film’s writers, adding that “the mon-
ster... was also scared.”
Then there was the all-important
question of the monster’s appearance.
In Mary Shelley’s novel, the crea-
ture is described as “Beautiful! Great
God! His yellow skin scarcely cov-
ered the work of muscles and arter-
ies beneath; his hair was of a lustrous
black and flowing; his teeth of a pearly
whiteness; but these luxuriances only
formed a more horrid contrast with his
watery eyes, that seemed almost of the
same color as the dun white sockets
in which they were set, his shriveled
complexion, and straight black lips.”
Whale and Universal’s head makeup
artist, Jack Pierce, started from scratch,
aiming to make the monster simulta-
neously frightening and pitiful. For
inspiration, Pierce spent three months
studying “anatomy, surgery, medicine,
criminal history, criminology, ancient
and modern burial customs, and elec-
trodynamics,” he said. In the process,
he learned that a surgeon can remove
a brain from a skull in six ways. “I fig-
ured that Frankenstein, who was a
scientist but no practicing surgeon,
would take the simplest surgical way,”
he added. “He would cut the top of the
“Have you thought
of Boris Karloff ?”
Whale’s partner
asked the director,
who responded:
“Boris who?”COLIN CLIVE AS DR. VICTOR
Frankenstein and Dwight Frye
as his assistant, Fritz, prepare
to shock their patient into
life in Frankenstein’s pivotal
scene. The set was filled with
Tesla coils, spare parts, and
assorted junk that flashed with
sparks supposedly generated
by lightning.50 LIFE FRANKENSTEIN
MARCWANAMAKER/BISON^ ARCHIVES^