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Boris Karloff. (credit: AP)
Boris Karloff. (credit: AP)
For more information on Boris Karloff, visit Britannica.com.
Boris Karloff
| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Boris Karloff |
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| Biography: Boris Karloff |
British actor Boris Karloff (1887 - 1969) created a cinematic icon when he played the role of the monster in the 1931 film "Frankenstein".
The ghoulish makeup he wore and the lurching walk he adopted in the film have become conventions, even cliches, of horror films. And beyond the individual techniques Karloff used when playing the role of the monster, he created a feeling of sympathy for the character, a technique that has since become a more general trait of successful horror films, whose monsters often gain intensity by fascinating audiences as well as repelling them. Karloff became a star with Frankenstein, which he made when he was already well into middle age. His life up to that point had been colorful, and attracted a host of biographers in spite of his reticence about his personal affairs. After Frankenstein, Karloff made many other films, some of them quite significant. He enjoyed a successful run as a stage actor and became a familiar figure on radio and then television. It was Frankenstein, however, that put his name in lights and led to his being billed, at the height of his fame, simply as "Karloff." That name recognition was something only a few other movie stars have achieved.
Groomed for Government Career
The youngest of nine children, Karloff was born William Henry Pratt on November 23, 1887, in Camberwell, a suburb of London, England. His father, Edward Pratt, had worked for much of his life in India, as a salt tax administrator for the British colonial government. The elder Pratt married three times; his third wife, Eliza, was Karloff's mother. Her family had lived in India as well, and some have speculated, as a way of explaining Karloff's unusually dark complexion, that she may have been partly of Indian ancestry. Edward Pratt left the family when Karloff was a year old, and he was raised largely by his stepsister Emma. Several of his older brothers entered the British civil service, and some of them followed their father's example and took posts in India. It was assumed that young Karloff would do the same.
Karloff's interests at school ran more to sports and music than to studying, however. His stage debut came in 1896 in a school play, a version of Cinderella. He loved to play and watch cricket, an enthusiasm he held for his entire life. Moving on from Enfield Grammar School to Merchant Taylor's School and the Uppingham School in London, Karloff kept on top of his studies and won admission to King's College at the University of London in 1907.
There he took courses that would lead to a place in Britain's diplomatic corps, but he spent more time attending plays in London. He dreamed of a theatrical career himself, but his family ridiculed the idea. In 1909 Karloff found himself frustrated with university studies. He was receiving poor grades and was supremely restless. Deciding to leave Britain, he flipped a coin to decide whether he would go to Canada or Australia. Canada won, and after coming ashore in Montreal in May of 1909, Karloff soon found himself rounding up horses in a field at 4:30 in the morning, having been hired as a farmhand. Karloff soon made his way to western Canada, moving from Banff, Alberta, to Vancouver, British Columbia, paying his way with such jobs as racetrack digger, streetcar track builder, and coal shoveler.
A place on a survey crew with the British Columbia Electric Company brought both a salary raise and an improvement in working conditions for Karloff, but he still nurtured hopes of becoming an actor. Hearing of a job with a troupe called the Jean Russell Players, he took a train to Kamloops, British Columbia, to audition. He devised the stage name Boris Karloff, claiming that Karloff was a name from his mother's family background, and he was quoted as saying in Scott Allen Nollen's book Boris Karloff that he pulled the name Boris "from out of the cold, Canadian air." Karloff claimed to have had experience on stage in England, and was hired. The troupe's managers quickly saw through the ruse and cut his salary in half, but Karloff barnstormed around Canada with the troupe for two years, until a Saskatchewan tornado brought the Jean Russell Players to an abrupt end.
Entered United States
Karloff signed on with another troupe, the St. Clair Players. This job was hardly more lucrative; Karloff recalled having to cook his breakfast by frying an egg on an electric iron propped upside down between a Gideon Bible and a bedpost. But the St. Clair Players did operate on both sides of the border; Karloff entered the United States for the first time via North Dakota in October of 1913, and traveled through the upper Midwest. He left and rejoined the St. Clair group as he found work with other theatrical stock companies, and eked out a living while traveling around the country. When World War I broke out, Karloff volunteered to join the British army but was rejected because of a heart murmur. The St. Clair Players sputtered to a halt for good in 1917, but by that time they had reached Los Angeles, California, landing Karloff at the doorstep of the growing film industry.
Touring with several theater companies in southern California, Karloff began appearing as an extra in films. His first film credit may have been for His Majesty, the American, starring Douglas Fairbanks, in 1919; he appeared in several dozen films during the silent era, and his memory of the very earliest ones was hazy. By the early 1920s he was finding consistent film work, often playing Native Americans, Mexicans, or Asian characters as a result of his exotic looks - at the time, Hollywood films were virtually an all-white preserve. Even after several years of working in the lower levels of the industry, Karloff saw few prospects of a breakthrough, and took a job in 1923 unloading giant putty casks from a building materials truck. He had married musician Montana Laurena Williams in 1920, after a first marriage, to actress Olive de Wilton, ended in divorce sometime after 1912. Karloff married dancer Helene Vivian Soulee in 1924, Los Angeles librarian Dorothy Stine in 1930, and English-born Evelyn Hope Helmore in 1946.
After meeting with silent film horror star Lon Chaney Sr. in the late 1920s, Karloff received some much-needed encouragement. Chaney (as quoted by Nollen) told him that "the secret of success in Hollywood lies in being different from anyone else. Find something no one else can or will do - and they'll begin to take notice of you. Hollywood is full of competent actors. What the screen needs is individuality!" Karloff took the advice to heart, stepping into negative roles that took advantage of his gaunt, rather unnerving appearance. His career took a step up with a role in Scarface under director Howard Hawks in 1931, and later that year he was sitting in a Universal Studios lunchroom when English-born director James Whale, in the process of casting Frankenstein, noticed him and envisioned him in the role of the monster.
Karloff got the part after Bela Lugosi turned it down to pursue another project, and he became a major star almost overnight. The film was a tremendous box office success, touched off a vogue for horror films that lasted through much of the 1930s, and was soon hailed as a classic. Three-quarters of a century later the film still held up well, largely thanks to the strongly human qualities of Karloff's performance. "There are more moments of quiet power (most of them involving the strikingly effective Boris Karloff as the monster who simply wants to be loved) than you'll find in a fistful of big-budget horror films," noted Dan Jardine in the All Movie Guide. Karloff wore several pounds of makeup and donned heavy asphalt shoes that gave the monster his characteristic gait.
Made Over $3,000 a Week
Karloff signed a contract with Universal Studios that gave him a salary of $750 a week in 1932. After several more hits, including The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932) and The Black Cat (1934, with Lugosi), his weekly salary had risen to $3,750. He earned his keep, making nine films during 1932 alone. His films varied in quality, but his elegant variations on the persona he had established with Frankenstein made them consistently compelling. Karloff and his wife Dorothy moved out of what they described as a shack in Laurel Canyon into a series of increasingly elegant lodgings, culminating in a mansion in the Coldwater Canyon area, where Karloff could indulge his passion for gardening. He also amassed a collection of unusual pets that included a tortoise, a parrot, egg-laying chickens, a cow named Elsie, a four-hundred-pound pig, and several dogs, two of which were named Angus Dei and Silly Bitch. Even as he personally experienced tremendous success, Karloff emerged as an advocate for the welfare of actors who labored in the trenches, as he had for so long. In 1933 he became a co-founder of the Screen Actors Guild union.
Often bemused by the Frankenstein phenomenon, Karloff also had a certain affection for the monster and was reluctant to make sequels that would degrade the impact of the original film. He made one, Bride of Frankenstein, in 1935, and another, Son of Frankenstein, in 1938, in the year his only child, a daughter Sara, was born. In 1940 he returned to the stage, starring in the original Broadway production of the comic horror play Arsenic and Old Lace, and going on tour with the company as it toured 66 cities during World War II. During the war years Karloff also edited two best-selling collections of horror and suspense stories, Tales of Terror and And the Darkness Falls.
Karloff made numerous films after the war, but he became increasingly known for his work on radio and television. He hosted the radio program Starring Boris Karloff beginning in 1949, and the show successfully made the transition to television in the early 1950s. Two 1950 projects, the radio show Boris Karloff's Treasure Chest and the Broadway show Peter Pan, demonstrated Karloff's appeal to children and opened up a successful career avenue for him in his later years. Karloff and his wife Evelyn moved to New York in 1951, eventually taking up residence in the Dakota apartment building.
Continuing to find joy and energy in performing, as he had since his youth, Karloff remained busy as an actor until his last days. Broadening his repertoire well beyond horror, he appeared on Broadway in The Lark in 1955 and was nominated for an Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award. Beginning the following year and continuing until 1968, Karloff recorded a daily radio program, Tales from the Reader's Digest. In 1962 he earned a Grammy nomination in the children's recordings category for his LP Rudyard Kipling's Other Just So Stories: The Cat Who Walked by Himself, and in 1966 Karloff narrated an animated television special, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. A broadcast of the program became an annual tradition, and Karloff became almost as familiar to baby-boomers for that role as he was for Frankenstein.
Karloff never took American citizenship. He lived with his wife in London during his last years, returning to the United States to work on projects in concentrated bursts. Among the most interesting products of his later years was the 1967 film Targets, directed by Peter Bogdanovich and starring Karloff as an aging horror film star who wants to retire because he finds the real world more horrifying than anything in the movies. Karloff continued to work on new films despite poor health; his last film was Chamber of Fear (1968), made in Mexico. He died in a hospital in Midhurst, Sussex, England, on February 2, 1969.
Books
Buehrer, Beverly Bare, Boris Karloff: A Bio-Bibliography, Green-wood, 1993.
International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, Vol. 3: Actors and Actresses, 4th ed., St James, 2000.
Jensen, Paul M., Boris Karloff and His Films, Barnes, 1974.
Nollen, Scott Allen, Boris Karloff, McFarland, 1991.
Underwood, Peter, Karloff: The Life of Boris Karloff, Drake, 1972.
Periodicals
New York Times, February 3, 2006.
Online
"Frankenstein," All Movie Guide, http://www.allmovie.com (February 19, 2006).
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Boris Karloff |
Karloff, Boris (kär'lôf, -lŏf), 1887-1969, Anglo-American actor, b. Dulwich, England; his original name was William Henry Pratt. A distinguished character actor with a superb speaking voice, Karloff was famous for his monster roles in Hollywood horror films, notably Frankenstein (1931). His other movies include The Ghoul (1933), The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Isle of the Dead (1945), and Targets (1968).
| Actor: Boris Karloff |
- Born: Nov 23, 1887 in London, England, UK
- Died: Feb 02, 1969
- Occupation: Actor
- Active: '20s-'60s
- Major Genres: Horror, Drama
- Career Highlights: The Bride of Frankenstein, Scarface, Frankenstein
- First Major Screen Credit: Without Benefit of Clergy (1921)
Biography
The long-reigning king of Hollywood horror, Boris Karloff was born William Henry Pratt on November 23, 1887, in South London. The youngest of nine children, he was educated at London University in preparation for a career as a diplomat. However, in 1909, he emigrated to Canada to accept a job on a farm, and while living in Ontario he began pursuing acting, joining a touring company and adopting the stage name Boris Karloff. His first role was as an elderly man in a production of Molnar's The Devil, and for the next decade Karloff toiled in obscurity, traveling across North America in a variety of theatrical troupes. By 1919, he was living in Los Angeles, unemployed and considering a move into vaudeville, when instead he found regular work as an extra at Universal Studios. Karloff's first role of note was in 1919's His Majesty the American, and his first sizable part came in The Deadlier Sex a year later. Still, while he worked prolifically, his tenure in the silents was undistinguished, although it allowed him to hone his skills as a consummate screen villain.Karloff's first sound-era role was in the 1929 melodrama The Unholy Night, but he continued to languish without any kind of notice, remaining so anonymous even within the film industry itself that Picturegoer magazine credited 1931's The Criminal Code as his first film performance. The picture, a Columbia production, became his first significant hit, and soon Karloff was an in-demand character actor in projects ranging from the Wheeler and Woolsey comedy Cracked Nuts to the Edward G. Robinson vehicle Five Star Final to the serial adventure King of the Wild. Meanwhile, at Universal Studios, plans were underway to adapt the Mary Shelley classic Frankenstein in the wake of the studio's massive Bela Lugosi hit Dracula. Lugosi, however, rejected the role of the monster, opting instead to attach his name to a project titled Quasimodo which ultimately went unproduced. Karloff, on the Universal lot shooting 1931's Graft, was soon tapped by director James Whale to replace Lugosi as Dr. Frankenstein's monstrous creation, and with the aid of the studio's makeup and effects unit, he entered into his definitive role, becoming an overnight superstar.
Touted as the natural successor to Lon Chaney, Karloff was signed by Universal to a seven-year contract, but first he needed to fulfill his prior commitments and exited to appear in films including the Howard Hawks classic Scarface and Business or Pleasure. Upon returning to the Universal stable, he portrayed himself in 1932's The Cohens and Kellys in Hollywood before starring as a nightclub owner in Night World. However, Karloff soon reverted to type, starring in the title role in 1932's The Mummy, followed by a turn as a deaf-mute killer in Whale's superb The Old Dark House. On loan to MGM, he essayed the titular evildoer in The Mask of Fu Manchu, but on his return to Universal he demanded a bigger salary, at which point the studio dropped him. Karloff then journeyed back to Britain, where he starred in 1933's The Ghoul, before coming back to Hollywood to appear in John Ford's 1934 effort The Lost Patrol. After making amends with Universal, he co-starred with Lugosi in The Black Cat, the first of several pairings for the two actors, and in 1936 he starred in the stellar sequel The Bride of Frankenstein.
Karloff spent the remainder of the 1930s continuing to work at an incredible pace, but the quality of his films, the vast majority of them B-list productions, began to taper off dramatically. Finally, in 1941, he began a three-year theatrical run in Arsenic and Old Lace before returning to Hollywood to star in the A-list production The Climax. Again, however, Karloff soon found himself consigned to Poverty Row efforts, such as 1945's The House of Frankenstein. He also found himself at RKO under Val Lewton's legendary horror unit. A few of his films were more distinguished -- he appeared in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Unconquered, and even Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer -- and in 1948 starred on Broadway in J.B. Priestley's The Linden Tree, but by and large Karloff delivered strong performances in weak projects. By the mid-'50s, he was a familiar presence on television, and from 1956 to 1958, hosted his own series. By the following decade, he was a fixture at Roger Corman's American International Pictures. In 1969, Karloff appeared in Peter Bogdanovich's Targets, a smart, sensitive tale in which he portrayed an aging horror film star; the role proved a perfect epitaph -- he died on February 2, 1969. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
| Filmography: Boris Karloff |
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| Wikipedia: Boris Karloff |
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| Boris Karloff | |
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| Born | William Henry Pratt 23 November 1887 Peckham, London, England, United Kingdom |
| Died | 2 February 1969 (aged 81) Midhurst, Sussex, England, United Kingdom |
| Years active | 1909 - 1969 |
| Spouse(s) | Grace Harding (1910 - 1913) Olive de Wilton (m. 1915) Montana Laurena Williams (m. 1920) Helene Vivian Soule (1924 - 1928) Dorothy Stine (1928 - 1946) Evelyn Hope Helmore (1946 - 1969) |
Boris Karloff (November 23, 1887 - February 2, 1969) was a British actor who emigrated to Canada in the 1910s. He is best remembered for his roles in horror films and his portrayal of Frankenstein's monster in the 1931 film Frankenstein, 1935 film Bride of Frankenstein, and 1939 film Son of Frankenstein. His popularity following Frankenstein in the early 1930s was such that for a brief time he was billed simply as "Karloff" or, on some movie posters, "Karloff the Uncanny".
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Early life
Karloff was born William Henry Pratt at 36 Forest Hill Road, Peckham Rye, London, England, where a blue plaque can now be seen. He was brought up in Enfield. His paternal grandmother was Eliza Julia (Edwards) Pratt, a sister of Anna Leonowens, whose tales about life in the royal court of Siam (now Thailand) were the basis of the musical The King and I. Her maternal grandmother was of Indian origin, being from Kolkata.[citation needed] In 1845, Anna's 15-year-old sister, Eliza Julia Edwards, married Edward John Pratt, a 38-year-old Anglo-Indian civil servant who had served in the Indian Navy. Eliza and Edward had a son, Edward John Pratt, Jr., who in 1887, with his wife, Eliza Sarah Millard, had a son named William Henry Pratt, who later became known as Boris Karloff. Because Pratt Sr. was an Anglo-Indian, Anna never approved of Eliza's marriage, and her disconnection from the family was so complete that decades later, when a Pratt relative contacted her, she replied threatening suicide if he persisted.[1]
Research for a new biography has shown the actor was not orphaned in his youth, as has always been believed.[2] Following his mother's death he was raised by his elder brothers and sister and attended Enfield Grammar School before moving to Uppingham School and Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood, and eventually King's College London. Karloff's first goal in life was to join the foreign service — his brother, Sir John Henry Pratt, became a distinguished British diplomat — but instead he fell into acting.
Karloff was bow-legged, had a lisp, and stuttered as a young boy.[3] He conquered his stutter, but not his lisp, which was noticeable all through his career.
Early acting career and name change
In 1909, Pratt travelled to Canada and some time later changed his professional name to "Boris Karloff". Some have theorized that he took the stage name from a mad scientist character in the novel The Drums of Jeopardy called "Boris Karlov". However, the novel was not published until 1920, at least eight years after Karloff had been using the name on stage and in silent films (Warner Oland played "Boris Karlov" in a movie version in 1931). Another possible influence was thought to be a character in the Edgar Rice Burroughs fantasy novel H.R.H. The Rider which features a "Prince Boris of Karlova", but as the novel was not published until 1915, the influence may be backward, that Burroughs saw Karloff in a play and adapted the name for the character. Karloff always claimed he chose the first name "Boris" because it sounded foreign and exotic, and that "Karloff" was a family name. However, his daughter Sara Karloff publicly denied any knowledge of Slavic forebears, "Karloff" or otherwise. One reason for the name change was to prevent embarrassment to his family. Whether or not his brothers (all dignified members of the British foreign service) actually considered young William the "black sheep of the family" for having become an actor, Karloff himself apparently worried they did feel that way. He did not reunite with his family again until 1933, when he went back to England to make The Ghoul, extremely worried that his siblings would disapprove of his new, macabre claim to world fame. Instead, his elder brothers jostled for position around their "baby" brother and happily posed for publicity photographs with him.
Karloff spent years testing the waters in North America while living in smaller towns like Kamloops, BC and Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. In 1912, while appearing in a play in Regina, Saskatchewan, Karloff volunteered to be a rescue worker following a devastating tornado. He also lived in Minot, North Dakota, for a year, performing in an opera house above a hardware store.
Due to the years of difficult manual labor in Canada and the U.S. while trying to establish his acting career, he suffered back problems for the rest of his life. Because of his health, he did not fight in World War I.
Career in Hollywood
Once Karloff arrived in Hollywood, he made dozens of silent films, but work was sporadic, and he often had to take up manual labor, such as digging ditches and driving a cement truck, to pay the bills. His role as Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein (1931) made him a star. A year later, he played another iconic character, Imhotep, in The Mummy.
The five-foot, eleven-inch, brown-eyed Karloff played a wide variety of roles in other genres besides horror. He was memorably gunned down in a bowling alley in the 1932 film Scarface. He played a religious WWI soldier in the 1934 John Ford epic The Lost Patrol. Karloff gave a string of lauded performances in 1930s Universal horror movies, including several with his main rival as heir to the horror throne of Lon Chaney, Sr.: Béla Lugosi, whose refusal to play the monster in Frankenstein made Karloff's subsequent career possible. Karloff played Frankenstein's monster three times; the other films being Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and Son of Frankenstein (1939), which also featured Lugosi as the demented Igor, spelled "Ygor" in this movie. Karloff would revisit the Frankenstein mythos in film several times after leaving the role. The first would be as the villainous Dr. Niemann in House of Frankenstein (1944), where Karloff would be famously contrasted against the then more popularized Glenn Strange, who became the standardized interpretation of the Monster during the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s.
Karloff returned to the role of the "mad scientist" in 1958's Frankenstein 1970, as Baron Victor von Frankenstein II, the grandson of the original inventor. The final twist reveals the crippled Baron has given his own face (i.e., "Karloff's") to the Monster. The actor appeared at a celebrity baseball game as the Monster in 1940, hitting a gag home run and making catcher Buster Keaton fall into an acrobatic dead faint as the Monster stomped into home plate. Norman Z. McLeod filmed a sequence in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty with Karloff in the Monster make-up, but it was deleted. Karloff donned the headpiece and neck bolts for the final time in 1962 for a Halloween episode of the TV series Route 66, but he was playing "Boris Karloff," who, within the story, was playing "the Monster."
While the long, creative partnership between Karloff and Lugosi never led to a close mutual friendship, it produced some of each actor's most revered and enduring productions, beginning with The Black Cat. Follow-ups included Gift of Gab (1934), The Raven (1935), The Invisible Ray (1936), Black Friday (1940), You'll Find Out (also 1940), and The Body Snatcher (1945). During this period he also starred with Basil Rathbone in Tower of London (1939).
From 1945-1946, Karloff appeared in three films for RKO produced by Val Lewton: Isle of the Dead, The Body Snatcher, and Bedlam. In a 1946 interview with Louis Berg, of the Los Angeles Times, Karloff discussed his three-picture deal with RKO, his reasons for leaving Universal Pictures and working with producer Lewton. Karloff left Universal because he thought the Frankenstein franchise had run its course. The latest installment was what he called a "'monster clambake,' with everything thrown in - Frankenstein, Dracula, a hunchback and a 'man-beast' that howled in the night. It was too much. Karloff thought it was ridiculous and said so." Berg continues, "Mr. Karloff has great love and respect for Mr. Lewton as the man who rescued him from the living dead and restored, so to speak, his soul"[4].
During this period, Karloff was also a frequent guest on radio programs, whether it was starring in Arch Oboler's Chicago-based Lights Out productions, most notably the episode "Cat Wife," or spoofing his horror image with Fred Allen or Jack Benny.
An enthusiastic performer, he returned to the Broadway stage in the original production of Arsenic and Old Lace in 1941, in which he played a homicidal gangster enraged to be frequently mistaken for Karloff. Although Frank Capra cast Raymond Massey in the 1944 film, (which was shot in 1941, while Karloff was still appearing in the role on Broadway), Karloff reprised the role on television with Tony Randall and Tom Bosley in a 1962 production on the Hallmark Hall of Fame. Somewhat less successful was his work in the J. B. Priestley play The Linden Tree. He also appeared as Captain Hook in the play Peter Pan with Jean Arthur. He was nominated for a Tony Award for his work opposite Julie Harris in The Lark, by the French playwright Jean Anouilh about Joan of Arc, which was also reprised on Hallmark Hall of Fame.
In later years, Karloff hosted and acted in a number of television series, most notably Thriller, Out of This World, and The Veil, the latter of which was never broadcast and only came to light in the 1990s. In the 1960s, Karloff appeared in several films for American International Pictures, including Comedy of Terrors, The Raven, and The Terror, the latter two directed by Roger Corman, and Die Monster Die (1965 film).
During the 1950s Karloff appeared on British TV in the series Colonel March of Scotland Yard, in which he portrayed John Dickson Carr's fictional detective Colonel March who was known for solving apparently impossible crimes.
As a guest on The Gisele MacKenzie Show, Karloff sings "Those Were the Good Old Days" from Damn Yankees, while Gisele MacKenzie performs the solo, "Give Me the Simple Life". On The Red Skelton Show, Karloff guest starred along with horror actor Vincent Price in a parody of Frankenstein, with Red Skelton as the monster "Klem Kadiddle Monster." In 1966 Karloff also appeared with Robert Vaughn and Stefanie Powers in the spy series The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., in the episode "The Mother Muffin Affair." Karloff performed in drag as the titular Mother Muffin. That same year he also played an Indian Maharajah on the adventure series The Wild Wild West ("The Night of the Golden Cobra"). In 1967, he played an eccentric Spanish professor who thinks he's Don Quixote in a whimsical episode of I Spy ("Mainly on the Plains").
In the mid-1960s, Karloff gained a late-career surge of American popularity when he narrated the made-for-television animated film of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and provided "the sounds of the Grinch" (the song "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" was sung not by Karloff, but by American voice actor Thurl Ravenscroft). Karloff later won a Grammy in the spoken word category after the story was released as a record.
In 1968 he starred in Targets, a movie directed by Peter Bogdanovich about a young man who embarks on a spree of killings carried out with handguns and high powered rifles. The movie starred Karloff as "retired horror film actor" Byron Orlok (a lightly-disguised version of himself) facing an end of life crisis, resolved through a confrontation with the shooter.
Karloff ended his career appearing in a trio of low-budgeted Mexican horror films that were shot shortly before his death; all were released posthumously, with the last, The Incredible Invasion, not seeing release until 1971, two years after Karloff's death.
Spoken Word
Other records Karloff made for the children's market included Three Little Pigs and Other Fairy Stories, Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories and, with Cyril Ritchard and Celeste Holm, Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes[5], and Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark[6].
Personal life
In contrast to the sinister characters he played on screen, Karloff was known in real life as a very kind gentleman who gave generously, especially to children's charities. Beginning in 1940, Karloff dressed up as Santa Claus every Christmas to hand out presents to physically disabled children in a Baltimore hospital.[7]
Karloff was also a charter member of the Screen Actors Guild, and was especially outspoken regarding working conditions on sets (some extremely hazardous) that actors were expected to deal with in the mid-1930s. He married six times. He had one child, a daughter, by his fifth wife.
In 1931, Boris Karloff took out insurance against premature aging from his fright make-up.[8]
Death
Boris Karloff lived out his final years at his cottage, 'Roundabout,' in the Hampshire village of Bramshott. After a long battle with arthritis and emphysema, he contracted pneumonia, succumbing to it in the King Edward VII Hospital, Midhurst, Sussex, England, on February 2, 1969. He was cremated, following a requested low-key service, at Guildford Crematorium, Godalming, Surrey, where he is commemorated by a plaque in the Garden of Remembrance. A memorial service was held at St Paul's, Covent Garden (The Actors' Church), London, where there is also a plaque.[9]
However, even death could not put an immediate halt to Karloff's media career. Four Mexican films for which Karloff shot his scenes in Los Angeles were released over a two-year period after he had died. They were dismissed, by critics and fans alike, as undistinguished efforts. Also, during the run of Thriller, Karloff lent his name and likeness to a comic book for Gold Key Comics based upon the series; after Thriller was cancelled, the comic was retitled Boris Karloff's Tales of Mystery. An illustrated likeness of Karloff continued to introduce each issue of this publication for nearly a decade after the real Karloff died; the comic lasted until the early 1980s.
Legacy
For his contribution to film and television, Boris Karloff was awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 1737 Vine Street (for motion pictures) and 6664 Hollywood Boulevard (for television) (Lindsay, 1975).
In 1998, Karloff (as Frankenstein's Monster and The Mummy) was featured in a series of "Monster Stamps" issued by the U.S. Postal Service.[10]
In the webcomic Schlock Mercenary, the AI responsible for piloting the mercenary warship Touch and Go is initially created with a spooky voice and demeanour attributed to it being given a 'Karloff Skin'.[11]
Kirk Hammett has been seen using ESP guitars customized to bear images of Boris Karloff as The Mummy and as Frankenstien's monster. He owns the rights to both guitars and is not currently allowing ESP to release them.
Filmography
Further information: Boris Karloff filmography
Notes
- ^ Anna and the King: The Real Story of Anna Leonowens. Produced by Kevin Burns. A&E, 1999
- ^ Stephen Jacobs. "Karloff in Saskatchewan". Saskatchewan History, Volume 59, Number 1 (Spring 2007). ISSN 0036-4908 [1]
- ^ Scott A. Nollen. Boris Karloff: A Gentleman's Life. pp. 18. ISSN 1887664238.
- ^ Louis Berg (1946-05-12). "Farewell to Monsters". Los Angeles Times. http://www.whiskeyloosetongue.com/articles/history/karloff.pdf. Retrieved 2009-11-07.
- ^ Deborah Stead (1989-06-11). "Children's Books; Play me a Story: it's tape time". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/11/books/children-s-books-play-me-a-story-it-s-tape-time.html?pagewanted=2. Retrieved 2009-04-19.
- ^ The Hunting of the Snark by Lewis Carroll, read by Boris Karloff, Saland Publishing / IODA, 2008
- ^ "Boris Karloff". Current Biography: 454–56. 1941. ISSN 00113344.
- ^ H2G2
- ^ "Role Changed His Life; Boris Karloff, Master Horror-Film Actor, Dies". The New York Times. February 4, 1969, Tuesday.
- ^ United States Postal Service -Monster Stamps
- ^ http://www.schlockmercenary.com/d/20060109.html
Bibliography
- Lindsay, Cynthia (1975). Dear Boris. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0394475798.
External links
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Boris Karloff |
- Boris Karloff at the Internet Broadway Database
- Boris Karloff at the Internet Movie Database
- Boris Karloff at Find a Grave
- Karloff's birthplace
- Vertlieb's Views: Boris Karloff
- Literature on Boris Karloff
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Mentioned in
- Destination Nightmare (1958 Horror Film)
- David Phillips (World Artist, '90s, 2000s)
- Grampa's Monster Movies (1990 Horror Film)
- Jack the Ripper (1958 Horror Film)
- Colonel March of Scotland Yard (1954 Mystery TV Series)
- 100 Years of Horror (1996 Film, TV & Radio TV Series)
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court: Studio One (TV Episode) (1952 Fantasy TV Episode)
- The Radio Years, Vol. 1 (1993 Album by Spike Jones & His City Slickers)
- Peter Pan [Original 1950 Broadway Cast] (1950 Album by Original 1950 Broadway Cast)
- The Strange Door (1951 Horror Film)
- The Raven (1935 Horror Film)
- The Climax (1944 Horror Film)
- Behind the Mask (1932 Mystery Film)
- Here Comes the Bride: The Honeymooners (TV Episode) (1956 Comedy TV Episode)
