KARLOFF, Boris

Nationality: British. Born: William Henry Pratt in London, England, 23 November 1887. Education: Attended Merchant Taylors' School, London, Uppingham School, 1903–06; King's College, London, 1906–09. Family: Married 1) the dancer Helene Vivian Soule, 1924 (divorced 1928); 2) Dorothy Stine, 1930 (divorced 1945), one daughter; 3) Evelyn Helmore, 1946. Career: 1909—emigrated to Canada, and joined the Ray Brandon Players in western Canada; during the next ten years played with other touring companies, including the Henry St. Clair Players and Billie Bennett's road company; 1919—billed film debut in His Majesty, the American; 1930—in stage version of The Criminal Code, and in film version the following year; 1931—acclaim for his role as the monster in Frankenstein; Universal contract; 1941—stage success in Arsenic and Old Lace, and later in The Shop at Sly Corner, 1949, as Captain Hook in Peter Pan, 1950, and in The Lark, 1955; 1949—host and star in TV series Starring Boris Karloff; 1954–55 panelist on TV series Down You Go; 1960–62—host and occasional star of TV series Thriller. Died: 2 February 1969.

Films as Actor:

1916

The Dumb Girl of Portici (Ratinoff) (as extra)

1919

The Masked Raider (Kennedy); The Lightning Raider (Seitz); His Majesty, the American (Henabery) (bit role); The Prince and Betty (Thornby) (bit role); The Deadlier Sex


(Thornby) (as Jules Borney); The Courage of Marge O'Doone (Smith) (as Tavish)

1920

The Last of the Mohicans (Tourneur) (as Huron Indian)

1921

Without Benefit of Clergy (Young) (as Ahmed Khan); The Hope Diamond Mystery (The Romance of the Hope Diamond) (Payton) (as Priest of Kama-Sita/Dakar); Cheated Hearts (Henley) (as Nei Hamid); The Cave Girl (Franz) (as Baptiste)

1922

The Man from Downing Street (The Jade Elephants) (José) (as Dell Monckton/Maharajah Jehan Dharwar); The Infidel (Young) (as Nabob); The Altar Stairs (Hillyer) (as Hugo); Omar the Tentmaker (Young) (as Holy Imam Mowaffak); The Woman Conquers (Forman) (as Raoul Maris)

1923

The Gentleman from America (Sedgwick); The Prisoner (Conway) (as Prince Kapolski)

1924

Riders of the Plains (Jaccard); The Hellion (Bruce Marshall) (as outlaw); Dynamite Dan (Bruce Marshall) (as Tony Garcia)

1925

Perils of the Wind (Francis Ford); Parisian Nights (Santell) (as Pierre); Forbidden Cargo (Dangerous Cargo) (Buckingham) (as Pietro Castillano); The Prairie Wife (Ballin) (as Diego); Lady Robin Hood (Ince) (as Cabraza); Never the Twain Shall Meet (Tourneur) (as South Sea villain)

1926

The Greater Glory (Rehfeld) (as scissors grinder); Her Honor, the Governor (The Second Mrs. Fenway) (Withey) (as Snipe Collins); The Bells (Young) (as mesmerist); The Eagle of the Sea (Lloyd) (as pirate); Old Ironsides (Sons of the Sea) (Cruze) (as Saracen pirate); Flames (Moomaw) (as Blackie Blanchette); The Golden Web (Lang) (as Dave Sinclair); Flaming Fury (Hogan) (as Gaspard); The Man in the Saddle (Clifford Smith) (bit role); The Nickel Hopper (Yates) (as lecher); Valencia (The Love Song) (Buchowetzki) (bit role)

1927

Tarzan and the Golden Lion (McGowan) (as Owaza); Let It Rain (Cline) (as crook); The Middlin' Stranger (Thorpe) (as Al Meggs); The Princess from Hoboken (Dale) (as Pavel); The Phantom Buster (Bertram) (as Mexican smuggler); Soft Cushions (Cline) (as Chief Conspirator); Two Arabian Knights (Milestone) (as Purser); The Love Mart (Fitzmaurice) (as Fleming)

1928

Vanishing Rider (Taylor); Vultures of the Sea (Thorpe); The Little Wild Girl (Mattison) (as Maurice Kent)

1929

Burning the Wind (MacRae and Blache) (as Pug Doran); The Fatal Warning (Thorpe) (as Mullins); The Devil's Chaplain (Worne) (as Boris); The Phantom of the North (Webb) (as Jules Gregg); Anne against the World (Worne); Two Sisters (Cummings) (as Cecil); Behind That Curtain (Cummings) (as Soudanese servant); The Unholy Night (The Green Ghost) (Barrymore) (as Abdoul)

1930

The Bad One (Fitzmaurice) (as prison guard); The Sea Bat (Ruggles) (as Corsican); The Utah Kid (Thorpe) (as Baxter); Mother's Cry (Henley) (as murder victim)

1931

King of the Wild (Thorpe) (as Mustapha); The Criminal Code (Hawks) (as Ned Galloway); Cracked Nuts (Cline) (as revolutionary); Young Donovan's Kid (Donovan's Kid) (Niblo) (as Cokey Joe); The Public Defender (Ruben) (as Professor); Smart Money (Green) (as Sport Williams); I Like Your Nerve (McGann) (as Luigi); Pardon Us (Parrott) (as convict); Five Star Final (LeRoy) (as T. Vernon Isopod);The Mad Genius (Curtiz) (as father); Dirigible (Capra) (bit role); The Last Parade (Kenton) (bit role); The Guilty Generation (Lee) (as Ton Ricca); Graft (Cabanne) (as Joe Terry); The Yellow Ticket (The Yellow Passport) (Walsh) (as drunken Czarist aide); Tonight or Never (LeRoy) (as waiter); Frankenstein (Whale) (as the Monster); Business and Pleasure (Butler) (as Sheik)

1932

Behind the Mask (Dillon) (as Jim Henderson); Alias the Doctor (Curtiz) (as Autopsy Surgeon); Scarface (Hawks) (as Gaffney); The Cohens and Kellys in Hollywood (Dillon) (as himself); The Miracle Man (McLeod) (as Nikko); Night World (Henley) (as Happy MacDonald); The Old Dark House (Whale) (as Morgan); The Mummy (Freund) (as Im-Ho-Tep/Ardath Bey); The Mask of Fu Manchu (Brabin) (title role)

1933

The Ghoul (Hunter) (as Professor Morlant)

1934

The Lost Patrol (John Ford) (as Sanders); The House of Rothschild (Werker) (as Count Ledrantz); Screen Snapshots, Number Eleven (as himself); The Black Cat (The House of Doom; The Vanishing Body) (Ulmer) (as Hjalmar Poelzig); Gift of Gab (Freund) (as himself)

1935

Bride of Frankenstein (Whale) (as the Monster); The Raven (Friedlander) (as Edmond Bateman); The Black Room (Neill) (as Baron Gregor de Berghman/Anton de Berghman)

1936

The Invisible Ray (Hillyer) (as Dr. Janos Rukh); The Walking Dead (Curtiz) (as John Ellman); The Man Who Lived Again (The Man Who Changed His Mind; Dr. Maniac; The Brainsnatcher) (Stevenson) (as Dr. Laurience); Juggernaut (The Demon Doctor) (Henry Edwards) (as Dr. Sartorius); Charlie Chan at the Opera (Humberstone) (as Gravell)

1937

Night Key (Corrigan) (as Dave Mallory); West of Shanghai (The War Lord) (Farrow) (as General Wu Yen Fang)

1938

The Invisible Menace (Without Warning) (Farrow) (as Jevries); Mr. Wong, Detective (Nigh) (title role)

1939

Son of Frankenstein (Lee) (as the Monster); The Mystery of Mr. Wong (Nigh) (title role); Mr. Wong in Chinatown (Nigh) (title role); The Man They Could Not Hang (Grinde) (as Dr. Henryk Savaard); Tower of London (Rowland V. Lee) (as Mord)

1940

Devil's Island (Clemens) (as Dr. Charles Gaudet); The Fatal Hour (Mr. Wong at Headquarters) (Nigh) (as Mr. Wong); British Intelligence (Enemy Agent) (Morse) (as Franz Strendler); Black Friday (Lubin) (as Dr. Ernest Sovac); The Man with Nine Lives (Behind the Door) (Grinde) (as Dr. Leon Kravaal); Doomed to Die (The Mystery of Wentworth Castle) (Nigh) (as James Lee Wong); Before I Hang (Grinde) (as Dr. John Garth); The Ape (Nigh) (as Dr. Bernard Adrian); You'll Find Out (Butler) (as Judge Mainwaring)

1941

The Devil Commands (Dmytryk) (as Dr. Julian Blair); Information Please Number Eight (as guest panelist); Information Please Number Twelve (as guest panelist)

1942

The Boogie Man Will Get You (Landers) (as Professor Nathaniel Billings)

1944

The Climax (Waggner) (as Dr. Hohner); House of Frankenstein (Kenton) (as Dr. Gustav Niemann)

1945

The Body Snatcher (Wise) (as John Gray); Isle of the Dead (Robson) (as General Nikolas Pherides)

1946

Bedlam (Robson) (as Master George Sims)

1947

Lured (Personal Column) (Sirk) (as Charles Van Druten); The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (McLeod) (as Dr. Hollingshead); Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome (Dick Tracy's Amazing Adventure) (Rawlins) (as Gruesome); Unconquered (Cecil B. DeMille) (as Seneca Chief Guyasura)

1948

Tap Roots (George Marshall) (as Tishomingo)

1949

Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (Barton) (as Swami Tapur)

1951

The Strange Door (Pevney) (as Voltan); The Emperor's Nightingale (Cisaruv Slavik) (Makovec) (as narrator)

1952

The Black Castle (Juran) (as Dr. Meissen)

1953

Colonel March Investigates (Colonel March of Scotland Yard) (Endfield) (title role); The Hindu (Sabaka) (Ferrin) (as General Pollegar); Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Lamont) (as Dr. Henry Jekyll); The Monster of the Island (Il mostro dell'isola) (Montero and Vecchietti) (as smuggler)

1957

The Juggler of Our Lady (Kousel) (as narrator); Silent Death (Voodoo Island) (Le Borg) (as Phillip Knight)

1958

Frankenstein (Koch) (as Baron Victor von Frankenstein); The Haunted Strangler (Grip of the Strangler) (Day) (as James Rankin/Dr. Tenant)

1963

Corridors of Blood (The Doctor of Seven Dials) (Day) (as Dr. Thomas Bolton); The Raven (Corman) (as Dr. Scarabus)

1964

The Comedy of Terrors (Jacques Tourneur) (as Amos Hinchley); Black Sabbath (I tre volti della paura) (Bava) (as Gorca); Bikini Beach (Asher) (as art dealer)

1965

Die, Monster, Die! (Monster of Terror; The House at the End of the World) (Haller) (as Nahum Whitley)

1966

The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (Weis) (as Hiram Stokeley); The Daydreamer (Bass) (as voice)

1967

Blind Man's Bluff (Cauldron of Blood; The Shrinking Corpse) (Edward Mann) (as Charles Badulescu); The Venetian Affair (Jerry Thorpe) (as Dr. Pierre Vaugiroud); Mondo balordo (Montero) (as narrator); Mad Monster Party (Bass) (as Karloff puppet); The Sorcerers (Reeves) (as Professor Monserrat)

1968

Targets (Bogdanovich) (as Baron Orlok)

1970

The Crimson Cult (Curse of the Crimson Affair) (Sewell) (as Professor Marshe); Isle of the Snake People (Ibañez and Hill) (as Dr. Carl Van Boulder)

1971

The Incredible Invasion (Sinister Invasion) (Ibañez and Hill) (as scientist); The Fear Chamber (Ibañez and Hill) (as scientist)

1972

House of Evil (Ibañez and Hill) (as menace)

Publications

By KARLOFF: articles—

"My Life as a Monster," in Films and Filming (London), November 1957.

"Memories of a Monster," in Saturday Evening Post (New York), 3 November 1962.

On KARLOFF: books—

Clarens, Carlos, An Illustrated History of the Horror Film, New York, 1968.

Butler, Ivan, Horror in the Cinema, rev. ed., New York, 1970.

Aylesworth, Thomas, Monsters from the Movies, Philadelphia, 1972.

Underwood, Peter, Karloff: The Life of Boris Karloff, New York, 1972.

Gifford, Denis, Karloff: The Man, The Monster, The Movies, New York, 1973.

Glut, Donald, The Frankenstein Legend: A Tribute to Mary Shelley and Boris Karloff, Metuchen, New Jersey, 1973.

Bojarski, Richard, and Kenneth Beale, The Films of Boris Karloff, Secaucus, New Jersey, 1974.

Everson, William, Classics of the Horror Film, Secaucus, New Jersey, 1974.

Frank, Alan, Horror Movies, London, 1974.

Jensen, Paul, Boris Karloff and His Films, New York, 1974.

Lindsay, Cynthia, Dear Boris: The Life of William Henry Pratt a.k.a. Boris Karloff, New York, 1978.

Mank, Gregory William, Karloff and Lugosi: The Story of a Haunting Collaboration, Jefferson, North Carolina, 1990.

Nollen, Scott Allen, Boris Karloff: A Critical Account of His Screen, Stage, Radio, Television, and Recording Work, Jefferson, North Carolina, 1991.

Buehrer, Beverley Bare, Boris Karloff: A Bio-Bibliography, Westport, Connecticut, 1993.

McCarty, John, Movie Psychos and Madmen, New York, 1993.

McCarty, John, The Fearmakers, New York, 1994.

On KARLOFF: articles—

Gordon, A., "Boris Karloff," in Cinema (Beverly Hills), no. 1, 1969.

Roman, Robert C., "Boris Karloff," in Films in Review (New York), August-September 1969.

Gerard, Lillian, "Boris Karloff: The Man behind the Myth," in Film Comment (New York), Spring 1970.

Ecran (Paris), May 1978.

Starburst, no. 57, 1983.

American Classic Screen (Shawnee Mission, Kansas), March-April 1983.

Prédal, René, "L'Usine aux maléfices," in Avant-Scène du Cinéma (Paris), March 1985.

Leifert, Don, "The Horrors of Columbia: Karloff and Cohn," in Filmfax (Evanston), April-May 1991.

Henderson, Jan Alan, "Tales of Mystery and Imagination," in Filmfax (Evanston), October-November 1991.

Seymour, Blackie, "Son of Frankenstein, part IV: Karloff's Birthday Party," in Classic Images (Muscatine), April 1993.

Vivona, Stephen T., "The Films of Val Lewton & Boris Karloff," in Filmfax (Evanston), April-May 1994.

Edwards, C., "Between the Bolts: A 'Found' Interview with Boris Karloff," in Monsterscene (Lombard), March 1995.

Senn, B., "The Monster, Bride, and Son," in Monsterscene (Lombard), March 1995.

Leifert, Don, "Marian Marsh," in Filmfax (Evanston), January-February 1996.

Katchmer, G., "Remembering the Great Silents," in Classic Images (Muscatine), April 1996.

Norman, Barry, in Radio Times (London), 8 June 1996.

Holt, W.G., "'The Karloff-Lugosi Collection'," in Filmfax (Evanston), June/July 1997.

Stein, E., "The Fright Stuff," in Village Voice (New York), 14 October 1997.

In one sense, Boris Karloff could be judged a failure. A lifetime of roles intended to create horror and loathing only succeeded in making him one of the most loved of actors. Audiences who shuddered pleasurably at his ghouls saw straight through them, to the gentle, dignified man beneath. Karloff ended up a white-haired, grandfatherly figure telling spooky tales to delight the children, any suggestion of menace belied by the kindliness in his eyes. That same sympathy animated the monsters he created—grave, vulnerable beings, victims of the "normal" world around them.

Unlike Lorre or Lugosi, serious actors who chafed at the narrow range into which Hollywood forced them, Karloff never strongly objected to being typecast in horror movies. In part, his reaction was practical: the relief of a 45-year-old actor, with ten years of ram-shackle stock companies and ten more of movie bit-parts behind him, suddenly finding fame and security in his 65th film, the 1931 James Whale version of Frankenstein. But he was also doing what he could do best. To the end of his days, he called the Frankenstein Monster the best friend any actor could have had.

Tall, gaunt, lantern-jawed, Karloff moved with a somnolent slowness that aptly evoked the inexorable, slow-motion menace of a bad dream. Deep-set eyes, overhanging brows, and a voice that seemed to echo from cobwebby vaults enhanced the intensity of his presence. Karloff never needed to gesticulate or rave; the quietly understated malevolence of his acting gained the more by contrast with the B movie hamming that often surrounded him.

Karloff began acting in silent films, most notably The Bells, where he played an evil mesmerist opposite hero Lionel Barrymore. But it was Frankenstein that made him a star—though a couple of good roles just before, in Hawks's The Criminal Code and LeRoy's Five Star Final (as the ineffably named phony clergyman, T. Vernon Isopod), helped bring him to James Whale's attention when the original star of Frankenstein, Bela Lugosi, opted out of the role of the monster because he did not want to disguise his features under pounds of makeup and his distinctive voice with inarticulate grunts. Thus, Karloff got his most famous role by default. Nevertheless, the inarticulate pathos of Karloff's portrayal of the monster, innocent and bewildered, staggering beneath the burden of emotions it can neither express nor control, lent the film dignity and depth, creating a lasting classic. Universal billed him in the credits only as "Karloff"; for future films, his first name was reinstated, but for filmgoers everywhere, young and old, generation after generation, no other name but "Karloff" was ever needed.

Karloff played the monster in two sequels for Universal (and once on television, in an episode of the hit television series Route 66). Without his presence, further sequels collapsed into routine programmers. (Ironically, Bela Lugosi finally did overcome his antipathy for the role of the monster and played it himself—long after Karloff had discarded it to go on to bigger things—in Universal's Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman, the fourth entry in the studio's long-running series.) Both Frankenstein sequels in which Karloff reprised his role, Bride of Frankenstein and Son of Frankenstein, were made during the 1930s, the period of Universal's great horror cycle, and Karloff's best decade. As The Mummy, a virtual remake of Universal's smash hit Dracula, set in Egypt, he slowed his movements yet further into an ancient, hieratic solemnity, eyes burning fiercely in a face of weathered sandstone. Death-in-life roles suited his cadaverous deliberation: in Edgar G. Ulmer's broodingly atmospheric The Black Cat, pacing gravely through galleries of women's corpses preserved behind glass; a resurrected convict in Curtiz's The Walking Dead; and, chuckling darkly, the clubfooted executioner Mord, henchman to Rathbone's Richard III in Tower of London.

Within the narrow range of his work, Karloff varied each role through subtle individual touches. Often, he undercut them with ironic humor: lumbering and grunting as the drunkenly lecherous butler of The Old Dark House; silkily urbane in The Mask of Fu Manchu (a rendition later reworked for virtue in the Mr. Wong series); ultimately over the top as a religious fanatic driven to mania by the sunbaked desert as a member of The Lost Patrol. Val Lewton provided Karloff with three quality assignments in the 1940s: The Body Snatcher, Isle of the Dead, and the elegantly Hogarthian Bedlam. Lewton's belief that horror can best be elicited through understatement and suggestion matched Karloff's talents perfectly, and he responded with some of his most stylishly controlled playing, especially in The Body Snatcher, as murderous cabman and protege of Burke and Hare, John Gray, arguably his greatest performance outside the original Frankenstein. The role is easily one of the subtlest, and scariest, dual-personality villains in the history of screen horror.

He was also adept at comedy, originating the role of the murderous Karloff lookalike Jonathan Brewster in the classic stage comedy Arsenic and Old Lace, where he sent up his own image as the ultimate bogeyman; Raymond Massey took the role in the Frank Capra film version because Karloff was still playing it on tour at the time.

Karloff again enjoyed sending up his image in Roger Corman's Edgar Allan Poe spoof, The Raven, and The Comedy of Terrors, where he appeared with fellow screen bad guys Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone, and Vincent Price. One of Karloff's best roles came almost at the last, more or less playing himself in Bogdanovich's directorial debut, Targets. As an avowed "antique, an anachronism" in an age of impersonal slaughter, Karloff manifested a touching dignity, and the film provided an affectionate farewell tribute—although, crippled by arthritis to the point of virtual immobility, he tread the boards through five more shockers the same year, one in England, the others in Mexico. Like one of the undead characters he often played, he arose from the grave four years after his death in his last released film, Blind Man's Bluff, a feature he shot in Spain in 1967.

—Philip Kemp, updated by John McCarty

Boris Karloff

British actor Boris Karloff (1887–1969) created a cinematic icon when he played the role of the monster in the 1931 film Frankenstein.

The ghoulish makeup he wore and the lurching walk he adopted in the film have become conventions, even cliches, of horror films. And beyond the individual techniques Karloff used when playing the role of the monster, he created a feeling of sympathy for the character, a technique that has since become a more general trait of successful horror films, whose monsters often gain intensity by fascinating audiences as well as repelling them. Karloff became a star with Frankenstein, which he made when he was already well into middle age. His life up to that point had been colorful, and attracted a host of biographers in spite of his reticence about his personal affairs. After Frankenstein, Karloff made many other films, some of them quite significant. He enjoyed a successful run as a stage actor and became a familiar figure on radio and then television. It was Frankenstein, however, that put his name in lights and led to his being billed, at the height of his fame, simply as "Karloff." That name recognition was something only a few other movie stars have achieved.

Groomed for Government Career

The youngest of nine children, Karloff was born William Henry Pratt on November 23, 1887, in Camberwell, a suburb of London, England. His father, Edward Pratt, had worked for much of his life in India, as a salt tax administrator for the British colonial government. The elder Pratt married three times; his third wife, Eliza, was Karloff's mother. Her family had lived in India as well, and some have speculated, as a way of explaining Karloff's unusually dark complexion, that she may have been partly of Indian ancestry. Edward Pratt left the family when Karloff was a year old, and he was raised largely by his stepsister Emma. Several of his older brothers entered the British civil service, and some of them followed their father's example and took posts in India. It was assumed that young Karloff would do the same.

Karloff's interests at school ran more to sports and music than to studying, however. His stage debut came in 1896 in a school play, a version of Cinderella. He loved to play and watch cricket, an enthusiasm he held for his entire life. Moving on from Enfield Grammar School to Merchant Taylor's School and the Uppingham School in London, Karloff kept on top of his studies and won admission to King's College at the University of London in 1907.

There he took courses that would lead to a place in Britain's diplomatic corps, but he spent more time attending plays in London. He dreamed of a theatrical career himself, but his family ridiculed the idea. In 1909 Karloff found himself frustrated with university studies. He was receiving poor grades and was supremely restless. Deciding to leave Britain, he flipped a coin to decide whether he would go to Canada or Australia. Canada won, and after coming ashore in Montreal in May of 1909, Karloff soon found himself rounding up horses in a field at 4:30 in the morning, having been hired as a farmhand. Karloff soon made his way to western Canada, moving from Banff, Alberta, to Vancouver, British Columbia, paying his way with such jobs as racetrack digger, streetcar track builder, and coal shoveler.

A place on a survey crew with the British Columbia Electric Company brought both a salary raise and an improvement in working conditions for Karloff, but he still nurtured hopes of becoming an actor. Hearing of a job with a troupe called the Jean Russell Players, he took a train to Kamloops, British Columbia, to audition. He devised the stage name Boris Karloff, claiming that Karloff was a name from his mother's family background, and he was quoted as saying in Scott Allen Nollen's book Boris Karloff that he pulled the name Boris "from out of the cold, Canadian air." Karloff claimed to have had experience on stage in England, and was hired. The troupe's managers quickly saw through the ruse and cut his salary in half, but Karloff barnstormed around Canada with the troupe for two years, until a Saskatchewan tornado brought the Jean Russell Players to an abrupt end.

Entered United States

Karloff signed on with another troupe, the St. Clair Players. This job was hardly more lucrative; Karloff recalled having to cook his breakfast by frying an egg on an electric iron propped upside down between a Gideon Bible and a bedpost. But the St. Clair Players did operate on both sides of the border; Karloff entered the United States for the first time via North Dakota in October of 1913, and traveled through the upper Midwest. He left and rejoined the St. Clair group as he found work with other theatrical stock companies, and eked out a living while traveling around the country. When World War I broke out, Karloff volunteered to join the British army but was rejected because of a heart murmur. The St. Clair Players sputtered to a halt for good in 1917, but by that time they had reached Los Angeles, California, landing Karloff at the doorstep of the growing film industry.

Touring with several theater companies in southern California, Karloff began appearing as an extra in films. His first film credit may have been for His Majesty, the American, starring Douglas Fairbanks, in 1919; he appeared in several dozen films during the silent era, and his memory of the very earliest ones was hazy. By the early 1920s he was finding consistent film work, often playing Native Americans, Mexicans, or Asian characters as a result of his exotic looks—at the time, Hollywood films were virtually an all-white preserve. Even after several years of working in the lower levels of the industry, Karloff saw few prospects of a breakthrough, and took a job in 1923 unloading giant putty casks from a building materials truck. He had married musician Montana Laurena Williams in 1920, after a first marriage, to actress Olive de Wilton, ended in divorce sometime after 1912. Karloff married dancer Helene Vivian Soulee in 1924, Los Angeles librarian Dorothy Stine in 1930, and English-born Evelyn Hope Helmore in 1946.

After meeting with silent film horror star Lon Chaney Sr. in the late 1920s, Karloff received some much-needed encouragement. Chaney (as quoted by Nollen) told him that "the secret of success in Hollywood lies in being different from anyone else. Find something no one else can or will do—and they'll begin to take notice of you. Hollywood is full of competent actors. What the screen needs is individuality!" Karloff took the advice to heart, stepping into negative roles that took advantage of his gaunt, rather unnerving appearance. His career took a step up with a role in Scarface under director Howard Hawks in 1931, and later that year he was sitting in a Universal Studios lunchroom when English-born director James Whale, in the process of casting Frankenstein, noticed him and envisioned him in the role of the monster.

Karloff got the part after Bela Lugosi turned it down to pursue another project, and he became a major star almost overnight. The film was a tremendous box office success, touched off a vogue for horror films that lasted through much of the 1930s, and was soon hailed as a classic. Three-quarters of a century later the film still held up well, largely thanks to the strongly human qualities of Karloff's performance. "There are more moments of quiet power (most of them involving the strikingly effective Boris Karloff as the monster who simply wants to be loved) than you'll find in a fistful of big-budget horror films," noted Dan Jardine in the All Movie Guide. Karloff wore several pounds of makeup and donned heavy asphalt shoes that gave the monster his characteristic gait.

Made Over $3,000 a Week

Karloff signed a contract with Universal Studios that gave him a salary of $750 a week in 1932. After several more hits, including The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932) and The Black Cat (1934, with Lugosi), his weekly salary had risen to $3,750. He earned his keep, making nine films during 1932 alone. His films varied in quality, but his elegant variations on the persona he had established with Frankenstein made them consistently compelling. Karloff and his wife Dorothy moved out of what they described as a shack in Laurel Canyon into a series of increasingly elegant lodgings, culminating in a mansion in the Coldwater Canyon area, where Karloff could indulge his passion for gardening. He also amassed a collection of unusual pets that included a tortoise, a parrot, egg-laying chickens, a cow named Elsie, a four-hundred-pound pig, and several dogs, two of which were named Angus Dei and Silly Bitch. Even as he personally experienced tremendous success, Karloff emerged as an advocate for the welfare of actors who labored in the trenches, as he had for so long. In 1933 he became a co-founder of the Screen Actors Guild union.

Often bemused by the Frankenstein phenomenon, Karloff also had a certain affection for the monster and was reluctant to make sequels that would degrade the impact of the original film. He made one, Bride of Frankenstein, in 1935, and another, Son of Frankenstein, in 1938, in the year his only child, a daughter Sara, was born. In 1940 he returned to the stage, starring in the original Broadway production of the comic horror play Arsenic and Old Lace, and going on tour with the company as it toured 66 cities during World War II. During the war years Karloff also edited two best-selling collections of horror and suspense stories, Tales of Terror and And the Darkness Falls.

Karloff made numerous films after the war, but he became increasingly known for his work on radio and television. He hosted the radio program Starring Boris Karloff beginning in 1949, and the show successfully made the transition to television in the early 1950s. Two 1950 projects, the radio show Boris Karloff's Treasure Chest and the Broadway show Peter Pan, demonstrated Karloff's appeal to children and opened up a successful career avenue for him in his later years. Karloff and his wife Evelyn moved to New York in 1951, eventually taking up residence in the Dakota apartment building.

Continuing to find joy and energy in performing, as he had since his youth, Karloff remained busy as an actor until his last days. Broadening his repertoire well beyond horror, he appeared on Broadway in The Lark in 1955 and was nominated for an Antoinette Perry (Tony) Award. Beginning the following year and continuing until 1968, Karloff recorded a daily radio program, Tales from the Reader's Digest. In 1962 he earned a Grammy nomination in the children's recordings category for his LP Rudyard Kipling's Other Just So Stories: The Cat Who Walked by Himself, and in 1966 Karloff narrated an animated television special, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. A broadcast of the program became an annual tradition, and Karloff became almost as familiar to baby-boomers for that role as he was for Frankenstein.

Karloff never took American citizenship. He lived with his wife in London during his last years, returning to the United States to work on projects in concentrated bursts. Among the most interesting products of his later years was the 1967 film Targets, directed by Peter Bogdanovich and starring Karloff as an aging horror film star who wants to retire because he finds the real world more horrifying than anything in the movies. Karloff continued to work on new films despite poor health; his last film was Chamber of Fear (1968), made in Mexico. He died in a hospital in Midhurst, Sussex, England, on February 2, 1969.

Books

Buehrer, Beverly Bare, Boris Karloff: A Bio-Bibliography, Green-wood, 1993.

International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, Vol. 3: Actors and Actresses, 4th ed., St James, 2000.

Jensen, Paul M., Boris Karloff and His Films, Barnes, 1974.

Nollen, Scott Allen, Boris Karloff, McFarland, 1991.

Underwood, Peter, Karloff: The Life of Boris Karloff, Drake, 1972.

Periodicals

New York Times, February 3, 2006.

Online

"Frankenstein," All Movie Guide, http://www.allmovie.com (February 19, 2006).

Karloff, Boris (1887–1969) English actor, b. William Henry Pratt. He is noted for his performances in horror films, including the portrayal of the monster in Frankenstein (1931).