WEBVTT - James Whale 0:00:00.080 --> 0:00:03.760 Hey everybody. Tracy here with news about some live appearances 0:00:03.760 --> 0:00:07.120 we have coming up. Saturday July seven, I will be 0:00:07.160 --> 0:00:09.680 at History Camp Boston, where I will be part of 0:00:09.720 --> 0:00:13.440 the History Podcaster panel. And then the next day, Sunday, 0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:16.560 July eight, at two pm, Holly and I both will 0:00:16.600 --> 0:00:20.200 be doing a live podcast at Adams National Historical Park 0:00:20.480 --> 0:00:24.240 in Quincy, Massachusetts, where our show will be John Quincy 0:00:24.320 --> 0:00:27.760 and Luisa Catherine Adams Abroad. This is an outdoor show 0:00:27.800 --> 0:00:30.800 and it will happen rain or shine, and we're coming 0:00:30.840 --> 0:00:34.400 back to Convention Days in Seneca Falls, New York. Our 0:00:34.440 --> 0:00:37.840 show is at four pm on Saturday, July twenty one 0:00:37.840 --> 0:00:41.320 in the historic Wesleyan Chapel. You can get more information 0:00:41.360 --> 0:00:43.800 about all of these shows with links to buy tickets 0:00:43.840 --> 0:00:48.279 where applicable at missed in History dot Com. Click on 0:00:48.520 --> 0:00:57.200 live shows in the menu. Welcome to steph you missed 0:00:57.200 --> 0:01:07.040 in History class from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, 0:01:07.120 --> 0:01:09.640 and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm 0:01:09.680 --> 0:01:13.240 Tracy V. Wilson. Tracy, I have been kind of working 0:01:13.280 --> 0:01:15.679 through my list, as you may have noted. I think 0:01:15.720 --> 0:01:19.280 we've both been doing some of that lately. Yeah, this 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:21.280 is another episode that has been on my list for 0:01:21.360 --> 0:01:25.040 a very long time, and originally I thought I might 0:01:25.200 --> 0:01:29.120 use it as one of our October Halloween programming episodes, 0:01:29.560 --> 0:01:31.720 but I changed my mind, and I will explain why 0:01:31.720 --> 0:01:34.600 I changed my mind at the end of this episode. 0:01:35.360 --> 0:01:38.720 We are talking today about the film director James Whale, 0:01:38.800 --> 0:01:41.760 who created such iconic imagery in the early half of 0:01:41.760 --> 0:01:44.679 the twentieth century, particularly the very early part of the 0:01:44.680 --> 0:01:48.120 twenty century, that images of the characters from his films 0:01:48.160 --> 0:01:51.600 are still found everywhere. He is one of the main 0:01:51.680 --> 0:01:55.600 reasons that Universal Pictures became synonymous with the horror genre, 0:01:56.280 --> 0:01:59.320 but his interests as a creator were far wider than 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:03.040 simply make being gothic spook stories. If you've seen the 0:02:03.080 --> 0:02:06.760 movie Gods and Monsters with Sir Ian McKellen, which in 0:02:06.840 --> 0:02:09.440 my mind is a recent movie but in reality came 0:02:09.440 --> 0:02:13.560 out twenty years ago, you'll you'll already know some things 0:02:13.560 --> 0:02:16.760 about the end of his life, which do include him 0:02:16.760 --> 0:02:19.799 taking his own life. So if that's a troubling spot 0:02:19.880 --> 0:02:23.760 for you, then just be aware. He yeah. Also, just 0:02:23.880 --> 0:02:27.560 heads up, we don't really talk about that particularly particular film. 0:02:27.600 --> 0:02:29.280 It is based on his life, but it is a 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:33.040 fictionalized bioping. There there are entire people that didn't exist 0:02:33.120 --> 0:02:36.320 in the real world correct that we're made up as 0:02:36.639 --> 0:02:40.960 as um story devices to kind of talk about different 0:02:41.000 --> 0:02:43.960 parts of his life. But it's a wonderful film and 0:02:43.960 --> 0:02:46.400 I highly recommended. I think Brandan Fraser is amazing in it, 0:02:46.440 --> 0:02:49.400 as well as sir Ian McKellen. But it's definitely not 0:02:49.440 --> 0:02:51.560 when you walk away from going I learned so much 0:02:51.560 --> 0:02:54.720 about James Whale, because those may not be correct now 0:02:54.760 --> 0:02:56.800 that came out. I think during a time when I 0:02:56.840 --> 0:02:59.320 was working a kind of a weird schedule and I 0:02:59.360 --> 0:03:02.280 saw it in the daytime, midweek, and I was in 0:03:02.320 --> 0:03:06.400 a theater alone, and I left just feeling very devastated. 0:03:06.840 --> 0:03:10.200 Oh that sounds perfect. It kind of was, But you know, 0:03:10.240 --> 0:03:13.640 I'm like a wallower, like I like a good dour 0:03:13.800 --> 0:03:16.880 scenario to watch kind of a dark film. So to me, 0:03:16.960 --> 0:03:19.720 that sounds perfect. But so to get to his actual 0:03:19.960 --> 0:03:23.560 life story. He was born on July twenty eight, eighty nine, 0:03:24.000 --> 0:03:27.360 large working class family and Dudley worce to Share in 0:03:27.400 --> 0:03:30.640 the UK. His father, William worked at a blast furnace 0:03:30.760 --> 0:03:34.360 and his mother, Sarah Peters Whale, came from a mining family. 0:03:35.560 --> 0:03:38.920 The number of siblings that he had varies depending on 0:03:38.960 --> 0:03:42.680 the source. The documentation wasn't very good. He did have 0:03:42.840 --> 0:03:45.680 some siblings for sure, though, and the family lived in 0:03:45.680 --> 0:03:50.480 a small fore room flat. Yeah, we there are six documented. 0:03:51.080 --> 0:03:54.960 There may have been additional siblings, we don't know. James 0:03:55.000 --> 0:03:58.560 initially attended school at the Dudley Bluecoach School, but he 0:03:58.560 --> 0:04:02.560 didn't complete his education in there. The family needed income, 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:05.680 so young James, like his two older brothers before him, 0:04:06.040 --> 0:04:09.440 started working at an early age to contribute. He worked 0:04:09.480 --> 0:04:12.680 as a cobbler and a sign letterer, and he squirreled 0:04:12.680 --> 0:04:14.440 away a little bit of money here and there to 0:04:14.520 --> 0:04:17.279 pay for night classes at the Dudley School of Arts. 0:04:18.040 --> 0:04:21.200 He eventually switched to a labor job, working in sheet metal, 0:04:21.520 --> 0:04:24.880 despite being poorly suited for physical work, because it paid 0:04:24.920 --> 0:04:27.520 better and it offered more hope that he would actually 0:04:27.520 --> 0:04:30.960 be able to pay for a complete education. In nineteen fourteen, 0:04:31.040 --> 0:04:33.800 James Whale was swept up into World War One, and 0:04:33.800 --> 0:04:35.800 at first he just did not have any interest and 0:04:35.920 --> 0:04:38.960 enlisting in staid. He volunteered at the y m c A, 0:04:39.160 --> 0:04:42.000 which offered a lot of support services to the military. 0:04:42.560 --> 0:04:45.920 In October of nineteen fifteen, though he finally did enlist 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:50.039 he was convinced that a draft was coming anyway. Yeah, 0:04:50.040 --> 0:04:54.520 there was definitely some animosity towards young men who went 0:04:54.560 --> 0:04:56.680 the route he did where he opted to do this 0:04:56.760 --> 0:05:00.120 volunteer work instead, so that may have also played to 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:02.080 part that he was getting a lot of social pressure. 0:05:02.640 --> 0:05:05.240 He went through officer training and he became part of 0:05:05.240 --> 0:05:09.960 the Worcestershire Regiment in nineteen sixteen. In nineteen seventeen, Wales 0:05:10.040 --> 0:05:12.680 was involved in the Flanders Campaign when he was taken 0:05:12.720 --> 0:05:16.520 prisoner and he was moved to Holdzmanden in Germany. The 0:05:16.560 --> 0:05:19.680 next fifteen months, basically the remainder of the war were 0:05:19.680 --> 0:05:23.479 spent as a pow but Wale put his creativity to 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:27.159 use during that time. He actually staged plays for the camp, 0:05:27.320 --> 0:05:30.960 in which both captors and prisoners were the audience, and 0:05:31.040 --> 0:05:33.920 he did a great deal of drawing. Early on in 0:05:33.960 --> 0:05:36.560 his imprisonment, a group of twenty five of his fellow 0:05:36.600 --> 0:05:40.279 Brits mounted an escape from Holzmanden, but Wale was too 0:05:40.279 --> 0:05:44.160 timid to join them. Wales's theatrical efforts didn't end when 0:05:44.160 --> 0:05:46.760 the war did. When he went back to England, he 0:05:47.080 --> 0:05:49.760 pursued a full time stage career. This was a decision 0:05:49.800 --> 0:05:52.520 he came to based on his experience at the Camp, 0:05:52.560 --> 0:05:54.719 where he fell in love with the stage. Despite the 0:05:54.800 --> 0:05:59.960 unusual circumstances that he was performing in immediately after the war, 0:06:00.080 --> 0:06:03.640 or Whales also sold a couple of cartoons for publication 0:06:03.760 --> 0:06:07.839 he had continued drawing, but despite that seemingly auspicious start, 0:06:07.960 --> 0:06:10.520 he didn't get any further than that with his cartoons. 0:06:11.200 --> 0:06:14.599 He decided to move from the increasingly costly London to 0:06:14.680 --> 0:06:18.400 Birmingham and he started working for the Birmingham Repertory Company. 0:06:18.440 --> 0:06:20.839 Although he was working for the theater without pay for 0:06:20.880 --> 0:06:23.040 a while before he was hired on as more than 0:06:23.080 --> 0:06:27.480 a volunteer, and as his theatrical career progressed, he worked 0:06:27.480 --> 0:06:30.279 with a number of people who would later become quite famous, 0:06:30.320 --> 0:06:34.040 for example, Noel Coward, Elsa Lanchester, of course, who his 0:06:34.040 --> 0:06:37.320 his story gets tied to quite closely, and John Gielgud, 0:06:37.360 --> 0:06:39.880 among others. And it was during this time that he 0:06:39.960 --> 0:06:45.159 also met costume and set designer Doris Zenkison. Doris was 0:06:45.279 --> 0:06:49.279 dramatic and artistic, and James Husi called whale Bone, found 0:06:49.320 --> 0:06:53.839 her just fascinating. The two of them became engaged ine 0:06:54.080 --> 0:06:58.080 and they became the couple in the art scene. They tangled, 0:06:58.120 --> 0:07:00.160 they went to clubs, they seemed to comp them in 0:07:00.200 --> 0:07:04.760 each other just perfectly. But they broke up in This 0:07:04.839 --> 0:07:08.400 is really the last time that Whale would appear to 0:07:08.520 --> 0:07:11.240 be a straight man, But he spoke really highly and 0:07:11.520 --> 0:07:14.120 lovingly of Doris for the rest of his life. As 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:16.440 for Doris, she went on to marry an executive at 0:07:16.520 --> 0:07:20.320 Johnny Walker Whiskey not long after they split up. Yeah, 0:07:20.360 --> 0:07:23.400 In interviews with people who knew him for the rest 0:07:23.400 --> 0:07:25.640 of his life, they all talked like, I really do 0:07:25.720 --> 0:07:27.760 think he was in love with her in some way, 0:07:27.880 --> 0:07:31.600 even though they also acknowledged that they believed that he 0:07:32.200 --> 0:07:34.880 knew at that point that he was not a straight man, 0:07:35.520 --> 0:07:37.880 but he just had this deep affinity that carried on 0:07:37.880 --> 0:07:39.520 pretty much for the rest of his life for her. 0:07:41.320 --> 0:07:43.800 James Whale was also pretty unique in the time and 0:07:43.800 --> 0:07:46.200 place that he lived, and that he was living fairly 0:07:46.240 --> 0:07:49.400 openly as a gay man in the nineteen twenties. Uh, 0:07:49.760 --> 0:07:53.120 most of his colleagues knew that this was the case. 0:07:53.320 --> 0:07:54.920 It was kind of one of those things that was 0:07:55.000 --> 0:07:57.600 not spoken about a lot, but was common knowledge and 0:07:57.640 --> 0:08:00.320 he did nothing to dissuade anyone from the king it. 0:08:01.000 --> 0:08:03.960 And this is interesting because you may recall from previous 0:08:03.960 --> 0:08:07.960 episodes of this podcast that homosexuality was illegal in England 0:08:08.040 --> 0:08:12.280 until nineteen sixty seven. Yeah, everybody people describe it from 0:08:12.320 --> 0:08:13.760 the industry at the time. It's sort of like an 0:08:13.760 --> 0:08:17.920 open secret, where like they weren't running around yelling about it, 0:08:17.960 --> 0:08:23.960 but everyone knew. Yeah. Acting had really drawn Whale to 0:08:23.960 --> 0:08:27.120 the stage, but he also worked in other roles, including 0:08:27.120 --> 0:08:30.120 in stage management. But it was as a director that 0:08:30.200 --> 0:08:34.400 he truly made a name for himself. On June twelfthree, 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:37.400 a one act play called Father Noah opened at the 0:08:37.440 --> 0:08:42.360 Strand Theater. This was wales directorial debut. Father Noah didn't 0:08:42.400 --> 0:08:44.960 get a lot of attention or accolades, but it was 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:47.840 the first step in some more leadership roles within the 0:08:47.840 --> 0:08:51.680 theater and then in nive he joined the Oxford Players, 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:55.160 which was a small, underfunded company. The nature of the 0:08:55.160 --> 0:08:57.600 group meant that Whale once again worked in a variety 0:08:57.640 --> 0:09:01.000 of roles on any given production. Act ding, set design, 0:09:01.280 --> 0:09:04.679 and assistant directing all landed on his plate. As a 0:09:04.720 --> 0:09:07.480 theatrical director, Wale got a lot of accolades when he 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:11.800 staged a play called Journeys End in Night. The play 0:09:11.880 --> 0:09:14.800 depicted a British infantry dug out during World War One 0:09:14.920 --> 0:09:17.680 over the course of four days while they awaited a 0:09:17.679 --> 0:09:21.400 German attack. The original star of the play was twenty 0:09:21.400 --> 0:09:24.319 one year old Laurence Olivier, although when the production became 0:09:24.360 --> 0:09:26.480 so successful that they had to move on to a 0:09:26.480 --> 0:09:31.680 bigger venue, another actor stepped into the role. The following year, 0:09:31.880 --> 0:09:35.160 the critically acclaimed play moved across the Atlantic for a 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:39.160 Broadway run, and that New York engagement actually proved pivotal 0:09:39.200 --> 0:09:42.720 in James Whale's career. In the late nineteen twenties, something 0:09:42.760 --> 0:09:45.679 big was happening in the film industry. That was talkies. 0:09:46.320 --> 0:09:50.360 Actors couldn't rely just on their physical characterizations to carry 0:09:50.440 --> 0:09:53.560 a motion picture. There was a very real need in 0:09:53.640 --> 0:09:56.480 Hollywood for coaches who could help the stars of silent 0:09:56.559 --> 0:10:00.400 films make the transition to talkies. In It was in 0:10:00.400 --> 0:10:03.400 that capacity that James Whale made his way to Los 0:10:03.400 --> 0:10:06.880 Angeles from New York. Wale worked as a dialogue director 0:10:06.920 --> 0:10:09.640 for Paramount Pictures, and then he was hired onto the 0:10:09.720 --> 0:10:15.439 high profile film Hell's Angel starring Geene Harlow, the actress 0:10:15.800 --> 0:10:18.680 was still quite green and uncertain of herself at the time, 0:10:19.280 --> 0:10:20.920 and in a scene in which she was supposed to 0:10:20.960 --> 0:10:24.120 seduce one of her male co stars, she asked Whale 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:27.480 for instruction on exactly what to do, to which he replied, quote, 0:10:27.880 --> 0:10:29.960 my dear girl, I can tell you how to be 0:10:30.000 --> 0:10:32.160 an actress, but I cannot tell you how to be 0:10:32.200 --> 0:10:35.320 a woman. But starting a film career was not the 0:10:35.360 --> 0:10:38.959 only thing that significantly changed for Whale. While working in Hollywood, 0:10:39.400 --> 0:10:42.679 he also met a story assistant named David Lewis. At 0:10:42.679 --> 0:10:45.880 the time, Whale was forty one and Louis was, and 0:10:45.920 --> 0:10:48.920 the younger man was not really impressed by the Englishman. 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:53.480 Whale found Louis captivating, though, and over time the two 0:10:53.559 --> 0:10:56.760 men struck up a friendship, which became a romantic relationship. 0:10:57.320 --> 0:11:00.520 Whale and Lewis spent the next two decades together as 0:11:00.520 --> 0:11:04.120 a couple. And we're going to get into James Whale's 0:11:04.200 --> 0:11:06.560 career as a film director in just a moment, But 0:11:06.679 --> 0:11:14.640 first we're going to pause for a little sponsor break. 0:11:15.320 --> 0:11:18.559 We were just talking about nine before we cut to break. 0:11:18.679 --> 0:11:21.760 And Whale also directed his first feature film in nineteen 0:11:21.800 --> 0:11:25.120 thirty that was the adaptation of his successful stage play 0:11:25.200 --> 0:11:28.839 Journey's End. It starred Colin Clive. That was the actor 0:11:28.880 --> 0:11:31.600 who had replaced Olivier on the London stage and who 0:11:31.600 --> 0:11:34.920 collaborated with James Whale many more times throughout his career. 0:11:35.800 --> 0:11:38.920 After Journey's End made it successful transition to the screen, 0:11:39.240 --> 0:11:42.440 James Whale was signed to a contract at Universal Studios 0:11:42.520 --> 0:11:46.680 by studio head Carl Lemley Jr. Wales's first assignment under 0:11:46.720 --> 0:11:50.640 this new contract was Waterloo Bridge, which was another adaptation 0:11:50.679 --> 0:11:53.760 of a stage play. Like Journey's End, this film was 0:11:53.800 --> 0:11:56.160 set during World War One. It focuses on a young 0:11:56.200 --> 0:11:59.480 American woman in London during the conflict who has to 0:11:59.520 --> 0:12:03.319 turn to x work to make money. Her life becomes 0:12:03.520 --> 0:12:06.920 entwined with a convalescent soldier from the Canadian Army, and 0:12:06.920 --> 0:12:09.440 then the plot centers around the people in the young 0:12:09.480 --> 0:12:12.439 woman's life who see this young man as a potential 0:12:12.480 --> 0:12:16.520 savior for her. Wales's adaptation came out in nine thirty one. 0:12:16.880 --> 0:12:19.280 Two remakes of it came out in nineteen forty and 0:12:19.320 --> 0:12:23.400 nineteen fifty six, although the latter version is a lot 0:12:23.520 --> 0:12:29.080 different and is titled Gabby Whale had pleased the studio 0:12:29.160 --> 0:12:31.960 with his production. He had stayed on schedule, he had 0:12:32.000 --> 0:12:35.200 stayed on budget, and though the film subject matter met 0:12:35.200 --> 0:12:38.240 with some controversy and had to be edited in some markets, 0:12:38.600 --> 0:12:41.440 it was successful enough that the director was given his 0:12:41.520 --> 0:12:44.400 pick of projects for his third film, and that's how 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:47.480 in one Wale directed what would become one of his 0:12:47.600 --> 0:12:52.800 most famous films of all time, Frankenstein, another adaptation. Obviously, 0:12:52.880 --> 0:12:56.080 the screenplay was based on Mary Shelley's novella, and the 0:12:56.160 --> 0:12:59.840 appeal of the Frankenstein's story for Wale was really simple. 0:13:00.000 --> 0:13:03.720 He just didn't feel like making another war movie that 0:13:04.400 --> 0:13:07.880 strikes me as ironic for reasons that will become clear 0:13:08.040 --> 0:13:11.319 as we go forward. Part of what made this picture 0:13:11.440 --> 0:13:15.360 so unique is the fact that Whale wasn't a horror director, 0:13:15.440 --> 0:13:18.400 even though as a genre that was still kind of congealing. 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:21.520 But he told the story of the doctor driven by 0:13:21.559 --> 0:13:24.280 his obsession and the monster that he created as though 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:28.240 it were a street drama, and audiences loved it. It 0:13:28.320 --> 0:13:31.320 made Boris Carlaw famous, and it really put horror on 0:13:31.360 --> 0:13:35.280 the map as a respectable and commercially viable genre. And 0:13:35.320 --> 0:13:38.160 it also gave James Whale a great deal of power 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:42.480 at Universal Studios. While executives at the studio wanted Whale 0:13:42.559 --> 0:13:45.840 to repeat his Frankenstein's success, he decided to make a 0:13:45.840 --> 0:13:49.040 film called The Impatient Maiden next. This is about a 0:13:49.080 --> 0:13:52.080 young woman and a doctor who meet, fall for each other, 0:13:52.280 --> 0:13:55.520 decide not to pursue a relationship, and are later pushed 0:13:55.559 --> 0:13:58.920 together when the doctor has to perform an emergency appendectomy 0:13:59.000 --> 0:14:03.680 on her. I feel like I've seen this episode of 0:14:03.679 --> 0:14:08.400 Grey's Anatomy right Like. There are so many of James 0:14:08.400 --> 0:14:12.680 Whale's films that I feel like set up tropes that 0:14:12.840 --> 0:14:15.720 happened forever after that, and they weren't by any means 0:14:15.760 --> 0:14:17.600 the first ones. But in a lot of cases he 0:14:17.679 --> 0:14:20.560 made those types of stories really famous. Now that I 0:14:20.560 --> 0:14:22.560 think about it more, I think it really was an 0:14:22.600 --> 0:14:25.640 actual episode of Doogie House or MV where he had 0:14:25.720 --> 0:14:30.840 to operate on his girlfriend. Anyway, Whale had chosen The 0:14:30.840 --> 0:14:33.160 Impatient Maiden as a project because he didn't want to 0:14:33.200 --> 0:14:35.880 be pigeonholed in horror, but it turned out to have 0:14:35.920 --> 0:14:39.400 been a poor choice. This romance drama fared really poorly 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:44.440 with both critics and audiences. In two, Whale made a 0:14:44.480 --> 0:14:46.800 film called The Old Dark House, which was sort of 0:14:46.880 --> 0:14:49.480 a horror comedy. I love this movie and I watched 0:14:49.520 --> 0:14:52.000 it while I was working on the outline for this 0:14:52.400 --> 0:14:57.160 and starred Boris Karloff, Gloria Stewart, Charles Lawton, and Melvin Douglas. 0:14:57.320 --> 0:15:00.560 And it is now also a classic horror trope. A 0:15:00.600 --> 0:15:03.920 group of people traveling in the countryside when they get 0:15:03.920 --> 0:15:06.280 caught in a terrible storm that makes it impossible to 0:15:06.320 --> 0:15:09.240 continue their journey, and they seek shelter in a creepy 0:15:09.240 --> 0:15:12.440 house with eccentric inhabitants, and things play out from there. 0:15:13.040 --> 0:15:16.480 Wale made two films that released in nineteen thirty three. 0:15:16.680 --> 0:15:19.080 The first was The Kiss Before the Mirror. This was 0:15:19.120 --> 0:15:23.080 a mystery about a lawyer and his possibly adulterous wife 0:15:23.120 --> 0:15:25.640 and a trial in which the lawyer is defending a 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:29.400 man who murdered his own cheating spouse. This was not 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:34.520 a blockbuster, but Whale's second film of nineteen thirty three 0:15:34.560 --> 0:15:39.120 had quite the opposite reception. When The Invisible Man hit theaters. 0:15:39.200 --> 0:15:43.400 It amazed audiences and delighted critics with its special effects work. 0:15:44.000 --> 0:15:47.720 Claude Rains, in the starring role, gave a memorable vocal performance, 0:15:48.080 --> 0:15:50.520 and the film became one of the year's biggest hits. 0:15:51.040 --> 0:15:54.480 There's obviously a pattern that was developing in James Whale's 0:15:54.520 --> 0:15:58.200 career where his most popular films were in this newly 0:15:58.320 --> 0:16:02.560 popular horror genre. But rather than make another horror film 0:16:02.600 --> 0:16:05.320 after The Invisible Man, he turned his efforts instead to 0:16:05.360 --> 0:16:08.880 a rom com called By Candle Light. It was adapted 0:16:09.080 --> 0:16:12.360 from a stage play by Austrian writers Siegfried Geyer and 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:15.880 Carl Farcas, and it involved a case of mistaken identity. 0:16:16.160 --> 0:16:19.080 A gentleman's butler falls in love with somebody who mistakes 0:16:19.160 --> 0:16:21.560 him for the gentleman that he works for. This was 0:16:21.640 --> 0:16:26.240 considered to be a light light fair, not particularly serious, 0:16:26.320 --> 0:16:31.480 nothing special. Yeah uh and again it it did okay, 0:16:31.520 --> 0:16:35.000 not great uh. Whale still, though, opted out of making 0:16:35.040 --> 0:16:37.440 another horror film, even though that probably would have been 0:16:37.440 --> 0:16:39.200 an easy way for him to say, look, I made 0:16:39.240 --> 0:16:42.960 another adant. Instead, he turned to serious drama with an 0:16:43.000 --> 0:16:46.640 adaptation of a novel by John Galsworthy titled One More River. 0:16:47.560 --> 0:16:50.080 This film features the story of a married English couple 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:53.320 who look perfect to outsiders, but then it's quickly revealed 0:16:53.360 --> 0:16:56.000 to the audience that in private, the husband is physically 0:16:56.040 --> 0:16:59.440 and emotionally abusive to his wife, who leaves him, only 0:16:59.480 --> 0:17:01.720 to have him threaten her with a smear campaign of 0:17:01.760 --> 0:17:06.159 adultery despite no wrongdoing on her part. This film was 0:17:06.440 --> 0:17:09.639 critically acclaimed and people who saw it thought it was 0:17:09.720 --> 0:17:12.960 quite amazing, but not many people actually wanted to see it, 0:17:13.000 --> 0:17:16.040 and it flopped at the box office. Maybe because of 0:17:16.080 --> 0:17:20.680 that series of lukewarm non horror projects, Wale finally decided 0:17:20.720 --> 0:17:23.040 to do what Universal and the public had been asking 0:17:23.119 --> 0:17:25.640 him to do for years, which was returned to horror 0:17:25.760 --> 0:17:29.120 and make a sequel to Frankenstein. While Treatments had been 0:17:29.119 --> 0:17:31.880 proposed for a Frankenstein follow up, it was Wale who 0:17:31.920 --> 0:17:37.640 finally decided that a love interest provided the most appealing possibility. 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:41.280 So Wale's work on the Bride of Frankenstein was lighter 0:17:41.320 --> 0:17:44.119 in tone than his previous work. He was more at 0:17:44.160 --> 0:17:46.760 play as a director, and the look of the film, 0:17:46.840 --> 0:17:50.359 thanks to cinematographer John jay Mescomb, was based in the 0:17:50.400 --> 0:17:54.560 paintings of Rembrandt, contrasting bright, highlighted sections of any given 0:17:54.600 --> 0:17:58.160 frame with the deepest of shadows to create depth and drama. 0:17:59.119 --> 0:18:02.840 Wale decided his friend Elsa Lanchester for the role, then 0:18:02.880 --> 0:18:07.200 carefully designed the bride's look inspired by the mummies of Egypt. 0:18:07.680 --> 0:18:10.359 Her iconic hair was modeled on the head pieces of 0:18:10.440 --> 0:18:13.320 Nefer Tit, and her makeup was carefully sketched out by 0:18:13.359 --> 0:18:17.399 the director in a series of drawings. Lanchester brought a 0:18:17.560 --> 0:18:21.760 unique inspiration to the role. The bride's behavior and movement 0:18:21.880 --> 0:18:25.440 was based on the swans at Hyde Park. Yeah, I 0:18:25.640 --> 0:18:28.360 uh had only read that recently. I'm sure I've probably 0:18:28.400 --> 0:18:30.920 passed over it before, but the idea of the way 0:18:30.960 --> 0:18:34.720 she hisses and like turns her roughly was based on 0:18:34.760 --> 0:18:37.400 these swans that she had had been observing. There's also 0:18:37.440 --> 0:18:40.640 an interesting story where he was already something like ten 0:18:40.760 --> 0:18:43.560 days or two weeks into production before he cast her. 0:18:44.080 --> 0:18:46.119 They were like, we can't figure out who the actress is, 0:18:46.200 --> 0:18:48.320 but we'll just start shooting and we'll figure it out, 0:18:48.680 --> 0:18:51.600 which to me sounds terrifying, but James Wales seemed to 0:18:51.600 --> 0:18:54.640 have it all in hand. We talked a lot about 0:18:54.680 --> 0:18:57.240 the Bride of Frankenstein, of course, in our two parter 0:18:57.280 --> 0:18:59.600 that we did about Elsa Lanchester a couple of years ago, 0:19:00.200 --> 0:19:02.439 but we didn't at that time really discuss how the 0:19:02.480 --> 0:19:06.399 film impacted James Whale's life and career. In terms of 0:19:06.400 --> 0:19:09.919 commercial success, the film was an unqualified success. There was 0:19:10.000 --> 0:19:11.679 no way you could frame it where it was not 0:19:11.760 --> 0:19:15.159 a huge hit. After Whale's Bride had terrified and charmed 0:19:15.200 --> 0:19:17.879 audiences and made a lot of money in the process, 0:19:17.880 --> 0:19:20.120 Wale was given more or less free reign to work 0:19:20.160 --> 0:19:23.280 on whatever projects he wanted to at Universal. This was 0:19:23.320 --> 0:19:26.159 a unique situation. Only a very few directors at the 0:19:26.200 --> 0:19:29.600 time had this level of creative freedom that James Whale 0:19:29.640 --> 0:19:33.080 had earned. And next up, we're going to delve into 0:19:33.119 --> 0:19:35.600 what his life was like after the Bride, But first 0:19:35.640 --> 0:19:44.720 we're gonna pause for a little sponsor break. Even though 0:19:44.960 --> 0:19:48.280 James Whale was getting pressure to make another horror film 0:19:48.320 --> 0:19:51.560 immediately after The Bride of Frankenstein, he opted to direct 0:19:51.560 --> 0:19:55.119 a comedic murder mystery called Remember Last Night. And this 0:19:55.200 --> 0:19:58.120 takes place in the aftermath of a drunken party during 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:00.720 which there was a murder which none of the attendees, 0:20:00.760 --> 0:20:04.440 who all got black out drunk, could recall. A hypnotist 0:20:04.560 --> 0:20:07.719 is summoned to help recover the partygoers memories, but then 0:20:07.760 --> 0:20:11.320 additional murders take place, deepening the whole mystery and sending 0:20:11.359 --> 0:20:15.560 everything into disarray. Remember Last Night was a money pit. 0:20:16.080 --> 0:20:18.800 Universal took a hit on it because ticket sales were 0:20:18.840 --> 0:20:20.919 so dismal. They ended up deep in the red. On 0:20:20.960 --> 0:20:25.080 that one. Wale needed a successful film, and his next 0:20:25.119 --> 0:20:28.080 picture was just that. It wasn't horror but instead it 0:20:28.080 --> 0:20:31.200 was a musical. He adapted the stage place show Boat 0:20:31.280 --> 0:20:34.920 into a huge, lavish production that once again pleased the 0:20:34.960 --> 0:20:38.760 studio by making a nice profit. Yeah, but because of Showboat, 0:20:38.800 --> 0:20:42.600 the studio actually changed significantly. It made a nice profit, 0:20:42.640 --> 0:20:44.880 but not for the people that originally started the project. 0:20:45.160 --> 0:20:47.840 So when the Lemlies put the studio in a financially 0:20:47.880 --> 0:20:52.320 precarious position, they were actually pushed out in six They 0:20:52.320 --> 0:20:55.280 had been willing to take risks, both creatively and financially, 0:20:55.880 --> 0:20:59.800 but even though Carl Lemley Sr. Had founded Universal alone 0:21:00.000 --> 0:21:02.240 that he had taken out to complete the over budget 0:21:02.240 --> 0:21:05.840 show Boat ended up doing him in before the picture, 0:21:05.880 --> 0:21:10.240 which turned a very nice profit, was even released. Standard Capital, 0:21:10.280 --> 0:21:14.919 which had issued the loan, seized control of Universal financier 0:21:15.040 --> 0:21:18.280 John Cheever. Cowden became president and chairman of the studio, 0:21:18.720 --> 0:21:22.840 and despite just having made a massively successful film, James 0:21:22.840 --> 0:21:26.000 Whale suddenly found himself on a tight leash, no more 0:21:26.040 --> 0:21:30.520 freedom to do as he pleased creatively. Almost immediately, the 0:21:30.600 --> 0:21:33.520 sting of being overseen by leadership that was a lot 0:21:33.560 --> 0:21:36.760 more worried about money than artist ry and really hit Whale. 0:21:37.119 --> 0:21:40.880 In seven, he directed a film adaptation called The Roadback, 0:21:40.920 --> 0:21:43.720 which was based on a novel, and the film was 0:21:43.800 --> 0:21:47.480 critical of the Nazi regime. The German government threatened to 0:21:47.560 --> 0:21:52.080 boycott all Universal Pictures if the film wasn't edited significantly 0:21:52.240 --> 0:21:56.040 to remove all the anti Nazis sentiment. Under the Lemley's 0:21:56.200 --> 0:21:58.720 Whale might have had more leverage to keep his movie 0:21:58.800 --> 0:22:01.159 as he had made it. A cowed and feared the 0:22:01.200 --> 0:22:04.120 loss of the profit from the German market. He had 0:22:04.119 --> 0:22:07.399 a second director come in and reshoot entire sections of 0:22:07.400 --> 0:22:10.840 the film. Significant editing was done on the portions that 0:22:10.920 --> 0:22:13.920 Whale had shot. I feel like that's one of those 0:22:13.960 --> 0:22:18.399 things that in retrospect everybody probably felt really stupid for 0:22:18.480 --> 0:22:21.280 having done. But that's just me. I don't know, uh. 0:22:21.359 --> 0:22:26.440 During seven and eight, Whale directed several small pictures, including 0:22:26.480 --> 0:22:29.439 a remake of The Kiss Before the Mirror titled Wives 0:22:29.480 --> 0:22:33.680 under Suspicion, but none of those films were really successes. 0:22:34.040 --> 0:22:36.720 He had been kind of alienated at Universal, so he 0:22:36.800 --> 0:22:39.960 made several movies as a freelance director with other studios. 0:22:40.160 --> 0:22:42.840 In NY nine, he made The Man in the Iron Mask, 0:22:42.960 --> 0:22:45.440 which was one of his strongest efforts of the last 0:22:45.480 --> 0:22:49.240 several feature films. The score was nominated for an Oscar 0:22:49.520 --> 0:22:53.399 and it was also Peter Cushing's first film. Reviews were mixed, 0:22:53.800 --> 0:22:57.920 but it was ultimately a successful commercial offering. His last 0:22:58.000 --> 0:23:01.280 two feature films, Green Hill and They Dare Not Love 0:23:01.440 --> 0:23:05.280