James Whale
This guy directed 4 of the most iconic films in horror history within 5 years of each other. How is he not a household name? (the answer is complicated)
Greetings! For my first post we have a biography of my current obsession, James Whale. In coming weeks I’ll be writing about each of Whale’s 4 horror films, Frankenstein, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, and Bride of Frankenstein.
Content warning: I will briefly mention suicide. I don’t get into the details of it, but it will come up.
James Whale was born to a working-class English family in 1889. At age 21 he enrolled in the Dudley School of Arts and Crafts as his parents could not afford to send him to a more prestigious 4 year arts institution, and he didn’t want to spend his working life in the industrial factories of his home town. Once World War I broke out he found himself in the army and shortly thereafter a prisoner of war. While imprisoned in Germany, he put on theatrical productions with his fellow soldiers, which, of all the ways to spend WWI, doesn’t seem so bad.
After the war, he became a staff cartoonist for a daily newspaper in Birmingham and began studying theater. Interestingly for horror-nerds, he was a participant in the 1920s London Grand Guignol revival. He doesn’t seem to have had any particular interest in the horror genre, but was a well-rounded artist who participated in many projects.
Whale was also openly gay. He was momentarily engaged to Doris Clare Zinkenstein but they never married, and Whale was “devoutly homosexual” according to biographer James Curtis. He was in a relationship with producer David Lewis for 23 years and, reportedly, never hid his sexuality.
I found mention on IMDb that Whale had an intimate relationship with Boris Karloff, but I’ve found no other evidence that they were anything other than colleagues.
Whale was a true working actor for years after the war, playing bit parts, doing stage management, and directing shows. That is until 1928 when he was asked to direct Journey’s End by R. C. Sherriff. The play was a hit and received universally positive reviews. In 1929, when the play came to America, Whale came with, directing the Broadway debut.
1929 marked the end of the Silent Film era and was an opportune time to be making waves with a global stage hit, as studios were looking to hire directors with experience in theater to work on talking pictures. Whale was hired on to be a "dialogue director" on The Love Doctor (1929) and Hell's Angels (1930) for Paramount Pictures. It was at this time that he met his partner, David Lewis, who worked for M-G-M, Paramount, and Warner Brothers throughout his career.
Whale was hired to direct the feature film adaptation of Journeys End in 1930. The film starred Colin Clive, who would go on to star in both of Whale’s Frankenstein films. Whale enjoyed working with a stable of actors and a crew that he knew, and there is a lot of crossover in cast and crew among the movies where he had the agency to choose who worked on the picture.
Universal Studios hired Whale and he directed Waterloo Bridge for the studio. Eager to direct something other than a war picture, and with support from Universal to do whatever he wanted with whatever intellectual property Universal owned, Whale took on his first horror script.
By the 1930s, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was in the public domain. However, Universal Studios had the rights to the 1927 play adaptation by Peggy Webling. This was on trend at the time, and Dracula (1931) was similarly adapted from a stage version of the novel.
Whale admitted that he wasn’t thrilled by the Frankenstein project, but it was the most interesting project he could find. It seems that Whale generally had the air of a stuffy Brit. However, he also had a fun-loving side that comes out in most of his movies.
Frankenstein was, of course, a hit, and Whale became a darling of the studio. He went on to direct The Old Dark House (1932), which was not nearly as successful as Frankenstein and quickly disappeared. The Old Dark House allowed Whale to work with some of the players he’d worked with in England including Charles Laughton and his friend Ernest Thesiger. He directed some non-horror things before doing The Invisible Man (1933) which The New York Times placed it in their list of the ten best films of the year.
In 1935 Whale reluctantly directed the sequel to Frankenstein. Despite his attitude about the film, Bride of Frankenstein is largely considered Whale’s opus.
Whale stopped directing horror films. His 1937 film The Road Back was heavily edited after a consul for Nazi German claimed it portrayed an "untrue and distorted picture of the German people" and put pressure on the studio to cancel the film. The initial edit of The Road Back received positive reviews, but the head of the studio demanded a re-edit, and the final film was a flop. Whale was furious, and the head of the studio wanted Whale off the payroll. He was relegated to directing B-movies until his contract expired. He bounced between studios, directing smaller pictures with less creative control than ever. Whale referred to his last four projects for Universal as his “punishment pictures”.
Upon his retirement from film in 1942, he took up painting and directed stage works through the early 1950s. Through the second world war he did volunteerism, including staging small plays for servicemen in California. David Lewis was in the air force, and Whale wrote him daily.
In 1953, he split from David Lewis (although the two remained friends, and Lewis was the source for James Curtis’ 1982 biography of Whale). According to David Lewis, Whale was depressed, but it was the ‘50s, so there wasn’t anything like our contemporary conversations about mental health. Following their breakup, Whale allowed his acquaintance and partner Pierre Foegel to move into his house. He also installed an in-ground pool and hosted pool parties for younger men.
In 1956 Whale had a stroke and was in declining health. In 1957, he died by suicide in Hollywood at age 67. His obituaries wrongly reported that he was 60, as he was insecure about his age and long lied about his birth year.
Whale's ashes are interred in the Columbarium of Memory at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. When David Lewis died in 1987, the executer of his will and Whale biographer James Curtis had his ashes interred in a niche across from Whale's. Since his death, there have been a couple of biographies on Whale and a 1998 feature film about an aging James Whale (played by Sir Ian McKellen).
James Whale’s horror legacy is astounding. He directed 3 of the most iconic Universal horror films in just 5 years, and blended genre and style in unique ways.
I will be writing on each of Whale's 4 horror films in the coming weeks. I’ve never seen either Frankenstein film, but I am eager to dip my toe, and I encourage everybody to watch The Old Dark House and The Invisible Man.
Thank you for reading!
The Films (via justwatch):
Sources:
Curtis, J. (1982). James Whale. Scarecrow Press.
Selway, J. (2021). The making of horror movies : Key figures who established the genre. Pen & Sword Books Limited.
Wikipedia contributors. (2023, November 13). David Lewis (producer). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 16:20, March 1, 2024, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=David_Lewis_(producer)&oldid=1184940459
Wikipedia contributors. (2024, February 28). James Whale. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 05:06, February 28, 2024, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=James_Whale&oldid=1210738899