram
. The novel focuses on the relationship between Whale and a fictional gardener named Clayton Boone. Father of Frankenstein served as the basis of the 1998 film Gods and Monsters
with Ian McKellen
as Whale and Brendan Fraser
as Boone. McKellen was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of Whale.
A memorial statue was erected for Whale in 2002 on the grounds of a new multiplex cinema in his home town of Dudley. The statue, by Charles Hadcock, depicts a roll of film with the face of Frankenstein's monster
engraved into the frames
and the names of his most famous films etched into a cast concrete base in the shape of film canisters.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
film director, theatre director and actor. He is best remembered for his work in the horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
genre, having directed such classics as Frankenstein
Frankenstein (1931 film)
Frankenstein is a 1931 Pre-Code Horror Monster film from Universal Pictures directed by James Whale and adapted from the play by Peggy Webling which in turn is based on the novel of the same name by Mary Shelley. The film stars Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles and Boris Karloff, and features...
(1931), The Old Dark House
The Old Dark House
The Old Dark House is an American comedy horror film directed by James Whale and starring Boris Karloff, produced just one year after their success with Frankenstein, also released by Universal Studios.-Background:...
(1932), The Invisible Man
The Invisible Man (1933 film)
The Invisible Man is a 1933 science fiction film based on H. G. Wells' science fiction novel The Invisible Man, published in 1897, as adapted by R. C. Sherriff, Philip Wylie and Preston Sturges, whose work was considered unsatisfactory and who was taken off the project...
(1933) and Bride of Frankenstein
Bride of Frankenstein
Bride of Frankenstein is a 1935 American horror film, the first sequel to Frankenstein...
(1935). Whale directed over a dozen films in other genres, including what is considered the definitive film version
Show Boat (1936 film)
Show Boat is a 1936 film based on the musical play by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II , which the team adapted from the novel by Edna Ferber....
of the musical Show Boat
Show Boat
Show Boat is a musical in two acts with music by Jerome Kern and book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. It was originally produced in New York in 1927 and in London in 1928, and was based on the 1926 novel of the same name by Edna Ferber. The plot chronicles the lives of those living and working...
(1936). He became increasingly disenchanted with his association with horror, but many of his non-horror films have fallen into obscurity.
Born into a large family in Dudley, England, Whale early discovered his artistic talent and studied art. With the outbreak of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, Whale enlisted in the British Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
and became an officer. He was captured by the Germans and during his time as a prisoner of war
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
he realized he was interested in drama. Following his release at the end of the war he became an actor, set designer and director. His success directing the 1928 play Journey's End
Journey's End
Journey's End is a 1928 drama, the seventh of English playwright R. C. Sherriff. It was first performed at the Apollo Theatre in London by the Incorporated Stage Society on 9 December 1928, starring a young Laurence Olivier, and soon moved to other West End theatres for a two-year run...
led to his move to the United States, first to direct the play on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
and then to Hollywood to direct motion pictures. Whale lived in Hollywood for the rest of his life, most of that time with his longtime companion, producer David Lewis
David Lewis (producer)
David Lewis , born David Levy, was a Hollywood film producer who produced such films as Dark Victory , Arch of Triumph , and Raintree County . He was also the longtime companion of director James Whale from 1930 to 1952...
. Including Journey's End
Journey's End (1930 film)
Journey's End is a 1930 British-American war film directed by James Whale. Based on the play of the same name by R. C. Sherriff, the film tells the story of several British soldiers involved in trench warfare during the First World War...
(1930), Whale directed a dozen films for Universal Studios
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
between 1930 and 1936 (his uncredited work on the war epic Hell's Angels
Hell's Angels (film)
Hell's Angels is a 1930 American war film, directed by Howard Hughes and starring Jean Harlow, Ben Lyon, and James Hall. The film, which was produced by Hughes and written by Harry Behn and Howard Estabrook, centers on the combat pilots of World War I...
having been done for United Artists
United Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
), developing a style characterized by the influence of German Expressionism
German Expressionism
German Expressionism refers to a number of related creative movements beginning in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin, during the 1920s...
and a highly mobile camera.
At the height of his popularity as a director, Whale directed The Road Back
The Road Back (film)
The Road Back is a 1937 drama film made by Universal Pictures, directed by James Whale. The screenplay is by Charles Kenyon and R.C. Sherriff from the eponymous novel by Erich Maria Remarque.The novel on which the film is based was banned during Nazi rule...
, a sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front, in 1937. Studio interference, possibly spurred by political pressure from Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
, led to the film's being altered from Whale's vision and The Road Back was a critical and commercial failure. A string of commercial failures followed and, while Whale would make one final short film in 1950, by 1941 his film directing career was over. Whale continued to direct for the stage and also rediscovered his love for painting and travel. His investments made him wealthy and he lived a comfortable retirement until suffering stroke
Stroke
A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...
s in 1956 that robbed him of his vigor and left him in pain. Whale committed suicide on 29 May 1957 by drowning himself in his backyard swimming pool.
Whale was openly gay throughout his career, something that was very unusual in the 1920s and 1930s. As knowledge of his sexual orientation has become more common, some of his films, Bride of Frankenstein in particular, have been interpreted as having a gay subtext
Subtext
Subtext or undertone is content of a book, play, musical work, film, video game, or television series which is not announced explicitly by the characters but is implicit or becomes something understood by the observer of the work as the production unfolds. Subtext can also refer to the thoughts...
and it has been claimed that Whale's refusal to remain in the closet led to the end of his career. However, Whale's associates dismissed the notions that Whale's sexuality informed his work or that it cost him his career.
Early years
Whale was born in DudleyDudley
Dudley is a large town in the West Midlands county of England. At the 2001 census , the Dudley Urban Sub Area had a population of 194,919, making it the 26th largest settlement in England, the second largest town in the United Kingdom behind Reading, and the largest settlement in the UK without...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, the sixth of the seven children of William, a blast furnace
Blast furnace
A blast furnace is a type of metallurgical furnace used for smelting to produce industrial metals, generally iron.In a blast furnace, fuel and ore and flux are continuously supplied through the top of the furnace, while air is blown into the bottom of the chamber, so that the chemical reactions...
man, and Sarah, a nurse. He attended Kates Hill Board School, followed by Bayliss Charity School
Charity school
A charity school, also called Blue Coat School, was significant in the History of education in England. They were erected and maintained in various parishes, by the voluntary contributions of the inhabitants, for teaching poor children to read, write, and other necessary parts of education...
and finally Dudley Blue Coat School
The Blue Coat School, Dudley
The Blue Coat School was a mixed secondary school located in Dudley, England. It was opened in 1869 within buildings in Bean Road, several hundred yards east of Dudley town centre...
. His attendance stopped in his teenage years because the cost would have been prohibitive and his labor was needed to help support the family. Thought not physically strong enough to follow his brothers into the local heavy industries, Whale started work as a cobbler, reclaiming the nails he recovered from replaced soles and selling them for scrap for extra money. He discovered he had some artistic ability and earned additional money lettering signs and price tags for his neighbors. Whale used his additional income to pay for evening classes at the Dudley School of Arts and Crafts.
World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
broke out in 1914. Although Whale had little interest in the politics behind the war, he realized that conscription
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
was inevitable so he enlisted in the Army. Considered because of his age a good candidate for officer training, Whale joined the "Inns of Court" cadet corps in October 1915 and was stationed in Bristol. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Worcestershire Regiment
Worcestershire Regiment
The Worcestershire Regiment was an infantry regiment of the line in the British Army, formed in 1881 by the amalgamation of the 29th Regiment of Foot and the 36th Regiment of Foot....
in July 1916. He was taken a prisoner of war
Prisoner of war
A prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a person, whether civilian or combatant, who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
during the course of the Flanders Campaign in August 1917 and was housed at the Holzminden
Holzminden
Holzminden is a town in southern Lower Saxony, Germany. It is the capital of the district of Holzminden. It is located directly on the river Weser, which here is the border to North Rhine-Westphalia.-History:...
prison camp. Whale was held for two years. While imprisoned, he discovered a talent for staging theatrical productions as he produced shows for the guards and fellow prisoners. Whale also developed a talent for poker and after the war he cashed in the chits and IOUs from his fellow prisoners to serve as a nest egg. During his imprisonment, Whale conceived an abiding hatred of Germany.
Theatre
After the armisticeArmistice
An armistice is a situation in a war where the warring parties agree to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, but may be just a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace...
he returned to Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...
and tried to find work as a cartoonist. He sold two cartoons to the Bystander
Bystander (magazine)
Bystander, a British weekly tabloid magazine, featured reviews, topical sketches, and short stories. Published from Fleet Street, it was established in 1903 by George Holt Thomas...
in 1919 but was unable to secure a permanent position. Later in 1919 Whale embarked on a professional stage career. Under the tutelage of actor-manager Nigel Playfair
Nigel Playfair
Sir Nigel Playfair was the actor-manager of the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, London, in the 1920s. He studied at University College, Oxford....
, Whale worked as an actor, set designer and builder, "stage director" (akin to a stage manager) and director. In 1922, while with Playfair, Whale met Doris Zinkeisen
Doris Zinkeisen
Doris Clare Zinkeisen was a Scottish theatrical stage and costume designer, painter, commercial artist and writer. She was best known for her work in theatrical design.-Early life:...
. The two were considered a couple for some two years, despite Whale's living as an openly gay man. The couple was reportedly engaged in 1924 but by 1925 the engagement was off.
In 1928 Whale was offered the opportunity to direct two private performances of R. C. Sherriff
R. C. Sherriff
-External links:**...
's then-unknown play Journey's End
Journey's End
Journey's End is a 1928 drama, the seventh of English playwright R. C. Sherriff. It was first performed at the Apollo Theatre in London by the Incorporated Stage Society on 9 December 1928, starring a young Laurence Olivier, and soon moved to other West End theatres for a two-year run...
for the Incorporated Stage Society
Stage Society
The Incorporated Stage Society, commonly known as the Stage Society, was an English theatre society with limited membership which mounted private Sunday performances of new and experimental plays, mainly at the Royal Court Theatre but also at other London West End venues...
, a theatre society that mounted private Sunday performances of plays. Set over a four-day period in March 1918 in the trenches at Saint-Quentin, France, Journey's End gives a glimpse into the experiences of the officers of a British Army infantry company in World War I. The key conflict is between Captain Stanhope, the company commander, and Lieutenant Raleigh, the brother of Stanhope's fiancée. Whale offered the part of Stanhope to the then-barely known Laurence Olivier
Laurence Olivier
Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM was an English actor, director, and producer. He was one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century. He married three times, to fellow actors Jill Esmond, Vivien Leigh, and Joan Plowright...
. Olivier initially declined the role, but after meeting with the playwright agreed to take it on. Maurice Evans
Maurice Evans (actor)
Maurice Herbert Evans was an English actor noted for his interpretations of Shakespearean characters. In terms of his screen roles, he is probably best known as Dr...
was cast as Raleigh. The play was well-received and transferred to the Savoy Theatre
Savoy Theatre
The Savoy Theatre is a West End theatre located in the Strand in the City of Westminster, London, England. The theatre opened on 10 October 1881 and was built by Richard D'Oyly Carte on the site of the old Savoy Palace as a showcase for the popular series of comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan,...
in London's West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
, opening on 21 January 1929. A young Colin Clive
Colin Clive
Colin Clive was an English stage and screen actor best remembered for his portrayal of Dr...
was now in the lead role, Olivier having accepted an offer to take the lead in a production of Beau Geste
Beau Geste
Beau Geste is a 1924 adventure novel by P. C. Wren. It has been adapted for the screen several times.-Plot summary:Michael "Beau" Geste is the protagonist. The main narrator , by contrast, is his younger brother John...
. The play was a tremendous success, with critics uniform and effusive in their praise and with audiences sometimes sitting in stunned silence following its conclusion only to burst into thunderous ovations. As Whale biographer James Curtis wrote, the play "managed to coalesce, at the right time and in the right manner, the impressions of a whole generation of men who were in the war and who had found it impossible, through words or deeds, to adequately express to their friends and families what the trenches had been like". After three weeks at the Savoy, Journey's End transferred to the Prince of Wales Theatre
Prince of Wales Theatre
The Prince of Wales Theatre is a West End theatre on Coventry Street, near Leicester Square in the City of Westminster. It was established in 1884 and rebuilt in 1937, and extensively refurbished in 2004 by Sir Cameron Mackintosh, its current owner...
, where it ran for the next two years.
With the success of Journey's End at home, Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
producer Gilbert Miller
Gilbert Miller
Gilbert Heron Miller was an American theatrical producer.Born in New York City, he was the son of English-born theatrical producer Henry Miller and Bijou Heron, a former child actress. Raised and educated in Europe, he returned home to follow in his father's footsteps and became a highly...
acquired the rights to mount a New York production with an all-British cast headed by Colin Keith-Johnston
Colin Keith-Johnston
Colin Keith-Johnston was a British actor. As well as film appearances, he appeared onstage as Stanhope in the first production of Journey's End in the United States.-Partial filmography:* Somehow Good...
as Stanhope and Derek Williams as Raleigh. Whale also directed this version, which premiered at Henry Miller's Theatre
Henry Miller's Theatre
The Stephen Sondheim Theatre, formerly Henry Miller's Theatre, is a Broadway theatre located at 124 West 43rd Street, between Broadway and 6th Avenue, in Manhattan's Theatre District.-History:...
on 22 March 1929. The play ran for over a year and cemented its reputation as the greatest play about World War I.
Hollywood
The success of the various productions of Journey's End brought Whale to the attention of film producers. Coming at a time when motion pictures were making the transition from silent to talking, producers were interested in hiring actors and directors with experience with dialogue. Whale traveled to Hollywood in 1929 and signed a contract with Paramount PicturesParamount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
. He was assigned as "dialogue director" for a film called The Love Doctor (1929). Whale completed work on the film in 15 days and his contract was allowed to expire. It was at around this time that Whale met David Lewis
David Lewis (producer)
David Lewis , born David Levy, was a Hollywood film producer who produced such films as Dark Victory , Arch of Triumph , and Raintree County . He was also the longtime companion of director James Whale from 1930 to 1952...
.
Whale next went to work for independent film producer and aviation pioneer Howard Hughes
Howard Hughes
Howard Robard Hughes, Jr. was an American business magnate, investor, aviator, engineer, film producer, director, and philanthropist. He was one of the wealthiest people in the world...
, who planned to turn the previously-silent Hughes production Hell's Angels
Hell's Angels (film)
Hell's Angels is a 1930 American war film, directed by Howard Hughes and starring Jean Harlow, Ben Lyon, and James Hall. The film, which was produced by Hughes and written by Harry Behn and Howard Estabrook, centers on the combat pilots of World War I...
(1930) into a talkie
Sound film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...
. Hughes hired Whale to direct the dialogue sequences. With work completed, Whale headed to Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
to direct another company of Journey's End.
Having purchased the film rights to Journey's End, British producers Michael Balcon
Michael Balcon
Sir Michael Elias Balcon was an English film producer, known for his work with Ealing Studios.-Background:...
and Thomas Welsh agreed that Whale's experience directing the London and Broadway productions of the play made him the best choice to direct the film. The two partnered with a small American studio, Tiffany-Stahl
Tiffany Pictures
Tiffany Pictures was a Hollywood motion picture studio in operation from 1921 until 1932.-History:...
, to shoot the film in New York. Colin Clive
Colin Clive
Colin Clive was an English stage and screen actor best remembered for his portrayal of Dr...
reprised his role as Stanhope, and David Manners
David Manners
David Manners was a Canadian - American film actor.Born Rauff de Ryther Daun Acklom in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Manners came to Hollywood at the beginning of the talking films revolution after studying acting with Eva Le Gallienne, and acting on stage with Helen Hayes...
was cast as Raleigh. Filming got underway on 6 December 1929 and wrapped on 22 January 1930. Journey's End was released in Great Britain on 14 April and in the United States on 15 April. On both sides of the Atlantic the film was a tremendous critical and commercial success and placed Whale at the top of the British film industry.
Universal Studios
Universal Pictures , a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, is one of the six major movie studios....
signed Whale to a five-year contract in 1931 and his first project was Waterloo Bridge
Waterloo Bridge (1931 film)
Waterloo Bridge is a 1931 American drama film directed by James Whale. The screenplay by Benn Levy and Tom Reed is based on the 1930 play of the same title by Robert E. Sherwood....
. Based on the Broadway play by Robert E. Sherwood
Robert E. Sherwood
Robert Emmet Sherwood was an American playwright, editor, and screenwriter.-Biography:Born in New Rochelle, New York, he was a son of Arthur Murray Sherwood, a rich stockbroker, and his wife, the former Rosina Emmet, a well-known illustrator and portrait painter known as Rosina E. Sherwood...
, the film stars Mae Clarke
Mae Clarke
Mae Clarke was an American actress most noted for playing Frankenstein's bride, chased by Boris Karloff in Frankenstein, and having a grapefruit smashed into her face by James Cagney in The Public Enemy, both released in 1931.-Early life and career:Clarke was born Violet Mary Klotz in...
as Myra, a chorus girl in World War I London who becomes a prostitute. It too was a critical and popular success. At around this time, Whale and Lewis began living together.
In 1931, Universal chief Carl Laemmle, Jr. offered Whale his choice of any property the studio owned. Whale chose Frankenstein
Frankenstein
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is a novel about a failed experiment that produced a monster, written by Mary Shelley, with inserts of poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty-one. The first...
, mostly because none of Universal's other properties particularly interested him and he wanted to make something other than a war picture. Casting the familiar Colin Clive as Henry Frankenstein and Mae Clarke
Mae Clarke
Mae Clarke was an American actress most noted for playing Frankenstein's bride, chased by Boris Karloff in Frankenstein, and having a grapefruit smashed into her face by James Cagney in The Public Enemy, both released in 1931.-Early life and career:Clarke was born Violet Mary Klotz in...
as his fiancée Elizabeth, Whale turned to an unknown actor named Boris Karloff
Boris Karloff
William Henry Pratt , better known by his stage name Boris Karloff, was an English actor.Karloff is best remembered for his roles in horror films and his portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein , Bride of Frankenstein , and Son of Frankenstein...
to play the Monster
Frankenstein's monster
Frankenstein's monster is a fictional character that first appeared in Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. The creature is often erroneously referred to as "Frankenstein", but in the novel the creature has no name...
. Shooting began on 24 August 1931 and wrapped on 3 October. Previews were held 29 October, with wide release on 21 November. Frankenstein was an instant hit with critics and the public. The film received glowing reviews and shattered box office records across the country, earning Universal $12 million on first release. It is one of only a few of Whale's films that has remained in the public eye and is regarded as a classic of the horror genre.
Next from Whale were Impatient Maiden
Impatient Maiden
Impatient Maiden is a drama film directed by James Whale, starring Lew Ayres and Mae Clarke, and released by Universal Pictures. The screenplay was written by Richard Schayer and Winifred Dunn, based on the novel The Impatient Virgin by Donald Henderson Clarke.-Cast:*Lew Ayres as Dr...
and The Old Dark House
The Old Dark House
The Old Dark House is an American comedy horror film directed by James Whale and starring Boris Karloff, produced just one year after their success with Frankenstein, also released by Universal Studios.-Background:...
, both in 1932. Impatient Maiden made little impression but The Old Dark House is credited with reinventing the "dark house" subgenre of horror films. Thought lost
Lost film
A lost film is a feature film or short film that is no longer known to exist in studio archives, private collections or public archives such as the Library of Congress, where at least one copy of all American films are deposited and catalogued for copyright reasons...
for decades, a print was found by filmmaker Curtis Harrington
Curtis Harrington
Curtis Harrington was an American film and television director whose work included experimental films, horror films, and episodic television.-Biography:...
in the Universal vaults in 1968 and restored by George Eastman House
George Eastman House
The George Eastman House is the world's oldest museum dedicated to photography and one of the world's oldest film archives, opened to the public in 1949 in Rochester, New York, USA. World-renowned for its photograph and motion picture archives, the museum is also a leader in film preservation and...
.
Whale's next film was The Kiss Before the Mirror
The Kiss Before the Mirror
The Kiss Before the Mirror is a suspense film directed by James Whale, starring Nancy Carroll, Frank Morgan, Gloria Stuart, and Walter Pidgeon, and released by Universal Pictures.-Plot:...
(1933), a critical success but a box office failure. Whale next turned his attention to The Invisible Man (1933). Shot from a script approved by H. G. Wells
H. G. Wells
Herbert George Wells was an English author, now best known for his work in the science fiction genre. He was also a prolific writer in many other genres, including contemporary novels, history, politics and social commentary, even writing text books and rules for war games...
, the film was a blend of horror, humor and confounding visual effects. The film was critically acclaimed, with The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
listing it as one of the ten best films of the year, and broke box office records in cities across the country. So highly regarded was the film that France, which restricted the number of theatres in which undubbed American films could play, granted it a special waiver because of its "extraordinary artistic merit".
Also in 1933 Whale directed the romantic comedy By Candlelight which got good reviews and was a modest box office hit. In 1934 he directed One More River, an adaptation of the novel of the same name by John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy
John Galsworthy OM was an English novelist and playwright. Notable works include The Forsyte Saga and its sequels, A Modern Comedy and End of the Chapter...
. The film tells the story of a woman desperate to escape her abusive marriage to a member of the British aristocracy. This was the first of Whale's films for which Production Code Administration
Production Code Administration
The Production Code Administration was established by the Motion Picture Association of America in 1934. The PCA required all filmmakers to submit their films for approval before release.-See also:* Pre-Code* Joseph Breen* Will H. Hays...
approval was required and Universal had a difficult time securing that approval because of the elements of sexual sadism implicit in the husband's abusive behavior.
Bride of Frankenstein
Bride of Frankenstein
Bride of Frankenstein is a 1935 American horror film, the first sequel to Frankenstein...
was Whale's next project. Whale had long resisted doing a sequel to Frankenstein as he feared being pigeonholed as a horror director. Bride hearkened back to an episode from Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley was a British novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus . She also edited and promoted the works of her husband, the Romantic poet and philosopher Percy Bysshe Shelley...
's original novel in which the Monster promises to leave Frankenstein and humanity alone if Frankenstein makes him a mate. He does, but then destroys the female without bringing it to life. The film was a critical success and a box office sensation, having earned some $2 million for Universal by 1943. Lauded as "the finest of all gothic horror movies", Bride is frequently hailed as Whale's masterpiece.
With the success of Bride Laemmle was eager to put Whale to work on Dracula's Daughter
Dracula's Daughter
Dracula's Daughter is a 1936 American vampire horror film produced by Universal Studios, a sequel to the 1931 film Dracula. Directed by Lambert Hillyer from a screenplay by Garrett Fort, the film stars Otto Kruger, Gloria Holden, Marguerite Churchill and, as the only cast member to return from the...
, the sequel to Universal's first big horror hit. Whale, wary of doing two horror films in a row and concerned that directing Dracula's Daughter could interfere with his plans for the remake of Show Boat, instead convinced Laemmle to buy the rights to a novel called The Hangover Murders. The novel is a comedy-mystery in the style of The Thin Man
The Thin Man
The Thin Man is a detective novel by Dashiell Hammett, originally published in Redbook. Although he never wrote a sequel, the book became the basis for a successful six-part film series which also began in 1934 with The Thin Man and starred William Powell and Myrna Loy...
, about a group of friends who were so drunk the night one of them was murdered that none can remember anything. Retitled Remember Last Night?
Remember Last Night?
Remember Last Night? is a 1935 American mystery comedy film directed by James Whale. The film, based on the novel The Hangover Murders, is about the investigation of the murder of one of a group of friends. The survivors are unable to recall the events of the night of the murder because they were...
, the film was one of Whale's personal favorites, but met with sharply divided reviews and commercial disinterest.
With the completion of Remember Last Night? Whale immediately went to work on Show Boat
Show Boat (1936 film)
Show Boat is a 1936 film based on the musical play by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II , which the team adapted from the novel by Edna Ferber....
(1936). Whale gathered as many of those as he could who had been involved in one production or another of the musical, including Helen Morgan
Helen Morgan
Helen Morgan was an American singer and actress who worked in films and on the stage. A quintessential torch singer, she made a big splash in the Chicago club scene in the 1920s...
, Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...
, Charles Winninger
Charles Winninger
Charles Winninger was an American stage and film actor, most often cast in comedies or musicals, but equally at home in drama.-Biography:He began as a vaudeville actor...
, and, as Magnolia, Irene Dunne
Irene Dunne
Irene Dunne was an American film actress and singer of the 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s. Dunne was nominated five times for the Academy Award for Best Actress, for her performances in Cimarron , Theodora Goes Wild , The Awful Truth , Love Affair and I Remember Mama...
, who believed that Whale was the wrong director for the piece. The 1936 Show Boat is considered the definitive film version of the musical, but became unavailable following the 1951 remake
Show Boat (1951 film)
Show Boat is a 1951 Technicolor film based on the musical by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II and the novel by Edna Ferber....
. This was the last of Whale's films to be produced under the Laemmle family; the Laemmles lost control of the studio to J. Cheever Cowdin, head of the Standard Capital Corporation, and Charles R. Rogers, who was installed in Junior Laemmle's old job.
Career in decline
Whale's career went into sharp decline following the release of his next film, The Road BackThe Road Back (film)
The Road Back is a 1937 drama film made by Universal Pictures, directed by James Whale. The screenplay is by Charles Kenyon and R.C. Sherriff from the eponymous novel by Erich Maria Remarque.The novel on which the film is based was banned during Nazi rule...
(1937). The sequel to Erich Maria Remarque
Erich Maria Remarque
Erich Maria Remarque was a German author, best known for his novel All Quiet on the Western Front.-Life and work:...
's All Quiet on the Western Front
All Quiet on the Western Front
All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel by Erich Maria Remarque, a German veteran of World War I. The book describes the German soldiers' extreme physical and mental stress during the war, and the detachment from civilian life felt by many of these soldiers upon returning home from the front.The...
, which Universal had filmed in 1930, the novel and film follow the lives of several young German men who have returned from the trenches of World War I and their struggles to re-integrate into society. The Los Angeles consul
Consul (representative)
The political title Consul is used for the official representatives of the government of one state in the territory of another, normally acting to assist and protect the citizens of the consul's own country, and to facilitate trade and friendship between the peoples of the two countries...
for Nazi Germany, George Gyssling, learned that the film was in production. He protested to PCA enforcer Joseph Breen
Joseph Breen
Joseph Breen is an American soap opera actor.He played contract parts on both Guiding Light and Loving before being offered his most front-burner role to date: that of Lisa’s long-lost son, Scott Eldridge, on As the World Turns...
, arguing that the film gave an "untrue and distorted picture of the German people". Gyssling eventually met with Whale but nothing came of it. Gyssling then sent letters to members of the cast, threatening that their participation in the film might lead to difficulties in obtaining German filming permits for them and for anyone associated in a film with them. While the low volume of business conducted by Universal in Germany made such threats largely hollow, the State Department
United States Department of State
The United States Department of State , is the United States federal executive department responsible for international relations of the United States, equivalent to the foreign ministries of other countries...
, under pressure from the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and the Screen Actors Guild
Screen Actors Guild
The Screen Actors Guild is an American labor union representing over 200,000 film and television principal performers and background performers worldwide...
, stepped in and the German government backed down. Whale's original cut of the film was given generally positive reviews but sometime between preview screenings and the film's general release Rogers capitulated to the Germans, ordering that cuts be made and additional scenes be shot and inserted. Whale was furious, and the altered film was banned in Germany anyway. The Germans were successful in persuading China, Greece, Italy and Switzerland to ban the film as well.
Following the debacle with The Road Back, Charles Rogers tried to get out of his contract with Whale; Whale refused. Rogers then assigned him to a string of B movie
B movie
A B movie is a low-budget commercial motion picture that is not definitively an arthouse or pornographic film. In its original usage, during the Golden Age of Hollywood, the term more precisely identified a film intended for distribution as the less-publicized, bottom half of a double feature....
s to run out his contractual obligation. Whale only made one additional successful feature film, The Man in the Iron Mask
The Man in the Iron Mask (1939 film)
The Man in the Iron Mask is a 1939 American film very loosely adapted from the last section of the novel The Vicomte de Bragelonne by Alexandre Dumas, père, which is itself based on the French legend of the Man in the Iron Mask....
(1939), before retiring from the film industry in 1941.
Post-film life
With his film career behind him, Whale found himself at loose ends. He was offered the occasional job, including the opportunity to direct Since You Went AwaySince You Went Away
Since You Went Away is a 1944 film distributed by United Artists, a big-budget epic about the American home front during World War II. It was directed by John Cromwell and adapted and produced by David O. Selznick from the novel Since You Went Away: Letters to a Soldier from His Wife by Margaret...
for David O. Selznick
David O. Selznick
David O. Selznick was an American film producer. He is best known for having produced Gone with the Wind and Rebecca , both of which earned him an Oscar for Best Picture.-Early years:...
, but turned them down. Lewis, meanwhile, was busier than ever with his production duties and often worked late hours, leaving Whale lonely and bored. Lewis bought him a supply of paint and canvasses and Whale re-discovered his love of painting. Eventually he built a large studio for himself.
With the outbreak of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Whale volunteered his services to make a training film
Training film
A training film is a form of educational film – a short subject documentary movie, that provides an introduction to a topic. Both narrative documentary and dramatisation styles may be used, sometimes both in the same production...
for the United States Army
United States Army
The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
. Whale shot the film, called Personnel Placement in the Army, in February 1942. Later that year, in association with actress Claire DuBrey, Whale created the Brentwood Service Players. The Players took over a 100–seat theatre. Sixty seats were provided free of charge to service personnel; the remaining were sold to the public, with the box office proceeds donated to wartime charities. The group expanded to the Playtime Theatre during the summer, where a series of shows ran through October.
Whale returned to Broadway in 1944 to direct the psychological thriller Hand in Glove. It was his first return to Broadway since his failed One, Two, Three! in 1930. Hand in Glove would fare no better than his earlier play, running the same number of performances, 40.
Whale directed his final film in 1950, a short subject based on the William Saroyan
William Saroyan
William Saroyan was an Armenian American dramatist and author. The setting of many of his stories and plays is the center of Armenian-American life in California in his native Fresno.-Early years:...
one-act play Hello Out There. The film, financed by supermarket heir Huntington Hartford
Huntington Hartford
George Huntington Hartford II was an American businessman, philanthropist, filmmaker, and art collector. The heir to the A&P supermarket fortune, he owned Paradise Island in the Bahamas, and had numerous other business and real estate interests over his lifetime including the Oil Shale Corporation...
, was the story of a man in a Texas jail falsely accused of rape and the woman who cleans the jail. Hartford intended for the short to be part of an anthology film
Anthology film
An anthology film is a feature film consisting of several different short films, often tied together by only a single theme, premise, or brief interlocking event . Sometimes each one is directed by a different director...
along the lines of Quartet. However, attempts to find appropriate short fiction companion pieces to adapt were unsuccessful and Hello Out There was never commercially released.
Whale's last professional engagement was directing Pagan in the Parlour, a farce about two New England spinster sisters who are visited by a Polynesian whom their father, when shipwrecked years earlier, had married. The production was mounted in Pasadena
Pasadena, California
Pasadena is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States. Although famous for hosting the annual Rose Bowl football game and Tournament of Roses Parade, Pasadena is the home to many scientific and cultural institutions, including the California Institute of Technology , the Jet...
for two weeks in 1951. Plans were made to take it to New York, but Whale suggested taking the play to London first. Before opening the play in England, Whale decided to tour the art museums of Europe. In France he renewed his acquaintanceship with Curtis Harrington
Curtis Harrington
Curtis Harrington was an American film and television director whose work included experimental films, horror films, and episodic television.-Biography:...
, whom Whale had met in 1947. While visiting Harrington in Paris, Whale went to some gay bars. At one he met a 25-year-old bartender named Pierre Foegel, who Harrington believed was nothing but "a hustler out for what he could get". The 62-year-old Whale was smitten with the younger man and hired him as his chauffeur.
A provincial tour of Pagan in the Parlour began in September 1952 and it appeared that the play would be a hit. However, Hermione Baddeley
Hermione Baddeley
Hermione Baddeley was an English character actress of theatre, film and television. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in Room at the Top and a Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play for The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here...
, starring in the play as the cannibal "Noo-ga," was drinking heavily and began engaging in bizarre antics and disrupting performances. Because she had a run of the play contract she could not be replaced and so producers were forced to close the show.
Whale returned to California in November 1952 and advised David Lewis that he planned to bring Foegel over early the following year. Appalled, Lewis moved out of their home. While this ended their 23-year romantic relationship, the two men remained friends. Lewis bought a small house and dug a swimming pool, prompting Whale to have his own pool dug, although he did not himself swim in it. Whale began throwing all-male swim parties and would watch the young men cavort in and around the pool. Foegel moved in with Whale in early 1953 and remained there for several months before returning to France. He returned in 1954 permanently, and Whale installed him as manager of a gas station that he owned.
Whale and Foegel settled into a quiet routine until the spring of 1956, when Whale suffered a small stroke
Stroke
A stroke, previously known medically as a cerebrovascular accident , is the rapidly developing loss of brain function due to disturbance in the blood supply to the brain. This can be due to ischemia caused by blockage , or a hemorrhage...
. A few months later he suffered a larger stroke and was hospitalized. While in the hospital he was treated for depression
Depression (mood)
Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person's thoughts, behaviour, feelings and physical well-being. Depressed people may feel sad, anxious, empty, hopeless, helpless, worthless, guilty, irritable, or restless...
with shock treatments
Electroconvulsive therapy
Electroconvulsive therapy , formerly known as electroshock, is a psychiatric treatment in which seizures are electrically induced in anesthetized patients for therapeutic effect. Its mode of action is unknown...
.
Upon his release, Whale hired one of the male nurses from the hospital to be his personal live-in nurse. A jealous Foegel maneuvered the nurse out of the house and hired a female nurse as a non live-in replacement. Whale suffered from mood swings and grew increasingly and frustratingly more dependent on others and his mental faculties were diminishing. Whale committed suicide by drowning himself in his swimming pool on 29 May 1957 at the age of 67. He left a suicide note, which Lewis withheld until shortly before his own death decades later. Because the note was suppressed, the death was initially ruled accidental. The note read in part:
"To ALL I LOVE,
"Do not grieve for me. My nerves are all shot and for the last year I have been in agony day and night—except when I sleep with sleeping pills—and any peace I have by day is when I am drugged by pills.
"I have had a wonderful life but it is over and my nerves get worse and I am afraid they will have to take me away. So please forgive me, all those I love and may God forgive me too, but I cannot bear the agony and it [is] best for everyone this way.
"The future is just old age and illness and pain. Goodbye and thank you for all your love. I must have peace and this is the only way.
"Jimmy"
Whale was cremated per his request and his ashes were interred in the Columbarium
Columbarium
A columbarium is a place for the respectful and usually public storage of cinerary urns . The term comes from the Latin columba and originally referred to compartmentalized housing for doves and pigeons .The Columbarium of Pomponius Hylas is a particularly fine ancient Roman example, rich in...
of Memory at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale
Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale
Forest Lawn Memorial Park is a privately owned cemetery in Glendale, California. It is the original location of Forest Lawn, a chain of cemeteries in Southern California. The land was formerly part of Providencia Ranch.-History:...
. Because of Whale's habit of periodically revising his date of birth, his niche lists the incorrect date of 1893. When his longtime companion David Lewis died in 1987, his executor and Whale biographer James Curtis had his ashes interred in a niche across from Whale's.
Sexuality
James Whale lived as an openly homosexual man throughout his career in the British theatre and in Hollywood, something that was virtually unheard of in the 1920s and 1930s. He and David Lewis lived together as a couple from around 1930 to 1952. While he did not go out of his way to publicize his homosexuality, he did not do anything to conceal it either. As filmmaker Curtis Harrington, a friend and confidant of Whale's, put it, "Not in the sense of screaming it from the rooftops or coming out. But yes, he was openly homosexual. Any sophisticated person who knew him knew he was gay." While there have been suggestions that Whale's career was terminated because of homophobiaHomophobia
Homophobia is a term used to refer to a range of negative attitudes and feelings towards lesbian, gay and in some cases bisexual, transgender people and behavior, although these are usually covered under other terms such as biphobia and transphobia. Definitions refer to irrational fear, with the...
, and Whale was supposedly dubbed "The Queen of Hollywood", Harrington states that "nobody made a thing out of it as far as I could perceive".
With knowledge of his sexuality becoming more common beginning in the 1970s, some film historians and gay studies scholars have detected homosexual themes in Whale's work, particularly in Bride of Frankenstein
Bride of Frankenstein
Bride of Frankenstein is a 1935 American horror film, the first sequel to Frankenstein...
in which a number of the creative people associated with the cast, including Ernest Thesiger
Ernest Thesiger
Ernest Frederic Graham Thesiger CBE was an English stage and film actor. He is best known for his performance as Dr...
and Colin Clive, were alleged to be gay or bisexual. Scholars have identified a gay sensibility suffused through the film, especially a camp
Camp (style)
Camp is an aesthetic sensibility that regards something as appealing because of its taste and ironic value. The concept is closely related to kitsch, and things with camp appeal may also be described as being "cheesy"...
sensibility, particularly embodied in the character of Pretorius
Doctor Septimus Pretorius
Septimus Pretorius is a fictional character who appears in the Universal film Bride of Frankenstein . He is played by British stage and film actor Ernest Thesiger. Some sources claim he was originally to have been played by Bela Lugosi or Claude Rains...
(Thesiger) and his relationship with Henry Frankenstein
Victor Frankenstein
Victor Frankenstein was born in Napoli, is a Swiss fictional character and the protagonist of the 1818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, written by Mary Shelley...
(Clive).
Gay film historian Vito Russo
Vito Russo
Vito Russo was an American LGBT activist, film historian and author who is best remembered as the author of the book The Celluloid Closet ....
, in considering Pretorius, stops short of identifying the character as gay, instead referring to him as "sissified" ("sissy" itself being Hollywood code for "homosexual"). Pretorius serves as a "gay Mephistopheles
Mephistopheles
Mephistopheles is a demon featured in German folklore...
", a figure of seduction and temptation, going so far as to pull Frankenstein away from his bride on their wedding night to engage in the unnatural act of non-procreative life. A novelisation of the film published in England made the implication clear, having Pretorius say to Frankenstein "'Be fruitful and multiply.' Let us obey the Biblical injunction: you of course, have the choice of natural means; but as for me, I am afraid that there is no course open to me but the scientific way." Russo goes so far as to suggest that Whale's homosexuality is expressed in both Frankenstein and Bride as "a vision both films had of the monster as an antisocial figure in the same way that gay people were 'things' that should not have happened".
The Monster, whose affections for the male hermit and the female Bride he discusses with identical language ("friend"), has been read as sexually "unsettled" and bisexual. Writes gender studies author Elizabeth Young: "He has no innate understanding that the male-female bond he is to forge with the bride is assumed to be the primary one or that it carries a different sexual valence from his relationships with [Pretorius and the hermit]: all affective relationships are as easily 'friendships' as 'marriages'." Indeed, his relationship with the hermit has been interpreted as a same-sex marriage that heterosexual society will not tolerate: "No mistake—this is a marriage, and a viable one", writes cultural critic Gary Morris for Bright Lights Film Journal. "But Whale reminds us quickly that society does not approve. The monster—the outsider—is driven from his scene of domestic pleasure by two gun-toting rubes who happen upon this startling alliance and quickly, instinctively, proceed to destroy it." The creation of the Bride scene has been called "Whale's reminder to the audience—his Hollywood bosses, peers, and everyone watching—of the majesty and power of the homosexual creator".
However, Harrington dismisses this as "a younger critic’s evaluation. All artists do work that comes out of the unconscious mind and later on you can analyze it and say the symbolism may mean something, but artists don’t think that way and I would bet my life that James Whale would never have had such concepts in mind." Specifically in response to the "majesty and power" reading, Harrington states "My opinion is that’s just pure bullshit. That’s a critical interpretation that has nothing to do with the original inspiration." He concludes, "I think the closest you can come to a homosexual metaphor in his films is to identify that certain sort of camp humor."
Whale's companion David Lewis stated flatly that Whale's sexual orientation was "not germane" to his filmmaking. "Jimmy was first and foremost an artist, and his films represent the work of an artist—not a gay artist, but an artist." Whale's biographer Curtis rejects the notion that Whale would have identified with the Monster from a homosexual perspective, stating that if the highly class-conscious Whale felt himself to be an antisocial figure, it would have been based not in his sexuality but in his origin in the lower classes.
Film style
German Expressionism
German Expressionism refers to a number of related creative movements beginning in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin, during the 1920s...
. He was a particular admirer of the films of Paul Leni
Paul Leni
Paul Leni born Paul Josef Levi was a German filmmaker and a key figure in German Expressionist filmmaking, making Backstairs and Waxworks in Germany, and The Cat and the Canary , The Chinese Parrot , The Man Who Laughs , and The Last Warning in...
, combining as they did elements of gothic horror and comedy. This influence was most evident in Bride of Frankenstein. Expressionist influence is also in evidence in Frankenstein, drawn in part from the work of Paul Wegener
Paul Wegener
Paul Wegener was a German actor, writer and film director known for his pioneering role in German expressionist cinema.-Stage and early film career:...
and his films The Golem
The Golem (1915 film)
Der Golem is a 1915 silent horror film written and directed by Paul Wegener and Henrik Galeen. The film is an original work inspired by ancient Jewish legend. It is a long lost film...
(1915) and The Golem: How He Came into the World
The Golem: How He Came Into the World
The Golem: How He Came Into the World is a 1920 silent horror film by Paul Wegener. It was directed by Carl Boese and Wegener, written by Wegener and Henrik Galeen, and starred Wegener as the golem. The script was adapted from the 1915 novel The Golem by Gustav Meyrink...
(1920) along with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a 1920 silent horror film directed by Robert Wiene from a screenplay by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer. It is one of the most influential of German Expressionist films and is often considered one of the greatest horror movies of the silent era. This movie is cited as...
(1920) from Robert Wiene
Robert Wiene
Robert Wiene was an important film director of the German silent cinema.Robert Wiene was born in Breslau, as the elder son of the successful theatre actor Carl Wiene. His younger brother Conrad also became an actor, but Robert Wiene at first studied law at the University of Berlin. In 1908 he also...
, which Whale reportedly screened repeatedly while preparing to shoot Frankenstein. Frankenstein roughly alternates between distorted expressionistic shots and more conventional styles, with the character of Dr. Waldman serving as "a bridge between everyday and expressionist spaces". Expressionist influence is also evident in the acting, costuming and the design of the Monster. Whale and makeup artist Jack Pierce may also have been influenced by the Bauhaus
Bauhaus
', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...
school of design. The expressionist influence lasted throughout Whale's career, with Whale's final film, Hello Out There, praised by Sight & Sound
Sight & Sound
Sight & Sound is a British monthly film magazine published by the British Film Institute .Sight & Sound was first published in 1932 and in 1934 management of the magazine was handed to the nascent BFI, which still publishes the magazine today...
as "a virtuoso pattern of light and shade, a piece of fully blown expressionist filmmaking plonked down unceremoniously in the midst of neo-realism's heyday".
Whale was known for his use of camera movement. He is credited with being the first director to use a 360-degree panning
Panning (camera)
In photography, panning refers to the horizontal movement or rotation of a still or video camera, or the scanning of a subject horizontally on video or a display device...
shot in a feature film, included in Frankenstein. Whale used a similar technique during the Ol' Man River
Ol' Man River
"Ol' Man River" is a song in the 1927 musical Show Boat that expresses the African American hardship and struggles of the time with the endless, uncaring flow of the Mississippi River; it is sung from the point-of-view of a dock worker on a showboat, and is the most famous song from the show...
sequence in Show Boat, in which the camera tracked around Paul Robeson
Paul Robeson
Paul Leroy Robeson was an American concert singer , recording artist, actor, athlete, scholar who was an advocate for the Civil Rights Movement in the first half of the twentieth century...
as he sang the song. Often singled out for praise in Frankenstein is the series of shots used to introduce the Monster: "Nothing can ever quite efface the thrill of watching the successive views Whale's mobile camera allows us of the lumbering figure". These shots, starting with a medium shot and culminating in two close-ups of the Monster's face, were repeated by Whale to introduce Griffin in The Invisible Man and the abusive husband in One More River. Modified to a single cut rather than two, Whale uses the same technique in The Road Back to signal the instability of a returning World War I veteran.
Legacy
Influential film critic Andrew SarrisAndrew Sarris
Andrew Sarris is an American film critic and a leading proponent of the auteur theory of criticism.-Career:Sarris is generally credited with popularizing the auteur theory in the U.S...
, in his 1968 ranking of directors, lists Whale as "lightly likable". Noting that Whale's reputation has been subsumed by the "Karloff cult", Sarris cites Bride of Frankenstein as the "true gem" of the Frankenstein series and concludes that Whale's career "reflects the stylistic ambitions and dramatic disappointments of an expressionist in the studio-controlled Hollywood of the thirties".
Whale's final months are the subject of the 1995 novel Father of Frankenstein
Father of Frankenstein
Father of Frankenstein is a 1995 novel by Christopher Bram which speculates on the last days of the life of film director James Whale. Whale directed such groundbreaking works as the 1931 Frankenstein and 1933's The Invisible Man and was a pioneer in the horror film genre.In 1998, Ian McKellen...
by Christopher Bram
Christopher Bram
Christopher Bram is an American author.Bram grew up in Virginia Beach, Virginia , where he was a paperboy and an Eagle Scout. He graduated from the College of William and Mary in 1974...
. The novel focuses on the relationship between Whale and a fictional gardener named Clayton Boone. Father of Frankenstein served as the basis of the 1998 film Gods and Monsters
Gods and Monsters
Gods and Monsters is a 1998 drama film that recounts the last days of the life of troubled film director James Whale, whose homosexuality is a central theme. It stars Ian McKellen as Whale, along with Brendan Fraser, Lynn Redgrave, Lolita Davidovich, and David Dukes...
with Ian McKellen
Ian McKellen
Sir Ian Murray McKellen, CH, CBE is an English actor. He has received a Tony Award, two Academy Award nominations, and five Emmy Award nominations. His work has spanned genres from Shakespearean and modern theatre to popular fantasy and science fiction...
as Whale and Brendan Fraser
Brendan Fraser
Brendan James Fraser is a Canadian-American film and stage actor. Fraser portrayed Rick O'Connell in the three-part Mummy film series , and is known for his comedic and fantasy film leading roles in major Hollywood films, including Encino Man , George of the Jungle , Dudley Do-Right , Monkeybone ,...
as Boone. McKellen was nominated for an Academy Award for his portrayal of Whale.
A memorial statue was erected for Whale in 2002 on the grounds of a new multiplex cinema in his home town of Dudley. The statue, by Charles Hadcock, depicts a roll of film with the face of Frankenstein's monster
Frankenstein's monster
Frankenstein's monster is a fictional character that first appeared in Mary Shelley's novel, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus. The creature is often erroneously referred to as "Frankenstein", but in the novel the creature has no name...
engraved into the frames
Film frame
In filmmaking, video production, animation, and related fields, a film frame or video frame is one of the many still images which compose the complete moving picture...
and the names of his most famous films etched into a cast concrete base in the shape of film canisters.
Filmography
- Journey's EndJourney's End (1930 film)Journey's End is a 1930 British-American war film directed by James Whale. Based on the play of the same name by R. C. Sherriff, the film tells the story of several British soldiers involved in trench warfare during the First World War...
(1930) - Hell's AngelsHell's Angels (film)Hell's Angels is a 1930 American war film, directed by Howard Hughes and starring Jean Harlow, Ben Lyon, and James Hall. The film, which was produced by Hughes and written by Harry Behn and Howard Estabrook, centers on the combat pilots of World War I...
(1930) - Waterloo BridgeWaterloo Bridge (1931 film)Waterloo Bridge is a 1931 American drama film directed by James Whale. The screenplay by Benn Levy and Tom Reed is based on the 1930 play of the same title by Robert E. Sherwood....
(1931) - FrankensteinFrankenstein (1931 film)Frankenstein is a 1931 Pre-Code Horror Monster film from Universal Pictures directed by James Whale and adapted from the play by Peggy Webling which in turn is based on the novel of the same name by Mary Shelley. The film stars Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles and Boris Karloff, and features...
(1931) - Impatient MaidenImpatient MaidenImpatient Maiden is a drama film directed by James Whale, starring Lew Ayres and Mae Clarke, and released by Universal Pictures. The screenplay was written by Richard Schayer and Winifred Dunn, based on the novel The Impatient Virgin by Donald Henderson Clarke.-Cast:*Lew Ayres as Dr...
(1932) - The Old Dark HouseThe Old Dark HouseThe Old Dark House is an American comedy horror film directed by James Whale and starring Boris Karloff, produced just one year after their success with Frankenstein, also released by Universal Studios.-Background:...
(1932) - The Kiss Before the MirrorThe Kiss Before the MirrorThe Kiss Before the Mirror is a suspense film directed by James Whale, starring Nancy Carroll, Frank Morgan, Gloria Stuart, and Walter Pidgeon, and released by Universal Pictures.-Plot:...
(1933) - The Invisible Man (1933)
- By CandlelightBy CandlelightBy Candlelight is an Austrian play by Siegfried Geyer and Karl Farkas. In 1933, it was filmed by director by James Whale, and starring Elissa Landi, Paul Lukas, Nils Asther, and Dorothy Revier...
(1933) - One More RiverOne More RiverOne More River is a 1934 film directed by James Whale. It was produced and distributed by Universal Pictures and starred Diana Wynyard. The film is based on a novel by John Galsworthy.-Cast:*Diana Wynyard - Claire Corven*Frank Lawton - Tony Croom...
(1934) - Bride of FrankensteinBride of FrankensteinBride of Frankenstein is a 1935 American horror film, the first sequel to Frankenstein...
(1935) - Remember Last Night?Remember Last Night?Remember Last Night? is a 1935 American mystery comedy film directed by James Whale. The film, based on the novel The Hangover Murders, is about the investigation of the murder of one of a group of friends. The survivors are unable to recall the events of the night of the murder because they were...
(1935) - Show BoatShow Boat (1936 film)Show Boat is a 1936 film based on the musical play by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II , which the team adapted from the novel by Edna Ferber....
(1936) - The Road BackThe Road Back (film)The Road Back is a 1937 drama film made by Universal Pictures, directed by James Whale. The screenplay is by Charles Kenyon and R.C. Sherriff from the eponymous novel by Erich Maria Remarque.The novel on which the film is based was banned during Nazi rule...
(1937) - The Great GarrickThe Great GarrickThe Great Garrick is a motion picture directed by James Whale and starring Brian Aherne and Olivia de Havilland. It also features Lionel Atwill, Edward Everett Horton, and Melville Cooper. Lana Turner has a bit part...
(1937) - Port of Seven SeasPort of Seven SeasPort of Seven Seas is a 1938 drama film starring Wallace Beery and featuring Frank Morgan and Maureen O'Sullivan. The movie was written by Preston Sturges based on the plays of Marcel Pagnol and the films based on them, and was directed by James Whale...
(1938)
- Sinners in ParadiseSinners in Paradise- Plot summary :A passenger aircraft crashes in mid-Pacific and some of the survivors reach an island inhabited only by an American, Jim Taylor, with his Chinese servant, Ping. He declines to help them, telling them to build their own shelter and gather their own food and, though he has a boat and...
(1938) - Wives Under SuspicionWives Under SuspicionWives Under Suspicion is a film directed by James Whale, starring Warren William, Gail Patrick, Ralph Morgan, and Constance Moore, and released by Universal Pictures.-Plot:...
(1938) - The Man in the Iron MaskThe Man in the Iron Mask (1939 film)The Man in the Iron Mask is a 1939 American film very loosely adapted from the last section of the novel The Vicomte de Bragelonne by Alexandre Dumas, père, which is itself based on the French legend of the Man in the Iron Mask....
(1939) - Green HellGreen HellGreen Hell is a 1940 adventure film directed by James Whale with photography by Karl Freund. The cast includes Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Joan Bennett, John Howard, George Sanders, Alan Hale, Sr., Vincent Price and Ray Mala...
(1940) - They Dare Not Love (1941)
- Personnel Placement in the Army (1942)
- Hello Out There (1950)