James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters

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You may not recognize James Whale, but you surely recognize his most prominent contribution to American popular culture: Frankenstein's monster, as portrayed by Boris Karloff. Whale, a British expatriate who made his way to Hollywood just as films were making the transition to the talkies, directed both the original Frankenstein (1931) and its sequel, The Bride of Frankenstein (1936), for Universal Pictures. Afraid of being pigeonholed as a horror director (he also made The Invisible Man and The Old Dark House), he eventually insisted on more mainstream projects, including the musical Show Boat and The Road Back, a sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front that flopped at the box office. Today, The Bride of Frankenstein is considered to be his best film, a work that combines moments of genuine suspense with a thoroughly macabre sense of humor.

In 1982, film historian James Curtis wrote his first biography of Whale. James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters is not a revision of that book, however, but a substantial reworking involving much in the way of new research. Whale's life story is emblematic of an entire generation of European émigrés who made critical artistic contributions to American film only to find themselves in ultimate obscurity. Although recent fictional and truthful accounts of Whale's life have emphasized his homosexuality--even the jacket cover of this book cites it as the reason for Hollywood's eventual rejection of Whale--Curtis himself tells a more nuanced tale. Certainly, Whale made no attempts to hide his preference for men; at the same time, he made his sexual orientation neither a prominent feature of his personal life nor his movies. While it's possible that he was fired from Columbia Pictures in 1941 because of homophobia on the part of studio owner Harry Cohn, it should also be noted that it didn't take much to get on the bad side of Harry Cohn and that, perhaps more to the point, Whale hadn't had a significant commercial hit in five years.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

James Whale directed some of the most stylish and unusual movies of the 1930s but he was most successful in a genre he virtually invented. For it was Whale who, in 1931, took a lanky, middle-aged actor and sometime truck-driver named Boris Karloff and cast him as the tragic, patchwork creature of the original Frankenstein. But Whale's success was short-lived. His career faltered and, being openly gay, he found work increasingly hard to get. He quit just ten years after the triumph of Frankenstein, and died a suicide only months before the film's eventual release on television. James Curtis has written the definitive account of the life of this innovative and stylish director.

SYNOPSIS

The definitive biography of James Whale, the stylish and innovative British director of Frankenstein who virtually invented the genre of the classic horror film but who only a few years later was no longer making films, living instead on the fringes of the closeted homosexual culture of 1950s Los Angeles, virtually forgotten by Hollywood.

FROM THE CRITICS

Scott Eyman

It is immaculately researched, smoothly written, honest without being lascivious, a model of its kind....I don't expect to read a better film book this year. -- Boston Book Review

Publishers Weekly

Shortly before his death, film director James Whale admitted that he'd looked in the mirror and realized that he'd launched "this horror" into the world that he couldn't stop. Was he referring to his creation of the classic film Frankenstein (1931) or its inferior off-shoots? Was he alluding to his inability (despite succeeding in mainstream genres) to transcend his reputation as a specialist in monster movies? Curtis (Between Flops: A Biography of Preston Sturges) narrates in seamless detail how this innovative son of a West Midlands coal man rose from obscurity to acclaim as a British theater and Hollywood director. Trained as a West End actor and stage manager, Whale gained recognition for his rendition of the WWI war drama Journey's End. He traveled to Broadway and finally Hollywood to adapt Journey's End (1930) to the movies. Curtis charts Whale's triumphs as well as his failures, lending insight into the convoluted collaborative world of moviemaking in the days of Hays Office censorship. Many of Whale's mainstream films (Waterloo Bridge; One More River; etc.) disappeared while Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein never went out of circulation. Showboat (1956) marked the pinnacle of Whale's career and was followed by a gradual decline and slide into suicide. One comes away from this quixotic and compelling biography with the feeling that Whale, who was homosexual, not only reinvented the monster movie but also himself, and that his particular genius was often ill appreciated except in the one genre he disdained. 60 b&w photos. (May)

Library Journal

Since most film students today would probably not recognize the name of James Whale, this biography of the director of the groundbreaking film Frankenstein comes just in time. Growing up in the bleak industrial center of Britain, Whale rose to prominence early in the century as a set designer and director for the London stage. He emigrated to California just as Hollywood started making talkies and joined Universal Studios. Whale almost single-handedly created the previously unknown horror-film genre in the United States with his 1931 masterpiece of the tragic monster, starring a then-unknown Boris Karloff. Whale went on to direct The Invisible Man, The Bride of Frankenstein, and Show Boat, among others. Despite the critical praise for these subsequent films, he was never able to surpass his early success, and he retired in 1940, a forgotten footnote in cinematic history. This well-researched film biography is an exhaustive study of the man's work, though not of his life, and is thus recommended for larger and academic collections, especially collections dedicated to arts and the cinema.Jeff Ingram, Newport P.L., OR

William F. Mann

"James Curtis has attempted, and largely succeeded, inpresenting Whale to us with the myths and latter-day gay obeisance stripped away. Whale was a highly original artists, who like many, failed to grasp the enduring significance of what came to be his masterpieces.... An expanded version of an earlir biography Curtis first wrote in 1982, James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters is a fascinating and exhaustive study of Hollywood's most unique move (and moster) maker." -- Lambda Book Report

Kirkus Reviews

A well-crafted, detailed biography of the director of such classics as Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, and the 1936 version of Showboat. Though he is usually identified as a "horror film" director, Whale, in the best tradition of the old-time Hollywood directors, took on all genres, from war films to musicals. His directing career was relatively brief and late in life but, as Preston Sturges biographer Curtis (Between Flops, 1982, etc.) convincingly demonstrates, Whale, like Dr. Frankenstein, has been unfairly overshadowed by his creations. He had a real style, a precise directorial vision that inflected everything from shot selection to costumes and scenery. Whale came to film by accident. A POW during WW I, he participated in a number of prison theatricals and realized he'd finally found his milieu. At the end of the war, he used his substantial gambling winnings from rich officer prisoners, to stake an acting career. He enjoyed some minor success, but eventually turned to directing, again with little success, until the WW I drama Journey's End became a surprise hit. He would direct the film version as well and its worldwide boffo box office made him the new golden boy in Hollywood. A little more than ten years later, a string of flops spelled the end of his career. In a notoriously closeted town, Whale made no secret of his homosexuality and the fact that he lived with another man. Current critical theory demands that an artist's homosexuality be reflected in his/her work, and others, including Vito Russo, have argued, for example, that Frankenstein is about the tragedy of being in the closet. Curtis tends to dismissthis line of thought, arguing that the most significant celluloid aspect of Whale's homosexuality was his inability to direct passionate heterosexual love scenes. While this is not an in-depth, psychologically rich biography, and Curtis's writing tends to be wooden, as an account of Whale's work, it is first-rate. (60 b&w photos)