Universal hired to direct Frankenstein.
Though he liked to put on aristocratic
airs, Whale’s beginnings were nothing
if not humble. The son of a blast fur-
nace man in Dudley, England, Whale
first found employment as a cobbler
but made so little money he had to sell
the nails he’d burned out of old soles.
When World War I broke out, Whale
enlisted in the army. In August 1917,
he was taken prisoner on the western
front in Flanders, Belgium, which is
where his future career began. In the
POW camp, he wrote, directed, and
acted in amateur theatrical produc-
tions that eventually led to directing a
virtually unknown Laurence Olivier
in 1928’s Journey’s End, a play about
the war. The success of that produc-
tion led Whale to Broadway, and soon
Hollywood came calling.
By the 1930s, Whale had become
Universal’s number-one director.
Though he thought Frankenstein was
a bit of a joke at first, he threw himself
into the project like the seasoned pro
he was. “I thought it would be amus-
ing to try and make what everybody
knows as a physical impossibility seem
believable,” he said. “Also it offered fine
pictorial chances, had two grand char-
acterizations, and had a subject matter
that might go anywhere.”
To establish this believability,
casting was particularly important—
starting with Colin Clive (who had per-
formed in Journey’s End) as Dr. Victor
Frankenstein. He had “exactly the
right kind of tenacity to go through
with anything, together with the kind
“I thought it would
be amusing to try
and make what
everybody knows as a
physical impossibility
seem believable,”
said Whale.AFTER UNIVERSAL PICTURES’
Dracula (opposite) became an
unexpected hit in 1931 and
made a star of Bela Lugosi
(above), the studio decided
to make Frankenstein. Though
finding the right actor to
play the monster proved a
challenge, Whale finally settled
on Karloff, whom the director’s
partner, David Lewis, had seen
perform as a convict in the
play The Criminal Code (left).
“He was powerful,” Lewis
said, “and you had to have a
powerful monster.”43RO
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