Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Monday, August 6, 2012
Jack Pierce, Wally Westmore mentioned in 1931 column
(Note: The following column is reprinted as it was first published, complete with typographical errors.)
Hollywood Sights and Sounds
The Carroll Daily Herald, Oct. 20, 1931
Sometimes it just happens that screen stories are timely, even though writers comb the newspapers for plot suggestions.
"Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," starring Frederic March, as in production weeks before the so-called "Ape Man" broke into Hollywood news with a series of attacks on women.
But the marauder's cruelty parallels the methods of Robert Louis Stevenson's fiction character, the bestial Mr. Hyde, who was the high-minded Dr. Jekyll's lower nature.
Another screen story long in preparation, "from an original story by Edgar Allan Poe," as the trade would say, has for its murdering villain a huge ape. It's called, of course, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue."
Another Thriller
Unrelated tr. apes and "apemen," but similarly of the movie cycle of horror stories following up on the success of "Dracula" is "Frankenstein," which features a monster created by a scientist from fragments of dead humans and given by mistake the brain of a criminal.
All these horror tales are giving studio make-up men opportunity to exercise their genius along macabre lines. Wally Westmore makes Frederic March such a grotesque Mr. Hyde that March, when in that character, shuns the studio lunchroom.
And Jack Pierce who spends three hours each morning tranforming Boris Karloff into the "Frankenstein'" monster, did weeks of research in medical libraries to perfect his conception of an "undead"' pieced-together being.
When made-up Karloff goes to the set under a sheet, and it is just as well. I witnessed the make-up process and can report that I'd rather not meet this "monster" in a dark deserted srreet or anywhere except the screen.
The ape of Rue Morgue will be comparatively simple, but "The Invisible Man" (not a horror story) will present a real problem. This character is supposed to have ability to render himself invisible, but I am told, cannot restore himself to normalcy, although his clothes.
Hollywood Sights and SoundsThe Carroll Daily Herald, Oct. 20, 1931
Sometimes it just happens that screen stories are timely, even though writers comb the newspapers for plot suggestions.
"Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," starring Frederic March, as in production weeks before the so-called "Ape Man" broke into Hollywood news with a series of attacks on women.
But the marauder's cruelty parallels the methods of Robert Louis Stevenson's fiction character, the bestial Mr. Hyde, who was the high-minded Dr. Jekyll's lower nature.
Another screen story long in preparation, "from an original story by Edgar Allan Poe," as the trade would say, has for its murdering villain a huge ape. It's called, of course, "The Murders in the Rue Morgue."
Another Thriller
Unrelated tr. apes and "apemen," but similarly of the movie cycle of horror stories following up on the success of "Dracula" is "Frankenstein," which features a monster created by a scientist from fragments of dead humans and given by mistake the brain of a criminal.
All these horror tales are giving studio make-up men opportunity to exercise their genius along macabre lines. Wally Westmore makes Frederic March such a grotesque Mr. Hyde that March, when in that character, shuns the studio lunchroom.
And Jack Pierce who spends three hours each morning tranforming Boris Karloff into the "Frankenstein'" monster, did weeks of research in medical libraries to perfect his conception of an "undead"' pieced-together being.
When made-up Karloff goes to the set under a sheet, and it is just as well. I witnessed the make-up process and can report that I'd rather not meet this "monster" in a dark deserted srreet or anywhere except the screen.
The ape of Rue Morgue will be comparatively simple, but "The Invisible Man" (not a horror story) will present a real problem. This character is supposed to have ability to render himself invisible, but I am told, cannot restore himself to normalcy, although his clothes.
Friday, August 3, 2012
Alternate title for THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS (1946)
Here's something I've never heard before: the 1946 Peter Lorre film THE BEAST WITH FIVE FINGERS began life with a much more subtle title. It's detailed below in an excerpt from a Dec. 24, 1946, gossip column published by The Newark Advocate American Tribune:
RKO has junked what we thought was one of the year's best movie titles. ''Build My Gallows High," because the Gallup poll boys turned in a report that it left movie fans cold. The picture's new title is "Out of the Past."
Well, anyway, it's not as bad as -a title-changing brainstorm at Warner Bros, where an original story "Concerto for the Left Hand" will be released soon as "The Beast With Five Fingers."
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