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James Whale (1889 - 1957)
Following the war Whale settled in the Kings Road area of London, where he found work acting and directing in the theater and designing sets. His professional acting debut was in a 1919 production of The Knights of the Burning Pestle, followed by The Merry Wives of Windsor, where he first Ernest Thesiger, the actor whom he later cast as Dr. Pretorius in The Bride of Frankenstein. In 1925, he acted in and did the set designs for J.R. Ackerly's Prisoners of War, the first play in London to present love between two men. Performing in Portrait of a Man With Red Hair (1928), a psychological thriller sprinkled with homoerotic sadism, Whale developed a strained friendship with the closeted Charles Laughton, who resented Whale's own openness about his sexuality. Among those Whale also worked with and befriended were Noel Coward, John Gielgud, Elsa Lanchester, H.G. Wells, Evelyn Waugh, and Aldous Huxley. Whale's triumph on the stage came in 1928 with Journey's End, about life in the World War I trenches, a subject with which Whale himself had more than enough experience. The cast included Maurice Evans, George Zucco, and Laurence Olivier. The play opened to incredible critical praise. When Olivier later left to perform in Beau Geste, his role was filled by a nervous young actor by the name of Colin Clive, whose performance brought the play even more praise. Whale was asked to direct the play on Broadway, and this led to work in Hollywood as a dialogue coach, and also to his meeting with David Lewis, a young film director with whom Whale had a love relationship which lasted many years. In 1930 Whale was hired to direct the film version of Journey's End, and immediately cast Colin Clive in the role he had played on the London stage. The success of Journey's End led to Whale's directing of Waterloo Bridge, one of Bette Davis's first films. Next came Frankenstein, for which Whale screened the movies Metropolis and The Golem as research. He immediately cast Clive in the role of Henry Frankenstein, and cast Boris Karloff as the creature on the suggestion of David Lewis, who had seen Karloff in The Criminal Code. Frankenstein became one of Universal's greatest financial successes, and was marked by Whale's many innovations in set design, cinematography, and camera effects. Whale worked again with Karloff in The Old Dark House, a classically spooky thriller based on J.B. Preistly's novel, The Benighted, and directed one of the best and most famous film treaments of H.G. Wells' The Invisible Man, with Claude Raines and Una O'Connor. It was with relunctance that Whales agreed to direct the sequel to Frankenstein, The Bride of Frankenstein. His enthusiasm increased as he was given substatntial artistic license. In addition to recasting Clive and Karloff, Whale also cast his old friends Elsa Lanchester and Ernest Thesiger in the film. The Bride of Frankenstein was a box-office smash, and hailed by many critics as both superior to the original and as Whales' greatest work. Whales himself accepted the praise, but in later life bemoaned the fact that his horror films were better known than his other, more serious works. These included The Kiss before the Mirror (1933), Remember Last Night (1935), The Great Garrick (1938), The Man in the Iron Mask (1939), and a version of Showboat in 1936 with Irene Dunne, considered by many to be superior to the more familiar 1951 version. Whale also directed The Road Back, a 1937 sequel to All Quiet on the Western Front, but the studio took the project from him and ordered editing which essentially destroyed the picture, all to appease the protests of the German consulate. At a time of growing conservatism, Whale lived even more openly as a gay man in Hollywood than he had in London. He and David Lewis lived together in his home as a de facto married couple for many years, and maintained a circle of gay friends which included not only old chums from London who had transplanted to the States, but also George Cukor and Bill Haines, among others. This openness about his lifestyle, coupled with sharp artistic differences with studio heads, led to fewer and fewer directing spots, and those that he did get were largely thanks to his relationship with David Lewis, who held considerable clout at MGM and later Warner Brothers. Whales' 1940 film, Green Hell, was a critical and financial flop, and after Lewis enlisted in the military and effectively ended their relationship, Whale had no one to turn to after he was fired from They Dare Not Love in 1941. The last two decades of Whales' life were spent largely in both semi-retirement and semi-seclusion. Though he and Lewis were no longer lovers, they remained friends and Lewis often checked in on him. Whales painted, and for a time had a love affair with his twenty-five year old chaffeur, Pierre Foegel. Though he could not swim, he installed a pool where he held many parties attended by hopeful young gay actors. He directed the play, Pagan in the Parlour, which closed quickly, and directed a television film, Hello Out There, which was never aired. He also suffered a series of strokes. Early in 1957, he had a nervous breakdown, for which he received a series of shock treatments. In May of that same year, Whale was found floating dead in his pool. A note in Whale's hand and his high blood alcohol level led to the immediate conclusion that his death was a suicide, though questions were raised as to why Whale was found floating face-up, a condition atypical for either suicidal or accidental drownings, who are usually found floating face down. With this in mind, the circumstances surrounding Whale's death and the possible reasons for his suicide became one of the great mysteries of Hollywood. Father of Frankenstein, Christopher Bram's 1996 biographical novel, presented Bram's own insights into the life of Whale and his own theories concerning the director's death. These were also presented in the 1998 film adaptation, Gods and Monsters, directed by Bill Condon and starring Sir Ian McKellen as James Whale. Outside Links: The monstrous works of James Whale Internet Movie Database - James Whale
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Entry updated 30 April, 2004
