Frankenstein: Facets of Filmmaking

Universal Studio’s history with horror was a long one.

The studio’s amazing run with the ‘children of the night’ began in 1923, with the silent movie hit The Hunchback of Notre Dame starring Lon Chaney Sr. (Father of the future Wolf-Man, Lon Chaney Jr.).  The film was a massive success, making $3 million (it sounds like nothing now, but it’d be the equivalent of around $43 million today).  Universal had struck gold, and continued the streak with other hits like The Phantom of the Opera and The Last Performance throughout the rest of the 1920s.

Then, in 1931, their biggest hit yet, Dracula, came to theaters, and audiences went nuts.  Within 2 days, the movie had sold 50,000 tickets, making $700,000, the hugest movie of the year.  Immediately after, the head of production, Carl Laemmle Jr., made the decision to make more horror films.  He gave the job of a new horror film, Frankenstein, to French-born director Robert Florey, and awaited their next big hit.

Following the success of Dracula, it only made sense to try to wrangle their big star, Bela Lugosi, for the film.  Lugosi was willing to play the role of the mad-scientist, Dr. Henry Frankenstein, but Laemmle Jr. wanted him to play the monster, instead.  After multiple make-up tests that weren’t working, Lugosi left the project.

At this point, the ‘monster’ was not the empathetic creature we know he is now.  Script changes by director Robert Florey had transformed the character into a killing machine, without the element of sympathy or humanity that Karloff would later be able to portray.  Fortunately, this aspect of the monster changed about the same time as the director did.

Shortly into pre-production, Florey was taken off the project, (only two of ‘his’ scenes are in the final product: the burning windmill scene is one) and was replaced with highly acclaimed director, James Whale, two weeks before shooting was to begin.  It was here that the project truly began to take shape as the movie we know today.

Whale, fresh off the boat from England, had been given his pick of any projects that Universal had going, and he found himself immediately attracted to the story of Frankenstein.  Upon taking control of the project, Whale revised the script, and added in the elements of pathos, of humanity, that is central to the character of the monster.

The script of Frankenstein was actually a complicated thing.  Much like the monster himself, it took a lot of mismatched efforts for the final product to become realized.

Although the story is based, pretty clearly, on Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Frankenstein, that’s obviously not where the script started and ended.  Lots of liberties were taken, to the point where the story is directly inspired by, but everything from the monster’s appearance to the existence of Fritz is the result of creative license: in other words, not in the original novel.

But there was more to the foundation of the script for Frankenstein than the original novel.

Frankenstein’s script took many nods from a stage adaptation written by Peggy Webling in 1927, in which the monster is mute and the mad scientist has an assistant.  Although it was closer to the finished product than the original novel, the script wasn’t a simple copy-paste of the stage-play.  There was still work to be done.

Universal called in John L. Balderston, a screenwriter who had already patched up the script of Dracula, to tighten the bolts on Frankenstein.  He was joined by fellow screenwriters 

Garrett Fort and Francis Edward Farragoh, and after a bit of tinkering, the trio came up with a script that was still more sympathetic to the monster than even Webling’s play.  For example, in the play, Fritz scaring the monster with fire is an accident, in the film, it is an active act of cruelty.

But still other changes needed to be made, even after the movie’s script was finished.

The original ending for the film was considerably different to the finished version, and actually had much more in common with the stage play: Frankenstein was to die in the mill with his monster, and then Elizabeth ends up marrying Frankenstein’s friend, Victor  (Originally Henry in the novel).  Test audiences didn’t like this ending, and so the script was rewritten so that Henry survives, and he and Elizabeth live happily (?) ever after.

Once the script was all worked out, they needed a cast to bring this story to life.  Thankfully, James Whale found his monster figure in the best possible choice: established English actor, Boris Karloff.

Karloff had been in several films for decades, working in the movie industry long before sound hit.  He was in his forties when Frankenstein came into production, and a relative unknown, but it turned out, he was the perfect fit for the monster.  Having spotted Karloff in the Universal commissary, James Whale sent him a note, offering a screen-test.  Karloff leapt at the chance to play the monster, although later he would joke about being offended to be considered for a horrifically ugly character, considering that he was wearing his best suit at the time.

With the monster discovered, the rest of the cast fell into place, British actor Colin Clive as Henry Frankenstein, and Universal favorite Mae Clarke as Elizabeth Lavenza.  Also in the cast were several actors who would become familiar household names to horror fans: Dwight Frye, (Fritz) had previously appeared in Dracula as Renfield, and he would appear in The Invisible Man, The Bride of Frankenstein, and other Universal horror classics.  Edward Van Sloan, who plays Dr. Waldman in the film, like Frye, had appeared in Dracula, and would go on to appear in The Mummy.

With the cast now assembled, all that was left was to begin making the film itself, starting with one of the most important elements of any monster movie: the monster itself.

The makeup job that the brilliant Jack Pierce did on Boris Karloff to turn him into the monster took nearly four hours to apply, and the overall costume weighed 48 pounds total.  The effect was accomplished by Pierce’s creation of a square skull, and the painting of Karloff’s face in a blue-green tone, in order to appear white on camera.  Pierce also came up with the idea to put the electrodes in the monster’s neck, finishing off the monster’s iconic look.

Some of the look, however, was Karloff’s idea.  Said Karloff:

“We found the eyes were too bright, seemed too understanding, when dumb bewilderment was so essential. So I waxed my eyes to make them heavy, half-seeing.”

The effect was immediately striking, as was Karloff’s other idea: removing his bridgework in his teeth in order to hollow his cheeks, giving the monster a gaunt look that showed up brilliantly in the final product.

Although the entire costume looked excellent on film, it wasn’t easy to wear.  Boris Karloff’s memories of the makeup chair were less than glowing:

“I spent three-and-a-half hours in the make-up chair getting ready for the day’s work. The make-up itself was quite painful, particularly the putty on my eyes. There were days when I thought I would never be able to hold out until the end of the day.”

The makeup wasn’t all there was to it, however.  Karloff wore a suit that was too small, allowing the monster to seem truly oversized, and wore platform boots that each weighed thirteen pounds, contributing to the monster’s slow, heavy walk.  

But there was more to the effects of Frankenstein than just the monster’s makeup.

The electricity effects of the ‘mad scientist’ lab were created by Kenneth Strickfaden, which were so instantly iconic and successful that they became essential to every Universal Frankenstein film made since.  (Strickfaden managed to obtain one of the Tesla Coils invented by Nikola Tesla to use in the film, another interesting part of the set.)  These sets and props became so iconic that they would later be used in Mel Brooks’ parody, Young Frankenstein, and some of the props survive even today.

Once the movie finished shooting (5 days late), all that was left was to send it into circulation in theaters, and while the film was successful, (the highest grossing film of 1931) some changes had to be made, according to the censors.

The state censorship boards in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and New York felt that the scene in which the monster accidentally drowns the girl, Maria, was too upsetting, and cut the second half of the scene before it hit theaters.  (Unfortunately, without this information, the implication of the monster’s actions is far worse than had the scene been shown in full.)  Also cut was Dr. Frankenstein’s blasphemous bragging after raising the monster.  Notably, Kansas’s initial request was to cut thirty two scenes, which would have shortened the film to half its original runtime.  Thankfully, they reconsidered, and an edited version (though not to that extent) was released in the state of Kansas, mostly the same film as released elsewhere.

After the film hit theaters, reception was wild.  Frankenstein immediately topped the already-successful Dracula in both financial and critical ways, finding acclaim among many critics, many lauding it for its technological achievements, as well as its chilling and fascinating story.

In that way, little has changed regarding Frankenstein.

To this day, Frankenstein is a cultural giant, the grandfather of the modern horror film.  It sits in the United States National Film Registry, is counted as one of the greatest films of all time, and is regularly mentioned on lists of films to see ‘before you die’, and with good reason.

In 1931, Frankenstein changed everything, making horror mainstream and telling a story that was just as frightening as it was thought-provoking, and the years have not changed that.  Nearly ninety years later, Frankenstein, although it might not be as ‘scary’ as it used to be, remains just as thought-provoking, and just as important as the films made and watched today.

Join us next time for our final look and personal thoughts on Frankenstein, where we’ll be wrapping our discussion up on this movie.  Thank you so much for reading, and I hope to see you in the next article.