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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

The monster who loved Conrad

December 19, 2019 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal “Sightings” column I recall the career of Boris Karloff, who was as fine a stage actor as he was a movie star. Here’s an excerpt.

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Chuck Jones’ much-loved 1966 animated version of Dr. Seuss’ “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” will be telecast for the umpteenth time by NBC on Christmas night. The narrator is Boris Karloff, whose speaking voice (he sounded like a kindly Edwardian uncle) will be familiar to anyone who’s seen “Grinch,” though he was far better known in his own day for having played the heavily made-up monster in James Whale’s 1931 screen adaptation of “Frankenstein,” the movie that made him a full-fledged star. Julie Harris, who later appeared opposite Karloff on Broadway and TV, called him “a great actor…He had an enormous warmth and humanity, and this fascinating darker quality. It was mysterious. You wanted to know where such a man came from.” But unless you’re old enough to have seen “Frankenstein,” it’s possible that you won’t recognize his name—and you certainly won’t know that there was far more to him than the monsters and madmen he played on screen….

As a result of the success of “Frankenstein,” alas, he was permanently typecast, and spent the rest of his life appearing in horror films that were mostly of indifferent quality (remember “Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”?). A few of them, fortunately, above all “The Body Snatcher” (1945) and “Bedlam” (1946), produced by Val Lewton, and “Targets” (1968), Peter Bogdanovich’s first feature film, were more than good enough to suggest how sensitive an actor he was beneath the bogeyman makeup that he often wore on screen….

Karloff’s first real opportunity to show his stuff came when, in 1941, he returned to the stage after a long absence—in a comedy. He made his Broadway debut in the original production of “Arsenic and Old Lace,” Joseph Kesselring’s now-classic black farce, which ran for 1,444 performances. In it, he created the role of Jonathan Brewster, a psychopathic mass murderer whose life is ruined when an alcoholic plastic surgeon inadvertently makes him look like—yes—Boris Karloff.

At first he was terrified by the thought of acting in front of live audiences after having spent so long in Hollywood. A month after the show opened, he recalled, “I got on the scales and I had lost 26 pounds—in sheer fright.” But to everyone’s amazement, his own included, he turned out to have a knack for comedy, and the rave reviews that he received for “Arsenic” inspired him to continue performing in plays as a more artistically fulfilling sideline….

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Read the whole thing here.

Julie Harris, Boris Karloff, and Basil Rathbone star in the 1957 Hallmark Hall of Fame TV version of the Broadway production of The Lark, Lillian Hellman’s English-language version of Jean Anouilh’s 1953 retelling of the story of Joan of Arc:

A live TV version of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, starring Roddy McDowell, Eartha Kitt, and Boris Karloff and originally telecast live on Playhouse 90. Adapted by Stewart Stern and directed by Ron Winston, this program was originally telecast by CBS on November 6, 1958:

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Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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