VOICE Journal of the Alex Film Society Vol. 11, No. 5 October 22, 2005, 2 pm & 8 pm 10/05 of theTHEATRE Halloween Spooktacular! Dr. Shocker&Friends art Ballyhoo and part bold Pface lie, the SPOOK SHOW evolved from the death of Vaudeville and Hollywood’s need to promote their enormous slate James Whale’s of B pictures. Bride of In the 1930’s, with performance dates growing scarce, a number of magicians turned to movie Frankenstein houses for bookings. The theatre owners decided to program the magic shows with their horror movies and the SPOOK SHOW was born. Who Will Be The Bride of Frankenstein? Who Will Dare? ames Whale’s secrecy regarding class socialists. She attended Mr. Jthe casting of the Monster’s Kettle’s school in London, where she mate in Universal Studio’s follow was the only female student and up to 1931’s hugely successful won a scholarship to study dance Frankenstein set the studio’s with Isadora Duncan in France. publicity machine in motion. With the outbreak of World War I, Speculation raged over who would Lanchester was sent back to London play the newest monster with where, at the age of 11 she began Brigitte Helm, who played Maria her own “Classical Dancing Club”. in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), In 1918, she founded “The Children’s and Phyllis Brooks, a statuesque Theatre” which later morphed into illustrator’s model from New York, “The Cave of Harmony”, a late night considered the front runners. venue where Lanchester performed In spite of Universal’s publicity, one-act plays and musical revues Dr. Shocker & Grace however, James Whale had known for the likes of H.G. Wells and from the moment he accepted the Aldous Huxley. Lanchester also The first Ghost Shows, like the one pioneered project who he wanted to play the performed in other London musical by EL – WYN, Salt Lake City Clerk Elwin Monster’s mate: Elsa Lanchester. revues dancing and singing risqué Charles Peck, relied heavily on the depression Cockney ballads with titles like era fascination with all things spiritual. Spooky Elsa Sullivan Lanchester was born “If You Peak In My Gazebo” and apparitions were summoned and interacted on Oct. 28, 1902. She was the “Never Go Walking Without Your with the host. The ghost’s unbelievable daughter of Edith Lanchester and Hat Pin“. Sometimes she performed phosphorescent appearance was the result of a James Sullivan, two unmarried shows at different theatres brand new, but still unknown invention, members of the Social Democratic almost simultaneously! While Continued on Page 5 Federation, a group of working Continued on Page 2 Bride of Frankenstein ................................ 1 Dr. Shocker & Friends ................................ 5 Halloween Spooktacular! ......................... 1 Perspective: Ernest Thesiger .................... 6 Perspective: Una O’Conner ..................... 3 Calendar ........................................................ 8 Feature Credits ............................................ 4 Membership information ......................... 8 ELSA LANCHESTER, Cont’d from page 1 “I think James Whale felt that if this beautiful and innocent Mary Shelley could write such a horror story as Frankenstein, then somewhere she must have had a fiend within. My playing both parts cemented that idea.” Lanchester was particularly thrilled with the dress she wore as Shelley during the film’s opening scenes. She described it as “the most fairy-tale like creation that I have ever seen before or since in a film.” It was covered with iridescent bead work, had a seven- add to the strangeness. I spent so foot train and took seventeen much time screaming that I lost my performing in Riverside Nights, a women twelve weeks to complete. voice and couldn’t speak for days.” musical revue where James Whale was the Stage Manager, Lanchester Over the course of her career, would flee the theatre the moment Lanchester starred in nearly seventy films Lanchester starred in nearly seventy she had finished performing, hail and made almost forty television appearances, films and made almost forty a taxi, and make her way across television appearances, but it is her town to The Midnight Follies, but it is her role as the Bride of Frankenstein role as the Bride of Frankenstein another revue in which she was for which she is best remembered. for which she is remembered best. performing, changing costumes in In a 1979 interview with Gregory the taxi’s backseat during the ride! This was a sharp contrast to her Mank, she remarked, “I’ve changed, costume as the Monster’s Mate. of course, after all these years, but I When it came time for James Whale “I was bound in yards and yards still have a lot of hair, and it blows to cast for Bride of Frankenstein, of bandage most carefully wound around, and I’m still recognizable. he remembered the young, slender by the studio nurse.” Lanchester Whatever James Whale saw in girl with the wild red hair from also spent three to four hours my face, it didn’t leave me.” Riverside Nights for not only each morning being made up the part of the Monster’s Mate, by Universal Studios make-up Daryl A. Maxwell is VP of the Alex but for the role of Mary Shelley artist Jack Pierce while he applied Film Society and has been a fan of in the film’s prologue as well. scars and worked Lanchester’s Universal Horror films, particularly Lanchester recalled, in her memoir own hair into the iconic “Bride the Bride ofFrankenstein, for longer ELSA LANCHESTER, HERSELF, of Frankenstein” hair-do. than he can remember. When it came time to film the Bride’s reaction to the Monster, Lanchester had an idea Whale loved for the scream. She recalled in her memoirs, “Actually, I’ve always been fascinated by the sound that swans make. Regents Park in London has lots of them on the lake… They’re really nasty creatures, always hissing at you. So, I used the memory of that hiss. The sound men, in one or two cases, ran the Colin Clive and Ernest Thesiger admire the hisses and screams backwards to results of their macabre work. VOICE of the THEATRE – – Vol. 11, No. 5 October 22, 005 FILMOGRAPHY: PERSPECTIVE: Una O’Connor by Daryl A. Maxwell In a career that extended across seven decades, actor-turned-director James Whale. Elsa Lanchester appeared in nearly 70 feature Whale asked O’Connor to join the films and countless TV shows ranging from “I Love cast of The Invisible Man (1933) Lucy” to “Mannix”. Here is a partial filmography where she portrayed Jenny Hall, of her work: the near hysterical and unfortunate Murder By Death (1976) keeper of the inn from which Claude Rain’s Jack Griffin chooses to rent Terror in the Wax Museum (1973) a room. Her performance even “Nanny and the Professor” TV Series (1970-71) earned her praise from H.G. Wells Willard (1971) (though he thought Whale had made That Darn Cat (1965) Griffin a “lunatic”). Whale then went on to cast O’Connor again in Mary Poppins (1964) his next film at Universal: Bride of Bell, Book and Candle (1958) Frankenstein (1935). Like her co- Witness for the Prosecution (1957)* star Elsa Lanchester, O’Connor has a Hell’s Half Acre (1954) double role in the film, playing both Androcles and the Lion (1952) Minnie, the high strung house- keeper of Castle Frankenstein, and Come to the Stable (1949)* the Shelly’s maid/dog walker in the The Secret Garden (1949) film’s opening sequence. O’Connor The Bishop’s Wife (1947) orn on October 23, 1880 as can be seen serenely walking a pack The Razor’s Edge (1946) BAgnes T. McGlade in Belfast, of huge dogs off the screen seconds Ireland, Una O’Connor was the only after the film’s opening. The Spiral Staircase (1946) surviving child born to parents Lassie Come Home (1943) that left her orphaned by the age of Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Rembrandt (1936) two. She was sent to be raised by an O’Connor became a supporting David Copperfield (1935) Aunt with eleven children. actress of great demand and worked endlessly with some of The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) Although she studied to become Hollywood’s greatest actors and * Oscar Nomination, Best Supporting Actress a teacher, she succumbed to the directors, including Michael Curtiz, call of the stage and enrolled in George Cukor, Ernst Lubitsch, the school of the Abbey Players in Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, Jean Dublin. She also joined the Irish Harlow, Barbara Stanwyck, Errol Repertory Company and the Irish Flynn, Olivia DeHavilland and Literary Theatre, where she first Marlene Dietrich. performed what she claimed to be her favorite stage role: the third Witch/Weird Sister in Macbeth. In 1931, O’Connor took the role YOU CAN WIN of Ellen Bridges, the Cockney Charwoman, in the stage production a Corpse Bride gift bag of Noel Coward’s Cavalcade. When oozing with promo items Fox made the film version of the play, O’Connor recreated her role and multi-movie DVD sets! for the screen and it became the first of a steady stream of character Raffle tickets available in roles for her. She was a master of Lobby before each show. characterizations and dialects, working non-stop in Hollywood Winners posted in lobby after Cavalcade (1933) and catching after each performance. Lanchester as Mary Shelley in “the dress”. the attention of fellow London stage Vol. 11, No. 5 October 22, 005 – – VOICE of the THEATRE James Whale’s Bride of Black and white – 1935 – 75 minutes Universal Pictures Frankenstein Print courtesy of NBC Universal Produced by .............. Carl Laemmle Jr. Cast Frank Benson, Walter Brennan Boris Karloff .............................The Monster Grace Cunard, John George Directed by ...............