Born Today September 8: Queenie Smith

1898-1978

Queenie Smith is remembered by generations of people from her numerous television appearances as an "auntie/grandmother" figure in guest roles on shows as different from one another as the original Hawaii Five-O to Little House on the Prairie.  Before embarking on a long career in television in the 1950's, she had a career in films in the 1930's and 1940's.  Before that, she was on the stage: first in the Metropolitan Opera Company productions of the 1910's and later in Broadway musicals of the 1920's. Smith was born on this day most likely in Texas; though many sources cite New York City, which is certainly where she was schooled. Obviously talented from a young age, she attended operatic and ballet instruction very early in her life; by her early teenage years, she was proficient in both. She is reported to have been a frequent dancer/performer in her teens in the teens of the 20th century.  It is therefore possible, though not probable, that she had a secondary unit bit part in little UK film that was John Halifax, Gentleman in 1915, released in England in June of that year.  The production was filmed on location in two places in Tewkesbury and was directed by George Pearson. While footage from New York may have been used in the little film, it's not likely; yet she is still credited with an appearance in the picture (all sources I've consulted list her). While it's possible that she traveled to England around this time, it is much more likely that another actress with the same name Queenie Smith is the credit in question. Of course I could be wrong!  But I am happy to have a chance to write a little about here about her. I remember her from re-runs of shows I watched after school as a kid.  Much later on, finally putting a name to face, I was able to enjoy her in classics that I love like James Whale's Show Boat (1936).  Any excuse right?!  Queenie Smith worked almost to the day she died. She appeared in five roles in 1978, despite battling cancer, the last of which was in the comedy Foul Play with Goldie Hawn and Chevy Chase in the lead. The film was released roughly 2 and 1/2 weeks before her death. She passed away on the 5 of August in Burbank, California; she was nearly 80 and never out of work! She is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills location.

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Born Today July 22: James Whale

1889-1957

If you are not, as I am, a horror hound, or even a super fan of older Universal studio releases, you may be unfamiliar with James Whale. Even if you are a fan of the Frankenstein director, you may not know that he was the director of dialogue on one lone film in 1929.  The Love Doctor was a 1929 talkie produced by Paramount (there was a silent version for release outside major urban areas); the film was directed by Melville W. Brown and starred Richard Dix and June Collyer in the leading roles.  Whale had very recently signed with the studio and his very first assignment was serving as dialogue director of the film; Whale, along with several others, went uncredited for his trouble. James Whale, despite that he invented a fictional narrative of his origins, was born in Dudley, England--right in the middle of working class Black Country--to a nurse mother and blast furnaceman father; he had six siblings, of which he was next to the youngest. Amongst the schools that he attended was a charity school, but as the semi-fictional film Gods and Monsters, in which Whale is played by Ian McKellen, recounts truthfully, Whale was pulled out of school and put to work as a teenager.  He was, though, artistically inclined and generated extra income by painting lettering and numbering signs of various sorts--the income he put to good use by paying his way through evening classes in a local arts and crafts school. Though the film Gods and Monsters gets his service in France during World War I correct, what it does not depict is his being taken as a prisoner of war. He remained so until the end of the war, and it was during this time that he took up acting (he also picked up the art of playing poker, which he would go on to use as a skill to generate income).  Knocking around Birmingham after the war, he drifted into theater work (after an attempt to become a cartoonist). He eventually, in 1928, had the opportunity to direct a play--which was so successful that it was produced on Broadway the following year--this is the catalyst by which Whale came to the United States and stayed. The play was was such a success that it was not long before movie producers were almost literally knocking down his door.  After just the one film with Paramount, his contract expired and he returned to theatrical work--this time in Chicago.  Impressed with his work, he was next hired by Howard Hughes for another round at dialogue direction on his Hell's Angels; and this brings me to Whale's only other connection to silent cinema (aside from his personal love of the partial silent Show Boat from 1929 that he would remake).  The entire production of Angels was a late fully silent film--almost at the last minute, Hughes decided to bring sound to it--which is the time during the production that he hired Whale. Whale worked as the "dialogue stager"--but also got some hands-on experience with film direction at the same time--it was not long before he had the needed to call on that knowledge.  His most important moment in 1929, by far, came when the men who had purchased the film rights to Journey's End, the play that Whale had directed and made such a sensation and set during the Great War, asked Whale to direct the film version. Filming started in early December 1929; by the end of January of the following year, filming wrapped.  Heavily billed as "All Talking," the film debuted on the 9th of April, 1930.  Whale was now a full fledged film director.  Film studios took serious notice and Whale was signed to a fateful five year contract with Universal in 1931.  He is most famous for the direction of Frankenstein in 1931 (a project that he chose from a list of projects presented to him), he was first handed another war picture by the studio: Waterloo Bridge (1931).  He was already at work directing the screwball comedy The Impatient Maiden--released in March of 1932--when it was clear that he was being hailed as the best new thing to happen to the horror genre (still in it's infancy in film at the time).  It is no surprise then that he is best remembered for his horror films. So, in 1932, he directed The Old Dark House, a first rate horror comedy that also featured "the Monster" himself Boris Karloff (the film was thought lost forever until 1968, when--thankfully!--a print was discovered).  He next tried his hand at the mystery genre in A Kiss Before Dying (1933), probably his least remembered effort; the film was a failure at the box office....so he returned to horror. He next directed The Invisible Man starring Claude Rains and introduced the world to the wild, zany antics of one Una O'Connor; the film was a huge box office hit for Universal. Whale, by this time, had a half formed rule that he would not direct two horror films in a row, so there were actually two films between Invisible Man and the film that many consider his masterpiece:   The Bride of Frankenstein. The film was released in May of 1935 and out-did The Invisible Man to such an extreme degree, that Universal boss of bosses Carl Laemmle tried to force Whale to helm Dracula's Daughter; this, of course, broke Whale's "horror film rule," and so concerned him that he was being "typecast" as a horror director, that he never directed another horror film (the project eventually went to Lambert Hillyer).  Whale's burning desire was to remake Show Boat as a full sound film, which he was able to convince the studio execs to allow him to do so; the film was released on the 17th of May of 1936 (this, and One More River 1934, were reportedly among Whale's personal favorites of his own films).  After this, Whale's career began to wilt. He made a number of genre flicks, from crime to comedy, but settled on the adventure film for his last few films. The one that stands out (at least for me) is Green Hell, released in 1940, starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and features quite the cast that included Joan Bennett, Alan Hale Jr. (aka The Skipper) and a young up and coming actor named Vincent Price (Price hated the film and by all accounts, he ranked it by far the worst acting experience that he had on a set).  His last feature length film was The Dare Not Love in 1941, made for Columbia.  Terribly bored with his dimininshing film career, he retired; eventually taking up painting at the urging of his long time partner producer David Lewis.  Whale returned to directing only twice in his life, and both of those films were non-studio efforts. The first was for the the United States military: Personnel Placement in the Army in 1942; and his final film--Hello Out There--in 1949, which was never commercially released. Whale did return to directing the theater; on Broadway in the 1940's and in Europe in the early 1950's (his last directed play was closed early due to it's star, Hermione Baddeley's heavy drinking).  In 1956, Whale suffered two strokes, the second of which was much more serious than the first. It left him impaired and depressed with failing mental faculties. He wrote a suicide note and drown himself in his swimming pool (a pool that he had never himself used) on the 29th of May in 1957. A concerned David Lewis, who was by this time estranged from Whale as a partner and living next door, found Whale and his note.  Lewis kept the note until his death in 1987, when it was published--finally clearing up what many had long suspected, that Whale had ended his own life some 30 years earlier (Whale's death had officially been ruled accidental). He was 67 years old. Whale was cremated and interred at the Columbarium of Memory in the mausoleum of Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale (his plaque lists the wrong year of his birth as 1893).  

[Source: AJ (Find A Grave)]

[Source: Denis Svoboda and Anneabe (Find A Grave)]

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Born Today October 11: Frederick Kerr

As Baron von Frankenstein

1858-1933

Actor of stage and screen, and man of the theater, Frederick (or Fred) Kerr, Frederick Grinham Kenn, was born on this day in London, England.  It would be easy to suppose that he got his start on the London stage given that he was born there; when he, in fact, got his start in acting by more or less stumbling into it in New York City.  Kenn left Britain for New York sometime just before or after 1880 in his early 20's.  When Kenn arrived in New York he managed to find work as a sketch artist and lived in a boarding house.  It just so happened that given it's location on 7th Ave., it was full of actors.  It just so happened, that a producer was looking for an English actor for his production of Sheridan's A School For Scandal.  An actor living at the boarding house heard this and alerted Kenn to the part, which he got in 1882.  It is thought that he changed his last name at this time, but no one can be sure, and it just as likely could have come at a later date.  He established himself solidly as a stage actor that year in New York, and eventually longed for the stage in London.  He left for his native UK late in 1882, making his London debut in December 1882.  He spent the next decades travelling back and forth across the Atlantic to appear in stage production in both countries.  He eventually got into theater management in London and found success there as well.  By the mid 1890's, he had married and started a family.  Kerr was late to film acting, appearing in his first film at the age of 58 in a comedic short that started as a live benefit play in the UK: The Real Thing At Last in 1916.  He only appeared in 4 films in the silent era, all of them in the 1910's and all of them UK productions.  His last silent film was 12:10 a mystery thriller, featuring his son Geoffrey Kerr, in 1919.  He did not appear in another film until 1930, when he played the role of Lord Trench opposite Nance O'Neil's Lady Trench in the MGM produced romantic comedy The Lady of Scandal, which also starred Basil Rathbone.  With movies now sporting sound, he found regular work in front of the camera as the character actor grandfather type up until the time of his death.  Of course, the most famous role that he would take was that of Baron Frankenstein, father of mad scientist Henry, in James Whale's horror classic Frankenstein.   Kerr developed lung cancer and died fairly quickly from the disease in 1933.  His last film was the UK picture Lord Of The Manor. Kerr passed away in London on the 3rd of May in 1933 at the age of 74.  He had been set to reprise his role as the Baron in The Bride Of Frankenstein, which was released in 1935, but in deference to him, the role was written out.  He was cremated at London's famed Golders Green, and was interred there.  In addition to his son following him into the profession, Kerr was also the grandfather of of John Kerr (as a fun fact, since it's the Halloween season, John Kerr had a role in the Vincent Price/Barbara Steele Pit And The Pendulum (1961)-directed by Roger Corman).

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Born Today November 23: Boris Karloff!

1887-1969

So obviously this is BIG one!  Born William Henry Pratt in at exactly 36 Forest Hill Road in London England, where a plaque marks the occasion.  His maternal grandmother's sister's, or great aunt, tales of the courts of Siam were reportedly the inspiration for the Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical The King and I.  Both of the sisters were Anglo-Indian in ethnicity.  He was bow-legged, suffered from both a lisp and stuttered as a child; it is possible that attempts to conquer the speech issues may have led to an interest in the stage, as he was actually able to rid himself of the stutter.  He studied at London University with idea going into diplomacy.   Instead in 1909 he moved to Canada and at some point started using the stage name that we know him so well by now.  There has always been a lot of strange and ridiculous speculation and to where the name came from.  Personally, I believe what he himself had to say on the subject--and why not, he was known to be a man of honour and honesty.  He says he chose "Boris" because it sounded exotic, and that the name "Karlov" was a family name from some time back--and why, with his ethnicity wouldn't he assume he had the right to do this?  It certainly made one heck of impression!  Though his daughter has said that she personally doesn't have any knowledge of any Slavic ancestor's--it's still a great name!  He also claimed that the reason for the name change was to prevent embarrassment to his family.  He was the youngest of nine children and had older brothers in British foreign service.  [Apparently they didn't feel any such way, when Karloff met back up with his family in Britain in 1933, they not only embraced him, they reportedly vied to have photos taken with their younger brother.].  His stage career in Canada was a rough one, with him taking various odd jobs to make ends meet--with him ending up in North Dakota performing in a penny opera.  When he did finally make it to Hollywood, things didn't improve much.  Though his first film credit came in 1919, and he was in many silent films from then on, many of the roles are very, very small and he still had to take odd jobs, such as digging ditches, to make ends meet.  For an example of a bit role from the 1920's, he played "an Indian" in an uncredited roles, which now confirmed part, in The Last Of The Mohicans (1920), starring Wallace Beery as Magua.  Many roles were of eastern or Native American or Mexican "exotics" in bit parts, due to his east Indian ancestry.  This, of course, began to change after his role as The Monster in Frankenstein in 1931; however, even after this he still has eastern ethnic role that were uncredited.  One has to get to 1932 in another James Whale classic The Old Dark House, to see that his career, largely in the horror genre takes off.  All of the manual labor he did from 1909 until relief came much later on in his career left him with permanent back troubles that would last for the rest of his life.  He was a great lover of children and at one point had his own children's radio show.  Beginning in 1940 he would dress as Father Christmas and hand out presents to disabled children at a Baltimore hospital.  Although he lived a great deal of his life in the United States, he remained a UK subject throughout his life.  And contrary many reports, he never legally changed his name to Boris Karloff.  He was born William Henry Pratt and he died with that name on 2 February 1969 (incidentally the same day as my own grandfather passed away 11 years later when I was just a kid), in a Sussex hospital after years of living the Hampshire county of England.  He died of pneumonia, brought on as a complication of a years long battle with emphysema.  He was cremated at Guilford Crematoria, where there is also a plaque in his name.

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Born Today October 28: Elsa Lanchester

1902 (London, England)-1986 (Los Angeles US)

 

People know Elsa Lanchester as the "Bride of Frankenstein," especially at this time of year, so near Halloween, when there is a lot of screening of classic Universal Monsters films. But Elsa got her start in films in the late 1920's when she herself was in her 20's.  She was born Elsa Sullivan Lanchester in the Lewisham area of London on this day into a "Bohemian" family. Her surname was take from her mother, with her middle name being the surname of her father, because her parents formally refused to legally marry.  She had one older brother five years her senior who also went into performance, albeit it a puppeteer & marionette company owner:  Waldo Sullivan Lancnester.  Elsa was schooled in Paris up until the start of World War I under Isadora Duncan.  She was then sent off to a domestic boarding school to teach dance; she was only 12 years old at the time. Her desire in life was to become a classical dancer, a dream that was not to be. She instead started her own nightclub act, singing and dancing revivals of Victorian ballads.  This would be her gateway into theatrical work. She made her film debut in 1925 in the melodramatic comedy The Scarlet Woman: An Ecclesiastical Melodrama, a student film made completely for the fun of it. The film was written by and featured Evelyn Waugh--the writer of Brideshead Revisited and was a friend of Lanchester (and with whom she shared a birthday); though completely an amateur effort, it brought some attention to the participants, Lanchester including.  Her first professional film appearance came in 1927 in the T. Hayes Hunter directed One of the Best.  She appeared in four films in 1928, in the one major production--The Constant Nymph--she went uncredited, but the other three was rather special. She appeared as "herself"--or rather "Elsa" in three short films written especially for her by H. G. Wells himself. The Tonic, Day-Dreams, and Blue Bottles were all comedy shorts and placed into script form by one of Wells' sons Frank.  All of these films were silent, but her last film appearance of the decade was in a DeForest Phono sound film Mr. Smith Wakes Up, another comedy short and released in February of 1929; it was based on a radio play penned by Vivian Tidmarsh. The 1920's were also a decade of other performance successes for Lanchester. For starters, she made several appearances on the serious London stage ("High Theater"); it was in one of these productions that she met future husband Charles Laughton, with whom she had a long and contentious marriage. She also was signed by Columbia to go into the recording studio to cut some records--the first of which was released in 1926.  Lanchester passed away at the age of 84 on Boxing Day (December 26) of 1986 in her adopted home town of Los Angeles. She was cremated and her ashed were scattered over the Pacific Ocean.

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