Whale, James
Entry updated 7 November 2022. Tagged: Film, People.
(1889-1957) UK-born Hollywood director, in active service during World War One; his career in US Cinema began in 1929. His first film of genre interest was the classic adaptation of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus (1818; rev 1831) as Frankenstein (1931), a highly influential interpretation in which Boris Karloff plays what many still regard as the definitive Creature or Frankenstein Monster. Whale remains best known for this and three further excursions into Horror in SF: the comic The Old Dark House (1932), again starring Karloff and based on J B Priestley's Benighted (1927; vt The Old Dark House 1928); The Invisible Man (1933), starring Claude Rains and based on The Invisible Man (1897) by H G Wells; and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), starring Ella Lanchester in the title role (and also that of Mary Shelley) while Karloff reprises his interpretation of the Creature. The last of these, which shows the strong influence of German Expressionism, is generally considered to be Whale's masterpiece. His final Hollywood success was The Man in the Iron Mask (1939), based on the final segment of Alexander Dumas's Three Musketeers novel Le Vicomte de Bragelonne, ou Dix ans plus tard ["The Vicomte de Bragelonne, or Ten Years Later"] (1847). Whale retired from big-time cinema in 1941, continuing to work on minor films and to direct stage productions. After two strokes and treatment for depression he drowned himself in 1957. [DRL]
James Whale
born Dudley, Worcestershire: 22 July 1889
died Hollywood, California: 29 May 1957
further reading
- James Curtis. James Whale (Metuchen, New Jersey: Scarecrow Press, 1982) [nonfiction: hb/]
- James Curtis. James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters (Boston, Massachusetts: Faber and Faber, 1998) [nonfiction: exp vt of the above: pb/photographic]
- Mark Gatiss. James Whale: A Biography; or The Would-Be Gentleman (New York: Cassell, 1995) [nonfiction: pb/photographic]
links
previous versions of this entry