Tag Archives: Movies

Boris Karloff meets Frankenstein’s Monster 1931.

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Boris Karloff actually was an intelligent man who continued acting almost to the end. Was he ever good looking? You be the judge.
The classic and definitive monster/horror film of all time, director James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) is the screen version of Mary Shelley’s Gothic 1818 nightmarish novel of the same name (Frankenstein; Or, The Modern Prometheus).
The film, with Victorian undertones, was produced by Carl Laemmle Jr. for Universal Pictures, the same year that Dracula (1931), another classic horror film, was produced within the same studio – both films helped to save the beleaguered studio.
[The sequel to this Monster story is found in director James Whale’s even greater film, Bride of Frankenstein (1935).]
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Just who is the Monster in this snap?
The film’s name was derived from the mad, obsessed scientist, Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive), who experimentally creates an artificial life – an Unnamed Monster (Boris Karloff), that ultimately terrorizes the Bavarian countryside after being mistreated by his maker’s assistant Fritz and society as a whole.
The film’s most famous scene is the one in which Frankenstein befriends a young girl named Maria at a lake’s edge, and mistakenly throws her into the water (and drowns her) along with other flowers.
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Mister Messy cuts the cake.
Read more via Frankenstein (1931).

Lucille Ball in the 1930s.

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Lucille Désirée Ball (1911-1989) was an American actress, comedienne, model, film-studio executive, and producer.
She was best known as the star of the self-produced sitcoms I Love Lucy, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour, The Lucy Show, Here’s Lucy, and Life with Lucy.

In 1962, Lucille Ball became the first woman to run a major television studio, Desilu Productions, which produced many popular television series, including The Untouchables, Mission: Impossible and Star Trek.

Lucille Ball did not back away from acting completely, appearing in film and television roles for the rest of her career until her death in April, 1989 from an abdominal aortic dissection at the age of 77.
These photos that capture portraits of this beautiful and talented woman in the 1930s.
Source: 43 Glamorous Photos of Lucille Ball in the 1930s ~ vintage everyday

Photos by the late Dennis Hopper.

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The late Dennis Hopper is most fondly remembered for directing and acting in the iconic Easy Rider, arguably his greatest film in a long and successful Hollywood career.
However, he was also a keen photographer and between 1961 and 1967 he documented all that he saw, taking an estimated 18,000 photographs.
This exhibition pulls together well over 100 of these images, which cover his travels within the United States of America and abroad.
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Dennis Hopper Andy Warhol, Henry Geldzahler, David Hockney and Jeff Goodman, 1963 The Hopper Art Trust © Dennis Hopper, courtesy The Hopper Art Trust
The show opens with several images of the celebrities he met and hung around with across the arts, including David Hockney, Paul Newman and Ike and Tina Turner.
Though there are a few well composed shots in this series, they are probably the weakest images in the exhibition.
This had us worried that this would be a very similar exhibition to the recent David Bailey show, but Hopper demonstrates he has a more diverse portfolio.
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Dennis Hopper Irving Blum and Peggy Moffitt, 1964 The Hopper Art Trust © Dennis Hopper, courtesy The Hopper Art Trust
The photographs act as a historical record offering up Martin Luther King speaking, hippie culture, Hell’s Angels and even space exploration viewed through pictures of television screens.
Where Hopper excels is capturing the everyday, such as a homeless man or children playing in slums, contradicting the often rose-tinted view many people hold of the 1960s.
See more via Dennis Hopper’s Photographs At Royal Academy | Londonist.

Bride of Frankenstein, 1935.

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While many of the profitable Universal monster movies were given sequels, Frankenstein’s first one is of particular interest.
With the success of the original picture, Universal realized it needed the director James Whale to come back and do the follow up, too. Whale, however, thought he’d done as much with the story as he could and was uninterested in working on a sequel.
He finally consented after being given full control of the picture including the script (along with a promise he could direct another film in which he was interested.
The result was one of those rare things, a motion picture sequel which is considered better than the original, similar to The Godfather Part 2.
Karloff repeated his role as the monster, while actress Elsa Lanchester took the part of the creature’s mate created by Frankenstein in order to fulfill a promise to the monster.
Lanchester also played the writer, Mary Shelley, in a flashback at the beginning of the picture.
Despite the bride only appearing for a few minutes at the end of the production, the makeup work of Jack Peirce again provided the world with an indelible image of a literary character.
via The UnMuseum – The Universal Monsters