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the actor himself would later call the
“small but showy” role of a convict
named Galloway. (“I had ugly cropped
hair and gruesome makeup,” Karloff
said.) When Whale was struggling to
find his monster, Lewis remembered
the actor. “Have you thought of Boris
Karloff?” he asked.
“Boris who?” Whale replied.
Nevertheless, he contacted the 43-year-
old actor, explained that he was cast-
ing Frankenstein, and arranged to meet
him for lunch. When the director told
Karloff that he wanted him to do a
screen test for the monster, the actor
was taken aback. “I was wearing a new
set of clothes which I’d bought espe-
cially for the interview,” Curtis quotes
Karloff as saying, “and I thought I was
looking rather smart. Monster indeed!”
Karloff got the part, of course, but
Whale’s challenges were hardly over.
For one thing, he wanted to make the
film even scarier than planned. “I
thought it might just as well be as hor-
rible as possible,” he said. To that end,
the film’s creature becomes deranged
because of an abnormal brain—unlike
the book’s monster, whose homicidal
impulses are driven by society’s rejec-
tion. The film also renders him mute,
as opposed to Mary Shelley’s monster,
who is extremely articulate.
Still, Whale wanted the monster
to have a human side, which is one
reason why Lugosi was phased out,
though the actor claimed that he
walked away from the part because
it involved no dialogue. “Lugosi was
basically scary,” Whale told one of the48 LIFE FRANKENSTEIN
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