She's Alive! Creating the Bride of Frankenstein Page #2

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In the first one, there was

the boring Dr Waldman.

And in this one, suddenly

there's this full-blown eccentric,

very, very gay and funny character,

that was created by Whale

in the development of the screenplay

for the second film.

Frankenstein.

Yes, there have been developments

since he came to me.

Unlike the original film, Mary Shelley's

novel featured a highly articulate monster.

Bride of Frankenstein

restored the monster's speech.

Before you came, I was all alone.

It is bad to be alone.

Alone. Bad.

Friend. Good.

Speech was the essential difference

between the original Frankenstein

and the Bride of Frankenstein.

My father really objected

to the monster being given speech.

He felt it would take away

from the original portrayal,

and I think he was wrong.

Cinema history has proven him wrong.

It's one of the few sequels that really...

most film critics regard

as surpassing the original.

Once more, Boris Karloff faced

a gruelling and uncomfortable make-up,

designed and applied

by the legendary Jack Pierce.

One of the changes in the make-up,

besides the fact that Karloff

had gained weight...

He wasn't as cadaverous.

I think success...

He was able to eat more and

unfortunately he had a little fuller face.

But one of the biggest changes

was the results of the fire.

So they singed his hair off

and gave him almost this crew cut,

which through the film grows,

which I thought was pretty neat.

His make-up goes through four

or five stages of regeneration,

allowing him to grow both visually

as well as spiritually as the film unfolds.

They gave him a burn on his hand and

a bit of a burn on this side of his face.

But other than that the make-up

was basically the same.

The flat head, and they still had

the electrodes in the brow.

Just a slightly fuller face with a few

little burn scars and the singed-off hair.

A great make-up.

Actually there was another change.

In the original make-up, he only had one

clamp on his head - this side actually.

It was something they didn't notice

for the longest time.

You would see pictures from the Bride,

and you saw the two big clamps, the little

ones in-between and the ones on the side.

I used to always assume that was

the same on the original make-up.

Later, when I started looking at it,

I said "He only has one clamp."

During the filming of Frankenstein,

Karloff sustained a serious back injury,

and suffered many discomforts due to

the weighted boots and padded costume.

For the sequel, efforts were made

to lessen the ordeal.

I'm sure they treated him more like a star,

because he was successful with

Frankenstein and some films after that.

I think that, in the original, the top of his

head was probably fabricated each day,

built up out of cotton and collodion.

In the Bride and the Son later on,

there was a rubber forehead that went on,

which probably sped up the process

for Boris and Jack.

I know they gave Karloff a slant board,

because he still couldn't quite sit down.

I have a picture in my office of him in this

great slant board, drinking a cup of tea.

The make-up posed technical challenges

for cinematographer John Mescall,

who required special lighting

for the monster's skin tones.

Jack Pierce's make-up for the monster

essentially was a blue-green colour.

This was not due to any belief in

a colour aesthetic for the monster.

But if the monster were photographed

wearing this shade of greasepaint,

on orthochromatic film,

and if he was lit as Mescall lit him,

with blue-gelled light,

he would read as dead white.

Mescall had red added into the make-up

of those who had scenes with the monster

and often trained warmer lights on them.

The make-up for the Bride of

Frankenstein is an absolute masterpiece.

It's the only iconic female monster

to ever come out of the movies.

I mean, if you were to think of

a classic female monster,

it's the Bride of Frankenstein

that comes to mind.

The Elsa Lanchester make-up was

very different from the Karloff make-up.

I'm sure what they wanted to do

was have her attractive.

You didn't want to have

a hideous woman monster.

I don't know if it was

an executive decision or what.

"We can't have an ugly woman monster."

So they came up with this...

again, another icon.

You think of the Bride of Frankenstein,

everybody knows that wacky hairstyle.

It had that Egyptian Nefertiti look to it.

They had this wire cage on her head and

that was really her hair mixed in with it.

They probably filled it in

with some crepe wool.

And the white streaks,

the crazy white streaks.

Yet she was very made-up, almost

wore basically a glamour make-up.

If it wasn't for the scar around the neck,

it would have looked like some

glamorous woman with a wacky hairstyle.

I heard that Elsa Lanchester

wasn't too fond of Pierce,

which I was sorry to hear.

Someone who I idolise like Jack Pierce.

I've heard from people that

he was a crotchety old guy.

Elsa Lanchester talked about Jack Pierce,

and she said that he was

an unusual personality.

He really almost felt, in her opinion,

that he was a god

who created these horror characters

that Universal marketed.

In the morning, he'd be all dressed up

in a surgeon's smock

as if he were about to

perform an operation.

She said you went into his sanctum

sanctorum to have the make-up done,

and you waited for him to say hello.

You didn't say hello first.

He had to say hello first.

So he was very, very much in control.

He really was a divine presence within his

own realm of creating these make-ups.

She was very funny. She talked about

the scar under the neck of the bride.

She said that Jack Pierce

took the longest time to do this,

that he went through this incredible ritual

of applying this scar,

that she said hardly shows in the film.

She said "I'm sure he could have bought

a scar for ten cents in a joke shop."

But he had his own way of doing it,

and he lovingly and painstakingly applied

this scar each morning to the bride.

The idea of the hiss of the female monster

came from she and Charles Laughton

feeding the swans at Regents Park.

She said "When swans would come up, if

you went to feed them, that was all right,

but if you got too near them or got near

their young, they would hiss."

So she thought of this

incredible hiss of the swans

and she incorporated it into the character.

Frankenstein combined English

and American actors,

not always convincingly.

Bride of Frankenstein was cast

mainly with British players.

Mae Clarke, the original Elizabeth,

was replaced by the 17-year-old ingnue

Valerie Hobson.

Valerie Hobson gives an amazing

performance, I think, as Elizabeth.

Very stylised. She's like

a Christmas angel,

the way she appears with the dress

and the flowing hair.

I talked to her in 1989 and she had

warm memories of making the film.

She said the first time she saw Karloff,

it was an extraordinary experience.

There he was in complete

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