All language subtitles for xyz00015.track_4608

Although "Frankenstein" established
Boris Karloff as a star,

the sheer volume of
work in the wake of The Criminal Code,

meant he
was becoming familiar to film goers.

Covering a wide range of
types and ethnicities, his parts included:

A drunken orderly in Imperial Russia,

a treacherous Arab
chief in the serial "King of the Wild",

a shifty would be revolutionary
in "Cracked Nuts",

drug pusher
Cokey Joe, in "Young Donovan's Kid",

a gambler
losing his stake , in "Smart Money",

and the prisoner ate a hearty breakfast!

There was more: a
Russian peasant in "The Mad Genius" ,

Luigi, an opportunistic butler in "I Like
Your Nerve".

In "The Public Defender", just
for a change, he was one of the good guys,

helping vigilante Richard
Dix expose a corrupt and powerful group.

Set your watches at
exactly six minutes after five

Possibly his finest pre-stardom
film was Howard Hawks "Scarface",

based on Al Capone, in which
he was a rival to Paul Muni's mob boss,

who sense's his days are numbered.

Well I was on my way here, to the garage
to keep an appointment. And I was late.

Yeah'?

In Scarface he's got
a very interesting role,

but people complained because
he was this English voiced gangster.

But the real person that that character
was based on

was actually an Englishman anyway.

Yeah, you were lucky you were late. Now
take a good peek and see what you missed!

I remember, I sat in on an acting class
that was conducted by Vincent Price

and somebody asked
him, "What is the difference

between acting on
the stage and acting in films?"

And he said: "Well that's very easy.

On screen you learn to act with your
eyes." And Karloff was a master of that.

Though "Scarface" is a classic, Karloff
was better served by "Five Star Final",

a gritty look at yellow press journalism.

As Don't. Vernon lsipod,
he's an unscrupulous reporter,

charged with
resurrecting a long forgotten murder case.

I'm gonna team you up with lsipod. Oh,
and don't ride in taxis with him.

Here pay attention lsipod. Look here.

I want you to
go out and get yourself a black outfit,

black hat - you know - stiff collar

Ah yes. Just like the
one I used on the Parclay case last year.

Posing as a clergyman, lsipod convinces
the Townsends to confide in him...

And you, Mrs. Townsend,
do you find it easy to pass the time.

Oh I - I'm just a housewife, that's all.

Oh now, now, now Mrs. Townsend, judging
from all that I have heard...

What have you heard?

Why... that you are
a wonderful mother, Mrs Townsend.

Quite a lot of British
Actors who didn't make it

above the
line did a rather good career, actually,

playing characters,
the same kind of baddie,

the same
kind of wily Oriental or whatever it was.

That could well have happened to Karloff,

had it not been for the James Whale
Frankenstein.

While Jack Pierce experimented with
the Frankenstein make up,

Karloff also filmed a supporting part
in Columbia's

"The Guilty Generation" as Italian mob
boss Tony Ricca.

And a good job, that I got
myself,

and I don't owe anybody anything.

And you don't owe
me anything?! I'm your father

What makes
this interesting, are two coincidences.

Karloff, preparing for Frankenstein, acts
in a film directed by Rowland V Lee,

who eight years
later will direct Son of Frankenstein.

And one of KarlofFs henchman, seen
holding the door,

is an uncredited Glenn
Strange. 13 years later,

when Strange himself played
the monster, brought to life by Karloff,

neither actor
remembered the previous occasion.

In the 7 weeks between
finishing Frankenstein and it's release,

Karloff stayed busy,

first with a rare comedy role as a waiter
in Gloria Swanson's "Tonight or Never".

I'll go down at once.

Oh no sir,
she wishes to come up here to you, sir.

She asked me to tell
her when the Marquessa went to bed sir.

She told me not to
mention the matter to you, sir, but...

but I thought perhaps I'd better.

Oh. Yes-yes of course.

Columbia's "Behind the Mask" had him
in jail again, for the opening scenes.

Now get this. The guy's name is Arnold.

If you get away with
this and find the house, ask for him.

Anticipating his later work
at the studio, it featured a mad doctor.

But this one was played
by Edward Van Sloan.

Though Karloff is on screen
quite a bit, he is merely a henchman.

However Columbia cleverly
exploited his presence in their publicity.

In early December,
Universal signed Karloff for 2 years,

but he had one more
commitment before he could join them.

1919's "The Miracle Man", a story
of con-artists posing as faith healers

was the breakthrough for Lon Chaney,
playing "The Frog", a contortionist,

whom the con-artists repeatedly
"cure". Chaney's riveting performance,

catapulted him to fame,
in much the same fashion as Karloff

So when Paramount decided to
remake the film with sound,

casting Karloff
seemed like a clever move.

Don't pull
that "kiddo" stuff with me. Cut that out.

You heard what she
said. Cut that out.

However the film squanders the
opportunity, with Karloff cast as Nikki,

a sleazy tavern owner who meets
an early death.

By January, Universal had at last found
something for Karloff: "Night World"

where he played 'Happy'
MacDonald, a prohibition era club owner,

playing host to an array of characters
and a Busby Berkeley chorus line.

Oh-me-oh-my-oh

The success of Dracula & Frankenstein
wasn't lost on the rest of Hollywood.

Most of the studios
want to jump on the Horror bandwagon.

It seems to be relatively
low budget and the returns are fantastic.

The horror stampede was on!
Paramount produced Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hyde,

bracingly directed by Rouben
Mamoulien, Warners' released Doctor X,

the grisly tale of a serial killer.

And in 'The Most Dangerous Game"
demented Count Zaroff

hunted human prey on his uncharted island.
Each one was popular, if controversial.

Irving Thalberg
and MGM were keen to join the party

And it was Irving Thalberg who gave
the go-ahead to one of

the most notorious
films ever made in Hollywood, Freaks,

It was a project
Tod Browning had nursed for years,

and in summer 1931,
with the phenomenal success of "Dracula",

Thalberg threw his support behind the film

Here this grubby, nasty, little movie
drew the special attention of Thalberg.

Freaks is now regarded as a masterpiece,

and quite advanced in
its depiction of its deformed characters.

But in January 1932,
it's preview audience found it shocking

in the worst possible way.

Even with 30 minutes of cuts,

the film was barely palatable
and MGM ultimately pulled it from release.

Thalberg
next remade an old Lon Chaney film,

but when that, too, failed he
realised he needed a genuine horror star.

Boris Karloff was promptly borrowed

for his first title role
appearance in "The Mask of Fu Manchu".

In early 1933 Universal
hired Karloff out to Gaumont-British

to appear in their entry
in the horror stakes,

"The Ghoul" - Karloff's first professional
acting role in his own country.

It's Gaumont British's
attempt at Universal Film

and you can see the
sets are very over the top,

kind of Victorian, er, kind of German
expressionistic,

British cinema will
develop it's own brand of Horror film.

But this early
attempt, though well photographed,

misfires due to
it's makers' inexperience of the genre.

It's odd in all kinds
of ways. Karloff plays an archaologist.

So why does he look so grotesque?!"

For a lot of the film
Karloff looks like he has

all kinds of really strange things on his
face

and it kind of
handicaps the film and his performance.

The Ghoul tries hard
to be as grisly and thrilling as possible,

and it has its fans. But the
New York Times dismissed it saying

"a newsreel of a Sunday school
picnic would have been more thrilling!"

In June 1933, Karloff was scheduled to
appear in James Whale's The Invisible Man.

But Universal had agreed with him a pay
structure, which they failed to employ.

So Boris, ever the Unionist, walked.

Proving that he needed
Universal less than they needed him,

Karloff signed for prominent roles in
two major productions:

John Ford's The Lost Patrol and Darryl
F. Zanuck's The House of Rothschild.

The Lost Patrol was
filmed in Yuma, Arizona.

Karloff played Sanders,
a religious zealot.

Director Ford was known for pressing
his actors beyond their comfort zone.

I had live bullets fired at my feet,

out on
the desert, and that was interesting too.

Ford came to me and said, you know:

"I hate this scene where they have sort
of pops in the sand

and that sort of thing,
it just doesn't work,

It'll be wonderful if
we can get these shots

as you walk across the sand at your feet."

I said: "|t would indeed, how do you
propose to do it?"

He said: "Well I've got Partner
Jones here, who's a sharp shooter."

And there's
nothing to do but take his word for it.

So I took a deep breath
and we got the shot.

While The Lost Patrol and
House of Rothschild were successful films,

audiences and reviewers still
saw Karloff primarily as a horror actor.

Since his triumph as Dracula in 1931,
Bela Lugosi had appeared in such films as

"White Zombie", "Chandu the
Magician" and "The Island of Lost Souls".

But his career was losing momentum

and increasingly
he made minor films at small studios.

By the time Karloff and
Lugosi first actually worked together,

his professional
standing had fallen down quite a bit.

He was playing scenes from Dracula
in Vaudeville

at the time the call came for
Karloff and Lugosi to do the Black Cat.

So "The Black Cat"
was a comeback for Lugosi.

However, he was suspicious of his co-star.

Their background, as far as what led
to their first film,

the dynamic of what was happening
then, was really a very dramatic one,

Of one person getting
this incredible break

and one person
kind of left holding the bag afterwards.

Er, and so
you can certainly understand Lugosi

having a certain amount of wariness

in approaching Karloff
at first in their film unions.

But even though he and Karloff were
very different, they worked well together.

' D _l~ ,'v ~'

They just really feed
off each other very well

and they seem to be enjoying each other

and enjoying the challenge each one brings
to the other, in their films together.

It's very interesting
to watch The Black Cat

and the contrast in the way that the two
characters approach what they're doing.

Again, Lugosi early in the film, to watch
him in the train when he gives a speech.

I too am going very near there.

For the sport?

Perhaps. I go
to visit an old friend

And again, the technique, the way he
uses his eyes, the way he uses his voice,

Carl Laemmle
Senior saw the rough cut and he said:

"You know, I'm not
gonna release this movie.

This company's not gonna put this
thing out there for public consumption.

You're gonna have to put
it back in production and tone it down."

They put it back and the basic changes
were to try to make Lugosi more of a hero,

So they decided to soften his
character, and they did, very effectively.

If you watch the film, certain
scenes, different, different close ups,

little short scenes, little
changes of dialogue really do the trick.

They make
him, again, this tragic hero character.

Karloff and Lugosi
would work together another seven times.

Yet their salaries were
never equal. Many have speculated why.

The answer lies in the
radically different status of each actor.

Karloff had the Universal contract,

Universal was building
Karloff tremendously,

you know, Mummy, they...

"Karloff the uncanny"
on the posters, these sorts of things.

On The Black Cat
Karloff received - $7500 was his flat fee

which meant that he was on contract
at Universal and Lugosi as a freelancer

was getting $1,000 a week
and a three week guarantee on the picture.

On The Raven, Karloff
is getting 10,000, Lugosi's getting 5,000.

On The Invisible Ray
it's not even close any more

Kar|off's getting $3,125 a week; Lugosi's
getting $4,000 for the entire picture.

Also, of course, it's always been Karloff
and Bela Lugosi in these early films,

but now it's 'The Great
Karloff and Bela Lugosi' on the posters.

As well as billing issues,
there were other changes within Universal

and the industry itself
which would have far-reaching consequences

not just for Karloff and
Lugosi, but the horror genre as a whole.

You have a real problem with censors.

The production code has really beefed up,

they're looking
for anything that might be a problem.

There's a great fervour across the country
of religion trying to tone down Hollywood.

All right, there's the
Catholic Legion of Decency,

and of course the Breen
Office is sort of taking a cue from them,

The Hays Code was partly
to stop sex in films and taboo subjects.

Betty Boop, who used to wear a very,
very short skirt and a garter right here,

suddenly was wearing
a dress tastefully cut off at the knees.

Jane, in the early Tarzan
movies was wearing a very brief outfit.

Suddenly she was wearing
a Mother Hubbard out there in the jungle.

Those are superficial
examples but very tangible examples

of the kind of change that
was imposed on every Hollywood film maker

The situation was
much the same in Britain.

Throughout the whole
of the early mid-'30s,

the censors and
the press in many respects in Britain,

had become increasingly more and
more anti-horror films.

This caused problems with what should have
been Kar|off's next British made film,

"The Man Who Changed his Mind",

and production was
delayed while studio and

censor thrashed out
an acceptable screenplay.

In the interim Karloff
went to work, at Warners.

The Walking Dead gave him one of
his most sympathetic parts in a film that

seasons a typical Warners gangster
story with a touch of the supernatural..

I'm Loder. Did
you want to see me?

Yes sir. My name is John
Elman. A man told me to come and see you.

He said you were always
ready to help a fellow.

Desperate for work,
he falls prey to a group of gangsters

planning to murder a prominent
judge, the same one who sentenced him.

With a ready
made motive, he's the perfect fall guy.

Arrested and accused of the murder,

Elman is defended by
a corrupt attorney in the gangster's pay.

I thought that Nolan
was defending this bird!

Looks to me like he's pushing the electric
chair right under him.

Just as planned, Elman
is convicted and sentenced to death.

Despite his pleas of
innocence, he goes to the Electric chair

The film seems
about to enter Frankenstein territory

when a scientist uses a new technique
to revive the wrongfully executed man.

~ I'? " " I2. 2E1 I� jij� -.

And, um, he's like,
this kind of zombie type figure,

very, very quiet,
very subdued with very watery eyes.

And he hardly speaks.

And I think the thing that
stood out for me was a moment when he was

playing the piano, because he's a pianist,
and he plays the piano beautifully,

And two of the people that railroaded
him are in the room

and his eyes just go round
very slowly and then he just locks on them

while he's playing. And there's
this beautiful change in his expression.

It's It's just wonderful acting.

It's like what you were saying about
his silent style acting,

really coming
into play, and I think it's very powerful

Following the success of The Walking Dead,

Warners signed Karloff
to a four picture deal.

The Man Who
Changed his Mind was now ready to roll,

so Dorothy
and Boris set sail to England again.

I would say it's quite possibly
his greatest mad doctor role ever.

A lot of people seem to muddle it up with

the other mad doctor
films that he made later in his career.

But in fact they were made
four years later at Columbia in America,

whereas The Man Who Changed His
Mind was a British film made in 1936.

By the time the Kar|off's returned to

Hollywood a lot had changed.

Universal had
new owners, the Laemm|e's were gone

and Joseph I Breen's campaign to kill
the horror film seemed to have succeeded.

Sunday March 13th, 1938 brought a
brief reunion for Boris and Bela,

Though the movies would make me
a terrible brute

When my
make up is off I am really quite cute.

We're horrible, horrible, horrible,
horrible, horrible, horrible men

Over the previous two years
both actors had experienced career slumps.

In Bela's case, his
only appearance had been in a serial.

He had no film work for most of 1938.

His son Bela
Junior was born in January of 1938,

not long after that Lugosi lost
his home that he had in Hollywood Hills.

He was under great, great duress.

And, he himself he said that the
Hollywood attitude

toward him was who wanted
anything to do with a jobless spook.

And that's how
they were regarding him, you know.

And another time he said: "They had
reduced me to the status of an animal"

Although Boris was a bit more fortunate,

Warner's attempt to
break his contract was not encouraging.

So when Dorothy told
Boris she was expecting their first child,

it's no surprise he
eagerly accepted an offer from low budget

Monogram Pictures to star in their
planned series of Mr. Wong mysteries.

One of the
most popular film characters at the time

was the Chinese detective
Charlie Chan, played by Warner Oland,

a Swedish Caucasian performing
in what is now termed 'Yellow face...

Karloff himself played a guest role

opposite Oland in
Charlie Chan at the Opera.

You'll never put me
behind those walls again.

Remember presence
of honourable daughter.

She didn't know me,
she's afraid of me. She thinks I'm mad.

That and his more
recent success in West of Shanghai

made him a natural
choice for the cerebral James Lee Wong,

whose methods of deduction
were very similar to Sherlock Holmes.

For Karloff, the series was timely,

since the five adventures which followed
kept him on screen

and provided a nice change
of pace from his more sinister roles.

Having made a fortune from re-issues of
Dracula and Frankenstein in summer 1938,

Universal inaugurated a second
wave of horror with Son of Frankenstein.

Karloff had reservations
about returning in his most famous role.

Karloff probably was not crazy
about playing the Frankenstein monster

for a third time on screen,
but he did sign a new

term contract with
Universal and he was a pro.

But apparently he did insist that
in this one the Monster does not speak.

And he got his
wish and the creature is very muted,

perhaps by the, you know,

the cataclysm that
destroyed him supposedly in the last one.

One of the problems
with Son Of Frankenstein is that, um,

nobody liked the original script in which
the monster talked

and in which there
was no Igor at all.

It was improvised. There was
a script but it wasn't adhered to at all.

And the director and
producer Rowland V. Lee,

decided that basically he would start
the film and rely on inspiration

to make it work, right,
day-to-day inspiration -

which of course drove the
actors crazy, particularly people

like Basil Rathbone,
Lionel Atwill & Josephine Hutchison.

Again, Universal
pulled a nasty deal with Lugosi, they

were aware that he
had had problems, professional problems,

and so when they brought him in to play
Igor they said:

Well, um, tell
you what we'll do -- of course at that

point they didn't know how big a role Igor
would be

because of the, you know, it was

everything was an
evolution, so they said:

Well Well basically, they told Rowland
Lee,

film everything that...
you're gonna use him for in a week.

We'll give him $500 and
send him home, that'll be it, you know.

And Lee got very angry, and he said:

"You're terribly underestimating this
man, he's a terrific actor,

he's gonna give
a fantastic performance in this movie,

and I'll tell you what I'm gonna do.

I'm gonna
keep him on this movie every single day.

I wanna bring him in every day and

he will be in it up until
we wrap the move at the end of production.

And almost
day-by-day a story was cobbled together

and one of Bela Lugosi's
major roles, Igor,

appears in no script, but somehow
Lugosi almost walks off with the picture.

When he played Igor in the Universal film
he pretty much took over the film as...

It had a little bit of
a comedic twist that he put on that role.

And I think
that's one of his best performances.

Lugosi's performance
as Igor is tremendous.

It's funny, it's malevolent,
it's, it's brilliantly creative,

He... does things for me.

Has he always been here?

Nearly always. This is
place of, the dead.

We're all dead, here.

N' ,. z

That is my favourite Bela
Lugosi performance of his entire career.

I think that he brings a demented relish,
a very, very precarious vulnerability

to his Igor. That, that...
you know, with the broken neck stump,

is so perverse, so
quirky, but In a very different way than,

than the quirkiness
of Bride of Frankenstein.

But while the adults were memorable,
one cast member almost stole the show.

Well, hello!

Right out of the Deep South,
okay. Everybody ruptured and I thought:

"Oh, my Mom's gonna give me
heck now..." Several times later, okay,

including off, off the set, Boris
Karloff had some fun with me on that,

he was "Well hello, Donnie!" or
something like that. He was a great guy.

As with Marilyn Harris 8 years earlier,

Donnie's reaction to seeing Karloff in
monster make-up, was far from frightened.

On the set, I think very early in
the shooting, Mr Karloff came walking out,

I guess from the area
of his dressing room

And he was practicing his walk, with his
heavy boots on,

and I recognised as he came
up closer, and I recognised who he was,

all that makeup on and some tube
thing in his neck and everything and

And I broke out laughing.
He laughed. And other people laughed.

And that was one of the happiest casts

and the most friendly cast of all eight
movies in my life.

While Donnie was an
onset favourite of Karloff and Rathbone's,

he didn't make
the same impression on the third star.

Mr Lee, the Director,
had us all assembled,

not in recall formation, but kind

of loosely assembled, and several people
were late. The main one we were waiting

for was Mr. Bela Lugosi. Just a few
days before this, okay, my mother tried

to start grooming me with some ethics
and some protocol in how

to introduce people. She really made a
thing about how to introduce people which,

which was good for
a little runt kid, right?

So I'm standing there,
and here comes Mr Bela Lugosi, he's late.

He was commonly late by they way.
Here he comes.

Now I wanna impress my mother, everybody's
standing right there, Mr. Karloff

is right there by me, great guy...

"Look everybody, here
comes Mr Belly Goosy." Everybody roared.

Boris Karloff really roared;
patted me on the back someone, like this,

and here comes Mr Bela Lugosi.

Slow now, right up
to me, looked down at me like: Grrrr!

He never
spoke a word to me the whole movie.

We'd pass
each other all the time, he'd glare at me.

Now what
made this worse was wonderful Karloff,

who had a great
sense of humour, during the production,

every once in a while
Boris would see Bela Lugosi over somewhere

and say "Hey, Belly!
How you doin' or something like that.

- I ..

Universal knew they had a hot property

and Son of Frankenstein
was rushed through post-production

at astonishing speed, hitting theatres
just one week after the final retake.

Under contract to Warners, Columbia,
Monogram & Universal,

Boris now found himself busier than
at any time since 1931.

Tower of London was
a well produced if set bound drama,

Tudor history with a dash of horror.

Karloff played Mord,
the king's torturer come

executioner, a man
who really enjoyed his work

I mean right from the beginning when
you see him,

he just lifts up a weight and
puts it on another body in the dungeon.

While Mord
lacks the depth of Kar|off's best roles,

his delight in causing
pain and absolute devotion to Richard III

made him
a memorable addition to Karloff's gallery.

He's like a fawning child in it,

he just seems to absolutely adore
Richard and wanna do everything for him.

But it's interesting because that film
includes one of Boris's sentimental scenes

when he picks up one of the children,

the princes
in the tower he's gonna have killed,

and the child grabs Mord's collar

and Mord looks like he's got a
moment of regret, but he kills him anyway.

Karloff had to have
his head shaved for Tower of London,

a total of 44 times during filming.

He sported this
unusual look at several public events

and Screen Actor's Guild meetings.

And in a curious gesture he wasn't
the only member of his family to do so.

One day my mother left me in his care
for the afternoon

and my father thought it would
be amusing to have my head shaved too.

My mother didn't think it was so cute!

Aside from this, his other films were
more modest.

Along with the Monogram
six, there were two with Bela Lugosi.

"Black Friday"'s posters
and promotion made it seem like this was a

Karloff-Lugosi vehicle in
the vein of their earlier collaborations.

In fact it was nothing of the kind and
the two actors don't even share a scene.

They make Black Friday, which is
basically almost a gangster film with a,

with a supernatural
horror element added to it

It's not one of their better pictures, but
it's, it's in "the fun" category

of so many of the pictures, the
program movies that Universal was making.

They have a gangster's
brain transplanted into the professor and,

sort of a Jekyll and Hyde character.

Do you remember the name Marnay?

Marnay! He's the one who took your place.

Karloff, allegedly,
was offered the role of the professor

who then becomes a criminal, but he
apparently opted to not play that part

and Lugosi was
gonna be the doctor, the mad doctor,

Instead Karloff
is the mad doctor and Stanley Ridges,

who was a wonderful
actor, plays the slash, criminal/good guy,

Mama�!

'W. ' .' ' ..

, ,

~. ~' ~~- ' ~

And again, there are some, scuttlebuck
about the fact that, you know, Karloff

did this on purpose because he wanted
to you know, sort of reduce Lugosi in

Lugosi's standing in the film.
But I, I think that's pretty ridiculous.

I think that you know, first of all
the role that Stanley Ridges plays, the

professor gangster, is clearly the star
role in the film. And I don't believe

Karloff would give up the star role in
the film simply so he could somehow

nudge Bela Lugosi down, you know,
in the pecking order of the film.

I mean that would...

that seems very illogical
and certainly out of character for him.

And Lugosi is
sort of shunted off to a gangster role,

which he
was really not particularly suited for.

So maybe that
killer's after us too.

A good deduction.

But who would want
us dead, except some friend of Red's.

And who would about
Red Cannon's friends better... than Sonny?

You know, truth be told,

Lugosi was really pretty
happy to play gangsters at this point.

I mean he was, he had, he
had been on a picture a short time before

The Saint's Double
Trouble and he said at the time, he said:

"I really enjoyed
you know, this is gonna broaden my field.

I don't think I'm gonna

I shouldn't be typecast again...
Just as horror - just in horror roles.

This shows I can play all different
kinds of heavies including gangsters."

So I don't think Lugosi probably was upset

as the legend says
he was to end up in that role.

And of course
he got that great sideshow thing with,

with the trailer of that being hypnotised

Reporters saw
Dr Manley Hall hypnotise actor Lugosi

to give reality to a
scene in Black Friday.

Horror struck, they witnessed
the hypnotized actor's mortal agony

as Lugosi actually experienced the terror
of suffocating to death... in a closet!

That's right, in the closet, which, er,

which he really wasn't, but which he
really enjoyed pretending he was.

But the most interesting
were the four he made at Columbia.

He's always a doctor with good
intentions who's interrupted by

somebody who's not as knowledgeable
and messes the whole thing up.

And then
he comes back for some kind of revenge.

And in The Man They Could
Not Hang he has a student's permission

to kill the student so
he can use his method to revive him.

Now a nurse
runs off and panics and calls the police.

The police come, arrest
the doctor, Karloff,

and he's not in a position to
revive the student, so the student dies.

So the doctor's hanged. And
his method is used to revive the Doctor

and then he gets his revenge on all the
people he feel is to blame for his death.

And he brings them all together in a
house like, er, And Then There Were None,

like Agatha
Christie, and he starts bumping them off.

But unfortunately, they
don't pursue that in the film far enough.

They should have had, everyone but one

because Boris's daughter turns
up and it goes in a different direction.

But, er, that's probably the best one.

I think
my first memories of my father were

at home at our house on Beaumont Drive.

I can remember him
down on the tennis court

and he and my
mother gave me a Cooker Spaniel puppy

and we would take it down to the
tennis court and let it roam free,

both on the tennis
court and on the grass that we had.

He loved animals, he was wonderful
with animals.

At one time
we had 22 dogs when we lived there.

We had Scotties and West
Highland Terriers and Bedlington Terriers.

He had a pig named
Violet. He had turkeys.

He'd fashioned himself a gentleman farmer.

I can remember
him spending a lot of time in his study

reading, he was a veracious reader.

He just liked to spend
his home time quietly.

He and my mother had a myriad of friends,

some in the business but mostly not.

And they entertained, not in a Hollywood
fashion at all.

My father loved the
out of doors, we had a tennis court,

they both played both my parents
played tennis.

He loved to be in the swimming
pool, he taught me how to, not to swim,

but not to drown. And
I can remember he had my footprints put,

put in the concrete around the pool.

Boris is asked to appear
in Arsenic And Old Lace,

a comedy about
two old spinsters who murder lonely people

and then have their
bodies buried in the cellar.

But he'd made so many films that
when he was first approached by

Lindsay and Crouse, who did Arsenic
And Old Lace

to play the role in Arsenic And Old Lace,

my father said: "Oh, it's
been so long since I've been on the stage

I couldn't possibly do a Broadway play."

And Boris
said he would only do it if there were

at least two parts that
were better than him.

And there's several,
there's two old ladies and there's

Mortimer Brewster who
is an art critic who hates the theater,

and Boris plays his brother
Jonathan who has been on a killing spree

and he comes home to
hide in Brooklyn and Boris loved it.

And it's quite a canny
move because Jonathan

doesn't appear till quite a way into it

so he's got all that time to just sit
and wait.

,, ' 'if. I ' 0' 113;? "Q1: :'5 :'~, , " " 5 I: ' t'

His sidekick in crime asked him why
he had killed somebody,

. - :. ~' : ~~ '. '~

"Because he said I
looked like Boris Karloff!"

(AUDIENCE: LAUGH)

And that brought... that brought
the house down every night.

It was a wonderful play. For many years
it held the record for longest play

longest running play
on Broadway and he adored doing it.

With the prestige of his Broadway success,

Universal rolled out the red carpet,

a bigger than usual
budget and Technicolor for his return.

While Karloff had
missed out on The Phantom of the Opera,

the new
film was designed as a semi sequel,

again set in the Paris Opera house,

and featuring
Karloff as an insane theater physician.

So it turned into this
strange tale of obsession

Rest, my dear, gently slipping away
into another world

a world of my design.

But though great to look at, the film
wastes it's star on a one dimensional part

Yeah, beautiful to
look at but rather dull.

Boris looks completely uninterested in it.

Which is rare.

It's one of those films where he looks
like he's just fulfilling his contract.

Karloff next
rejoined the Frankenstein franchise

for a more typical Universal production
of this period.

Well when I went to The Mode, to see

House of Frankenstein I
thought Boris Karloff played Frankenstein.

So when I got into the theater
and I saw his name on the credits, okay,

he's gonna play Frankenstein, the Monster.

And then suddenly I saw him at a prison,

Now will you give me my chalk.

Boris Karloff didn't wanna
play the Monster anymore at that time,

but they wanted
to use his name of course in the movie.

Try that again
and I'll put you in solitary confinement

you would-be-Frankenstein!

And they got an actor
named Glenn Strange

Now on the set Boris
coached Glenn Strange as to how to walk,

how to do the walk,
how to play the Monster,

and Glenn Strange told me that he was

indebted
to Karloff all his life because of that.

Karloffs Dr Neiman was the
sort of role he could play in his sleep.

Fortunately, something
more challenging was on offer from RKO,

who signed him
to appear in three films for Val Lewton.

The first of these to be released was
one of his best, The Body Snatcher,

and a part that
offered real real depth and character.

There's bad news,
boy, bad news. We have to go out again.

It's a remarkable -
remarkably rounded performance, and

the little girl -
he's charming to the little girl

He knows every little girl in Edinburgh.

Some day when
you're running and playing in the streets,

he'll knicker at you as we go by.

He was very merciful and very kind to
younger actors

which was everybody on the
set who was younger than he was,

and he was especially gentle with me.

There were several
scenes where he picked me up and one

where he held me
over to pet the horse

And I had no fear of him at all.

He didn't have too many compliments

for some of the
other directors he worked for, I must say.

But Val Lewton
knew his stuff completely and he did stuff

underneath the main themes
of the films, which was very interesting.

As it turned out Val Lewton brought
in Bela Lugosi

for box office value
and cast him in a small role

I would like to speak to you.

Well I presume you
shall, this won't be my last visit here.

I want to speak to
you alone. I saw something, I heard!

What did you hear?

I know... maybe some other time.

And, and I think Lugosi's feelings were,

were
quite hurt to be given a role this small.

I think he was very self-conscious and he
was not in good shape during the shooting.

Robert Wise mentioned that Karloff did
a lot to try to cheer Lugosi up,

that he was very
aware of the sensitivity of the situation,

that Lugosi was not
at his best at that time,

and that they
worked together in a very smooth way.

While she didn't fully comprehend
how big a star her father was,

Sara became
accustomed to the odd reactions of others.

Being in an elevator with my father was
an experience.

People never knew
whether or not to mind their manners.

There was a lot of body language going on

in an elevator with
my father, they'd be nudging one another.

And the minute we stepped out of an
elevator they'd be pointing and say:

"That was
Boris Karloff, that was Boris Karloff)'.

So, he really couldn't go anywhere that
he wasn't recognised either

certainly by his looks.

My father drove
a convertible and stopping at a stop sign,

people would look then take a double take

and look again
and make certain saw what they saw.

And that was always amusing, to me.

And you just had to learn to live with it.

And he learned to
live with it very graciously and,

and he was very appreciative of his fans

- ..~~ -. ~'-'.~~

he had to
spend a lot of time at home

because he

One time he took me to
a football game and I can guarantee you,

people in the rows around us could never
tell you a thing about that football game.

They were looking at him, watching
him, talking about his being there.

They wasted
their money as far as seeing that game.

But they spent it well
being able to watch him.

So when he went out in public he
really didn't have any private time.

And that's how
I recognised the, the degree of his fame.

But during the previous few years Boris
had become estranged from Sara's mother.

He had been in Arsenic and Old Lace
for three years. Now you think about that.

That means he's doing eight
performances of that play a week, right.

He's away six
nights a week, two afternoons a week.

And if you examine his career at the time,

at the same time he's doing Arsenic
And Old Lace in New York, for example,

he's doing radio
shows that he manages to sandwich in

before the performances at night, all
right.

And he's dressing up as Santa Claus
at, at a hospital,

and he's doing all these other things

and personal
appearances and so on and so forth.

And he's just
completely throwing himself into his work.

And obviously
there's only so many hours in the day,

so he's probably not
seeing his wife very often,

he's probably not seeing
his little girl very often.

And I think that probably
at by the time of 1945 when they divorced,

that Dorothy felt well,

I've kind of lost my husband in
a sense to his profession...

Because I think,
your mother and your father broke up...

Yes. When I was seven.

When you were seven.

So the memories of the three of you as a
family

are really just until you were seven?

Yes. And they each remarried
very happily and very successfully.

My stepmother adored my father and he her.

She took very good care of him.

And my mother married very
successfully and I adored my stepfather.

So it was a win-win
situation for everybody.

And I got to spend some very
marvellous quality time with my father

whenever he was in Los
Angeles working, which was quite a lot.

And my mother and I moved to
San Francisco with my step-father.

With horror production in limbo,

Karloff reverted
to juicy supporting roles in bigger films,

such as the sinister Dr. Hollingshead
in "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty"

that Mr Mitty called,
Walter Mitty, M-

I know of
a way to kill a man and leave no trace.

Excuse me, I'll be
with you in just a moment.

In "Lured", he was
an unhinged former dress designer,

as chorus girl Lucille
Ball tries to uncover a serial killer.

Not so loud! It
hurts the ears...

In DE Mi||e's "Unconquered"

Karloff was a demonised version of the
real life Guyasuta, Chief of the Senecas.

As for Universal's
lavish but clich� ridden

"Tap Roots", the New York Times noted that

"Our old friend Boris Karloff
appears to be getting into another rut,

for he is playing an Indian again,
though quite a civilized one this time."

And you?

I'm happy to be
relieved of the necessity of killing you.

Between these he was the thuggish Gruesome
in one of RKO's

"Dick Tracy" films, costarring
the memorably named Skelton Knaggs.

Any more!

At all?
At All!

I see. Tell him I'll do
what he says for exactly fifteen minutes.

Oh please, now!

Unless of course you're
back within that time, with half the take.

- ' ~' 1 '

marked the end
of Universal's classic monster series,

pitching the
cross-talk duo against Lugosi's Dracula,

Chaney's Wolf
Man & Glenn Strange as the monster.

Karloff wasn't involved,
but gave it a plug,

when it opened in New York, in return
for which Universal paid his hotel bill.

He didn't like the monster to be mocked,

yet was willing to revive
the character in the right circumstances.

And, as recently discovered stills reveal,

the monster
almost appeared in the Walter Mitty film.

What's interesting
about The Secret Life of Walter Mitty is

Boris was willing to do the Monster
in a comedy film.

There was a dream sequence in it in which
Karloff again put on his monster costume.

But obviously it seems that what
he was doing would be straight

and it would be Danny Kaye reacting to it.

But it was never really in the movie. I
don't know if it was even in any previews,

and that's a that would
be a really great piece of film to find.

At 62, Karloff, was
facing a downturn in his film career.

Screen Actors Guild dues
were based on how much money you made.

So if you were
making less money you paid less dues.

And by the late 1940s Boris

was reclassified to a lower
dues paying category as a result.

Which would have meant ...?

It would have
meant that he's making less money

under Guild contracts for motion pictures.

He did two other plays,
each of which ran seven performances,

so I can say that
I was among the masses who missed both

The Linden Tree and
The Shop at Sly Corner.

One who did see the second
of these was actor, Nehemiah Persoff.

And there's only one thing I
remember and that was there was some lady,

sitting on a chair the way I'm
sitting, and he walked slowly behind her.

And they were
talking and having a simple conversation

and he walked behind her and
he got behind her and he had big hands.

And he put both his hands around
there and then he took them away.

And it was a great moment, great moment.

And of all
the entire play that's all I remember.

You are in a deep sleep, a sound sleep.

You hear nothing but
the sound of my voice.

With two failed Broadway productions
in quick succession

"Abbott & Costello Meet the Killer, Boris
Karloff" provided welcome employment.

Afterwards it was back to
New York for a live TV production

ofArsenic and Old Lace, and
the beginning of new phase in his career.

...you get out of here!!

But I'm Jonathan, your
nephew Jonathan.

Oh no you're
not, you don't look a bit like Jonathan,

so don't pretend
you are. You just you get out of here!!

But Aunt Abby,
I am Jonathan and this is Dr. Einstein.

The '50s were very full
of instant gratification for my father,

both television wise and the stage.

Peter Pan was a very
exciting project for me

because it had some very good
people in it, Jean Arthur, Boris Karloff.

I was very excited about getting it.

About a week
before that, the Actors Union, Equity,

had a meeting
in which they honoured Bela Lugosi.

And I was a great fan of Bela Lugosi.
I was sitting there and he came on stage,

when he came on stage he mocked himself.

And out of the blue it came to me in
and I let out a heart-curdling screech

. ~ " 7 - ' I~"~. ~ ~~.~ ~ ...

And I slid down my chair. And everybody,
75 people started laughing and

and Lugosi too started laughing
and applauding and it was very good.

I was very happy I did it.

And as a young actor you were always very
happy whenever you've made an impression,

some kind of
impression on people in the business,

because it's very hard
to get in the business

Anyway, so this was about a
week before we began rehearsing Peter Pan.

We had the first rehearsal,

I walked on stage and there was Boris
Karloff standing there, and I thought

I made such a big hit with that scream
I'll try it again.

And I came over to Boris and:

Ahhhhh! And I screamed
and ran off the stage.

Nobody laughed.

It wasn't funny. It
was a mistake. I shouldn't have done it.

In the late fall, early
spring of '49 and '50

I was asked
if I would like to audition to play John

in the Jean Arthur/ Boris Karloff edition
of Peter Pan.

I had been in show business prior to that,

doing radio early in
the 1940s on kids' shows,

and then playing the
part of the youngest son in

Life With Father
on Broadway for about two years,

And actually my agent and
I decided that

we didn't really appreciate

the financial offer
that was made and I turned it down.

And another young boy was
actually selected and chosen for the part.

About two weeks into
rehearsals they came back to me and said:

"Jack, we want you to do the part. We'll
pay your price."

The director was a
British director, John Burrell,

and he didn't like people sitting out
front watching the actors work on stage,

so we all had to go into the wings, and
I found a nice chair for myself there.

And I used to watch
the action from the side.

I loved to
see Jean Arthur flying, that was great.

After a little bit, Boris Karloff came to
me, he brought a chair with him and

sat down next to me and he said:
"How are you?" I said: "Fine, thank you."

He was sorry that there
was such a relationship between us,

that I didn't have to feel that
way, that what he would like to establish

is a rapport between Captain Hook
and the pirates that was more friendly.

Pirates, but still very kind and good.

And I looked at
him and I thought:

What a terrible mistake I made,

I shouldn't
have, shouldn't have done that scream.

I hurt his feelings I know.

But after a few moments he
left and I felt I could be his friend.

And so right after that when I came to
the theater I'd pass his dressing room,

I'd knock, I had a special
da-da, da knock so he knew it was me,

and he'd say: "Come in, Nicky, come in."

And I'd talk for a while with him.

And the conversations are not the kind
of conversations

you have with a star because

most stars will tell you how
they're recognised, how this and

da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da,
da-da having to do with their stardom.

' J � \ ' V. ,

He talked about
driving a truck; he talked about kindness;

he talked about goodness; he talked a
little bit about this Screen Actors Guild,

he helped organise that I think, I'm not
sure.

" ~ ' " ' '

Our rehearsals
were generally the blocking, the staging

and certainly
getting used to each other in our roles.

And it was really an
eye opening experience

for a 13 year old boy at that time.

His first encounter with
Karloff as Captain Hook was memorable.

That was an astounding transformation.

Because he did his own makeup, of course,

and I was just amazed that he could
do that kind of a job

and transform himself so tremendously

and just be the total opposite of the
urbane and very British Father Darling.

He played the role beautifully,
better than anyone I've ever seen do it,

and I have seen a few other productions.

But I, I think he was
just great all around.

He had a very striking stage presence.

I think had he
not had the film career to precede it,

he still would have been extremely
effective on Broadway or in the theater.

He was very moving. He was a very
tender, moving presence on the stage.

This is a tremendous success. And in
fact the New York Times critic says:

"This is Mr Karloffs
day of triumph, all right,

in which he shows really what he can do as
an actor," right.

Both those roles he plays, he plays
the menace, he plays the comedy,

he sings, you
know, it's an incredible showcase for him.

He found his greatest rewards
and satisfactions first on Broadway

and then on radio as well and --

which was a dominant medium at this time;

and
then in the early days of live television,

which was also based out of New York
where he was working on the stage.

So he found great opportunities away from
Hollywood,

not so many great ones in Hollywood.

Live TV was a handy
source of extra income for actors like

Karloff and Nehemiah Persoff, but it
wasn't covered by the terms of any Union.

I had just finished doing
a TV show for $50

which was too low
but there was nothing you could do,

One day I got to my dressing room

and there was a flyer announcing that
a new union would be formed,

the American
Federation of Television Radio Artists.

And when I got that, I went down
to Boris and he had the flyer too --

and he didn't say
anything about going there or anything.

I didn't wanna bring
it up because I didn't wanna force him.

This was when Senator Joe McCarthy

was stirring up fear of communist
activity in the entertainment industry.

In the era of the Hollywood Ten,

anyone supporting
a new union could fall under suspicion.

It was very quiet going up the steps,

and when I got there I knew why
it was quiet because there was nobody --

nobody there.

The place was empty,
except the one man that was sitting

in the audience there, was Boris Karloff.

I walked over
and I said: "Hello." He said: "Hello."

And he told me that I shouldn't
worry about it, that actors,

workers in general who don't have a
Union don't know what they're missing.

And these actors don't know what they're
missing when they don't support a Union.

First time
I saw him on stage was in Peter Pan.

And he had arranged for me to see
him from the wings

and backstage
and out front and for five, five days.

And I loved every bit of
it. At the end of my stay he said to me:

"Well, I can
tell you don't have the fire in the belly

because you paid more attention
to Nana the dog than you did to me."

And he knew
right then that I never would really have

the passion to be an
actress and he was absolutely right.

His first film
in two years was "The Strange Door",

Universal-|nternationa|'s attempt at a
horror revival,

as Voltan to Charles Laughton's succulent
Sire Alain DE Maletroit.

I suggest you stay
in the old barn.

(WHISPERS) The panel.

(LAUGHING) One's really
subdued, and one's really over the top.

Voltan... you want
your ears cropped for eavesdropping.

(CRIES OUT)

But these were not
especially popular films,

and so they didn't make very many of them.

And of course these
were movies that allowed Karloff to play

the kind of parts that
he was now typecast in.

During filming, Boris's co-star made
him an exciting offer.

To celebrate the British Festival, Charles
Laughton was putting together a troupe

to come to the UK to do
George Bernard Shaw's "Don Juan In Hell",

and when Cedric Hardwicke
dropped out because he had tax problems,

Boris was gonna take his place.

And in his letters, Boris is thrilled, you
know, he's coming to do stage in England.

And then he says:

"I don't know how he did it, but
he managed to sort his tax troubles out,"

and he never got to do it in the end.

Apart from one night at the Palladium
for a charity show.

Whenever he came to work he had
the, the Lords scores, the cricket,

he was really more interested
in cricket than anything in the wor|d..

So he had all the scores in his pocket,

this huge news,
newspaper with all the latest scores,

and he'd retire and read them and
study them.

I thought that was enchanting.

In 1953, a friend, a
young chap who'd been a local journalist

rang me frantically and said:

"|'ve got Boris Karloff
coming back to England,

we've had a cable,
and he wants to go to a cricket match

and you're the only
person I know who goes to cricket."

So I met him at the flat they got him in
Brompton Square,

and took him to the Oval.

And we sat on the

on the top shelf and watched right over
the wicket and Alec Benson was bowling.

And Boris, the first words he'd said
really, other than first meeting, was --

"This is like dying and going to Heaven,"

in that wonderful voice of
his. And he sat all day and he then

I used to take him, we'd go
to all the matches at Lords and the Oval

and test matches regularly. And, um,
we were at the

there when England won the Ashes in 1953

and we were at Lords when Trevor Bailey
and Willie Watson saved the game,

which looked as though we were losing.

So that was our beginning. And then
over the years we built up a friendship,

a great friendship and he met lots of
the cricketers and he umpired for them;

talked about the Hollywood Cricket Club;

told me how he and
Aubrey Smith had set it up.

And, um, he was a man of enormous
interest to me.

One day -- I'd got a little
pub I just bought and I said to him:

"Boris, would you mind opening
would you open it for me?"

And he said: "I
would love to," he said, "great pleasure.

I've never He said
an ambition of mine. And that was it.

And we arrived, and he
got this old carrier bag in his arms

and he made a lovely little speech to the
people who were there

And then he took out of this
bag what looked like a champagne bottle

and he hit me over the head with it.

"I declare this pub open," he said. And
he'd had this specially made, this

and he was
oh, he was such a lovely, lovely man.

So it was a prop bottle?

It was a prop
bottle he'd had made specially for it.

1 ~ -' '~ z ~' -~.. ~.

My first encounter with Boris
Karloff was when I was six years old,

7 x I; ."",':,_' F} I: ~ ' iii? " " z" �W3, ::':'::~a~.: I: 'i:. .~

We'd just bought a
telly - great excitement

- there it was in it's wooden cabinet

And there
was this larger than life Colonel March,

with the black eye patch, who was solving
everyone's problems from Scotland Yard...

Colonel March of Scotland Yard which
I watched all the time,

and again, my mother said:

"There's Boris Karloff
who played Frankenstein."

Didn't say the monster, we didn't know

the monster didn't
have a name back then...

Colonel March is, is a good deal of fun.

It was very different than anything the
American public had seen of Boris Karloff.

Good evening.

I'm sure that the American public in the
mid-50's,

when they saw it really delighted in it.

But it was the charisma of the
man, the bigness of him as a character.

He acted everybody else off the screen

and it sort of put in my
mind how police adventures should be told.

Even TV Guide praised the series - saying
it had "socko video potential" and said

"Colonel March out to bring Karloff as
much appreciation

as his horror roles did."

He was the
entire series and if you look at it today

you can see guest appearances by
people who became famous later

I don't think I'd seen many Boris Karloff
films by the time I worked with him.

I was aware that he was a big star from my
agent and people around and the evident,

you know, attitude of people to
him, it was very clear he was a big deal.

But I don't
think I'd seen any of the legendary films

at that point in time as far as I can
remember.

But I do remember loving his voice.

I've brought you
some pyjamas, they're Mr Hartley's.

That's very kind of you, Andrew.

Is he going to die?

Of course not. What
an idea, just a nasty bump on the head.

It was very careless of him
falling down those stairs, wasn't it?

Naturally, his voice had an authority
and a, and a spookiness to it all its own,

even when he wasn't
putting it on in any way.

Even when he wasn't doing a monster voice,

his natural speaking voice was very cool

and that impressed
me at the time, I distinctly remember.

Annette! How is Mrs
Greer getting along.

She's still
under the dryer, sir.

I was very nervous because of Boris's
reputation.

I couldn't understand what sort of guy he
would be,

but he was a charming, charming man

and very helpful and he reassured
me that everything would be all right.

And so I was lucky, I was very lucky.

Boris Karloff was charming. I mean
he was, he was nice to me,

and didn't talk down to me at all.

I mean at
that age, sometimes grown-ups act like

a child actor's different
from an actor actor.

And I liked working with him because,

as I say, he didn't treat me differently
than any other actors, you know.

He wasn't particularly nice
or different to me because I was young.

By the mid-'50s he's
on Broadway in The Lark

which he considers the
greatest acting achievement of his career,

playing the
Bishop to Julie Harris's Joan of Arc.

He just thinks she's magnificent, he just
loves acting with her eight times a week

and keeping eye contact with her on stage

and, and this is, this is really the high
point of his career,

is doing The Lark.

He said it was sheer joy to work
with that woman, that child at that time.

You had to get used to answering him

because he had that wonderful,
rather slow delivery, so you couldn't

you could get
a little bit... little nervous, we'd say:

hurry up Boris, get through that line.

But he always read everything so,
so wonderfully and so musically.

He was of course, the cleric who

has to make decisions about the fate
of Joan of Arc.

And he
wasn't threatening. He was rational.

The way he depicted the character was
understated.

But you knew that he was in control.

Bad actors can
say: Yes, you know, I'm this, I'm that.

No. He just sat there quietly and you
knew that her fate was in his hands.

Another audience
member during the Broadway run of The Lark

I remember going
backstage both to see Julie,

and to introduce myself to Boris because

I was going around with a petition

to replace the Board of AFTRA,

With John Henry Falk and Liberal people,

so that the Union board stopped

black-listing Television Actors.

And I went to Boris Karloff and asked him
to sign a petition.

Now you don't sign

a petition without taking
the chance of being blacklisted yourself.

And I remember how welcoming he
was and how quickly

he said "Of course I will."

It was - it was very dear to me.

And there was something so
humble about him and so genuine

I just remembered and appreciated
him so, for being in the fight.

I think about two
months into the run, one night Boris,

who was impeccably
professional at all times, didn't show,

he didn't show
at the 8 o'clock call for half hour, and

he didn't show at the 15 minute call,

And then a five minute call. Nothing.

...

And I was standing there with the stage
management looking down the alley

outside the stage door and

no, no Boris. And then
I suddenly felt some

I looked up and the entire cast

had assembled on the stairwells,

they all come out instinctively

and in silent agony,

waiting for Boris.

And And then
suddenly he came over the threshold,

old Boris came through and
they gave him a complete standing ovation.

They so adored that man,

he was much loved.

I felt that particular night...

I suddenly felt rather empty that...

I knew I'd worked with
a very good man and I

don't mean that in any sentimental
way, he...

He was a truly good man

Although Plummer didn't appear
in the TV version of The Lark,

he and Karloff did
act together on a live TV production of

"Even the
Weariest River" along with Lee Grant,

who had been
blacklisted for the previous 5 years.

I was 29 when I did that very public,

Television movie that went throughout
the whole country.

And the first thing you
saw was Boris Karloff,

Franchot Tone and Christopher Plummer.

If you looked for
the name Lee Grant, you didn't find it.

And that was the way that
the producer who was a great caring guy,

got me to be able
to play the part and past the networks

and past the Blacklisting people.
He got me in there secretly.

Because in those days, you had a long
rehearsal

but you filmed the show in one day.

So that there
was no chance for somebody to come

and say stop filming with her because
she's a Red or she's married to a Red.

So he got me through the rehearsals

and we shot the whole thing in one day

and, he got me on television.

Y'kn0w which was
a very brave and courageous

and extraordinary thing for
any producer who wants to produce more.

Thank you Herb Brodkin.

It is a Western in blank verse.

He plays Doc Dixon on it, he's the

narrator, sort of tells
this very tragic story of

a Sheriff who's starting to
become somewhat senile and worrying about

keeping his authority
in this lawless town.

And he's wonderful. He is dynamite.

He has all this excitement and energy
and vitality as an actor.

And I can remember that wonderful
sound he made as he read

Swinburne's poem:

No life lives
forever;

that dead men rise up, never;

and even the weariest
river

I V'_ D.

Some of Kar|off's most intriguing TV work

seems to survive only in the memories
of those who appeared in or saw them.

Was a television version
of Arsenic and Old Lace,

with Peter Lorre and
this was I think 1955.

And I remember the next day
at school, you know, we weren't

little boys weren't
into little girls necessarily back then,

and we would take these
girls that we had rivalries and we'd say:

"You look like Boris
Karloff, you look like Boris Karloff."

So that's my early

my earliest recollection,
and I became a fan of his instantly,

and he became my favourite actor and
he still is to this very day.

I was tapped to play the Cary
Grant part. I think I was 25 years old

and I played Boris Karloff's
brother. What was he, 70?! But so what.

And CBS was touting me as the new
young hot comic, so they put me on it.

But my experience on it was
what a wonderful man Karloff was.

They have this weighted camera with a
big weight and the guy sits in the centre,

the camera is here
and there's a big weight,

so it can go like this, and you can get
that kind of a shot.

The nickname for such
a camera is 'the monster'.

So when we were shooting
Arsenic and Old Lace somebody will:

"Get that monster over here!"
And Karloff said: "I beg your pardon?!"

He was wonderfully self-effacing, you
know, he could just make fun of himself.

Peter Lorre was miserable. "Aggh, it's
hot; when are we gonna get a break?

I can't stand this."
And Karloff would say:

"Relax, Peter, it's
all in a day's work."

I knew a guy who used to do a one word
impression of Boris Karloff, he'd go:

"Antipasto."

We did Mr Blue Ocean,

traditional Chinese play.

It was such a thrill to,

to meet Boris Karloff and actually work
with him because he was the Monster,

you know. He was a huge star.

One of the nicest,
giving actors that I've worked with.

I love a giving actor
who's the star of the piece

and he's there for you
as well as for the piece.

And the wonderful
thing about, he has a slight lisp,

never, as far
as I know, never worked to dismiss it,

he used it
and it gave him even more humanity.

There was something about it that made him
even sweeter.

There was just
something awfully good about the man.

That I actually do remember in detail.

I think we did it in three acts.

After the first
act, the director came out of the booth,

came onto
the floor, went up to Susan Strasberg,

who was a child, who was...
and he yelled in her face

"You're ruining my show!"

(LAUGHS)

And then he went back up into the booth.

Everybody was in shock.

The poor girl had two more acts to do

and she was
there with her mother. Her first job,

by the way, this was her first job.

I thought she was fine.

I don't know what the
director's trouble trouble was anyway.

That... that
incident is just burned into my head.

I'll never forget it.

We all felt for the poor girl. But she
did very well.

June 23rd, 1960
saw the broadcast of a show billed as

"a refreshingly different spectacular".

Directed by Norman Jewison,

this original musical set out to explore

"The Secret World of Eddie Hodges"

The kid was very talented.

And so we said: "What if we took him

and we dealt with his imaginary friends?

What do kids really like or what are they
scared of,

or what are they impressed with?"

And someone said: "Well,
you got the witch in the Wizard of Oz."

Oh, Margaret Hamilton, maybe
we could get Margaret Hamilton.

And we
She lives next door to Eddie Hodges.

"Oh, how about Captain Hook? Aye

the big Hook
is here, aye." And who could we get.

"Oh my God,
Boris Karloff. He would be wonderful."

I remember very clearly how

"Boris Karloff" would,
would frighten the kid

and... would frighten Eddie,

and I asked him to really lay it on.

I mean it was... it was... Because it
was kind of stylised.

But he was... he was terrific.
He was, as I remember, he was,

he was very good with Eddie and, and very
supportive and,

and I said: "Don't worry about Eddie
Hodges, he'll take care of himself, Boris.

(LAUGHS)

He's he's kind of... he's
very good with lines, he's very good with

memorising everything and he'll be fine."

Of all the great
"might have beens" in Karloff's career,

the most intriguing was an idea
by fan and acquaintance

Miles Kreuger.

During the 1950s my mother,

who was always in the world of fashion and
knew everybody,

was the fashion coordinator
for Bloomingdale's on Lexington Avenue,

and Boris Karloff
used to come in all the time to shop.

And I would go
down and have lunch with my mother,

so I ran into Boris Karloff
and it occurred to me

that he would be a
marvellous Peter Stuyvesant

in a revival of Knickerbocker Holiday,

which has a text by Maxwell
Anderson and a score by Kurt Weill.

And I just walked up
to him, and he seemed very approachable,

he was going through merchandise
as people do in department stores,

I introduced myself, and I was
just out of Bard College

and I said:
"Would you be interested in that,

cause I would love
to hear you sing The September Song?

I think you'd be marvellous doing
that. And he seemed very interested.

And we went off to the coffee shop in
the store and had a little cup of coffee

and something to nibble,

and my next task was to have Lotte
Lenya agree

to the use of the Kurt Weill score and do
a revival.

" ~. " " ' 1:� I; I .. "a-C}: I; I =9135i,"

And then I had
to meet the Maxwell Anderson family

and I think he was still living, but I was

woefully inexperienced about how to
get the show

on the stage. I had no instincts
whatever to be a producer, none.

And yet I had
a star, Boris Karloff, agreeing to do it;

Lotte Lenya agreeing
to the Kurt Weill score,

I didn't know what to
do next. And so it all fizzled out. But...

Mr Karloff and I talked
several times about it.

How did you
find Boris personally?

Oh, he was delightful. I
mean he treated me to my coffee! (LAUGHS)

And it's interesting,
I think Ron observed

that there's a recording
of Boris performing September Song.

I just learned that. I can't believe it.
I'd never heard it.

And it sounds like it was not long
after you actually had the conversation.

Did I put a bee in his bonnet?!

Instead he received an intriguing
offer to revive Arsenic and Old Lace

for a limited 3 day run...

in Anchorage, Alaska!

In 1957, Boris
Karloff came to Anchorage, Alaska, to do

"Arsenic and Old Lace" and I
was the stage manager for that production.

Prior to that time, mostly it was

high school productions. So they did
a few minor things but

they came up on an anniversary and said:

"Well, we wanna do Arsenic and Old
Lace," and they had auditions and

they just couldn't find anybody to do
the Karloff part.

So somebody said, and I have no idea
because I wasn't

privy to the upper levels,

said: "Let's get Boris Karloff."

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was the publicity person,

and I guess she
somehow actually got through to him

and said: "Hey, would you come to Alaska?"
And there was, you know, this kind of

give and take and finally he said:
"Well, let's see if we can do it."

And everybody in the
production was excited that he was coming.

And then when
he got there, he was so gracious

and treated me just like he would have
treated a stage manager in New York.

And that probably was why I
stayed in theater for the rest of my life.

There's a scene in the play where
he is going to operate on Mortimer

and the prop
people had come up with this terrible

civil war doctor's roll of instruments.

And during one of the first run
throughs he kind of fussed with this stuff

and then he came to me and said:
"John, can you get me a knitting needle?"

"Yes sir, yes sir." And
boy, I was off to grab a knitting needle.

And the next night he just took
that out of the roll and he held it up

and he walked
over to Mortimer and he measured the

distance between his eye and his ear.

And during the performance you could
hear

people in the audience going: (GASPS)

And even the
cast when they picked up these terrible

things the first
time: Oh yeah, okay, that's bad. But

just using that needle, it was,
it was really impressive to me.

One of the
things that was in the Karloff archive

that we offered at Heritage Galleries,
was a little scrapbook that he had kept

about that engagement. I mean it meant
so much to him

that he actually had a little scrapbook
all about this

Alaskan production
of Arsenic And Old Lace.

He didn't
have a scrapbook on Frankenstein.

You know, he didn't have a
scrapbook on The Body Snatcher.

But he had a scrapbook on
this particular production and,

everybody up there just loved him. They
just, er, they just absolutely adored him.

And on the last performance, we recorded

And this is that recording

(AUDIENCE LAUGHTER)

That's your work doctor!
You did that to me!

One of my favourite roles of Karloff is
him playing Kurtz in Heart of Darkness.

CBS for Playhouse 90.

My iVOFY, my jungle,
my earth, my son!

And you really get a sense
of the sinister and enigmatic character

that is Kurtz through the performance
of Boris Karloff.

(SCREAMS) Marian

This is your destiny,
just as it was mine!

With the new interest in horror,

Karloff had his first
starring vehicles in years...

with "Voodoo |s|and",

"Grip of the Strangler",

And "Corridors of Blood"
produced in rapid succession.

For many new Boris Karloff fans

Voodoo Island was the first chance
to see Karloff on the big screen.

And because I was basically
unfamiliar with anything but his name,

I really didn't know which one of the
actors in this picture was Boris Karloff

for a good deal of the running time.

It was a crazy movie.

It was about somebody who got mind zapped

and he was trying to go back and find out
what happened to this guy, he was a zombie

No signs
of inter-cranial pressures

Convinced, Mr Knight?

When you asked me earlier about what's my
favourite movie,

Voodoo Island is so boring,

it's a non movie - it's really not good.

But he's great in it.

And the fact that
it's shot in Hawaii,

y'know - or was it Costa Rica - anyway

it's some place I'd been because I kept
staring at it going

this is reminding me of my trip there.

And all these years later everything
still looks the same. Of course - right.

Cover him well over!
Quicklime is cheap enough!

Much better were the
two British films, directed by Robert Day.

The first, "Grip of the Strangler" cast
Karloff as a Victorian writer,

determined to prove a man
who was hung as the Haymarket Strangler

20 years earlier was in fact innocent.

...this one?

It's the one clear case
that will prove my point.

If Stiles had had the money for an

adequate
defence he never would have hanged.

For 19 year old Diane Aubrey,

acting with Karloff would be her
first experience on the big screen.

I didn't know you were back.

Evening Lily.

Boris Karloff had a presence,
a very special presence and a skill.

You know, people don't understand that

the skill of an actor, that you have to
work and work

and work on something.

Considering the
physical problems Karloff was having,

he's astonishingly energetic in his role.

My memory of Boris Karloff was that,

you know, you're very grateful as a

young new actor to
kindness and help from older actors.

And he was very kind and

my impression
was that he was very professional and

wonder of wonders he used to give me
a lift home in his chauffeur driven car

having myself got
the bus out there at the crack of dawn.

Diana's longest and final day of filming

was for the climactic scene
in which she is strangled by her father

So we started, you know at
8 o'clock in the morning and it went on,

we went on till about 10 o'clock at night,

this I do remember.

And there were quite a few takes
in the scene in the conservatory

when he's now become Hyde and is
strangling me,

literally strangling me.

And so there were these dramatic
scenes where he'd be going:

(IMITATES) that terrible face he used
to make and I'd be going: Aggghhh!

And then and then the take
would be over and then he'd say:

"Oh my dear,
my dear, are you all right, my dear?"

And I'd say: "Yes,
yes, I'm fine. Let's go again."

So that happened about five times,

but it was, it was
wonderful to sort of see these two...

the actor being the monster and then the
genuine kind of person that he is. Yeah.

The Grip Of The Strangler was a fairly
successful picture

Paperback version
of it, that was rather lurid,

that's all I can say.

There was a trend at that time to
take the some of these pictures

that were ostensibly horror films or -

pictures like Gorgo or Bride of Dracula,

Stranglers of Bombay

and do very lurid,

sexed up, paperback versions

of these things, which weren't necessarily
advertised as such,

but when kids, teenagers -

randy teenagers got a hold of these things

they suddenly discovered this was a
kind of book you had to hide from mom.

Because it was... it was the
equivalent of

Peyton Place for, for us kids.

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For your information, gentlemen,

this is a straight-forward amputation
at the lower extremity of the femur.

And to you students again I emphasise
the absolute necessity for speed.

I think that in Corridors of Blood,
you see a richness has come

to Kar|off's performances

that comes from the fact that he has
had this experience on the stage now;

he's had his experience in live television

He's getting better and better,

which is really interesting because
the general belief is that as

actors get older they
lose some of their spark.

In Karloff's situation
it was really pretty much the opposite

and so when
he was good, he was extremely good,

and he was showing
little nuances and technique and things

that you might
not have seen in earlier performances,

Karloff discovers anaesthesia and he
gets addicted to it,

which means
that he has to fall into bad company

, V, '3). I K _V , I

where there was all
sorts of chicanery going

and I thought it was
actually a pretty good movie.

What's so interesting in that
is that Chris Lee plays a character who is

(LAUGHS) one guy!

Lee and Karloff had actually
worked together five years previously

in an episode of Colonel March.

I'm afraid I'm
not very good at games.

Oh but my little
game is not altogether without point,

I know you have an interest
in justice.

Lee was unknown
then, they didn't know each other at all

and then it was several years before they

met together when they
did "Corriders of Blood".

And then, by that time Lee himself had

played the Frankenstein monster in
Hammer films The Curse of Frankenstein

with Peter Cushing and Dracula as well and

became a major horror star himself.

And they stayed friends until Karloff
died.

Lee often mentioned Kar|off's legacy when
chatting with

He learned a lot from Karloff,

because he was the
master, everybody kind of looked up to him

insofar as he was, he was the man,

so to speak. He really, really was.

And it, it's a, it's a tall thing to set,
isn't it, it's a high benchmark to set.

The success of this
and Kar|off's return to the big screen

made a new
Frankenstein film with Boris inevitable

Karloff made at Warner
Bros. for Howard Koch.

A TV company wants to shoot a series
at the Frankenstein Castle and of course,

Boris is the last of
the Frankensteins and he's got a big scar

and he's happy to have
these people in his castle because he can

get parts for the monster
that he's building in the basement.

And at one point Boris goes down
to the catacombs and delivers

this soliloquy,
which is I think he's doing for the camera

In this stone sarcophagus,

deep in the bowels of the earth,

he buried his
creature - his creation.

At the end of
the shoot he was quoted as saying:

"They just didn't know
how to make horror pictures any more."

And I think he was reacting
to the fact that there's a lot of

eyeballs and brains
and all that, that sort of

stuff that Hammer ended
up, you know, exploiting for a long time.

He just thought that was
kind of gore for gore's sake.

By the 1960's Karloff was well and truly
finished with the Frankenstein monster,

or was he?

Then of course there
was that wonderful Route 66 episode

That proves it!
The old ghosts are the best after all.

And the power of all three of
us in one picture... can you imagine it!

Why it's almost too
ghastly to contemplate.

You know,
what a treat, what an absolute treat.

When Boris was doing the Route 66 Show,

I knew he was
gonna be in town over like a few days,

and I assumed that
he'd be staying in a Downtown hotels,

so I and a friend went to every major
hotel in Downtown Chicago asking:

"ls Mr Karloff registered here?" "No."

"How about a Mr Pratt?" "No."

And we never dreamed that he was gonna
be shooting like in the suburb somewhere.

Roger German's The
Raven returned Boris to the

big screen
in Deluxe co-lour and Cinemascope.

At age 75,
Karloffs popularity was never stronger,

especially among Drive-in audiences.

And it led to the offer of
his first long term contract in 25 years.

They signed him
to a contract for 7 films I remember,

and he told me:

"Well if they have
that much confidence in my longevity

I guess I'd better
stick around and fill out the contract.

So he I think he fulfilled
the entire contract that he had with them.

And not all the films were all that good.

But at least he had an opportunity to

stay busy,
stay working in the profession he loved.

In '63 he went to Italy
to make a film with Mario Bava called

"Black Sabbath" and - like
in Thriller he introduces the stories.

So you have a nice suited Boris with a
moustache introducing each of the stories,

but in one of the stories "The
Wurdu|ak"

he plays his only vampiric role.

And it is very, very sinister
It's a peasant setting,

rather than an aristocratic setting -

which is where the folklore of the vampire
actually came from.

It's a peasant, wood-cutting family
and a child

Mamma, I'm cold!
Mamma! Let me in.

Let Me In'.

And "Let the
Right one in" and all these recent films,

vampire films which
are said to be so original

it's all in there in "The
Family of the Wurde|ak"

And Karloff plays
this sort of shambling peasant man,

And his performance is fantastic,
with moustache and hair and...

somehow he - he makes
you believe he's this rural peasant who -

this folkloric manifestation
has changed his life.

I think "The Family of the Wurde|ak"
is by far the best in that portmanteau,

D� N�

It also looks fantastic, the co-lour.

Post Hammer we're now in
co-lour and y'know Karloff in co-lour - mmm.

It really retains all
it's power. And for him to be able to

immerse himself into
that new sort of horror film

and to hit those chords, alright - that
Bava wanted

I mean that is really, I think,
again

There's a great scene at the end

that Boris particularly loved where they
show him on his horse,

riding on his horse.

And the camera backs away and you
see how they do it,

the stage hands are jiggling
the horse and running past with branches..

While Karloff greatly
enjoyed filming this scene,

he was only half joking when he told Bava

he would probably catch pneumonia and
die from the fans.

The "brutally cold" conditions did indeed
cause a serious bout of pneumonia,

which took five months to recover from.

Returning to work
in The Comedy of Terrors,

Karloff was supposed to play villainous
landlord Mr Black,

but with worsening arthritis,

he suggested
swapping roles with Basil Rathbone,

cast as a senile Funeral Parlour
owner.

The choice was an inspired one.

Alexander the Great
embalmed in honey so they say!

(CACKLES)

Egyptians used to
hollow 'em out and pour 'em full of resin.

He's not the baddie really, he's not the
nasty undertaker,

He's the old
man at home who's got Alzheimer's

Egyptians used to bend them in two
and stick them in a vase of salt water.

He can't remember
anything, and he's very, very touching

Yank their
brains out with a hook!

. ,

One time my, er, father-in-law was in
the hospital and,

while I was visiting,

an alert went off and everybody had to go
to the nearest

waiting room and you know,

until something was
taken care of in the hospital.

And I went there and The Comedy
of Terrors was on television,

There's a great scene where
he's in charge of this funeral and he's

giving this really eloquent speech

This litter of sorrow, this cairn,
this cromlech, this dread dachma, this...

And there must have been 12 people
in that room,

and they were all watching it,
and they are all roaring with laughter.

I mean...

(LAUGHS)

Even though though it was a
hospital and it was a grim situation,

and we're all kind of locked up

in there at the time,

This unhappy cumulus, this - this (COUGHS)

What is the word? This...

(LAUGHS) You know, his timing
is worthy of Laurel and Hardy,

he's just absolutely hysterical.

He enjoyed doing comedy and

but as a, as a person
he had a wonderfully,

beautiful timing in
his own sense of humour,

typically British humour
and very often turned back on himself

Die, Monster Die,

Kar|off's next AIP assignment

was produced in England and is notable as
an early film adaptation of H P Lovecraft.

I don't remember
having invited you.

I think it's in Die
Monster, Die. He has a

wheelchair for the
first time and he loves it.

It was my first film.

The one problem that we had

was he was having trouble with his legs.

And I decided to put him in a wheelchair
and I think he appreciated that.

Yeah, there's an interview and he says:

"This is just great, I'm gonna do this
from now on."

And he does. I mean you just do see
him in wheelchairs,

like in The Name of the Game on TV.

Well I think one of the great
strengths of Boris Karloff was his voice.

He did a whole series of records
for kids, narrations, "Just So" stories.

He did a narration for a Christmas
short called The Juggler of Our Lady,

which the entire soundtrack
is just some music and his voice.

A lot of his performances are

marked by the way he turns a phrase,

and that lisp and that accent and,

and the warmth of it. And I think
that's one of his enduring legacies.

And any time you can
pick up an audio book that was recorded

a long time ago by,
by Boris it's, it's always a treat.

Early in 1966,
Boris and Evie bought their final home,

Roundabout Cottage
in Bramshott, Hampshire,

They're probably sitting
back here, I think,

And um, you can't - you have
to

stand up to see over the wall. Anyway

a funeral procession goes by.

And Boris
goes "Shant be long!"

Oh wow, right.

You know he was joking all the time

because
he was very ill for a number of years.

You're going to do
a scene with Boris Karloff

your lines will appear, right here...

Despite increasing frailty,
Boris was determined to keep working.

Come in, you know why I've asked you here!

You must convince the villagers that
I am harmless.

Bedouins, the once fierce warriors of
the Sahara desert are now accenting...

Voice over
work was lucrative and undemanding.

In addition to "How the
Grinch Stole Christmas", he was The Rat

in Rankin Bass's "The Daydreamer"

I'd go myself
but my poor lumbago - ooh aah ooh.

And for the same team in "Mad Monster
Party",

\- '�_' \ .'- �~

Ha ha ha... quoth the
raven, never more!

He had varied roles
on TV series such as "The Wild Wild West"

as an emigree
Maharajah training his sons to be killers.

BOYS! Are
you defying me? Go to your rooms!

Butpappa!

Not another word, sir, go!

Even more
camp was his criminal mastermind,

Agnes Tewksbury
in "The Girl from U.N.C.LE".

Aaah, I just can't
bear slow, torturous deaths, Mr Solo.

Well you're very kind, mother.
May I ask what you're brewing here?

Embalming fluid,
dear. My own recipe.

And I thought: Oh, we've got Boris Karloff
on our show. Oh my I was so excited,

I didn't even look at
anybody who was sitting in the next chair

because that person was
sort of covered up and being worked on.

And I sat down, jumped
in the chair and closed my eyes and the

make-up artist started
putting make-up on me, and I said

I started chatting away
about Boris and about how

he scared me when I was a
kid and that voice and all of this and

Little did I know that being made-up
next to me,

was not a woman in fact,

.' 15-20: ._ . . 'x? 'I: Don't:.

And when he was finished being made-up,

somebody said something about
"Oh, it's going to be your birthday."

I said, "Yes, it's going
to be my birthday."

Somebody said: "Well what day is it?"

And I said: "November 2nd," and this
figure lifted up out of the chair

(IMITATES) "So is mine." And it
was Boris. And he was talking like that.

I mean I absolutely dropped my cookies,

Body that emerged in a woman's,
make-up

with a wig on was the man himself.

But for the fact that
I'm being paid a fortune by Casa Bianco

to eliminate you, I'd be sorely tempted
to keep you for my very own.

Wouldn't you hate
to have that choice!

Hold yer tongue, ducks, or you won't
have it much longer.

That gal was trouble. She... (LAUGHS) He
was... he was really a trip in that show.

While Karloff enjoyed these, he really
shines in "I Spy-Mainly on the plain".

One of his least celebrated performances.

He played this Nuclear scientist who
had delusions of being Don Quixote

and acts out fighting windmills and that
kind of thing.

And he's very poignant and lyrical.

He's nearing the end
of his career, so all his lines take on

further resonance
and have much more meaning

Have you ever been in an aeroplane,

flying in and out of patches of cloud.

That is how it has been with me.

Passing through mists that seem to
cloud my mind.

Please! Be patient with me.

He was in very poor health at the time,

but being the consummate professional
never complained - or anything.

But - And it was filmed
in Spain, suitably.

And being where Don Quixote is from.

And it's just a, I think
one of his really last great performances.

Karloffs films at this
time were a mixed bunch.

His role
was literally an afterthought.

Added when production
was already completed

in an attempt to improve a film
that embarrassed almost everyone involved.

The Venetian Affair
was a marked improvement,

being a relatively
serious, major studio release from MGM.

A downbeat spy thriller,
starring Robert Vaughan, it cast Karloff

in a small but pivotal role of a scientist
being manipulated by enemy agents

Dr Vaugiroud

Oh you recognise me. That
is good, good. That you can still do that.

Oh my poor boy, my poor boy.

I am responsible for
what they are doing to you,

you must not let it continue another day.

Michael Reeves "The Sorcerers"
saw Karloff back as a mad scientist.

Though filmed cheaply,
it had a good script,

excellent roles for Karloff
and Catherine Lacey

and a gifted director

In stark contrast,
the Spanish produced "Cauldron of Blood",

an ineptly directed fiasco, was
so bad it didn't surface until 1971.

Fortunately Kar|off's next film would
be a near classic.

Oh Sammy, what's the use. Mr Boogie
Man, King of Blood, they used to call me.

Marx Brothers make you laugh, Garbo
makes you weep, Orlock makes you scream.

It's an absolutely perfect film for him,

as Byron Orlock this old horror star who

figures he's lost

connection with the modern world,
with the kind of films that he's made.

He said to me on the phone from London,

he says: "Since I'm playing
a character based very much on my

on me, do I have to
say such terrible things about myself?"

And I said: "Well, I
think the more terrible things you say,

the more the audience will so
no, it's not true. That's my intention."

And he said: "A|| right." So
we didn't change it.

One line he rushed,

one line, it was the only line he rushed,
he didn't wanna say it, but he said it:

And once I thought I'd be an actor
- oh it's not that the films are bad,

I've gone bad. I couldn't even
play a straight part decently anymore.

And he really delivered
all that stuff fully.

And the audience did say:
No, it's not true. They loved him for it.

Although not his final performance as some
have suggested,

"Curse of the Crimson Altar"

is the last of his films to
be completed and released in his lifetime.

You know this is a
very interesting old house

Mmm, I don't
know. It gets a bit creepy sometimes.

It's a bit like one of those old houses
in horror films.

Yeah, I know what you mean.

As though Boris
Karloff is going to pop up any moment.

The film Curse Of The
Crimson Altar was produced by Tony Tenser

And I was offered the role and sent
the script and delighted to do it.

And the script
is a bit of a laugh, very camp, but hey,

the opportunity of working with the legend

Boris Karloff was just
too thrilling to be true.

Boris of course was wonderful,

very gentle, not at all
what I expected. But you think

all those monsters and you know,

he'd be kind of a little bit terrifying.

But he was polite,
gentle, kind, interested,

very happy to
have a conversation, was a delight.

Whereas Christopher was very, very cold,
very austere,

didn't wanna have a conversation;

would never run lines,
and unfortunately one of my first days

was working with him and we're all
sitting round the breakfast table. And

we wanted to run lines - and

Christopher wasn't having it.
He just picked up his newspaper

and was reading the
paper and I thought it was a bit mean.

By the time Curse began filming it was
winter,

and Karloff was in bad shape.

We'd all been told that Boris wasn't very
well and

if he did and when he did come,

we'd have to sort of get it all in on

one day outside or one night

and he
it was very limited to an amount of time.

And his voice was definitely very

rasping and when you see the movie
he's sort of...

(TAKES DEEP BREATH)

Takes a deep breath
and the music goes up,

um, and he
was very soft, I remember that now.

His tone was,

was very
soft and you sort of had to listen a bit

to what he was saying and get your cue in.

When we were sitting
in the sort of like the drawing room,

I remember, um, he was

a delight and curious about the location
and just,

like a lovely actor.

Be careful of this brandy, Elder.

It's as rare
as gold, but infinitely more precious.

Thank you

Good girl. Completely
wasted on women.

It's just like: What?!

(LAUGHS) Hang on!

Well you wouldn't, you wouldn't get away
with that now, would you.

I mean it's kind of quite shocking.

But you know, it was what it was.

You just kind of went along with it.

But it's also a delicious
scene because the way

There's a real sweetness to it.

Yeah, well he was a sweet guy.

He was very endearing. And I think that's
what in a way was kind of surprising,

because when you
look at him and when all the

wonderful things

and the roles
that he's played, you don't expect that.

. '- ' ' ~' 1 .~ ' ~ ~ z " I ~ -"' *: ~ ~ ~~ ' ~ '~ ~' R ' ~-.

And they needed a lot
of shots with Boris Karloff as pick-ups,

retakes and
some stuff that they hadn't shot and

I was the
obvious person to ask to join the crew.

And the call I think
was probably 9 P.m. and it was winter

and off I went
dressed suitably as I always was, am.

And I arrived and Boris
Karloff was sitting in his wheelchair

out in the freezing cold in
his costume but with a blanket round him.

It was freezing! And I'm sure filming
outside can't have done him much good.

At the end of the take when we had
decided what to print

and I'd spoken
to the director, Boris stayed in situ

and I went
and spoke to him, and I told him that I,

you know, seen him on the screen since
1933 when I was probably 7 years old,

and he'd been a bit of a hero
and I'd been frightened of him of course,

so not hero really,
but very frightened of him.

And your voice is
so beautiful and I can't stop of course,

and then I become the normal me.

And he was very sweet to me but
he was frozen, absolutely frozen.

And so I, you know, went away.

We did the
fireworks scene and Vernon Sewell

was going crazy trying to
get the fireworks to go across the frame,

which was absolutely terrifying,

Were closer closer, safety,
out the window.

No, he didn't allow or encourage
any danger

but director's
enthusiasm does want closer, closer.

There is one
that almost hits Boris.

Hm-mm.

It just kind of it goes
phewwww. And you see him sort of-

Flinching. Yeah. Well he was lucky.

We all were lucky, you know. He was a
bit nuts, Vernon.

His professionalism was so great
that he made himself look comfortable

in the situation even
though he obviously wasn't.

And behind the camera we
were all concerned about how cold it was

and not, not his
breathing, I mean I was unaware of that.

But, that this couldn't be good for an
elderly gentleman

who's having to sit still because that's
all he could do, all these long nights.

And we thought, you know, this
is gonna kill him, and then when he died,

we kind of thought it did, but knowing
now or then that he did other stuff

Is this the mockery you make of our
lifetime of work,

to defile the
daughter of a God with your brutal lust.

You can't feel so bad about it.
And, he went doing what he loved.

This Mexican
producer had made what everybody thought

was just an absolutely insane deal.

He, he wanted to hire
Boris Karloff for four weeks,

shoot all of his scenes, for
four pictures, he wanted to make

four pictures back-to-back.
And he had no scripts.

So he saw He came
to see a film that I had done for Roger

and so he thought maybe I could do it.

So I had to write... I had to come
up with ideas to write four scripts

for Boris Karloff, horror movies,

in such a way that they'd
be different, one from the other,

each would have its
own personality but at the same time

be done in such a
way that all of his scenes

could be shot
in Hollywood because he had emphysema,

he could not go to Mexico City because it
was 4,000 feet up or something, you know.

And the scripts were actually not too bad.

I had this vision in mind of Boris Karloff
playing the organ with flames coming up,

you know, all
Roger Corman movies end with things...

castle burning up, you know, so I
wanted to have an ending like that.

And so I wrote the whole
script so that I could have that scene.

And, and the others
I did, one was a science fiction movie;

Help me strap her down Paul.

...1a" ~~. ' '~. ~' ' * ' ' '~' ' ~ ~~

You think that this miserable pig could
be master of the legions of the dead?

And the other one was -- I don't even
remember now, it was something else.

' ' ' V' '5,3 '

Yeah. Yeah, oh yeah. I thought
that was a good idea, you know.

They discovered that in
order to get this super kind of chemical

or super thing to cure,
I forget what it was,

it can only be obtained by having
a woman in such a state of terror,

Now hurry

When Boris came he, he
had a little place in a street called

called Benedict Canyon, where a lot
of people and studios lived in.

I went to visit him there.
He was a really, really nice guy.

He's happy to do it, he says, as long
as somebody will employ me, you know.

Beause he was dying of emphysema. And

But he, on
the set he would be in a wheelchair

and then he would have an oxygen
bottle here that he would breath from.

And then when it's time for if he
had to do some action, like he did,

he would get up and do his action

and then he'd
come back and take his oxygen again.

It was sad and
yet the guy was just a trooper, you know,

just really wanted
to do it. And he did a wonderful job.

When Boris Karloff
died on February 2nd 1969,

every obituary commented on
the amazing body of work he left behind.

The Monster, the Mummy,
The Black Cat, The Body Snatcher,

Lorca the Wurdelak and
of course Byron Orlock in Targets.

No one would seriously contest this,
but beyond his roles,

Karloff the man, left
an equally lasting legacy.

Any final thoughts you'd like to share
about Boris?

Lucky! Blessed...

To be a part of whatever he was doing.

Having contact with somebody so moral

and so lovely and so giving

and so intelligent and elegant.

I'm gonna read you something
because I want to I put it all down

on notes because I wanted to get it right.

So forgive me, everybody, for reading this
but it'll answer your question I hope.

I'm calling it "Little Did I Know."

That's the title of my documentary,
damn it!

(READS) "|t's about the monster
that frightened me so much

when I first saw him on the screen.

But little did I know
what a beautiful voice he had.

That those deep,
dark piercing eyes that could assume

the gentlest of expressions and - ha -

such dark secrets
that lived behind those deep eyes.

And little did I know how misused
he had been in his early career,

overworked and underpaid and broken,
physically,

but no complaints on his part.

Taken much advantage of.

And then to become the monster that
made him a star, he had his revenge.

Little did I know then what
a marvellous actor he was under the mask."

"And little did I know
that I'd have the good fortune

of working with him many years later
in two, two --

there was one
on television and one on the theater --

one in Alvin
Sapinsley's Even The Weariest River.

And I can remember that wonderful
sound he made

as he read Swinborne's poem:

that no life lives
forever,

that dead men rise up never

I V'_ D.

Does that answer your question?

Very well!
- um

What do you think
it is about Boris Karloff,

that has made him
endure in the way he has?

First, I think it's his
skill. It's his talent as an actor.

The fact that he worked so long,
that he brought such grace and dignity

to everything he did, everything he did,

even some assignments that weren't
worthy of him he,

he never condescended,
he never disdained them.

Work was work.

That face
was just so magical and said so much.

And it's all about the
eyes.

And you saw his soul, didn't you?

You could feel, almost feel what was
coming, what he was trying to say

but just through looking at his face.

Well he was wonderful to work with.
He was very giving.

He directed me, as I told
you, a couple of times, it was great.

And he never give me any problems at all.
He was just very together and very...

just wonderful to work with.

I can't think of anything except
that, he was great. My first movie star.

Your first movie star, yeah.

I've worked some movie
stars in the theater, but not in movies.

Oh God, he was wonderful.

I just wish there
were more stars like him in the world.

I am not talking as a fan.

I'm not talking as, as the
4 or 8 year old

and living in Guadalajara,
I'm talking about a

film director with 25
years of work experience,

I can tell you
that, that man was such a fine actor,

And then he just... he
was born to be there in front of a screen.

I think that's a perfect point
at which to end.

Thank you so much

My pleasure.