Speaker 1: Hey everybody. Tracy here with news about some live appearances
Speaker 1: we have coming up. Saturday July seven, I will be
Speaker 1: at History Camp Boston, where I will be part of
Speaker 1: the History Podcaster panel. And then the next day, Sunday,
Speaker 1: July eight, at two pm, Holly and I both will
Speaker 1: be doing a live podcast at Adams National Historical Park
Speaker 1: in Quincy, Massachusetts, where our show will be John Quincy
Speaker 1: and Luisa Catherine Adams Abroad. This is an outdoor show
Speaker 1: and it will happen rain or shine, and we're coming
Speaker 1: back to Convention Days in Seneca Falls, New York. Our
Speaker 1: show is at four pm on Saturday, July twenty one
Speaker 1: in the historic Wesleyan Chapel. You can get more information
Speaker 1: about all of these shows with links to buy tickets
Speaker 1: where applicable at missed in History dot Com. Click on
Speaker 1: live shows in the menu. Welcome to steph you missed
Speaker 1: in History class from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm
Speaker 1: Tracy V. Wilson. Tracy, I have been kind of working
Speaker 1: through my list, as you may have noted. I think
Speaker 1: we've both been doing some of that lately. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is another episode that has been on my list for
Speaker 1: a very long time, and originally I thought I might
Speaker 1: use it as one of our October Halloween programming episodes,
Speaker 1: but I changed my mind, and I will explain why
Speaker 1: I changed my mind at the end of this episode.
Speaker 1: We are talking today about the film director James Whale,
Speaker 1: who created such iconic imagery in the early half of
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, particularly the very early part of the
Speaker 1: twenty century, that images of the characters from his films
Speaker 1: are still found everywhere. He is one of the main
Speaker 1: reasons that Universal Pictures became synonymous with the horror genre,
Speaker 1: but his interests as a creator were far wider than
Speaker 1: simply make being gothic spook stories. If you've seen the
Speaker 1: movie Gods and Monsters with Sir Ian McKellen, which in
Speaker 1: my mind is a recent movie but in reality came
Speaker 1: out twenty years ago, you'll you'll already know some things
Speaker 1: about the end of his life, which do include him
Speaker 1: taking his own life. So if that's a troubling spot
Speaker 1: for you, then just be aware. He yeah. Also, just
Speaker 1: heads up, we don't really talk about that particularly particular film.
Speaker 1: It is based on his life, but it is a
Speaker 1: fictionalized bioping. There there are entire people that didn't exist
Speaker 1: in the real world correct that we're made up as
Speaker 1: as um story devices to kind of talk about different
Speaker 1: parts of his life. But it's a wonderful film and
Speaker 1: I highly recommended. I think Brandan Fraser is amazing in it,
Speaker 1: as well as sir Ian McKellen. But it's definitely not
Speaker 1: when you walk away from going I learned so much
Speaker 1: about James Whale, because those may not be correct now
Speaker 1: that came out. I think during a time when I
Speaker 1: was working a kind of a weird schedule and I
Speaker 1: saw it in the daytime, midweek, and I was in
Speaker 1: a theater alone, and I left just feeling very devastated.
Speaker 1: Oh that sounds perfect. It kind of was, But you know,
Speaker 1: I'm like a wallower, like I like a good dour
Speaker 1: scenario to watch kind of a dark film. So to me,
Speaker 1: that sounds perfect. But so to get to his actual
Speaker 1: life story. He was born on July twenty eight, eighty nine,
Speaker 1: large working class family and Dudley worce to Share in
Speaker 1: the UK. His father, William worked at a blast furnace
Speaker 1: and his mother, Sarah Peters Whale, came from a mining family.
Speaker 1: The number of siblings that he had varies depending on
Speaker 1: the source. The documentation wasn't very good. He did have
Speaker 1: some siblings for sure, though, and the family lived in
Speaker 1: a small fore room flat. Yeah, we there are six documented.
Speaker 1: There may have been additional siblings, we don't know. James
Speaker 1: initially attended school at the Dudley Bluecoach School, but he
Speaker 1: didn't complete his education in there. The family needed income,
Speaker 1: so young James, like his two older brothers before him,
Speaker 1: started working at an early age to contribute. He worked
Speaker 1: as a cobbler and a sign letterer, and he squirreled
Speaker 1: away a little bit of money here and there to
Speaker 1: pay for night classes at the Dudley School of Arts.
Speaker 1: He eventually switched to a labor job, working in sheet metal,
Speaker 1: despite being poorly suited for physical work, because it paid
Speaker 1: better and it offered more hope that he would actually
Speaker 1: be able to pay for a complete education. In nineteen fourteen,
Speaker 1: James Whale was swept up into World War One, and
Speaker 1: at first he just did not have any interest and
Speaker 1: enlisting in staid. He volunteered at the y m c A,
Speaker 1: which offered a lot of support services to the military.
Speaker 1: In October of nineteen fifteen, though he finally did enlist
Speaker 1: he was convinced that a draft was coming anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was definitely some animosity towards young men who went
Speaker 1: the route he did where he opted to do this
Speaker 1: volunteer work instead, so that may have also played to
Speaker 1: part that he was getting a lot of social pressure.
Speaker 1: He went through officer training and he became part of
Speaker 1: the Worcestershire Regiment in nineteen sixteen. In nineteen seventeen, Wales
Speaker 1: was involved in the Flanders Campaign when he was taken
Speaker 1: prisoner and he was moved to Holdzmanden in Germany. The
Speaker 1: next fifteen months, basically the remainder of the war were
Speaker 1: spent as a pow but Wale put his creativity to
Speaker 1: use during that time. He actually staged plays for the camp,
Speaker 1: in which both captors and prisoners were the audience, and
Speaker 1: he did a great deal of drawing. Early on in
Speaker 1: his imprisonment, a group of twenty five of his fellow
Speaker 1: Brits mounted an escape from Holzmanden, but Wale was too
Speaker 1: timid to join them. Wales's theatrical efforts didn't end when
Speaker 1: the war did. When he went back to England, he
Speaker 1: pursued a full time stage career. This was a decision
Speaker 1: he came to based on his experience at the Camp,
Speaker 1: where he fell in love with the stage. Despite the
Speaker 1: unusual circumstances that he was performing in immediately after the war,
Speaker 1: or Whales also sold a couple of cartoons for publication
Speaker 1: he had continued drawing, but despite that seemingly auspicious start,
Speaker 1: he didn't get any further than that with his cartoons.
Speaker 1: He decided to move from the increasingly costly London to
Speaker 1: Birmingham and he started working for the Birmingham Repertory Company.
Speaker 1: Although he was working for the theater without pay for
Speaker 1: a while before he was hired on as more than
Speaker 1: a volunteer, and as his theatrical career progressed, he worked
Speaker 1: with a number of people who would later become quite famous,
Speaker 1: for example, Noel Coward, Elsa Lanchester, of course, who his
Speaker 1: his story gets tied to quite closely, and John Gielgud,
Speaker 1: among others. And it was during this time that he
Speaker 1: also met costume and set designer Doris Zenkison. Doris was
Speaker 1: dramatic and artistic, and James Husi called whale Bone, found
Speaker 1: her just fascinating. The two of them became engaged ine
Speaker 1: and they became the couple in the art scene. They tangled,
Speaker 1: they went to clubs, they seemed to comp them in
Speaker 1: each other just perfectly. But they broke up in This
Speaker 1: is really the last time that Whale would appear to
Speaker 1: be a straight man, But he spoke really highly and
Speaker 1: lovingly of Doris for the rest of his life. As
Speaker 1: for Doris, she went on to marry an executive at
Speaker 1: Johnny Walker Whiskey not long after they split up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: In interviews with people who knew him for the rest
Speaker 1: of his life, they all talked like, I really do
Speaker 1: think he was in love with her in some way,
Speaker 1: even though they also acknowledged that they believed that he
Speaker 1: knew at that point that he was not a straight man,
Speaker 1: but he just had this deep affinity that carried on
Speaker 1: pretty much for the rest of his life for her.
Speaker 1: James Whale was also pretty unique in the time and
Speaker 1: place that he lived, and that he was living fairly
Speaker 1: openly as a gay man in the nineteen twenties. Uh,
Speaker 1: most of his colleagues knew that this was the case.
Speaker 1: It was kind of one of those things that was
Speaker 1: not spoken about a lot, but was common knowledge and
Speaker 1: he did nothing to dissuade anyone from the king it.
Speaker 1: And this is interesting because you may recall from previous
Speaker 1: episodes of this podcast that homosexuality was illegal in England
Speaker 1: until nineteen sixty seven. Yeah, everybody people describe it from
Speaker 1: the industry at the time. It's sort of like an
Speaker 1: open secret, where like they weren't running around yelling about it,
Speaker 1: but everyone knew. Yeah. Acting had really drawn Whale to
Speaker 1: the stage, but he also worked in other roles, including
Speaker 1: in stage management. But it was as a director that
Speaker 1: he truly made a name for himself. On June twelfthree,
Speaker 1: a one act play called Father Noah opened at the
Speaker 1: Strand Theater. This was wales directorial debut. Father Noah didn't
Speaker 1: get a lot of attention or accolades, but it was
Speaker 1: the first step in some more leadership roles within the
Speaker 1: theater and then in nive he joined the Oxford Players,
Speaker 1: which was a small, underfunded company. The nature of the
Speaker 1: group meant that Whale once again worked in a variety
Speaker 1: of roles on any given production. Act ding, set design,
Speaker 1: and assistant directing all landed on his plate. As a
Speaker 1: theatrical director, Wale got a lot of accolades when he
Speaker 1: staged a play called Journeys End in Night. The play
Speaker 1: depicted a British infantry dug out during World War One
Speaker 1: over the course of four days while they awaited a
Speaker 1: German attack. The original star of the play was twenty
Speaker 1: one year old Laurence Olivier, although when the production became
Speaker 1: so successful that they had to move on to a
Speaker 1: bigger venue, another actor stepped into the role. The following year,
Speaker 1: the critically acclaimed play moved across the Atlantic for a
Speaker 1: Broadway run, and that New York engagement actually proved pivotal
Speaker 1: in James Whale's career. In the late nineteen twenties, something
Speaker 1: big was happening in the film industry. That was talkies.
Speaker 1: Actors couldn't rely just on their physical characterizations to carry
Speaker 1: a motion picture. There was a very real need in
Speaker 1: Hollywood for coaches who could help the stars of silent
Speaker 1: films make the transition to talkies. In It was in
Speaker 1: that capacity that James Whale made his way to Los
Speaker 1: Angeles from New York. Wale worked as a dialogue director
Speaker 1: for Paramount Pictures, and then he was hired onto the
Speaker 1: high profile film Hell's Angel starring Geene Harlow, the actress
Speaker 1: was still quite green and uncertain of herself at the time,
Speaker 1: and in a scene in which she was supposed to
Speaker 1: seduce one of her male co stars, she asked Whale
Speaker 1: for instruction on exactly what to do, to which he replied, quote,
Speaker 1: my dear girl, I can tell you how to be
Speaker 1: an actress, but I cannot tell you how to be
Speaker 1: a woman. But starting a film career was not the
Speaker 1: only thing that significantly changed for Whale. While working in Hollywood,
Speaker 1: he also met a story assistant named David Lewis. At
Speaker 1: the time, Whale was forty one and Louis was, and
Speaker 1: the younger man was not really impressed by the Englishman.
Speaker 1: Whale found Louis captivating, though, and over time the two
Speaker 1: men struck up a friendship, which became a romantic relationship.
Speaker 1: Whale and Lewis spent the next two decades together as
Speaker 1: a couple. And we're going to get into James Whale's
Speaker 1: career as a film director in just a moment, But
Speaker 1: first we're going to pause for a little sponsor break.
Speaker 1: We were just talking about nine before we cut to break.
Speaker 1: And Whale also directed his first feature film in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty that was the adaptation of his successful stage play
Speaker 1: Journey's End. It starred Colin Clive. That was the actor
Speaker 1: who had replaced Olivier on the London stage and who
Speaker 1: collaborated with James Whale many more times throughout his career.
Speaker 1: After Journey's End made it successful transition to the screen,
Speaker 1: James Whale was signed to a contract at Universal Studios
Speaker 1: by studio head Carl Lemley Jr. Wales's first assignment under
Speaker 1: this new contract was Waterloo Bridge, which was another adaptation
Speaker 1: of a stage play. Like Journey's End, this film was
Speaker 1: set during World War One. It focuses on a young
Speaker 1: American woman in London during the conflict who has to
Speaker 1: turn to x work to make money. Her life becomes
Speaker 1: entwined with a convalescent soldier from the Canadian Army, and
Speaker 1: then the plot centers around the people in the young
Speaker 1: woman's life who see this young man as a potential
Speaker 1: savior for her. Wales's adaptation came out in nine thirty one.
Speaker 1: Two remakes of it came out in nineteen forty and
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six, although the latter version is a lot
Speaker 1: different and is titled Gabby Whale had pleased the studio
Speaker 1: with his production. He had stayed on schedule, he had
Speaker 1: stayed on budget, and though the film subject matter met
Speaker 1: with some controversy and had to be edited in some markets,
Speaker 1: it was successful enough that the director was given his
Speaker 1: pick of projects for his third film, and that's how
Speaker 1: in one Wale directed what would become one of his
Speaker 1: most famous films of all time, Frankenstein, another adaptation. Obviously,
Speaker 1: the screenplay was based on Mary Shelley's novella, and the
Speaker 1: appeal of the Frankenstein's story for Wale was really simple.
Speaker 1: He just didn't feel like making another war movie that
Speaker 1: strikes me as ironic for reasons that will become clear
Speaker 1: as we go forward. Part of what made this picture
Speaker 1: so unique is the fact that Whale wasn't a horror director,
Speaker 1: even though as a genre that was still kind of congealing.
Speaker 1: But he told the story of the doctor driven by
Speaker 1: his obsession and the monster that he created as though
Speaker 1: it were a street drama, and audiences loved it. It
Speaker 1: made Boris Carlaw famous, and it really put horror on
Speaker 1: the map as a respectable and commercially viable genre. And
Speaker 1: it also gave James Whale a great deal of power
Speaker 1: at Universal Studios. While executives at the studio wanted Whale
Speaker 1: to repeat his Frankenstein's success, he decided to make a
Speaker 1: film called The Impatient Maiden next. This is about a
Speaker 1: young woman and a doctor who meet, fall for each other,
Speaker 1: decide not to pursue a relationship, and are later pushed
Speaker 1: together when the doctor has to perform an emergency appendectomy
Speaker 1: on her. I feel like I've seen this episode of
Speaker 1: Grey's Anatomy right Like. There are so many of James
Speaker 1: Whale's films that I feel like set up tropes that
Speaker 1: happened forever after that, and they weren't by any means
Speaker 1: the first ones. But in a lot of cases he
Speaker 1: made those types of stories really famous. Now that I
Speaker 1: think about it more, I think it really was an
Speaker 1: actual episode of Doogie House or MV where he had
Speaker 1: to operate on his girlfriend. Anyway, Whale had chosen The
Speaker 1: Impatient Maiden as a project because he didn't want to
Speaker 1: be pigeonholed in horror, but it turned out to have
Speaker 1: been a poor choice. This romance drama fared really poorly
Speaker 1: with both critics and audiences. In two, Whale made a
Speaker 1: film called The Old Dark House, which was sort of
Speaker 1: a horror comedy. I love this movie and I watched
Speaker 1: it while I was working on the outline for this
Speaker 1: and starred Boris Karloff, Gloria Stewart, Charles Lawton, and Melvin Douglas.
Speaker 1: And it is now also a classic horror trope. A
Speaker 1: group of people traveling in the countryside when they get
Speaker 1: caught in a terrible storm that makes it impossible to
Speaker 1: continue their journey, and they seek shelter in a creepy
Speaker 1: house with eccentric inhabitants, and things play out from there.
Speaker 1: Wale made two films that released in nineteen thirty three.
Speaker 1: The first was The Kiss Before the Mirror. This was
Speaker 1: a mystery about a lawyer and his possibly adulterous wife
Speaker 1: and a trial in which the lawyer is defending a
Speaker 1: man who murdered his own cheating spouse. This was not
Speaker 1: a blockbuster, but Whale's second film of nineteen thirty three
Speaker 1: had quite the opposite reception. When The Invisible Man hit theaters.
Speaker 1: It amazed audiences and delighted critics with its special effects work.
Speaker 1: Claude Rains, in the starring role, gave a memorable vocal performance,
Speaker 1: and the film became one of the year's biggest hits.
Speaker 1: There's obviously a pattern that was developing in James Whale's
Speaker 1: career where his most popular films were in this newly
Speaker 1: popular horror genre. But rather than make another horror film
Speaker 1: after The Invisible Man, he turned his efforts instead to
Speaker 1: a rom com called By Candle Light. It was adapted
Speaker 1: from a stage play by Austrian writers Siegfried Geyer and
Speaker 1: Carl Farcas, and it involved a case of mistaken identity.
Speaker 1: A gentleman's butler falls in love with somebody who mistakes
Speaker 1: him for the gentleman that he works for. This was
Speaker 1: considered to be a light light fair, not particularly serious,
Speaker 1: nothing special. Yeah uh and again it it did okay,
Speaker 1: not great uh. Whale still, though, opted out of making
Speaker 1: another horror film, even though that probably would have been
Speaker 1: an easy way for him to say, look, I made
Speaker 1: another adant. Instead, he turned to serious drama with an
Speaker 1: adaptation of a novel by John Galsworthy titled One More River.
Speaker 1: This film features the story of a married English couple
Speaker 1: who look perfect to outsiders, but then it's quickly revealed
Speaker 1: to the audience that in private, the husband is physically
Speaker 1: and emotionally abusive to his wife, who leaves him, only
Speaker 1: to have him threaten her with a smear campaign of
Speaker 1: adultery despite no wrongdoing on her part. This film was
Speaker 1: critically acclaimed and people who saw it thought it was
Speaker 1: quite amazing, but not many people actually wanted to see it,
Speaker 1: and it flopped at the box office. Maybe because of
Speaker 1: that series of lukewarm non horror projects, Wale finally decided
Speaker 1: to do what Universal and the public had been asking
Speaker 1: him to do for years, which was returned to horror
Speaker 1: and make a sequel to Frankenstein. While Treatments had been
Speaker 1: proposed for a Frankenstein follow up, it was Wale who
Speaker 1: finally decided that a love interest provided the most appealing possibility.
Speaker 1: So Wale's work on the Bride of Frankenstein was lighter
Speaker 1: in tone than his previous work. He was more at
Speaker 1: play as a director, and the look of the film,
Speaker 1: thanks to cinematographer John jay Mescomb, was based in the
Speaker 1: paintings of Rembrandt, contrasting bright, highlighted sections of any given
Speaker 1: frame with the deepest of shadows to create depth and drama.
Speaker 1: Wale decided his friend Elsa Lanchester for the role, then
Speaker 1: carefully designed the bride's look inspired by the mummies of Egypt.
Speaker 1: Her iconic hair was modeled on the head pieces of
Speaker 1: Nefer Tit, and her makeup was carefully sketched out by
Speaker 1: the director in a series of drawings. Lanchester brought a
Speaker 1: unique inspiration to the role. The bride's behavior and movement
Speaker 1: was based on the swans at Hyde Park. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: uh had only read that recently. I'm sure I've probably
Speaker 1: passed over it before, but the idea of the way
Speaker 1: she hisses and like turns her roughly was based on
Speaker 1: these swans that she had had been observing. There's also
Speaker 1: an interesting story where he was already something like ten
Speaker 1: days or two weeks into production before he cast her.
Speaker 1: They were like, we can't figure out who the actress is,
Speaker 1: but we'll just start shooting and we'll figure it out,
Speaker 1: which to me sounds terrifying, but James Wales seemed to
Speaker 1: have it all in hand. We talked a lot about
Speaker 1: the Bride of Frankenstein, of course, in our two parter
Speaker 1: that we did about Elsa Lanchester a couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: but we didn't at that time really discuss how the
Speaker 1: film impacted James Whale's life and career. In terms of
Speaker 1: commercial success, the film was an unqualified success. There was
Speaker 1: no way you could frame it where it was not
Speaker 1: a huge hit. After Whale's Bride had terrified and charmed
Speaker 1: audiences and made a lot of money in the process,
Speaker 1: Wale was given more or less free reign to work
Speaker 1: on whatever projects he wanted to at Universal. This was
Speaker 1: a unique situation. Only a very few directors at the
Speaker 1: time had this level of creative freedom that James Whale
Speaker 1: had earned. And next up, we're going to delve into
Speaker 1: what his life was like after the Bride, But first
Speaker 1: we're gonna pause for a little sponsor break. Even though
Speaker 1: James Whale was getting pressure to make another horror film
Speaker 1: immediately after The Bride of Frankenstein, he opted to direct
Speaker 1: a comedic murder mystery called Remember Last Night. And this
Speaker 1: takes place in the aftermath of a drunken party during
Speaker 1: which there was a murder which none of the attendees,
Speaker 1: who all got black out drunk, could recall. A hypnotist
Speaker 1: is summoned to help recover the partygoers memories, but then
Speaker 1: additional murders take place, deepening the whole mystery and sending
Speaker 1: everything into disarray. Remember Last Night was a money pit.
Speaker 1: Universal took a hit on it because ticket sales were
Speaker 1: so dismal. They ended up deep in the red. On
Speaker 1: that one. Wale needed a successful film, and his next
Speaker 1: picture was just that. It wasn't horror but instead it
Speaker 1: was a musical. He adapted the stage place show Boat
Speaker 1: into a huge, lavish production that once again pleased the
Speaker 1: studio by making a nice profit. Yeah, but because of Showboat,
Speaker 1: the studio actually changed significantly. It made a nice profit,
Speaker 1: but not for the people that originally started the project.
Speaker 1: So when the Lemlies put the studio in a financially
Speaker 1: precarious position, they were actually pushed out in six They
Speaker 1: had been willing to take risks, both creatively and financially,
Speaker 1: but even though Carl Lemley Sr. Had founded Universal alone
Speaker 1: that he had taken out to complete the over budget
Speaker 1: show Boat ended up doing him in before the picture,
Speaker 1: which turned a very nice profit, was even released. Standard Capital,
Speaker 1: which had issued the loan, seized control of Universal financier
Speaker 1: John Cheever. Cowden became president and chairman of the studio,
Speaker 1: and despite just having made a massively successful film, James
Speaker 1: Whale suddenly found himself on a tight leash, no more
Speaker 1: freedom to do as he pleased creatively. Almost immediately, the
Speaker 1: sting of being overseen by leadership that was a lot
Speaker 1: more worried about money than artist ry and really hit Whale.
Speaker 1: In seven, he directed a film adaptation called The Roadback,
Speaker 1: which was based on a novel, and the film was
Speaker 1: critical of the Nazi regime. The German government threatened to
Speaker 1: boycott all Universal Pictures if the film wasn't edited significantly
Speaker 1: to remove all the anti Nazis sentiment. Under the Lemley's
Speaker 1: Whale might have had more leverage to keep his movie
Speaker 1: as he had made it. A cowed and feared the
Speaker 1: loss of the profit from the German market. He had
Speaker 1: a second director come in and reshoot entire sections of
Speaker 1: the film. Significant editing was done on the portions that
Speaker 1: Whale had shot. I feel like that's one of those
Speaker 1: things that in retrospect everybody probably felt really stupid for
Speaker 1: having done. But that's just me. I don't know, uh.
Speaker 1: During seven and eight, Whale directed several small pictures, including
Speaker 1: a remake of The Kiss Before the Mirror titled Wives
Speaker 1: under Suspicion, but none of those films were really successes.
Speaker 1: He had been kind of alienated at Universal, so he
Speaker 1: made several movies as a freelance director with other studios.
Speaker 1: In NY nine, he made The Man in the Iron Mask,
Speaker 1: which was one of his strongest efforts of the last
Speaker 1: several feature films. The score was nominated for an Oscar
Speaker 1: and it was also Peter Cushing's first film. Reviews were mixed,
Speaker 1: but it was ultimately a successful commercial offering. His last
Speaker 1: two feature films, Green Hill and They Dare Not Love
Speaker 1: We're released in nineteen forty and nineteen forty one. Green
Speaker 1: Hell starred Douglas Fairbanks, and a jungle adventure in South America,
Speaker 1: was incredibly expensive to make and was such a flop
Speaker 1: that the studio reused the lavish sets just to try
Speaker 1: to recoup some of their losses in the overhead. They
Speaker 1: Dare Not Love was another war picture, this time about
Speaker 1: a Prince of Austria forced to flee to London when
Speaker 1: the Nazis took over his country. A second director, Charles Vidor,
Speaker 1: also worked on that film, allegedly because Whale had gotten
Speaker 1: sick with the flu, but there were a lot of
Speaker 1: rumors that there were actually on set conflicts with the
Speaker 1: director that led to that change. After They Dare Not Love,
Speaker 1: Wales stepped away from work for a while. He decided
Speaker 1: to return to his roots as an artist, and he
Speaker 1: set up a studio in his home. He occasionally picked
Speaker 1: up small directing jobs, but for the most part he
Speaker 1: spent the nineteen forties and semi retirement. In nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: Whale returned to England. He was directing a play there,
Speaker 1: a farcet titled Pagan and the Parlor. He had asked
Speaker 1: his longtime partner David Lewis to go with him, as
Speaker 1: he planned to extend the trip into a European tour,
Speaker 1: but David, who had been dealing with his own professional challenges,
Speaker 1: didn't feel like he could take an extended leave, so
Speaker 1: James went alone. After spending several weeks in London seeing
Speaker 1: to the production, Wale moved on to Paris, where he
Speaker 1: didn't know very many people, but one night he met
Speaker 1: a young man from Strasbourg named Pierre Fogel. Fogel was
Speaker 1: twenty five and he started a relationship with the sixty
Speaker 1: three year old Whale. James purchased a car and hired
Speaker 1: Pierre's his chauffeurst that the two men had a pretext
Speaker 1: to travel together. When he went back to London to
Speaker 1: continue work on Pagan and the Parlor, Fogel went with him, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just for clarity on how the timing of that play worked.
Speaker 1: He had gone to London, done several weeks of pre production,
Speaker 1: gone away while things like costumes and sets were built,
Speaker 1: and then he came back when it came time to
Speaker 1: get to rehearsals. But the touring production of Pagan and
Speaker 1: the Parlor fell apart because it became apparent that the
Speaker 1: leading lady in the show, Hermione Badeley, had a serious
Speaker 1: drinking problem. During one performance, she actually stumbled onto the
Speaker 1: stage at completely the wrong time, and because her contracts
Speaker 1: stipulated that she would retain the role as long as
Speaker 1: the production continued to tour, she couldn't legally be replaced,
Speaker 1: So the decision was made to shut it down completely
Speaker 1: and James Whale returned home to Los Angeles, but he
Speaker 1: had a plan to move Pierre Fogel to the United States,
Speaker 1: and when he got home, he told David Everything that
Speaker 1: he had met a young man in a club in
Speaker 1: Paris and that his new romance had really reinvigorated his life,
Speaker 1: and that he intended for the young man to live
Speaker 1: with them. David Lewis did not want to share his
Speaker 1: home and his beloved with a stranger imported from Paris,
Speaker 1: and David ultimately decided to move out. It was an
Speaker 1: abrupt end to the relation and ship, but the two
Speaker 1: men stayed friends. Fogel arrived in l a shortly after
Speaker 1: the new year, but then in nineteen fifty three he
Speaker 1: returned to Paris, and his exit catalyzed a period of
Speaker 1: true hedonism for Wale. He became infamous for hosting wild
Speaker 1: pool parties for scores of young men, but when Pierre
Speaker 1: returned to Waleses home in mid nineteen fifty four, things
Speaker 1: changed almost instantly, and the retired director became almost antisocial.
Speaker 1: He had always been known, even before his sort of
Speaker 1: hedonism period, for having these amazing parties and knowing really
Speaker 1: fabulous people and just having a really fun lifestyle, but
Speaker 1: at that point he stopped hosting those famous dinner parties
Speaker 1: and he rarely ventured out, only visiting friends occasionally, and
Speaker 1: instead he chose to stay home and paint. In nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty six, Whale had a minor stroke during dinner. Pierre
Speaker 1: could see that something was off, but James seemed to
Speaker 1: recover after a few moments and he seemed like himself again.
Speaker 1: But within a few days it became clear that there
Speaker 1: was some damage. His coordination was off, his mood would
Speaker 1: change really abruptly when he finally went to a doctor.
Speaker 1: Because he hadn't sought care sooner, there wasn't much that
Speaker 1: could be done. Yeah, Pierre had actually said should we
Speaker 1: get a doctor, and James was like, no, I think
Speaker 1: I'm fine. Like it was a very minor couple of
Speaker 1: moments where he was just kind of not quite right
Speaker 1: and then felt like he recovered, almost like what would
Speaker 1: happen in any number of you know, passing illnesses. So
Speaker 1: they thought it was nothing. But then a second, more
Speaker 1: severe stroke followed a few months later, and this led
Speaker 1: to a hospitalization. This also became uh kind of a
Speaker 1: layered treatment situation because he was also diagnosed with depression,
Speaker 1: and to treat that, he was given shock treatments. But
Speaker 1: after he finally returned home, he hired one of the
Speaker 1: male nurses, j Wrigley, who had looked after him during
Speaker 1: his hospitalization, as his personal nurse. After this second stroke,
Speaker 1: whale did a little design work for various product shins,
Speaker 1: but he really had trouble with mood swings. He had
Speaker 1: an increasing dismay at needing to be dependent on other people.
Speaker 1: On seven, he went about his morning routine, and then
Speaker 1: he waded into the swimming pool, where he dove headfirst
Speaker 1: into the water, striking his head on the bottom. His
Speaker 1: maid found him when she tried to find him for lunch.
Speaker 1: James had left a note he saw only decline in
Speaker 1: his future and he didn't want to live that way.
Speaker 1: He also added a PostScript to that note that his
Speaker 1: finances were all handled and he asked those that he
Speaker 1: loved to please understand that he was choosing to not
Speaker 1: suffer any longer for his wishes. He was cremated, although
Speaker 1: why he had wanted to have his ashes scattered, they
Speaker 1: were not. They were putting an urn and um Uh
Speaker 1: interred in the cemetery. His will divided his estate among
Speaker 1: Pierre Fogel for Whales surviving four siblings, and David Lewis.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of rumors at the time that
Speaker 1: this happened about what had happened, because that note wasn't
Speaker 1: public for a long time. Yeah, yeah, there were lots
Speaker 1: of u uh theories about what that could have been,
Speaker 1: what could have actually happened, and if there had been
Speaker 1: foul play, and um, but no, and he was I
Speaker 1: I won't say I love it, but I it was
Speaker 1: so in character for him to explain that the finances
Speaker 1: were all fine, because he had, in part, probably because
Speaker 1: he had grown up so very poor, always been really
Speaker 1: careful and really smart about money, Like he lived a
Speaker 1: very fabulous life, but he always did so exactly within
Speaker 1: his means and had put away enough money that when
Speaker 1: he decided he didn't want to direct anymore for a while,
Speaker 1: that was not going to be a financial burden in
Speaker 1: any way. So it does when you read it, it
Speaker 1: does sort of strike me as almost comedically perfectly in
Speaker 1: character for him to be like, don't worry, the finances
Speaker 1: are all taken care of. Uh. That's so very English
Speaker 1: of him, in the way that he liked everything to
Speaker 1: be very ordered. So uh. While he's known to this
Speaker 1: day largely as a director of horror films, do you
Speaker 1: actually look at his body of work that does only
Speaker 1: make up about twenty percent of it. And that is
Speaker 1: why I decided to do his episode now instead of
Speaker 1: saving it for October because he didn't feel like he
Speaker 1: was a horror director. He felt like he was a
Speaker 1: director of many things, so it seemed a little more
Speaker 1: respectful to just put it during the middle of the
Speaker 1: middle of late spring, early summer. I did, Uh, when
Speaker 1: I set up the tags for today's episode, I did
Speaker 1: tag him with those episodes because they are related. But
Speaker 1: that's just so they'll be in the same collection on
Speaker 1: our website. All the stuff you can find in one place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's I mean. I think for a lot of people
Speaker 1: that are film buffs, that might be their entree into
Speaker 1: seeing the work of James Whale. But there are some
Speaker 1: really fun ones outside of it. Like they're not all
Speaker 1: good Greenhill, It's not a good movie. There's like, no,
Speaker 1: there's no way to make that a good movie. You
Speaker 1: could try. But uh, some of his other films really
Speaker 1: are quite interesting. He because he came from that design background,
Speaker 1: his eye for the visual was always spectacular, so the
Speaker 1: way he would set up shots was really wonderful. Uh.
Speaker 1: There are some great stories about how when he first
Speaker 1: went to Hollywood as a dialogue coach, he was keenly
Speaker 1: aware of how the art of filmmaking was being ignored
Speaker 1: a little bit because they were so focused on capturing
Speaker 1: the audio of dialogue that they would set up coverage
Speaker 1: shots that had nothing to do with composition, but just
Speaker 1: where they could put microphones. And he was like that,
Speaker 1: there's there are better ways to do this. Uh So,
Speaker 1: so he's he's very interesting. Uh. One of the books
Speaker 1: I read in preparation for this, that's a biography of him,
Speaker 1: is really excellent and talks a lot about his insights
Speaker 1: into films he was coming into the business and and
Speaker 1: theater as well, and he just seemed like an incredibly
Speaker 1: astute and smart person who really knew what he wanted
Speaker 1: to do on any given project, which I sort of love.
Speaker 1: I have a listener mail. It is also about a
Speaker 1: director that we've already talked about, and I lately have
Speaker 1: been seeming listener mail quite by accident, but I love
Speaker 1: this email so and is from our listener, Lindsay. She writes,
Speaker 1: Dear Holly and Tracy. When you mentioned that Lotta Reinenger
Speaker 1: grew up in the Charlottenburg neighborhood in Berlin during your
Speaker 1: recent episode, I was so excited, Although I didn't know
Speaker 1: anything about Lotta Reineger and her enchanting animation. I did
Speaker 1: know a little bit about Charlottenburg because I happened to
Speaker 1: live there. After learning about her from your well researched podcast,
Speaker 1: I set out to find any memorials to her in
Speaker 1: my neighborhood, and I was thrilled to find a plaque
Speaker 1: on the building where she lived. The plaque reads in English,
Speaker 1: I believe more in fairy tales than in newspapers, and
Speaker 1: then marks the birthplace at her birthplace uh and talks
Speaker 1: about how she was the pioneer of cartoons, and then
Speaker 1: it goes on. Between ninety six she created the first
Speaker 1: long animated film of film history. It was mainly based
Speaker 1: on fairy tales and opera motifs. She designed numerous silhouettes
Speaker 1: and silhouette films. She left Germany and I need thirty five,
Speaker 1: returned before the end of the war and returned to
Speaker 1: Berlin and lived in England from nineteen nine. Lindsay rights.
Speaker 1: Because of your podcast, I was not only able to
Speaker 1: learn about a little known place near me, but I
Speaker 1: was also able to teach my children about lot of
Speaker 1: Rehineger and share some of her animation that I found online.
Speaker 1: I hope her kids were captivated. I'm very curious how
Speaker 1: modern kids perceive animation in that style, so if anybody
Speaker 1: wants to share those insights, please do. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much Lindsay for this email. What a wonderful thing to
Speaker 1: be able to walk out into your neighborhood and find
Speaker 1: a lot of Rhineger's birthplace. That sounds very cool to me.
Speaker 1: If you would like to email us, you can do
Speaker 1: so at History Podcast at how stubb works dot com.
Speaker 1: We are also across social media as Missed in History,
Speaker 1: and that is also our website Missed in his Ree
Speaker 1: dot com, where we have every episode of the show
Speaker 1: that's ever existed, is well like show notes on any
Speaker 1: of the ones that Tracy and I have worked on together.
Speaker 1: So come and visit us at Miston History dot com.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
Speaker 1: how staff works dot com. M