Everything about Boris Karloff totally explained
Boris Karloff (born
William Henry Pratt) (
November 23,
1887 –
February 2,
1969) was an
English actor who emigrated to
Canada in the 1910s. He is best known for his roles in horror films and his portrayal of
Frankenstein's monster in the 1931 film
Frankenstein. His popularity following
Frankenstein in the early 1930s was such that for a brief time he was billed simply as "Karloff" or, on some movie posters, "Karloff the Uncanny".
Biography
William Henry Pratt was born in
Camberwell,
London,
England to Edward John Pratt, Jr., the Deputy Commissioner of Customs, Salt and Opium, Northern Division, Indian Salt Revenue Service, and his third wife, Eliza Sarah Millard. He was brought up in
Enfield. His paternal grandmother was Eliza Julia (Edwards) Pratt, a sister of
Anna Leonowens, whose tales about life in the royal court of
Siam (now
Thailand) were the basis of the musical
The King and I. Her maternal grandmother was of
East Indian origin from
Calcutta in
Bengal.
Research for a new biography has shown the actor wasn't orphaned in his youth, as has always been believed. Following his mother's death he was raised by his elder brothers and sister and attended
Enfield Grammar School before moving to
Uppingham School and
Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood, and eventually the
University of London. Karloff's first goal in life was to join the foreign service — his brother, Sir John Henry Pratt, became a distinguished British diplomat — but instead he fell into acting. In 1909, Pratt travelled to
Canada, changing his name to something more in keeping with his new vocation while on his way to an acting job with the Jeanne Russell Theater Co. in
Kamloops, British Columbia. He spent years testing the waters in
North America while living in smaller towns like Kamloops and
Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. In 1912, while appearing in a play in
Regina, Saskatchewan, Karloff volunteered to be a rescue worker following a devastating
tornado. He also lived in
Minot, North Dakota, for a year, performing in an
opera house above a
hardware store. For health reasons, he didn't fight in
World War I.
Name change to Karloff
Some time after emigrating to Canada in 1909, William Pratt changed his professional name to "Boris Karloff." Some have theorized that he took the stage name from a mad scientist character in the novel
The Drums of Jeopardy called "Boris Karlov." However, the novel wasn't published until 1920, at least three years after Karloff had been using the name on stage and in silent films (
Warner Oland played "Boris Karlov" in a movie version in 1931). Another possible influence was thought to be a character in the
Edgar Rice Burroughs fantasy novel
H.R.H. The Rider which features a "Prince Boris of Karlova," but as the novel wasn't published until 1915, the influence may be backward, that Burroughs saw Karloff in a play and adapted the name for the character. Pratt/Karloff always claimed he chose the first name "Boris" because it sounded foreign and exotic, and that "Karloff" was a "family name." However, his daughter Sara Karloff publicly denied any knowledge of
Slavic forebears, "Karloff" or otherwise. One reason for the name change was to prevent embarrassment to his family. Whether or not his brothers (all dignified members of the British foreign service) actually considered young William the "black sheep of the family" for having become an actor, Karloff himself apparently worried they did feel that way. He didn't reunite with his family again until 1933, when he went back to England to make
The Ghoul, extremely worried that his siblings would disapprove of his new, macabre claim to world fame. Instead, his elder brothers jostled for position around their "baby" brother and happily posed for publicity photographs with him.
Career in Hollywood
Once Karloff arrived in
Hollywood, California, he made dozens of
silent films, but work was sporadic, and he often had to take up manual labor--such as digging ditches and driving a cement truck--to pay the bills. His role as the
Monster in
Frankenstein (1931) made him a star. A year later, he played another iconic character,
Imhotep, in
The Mummy.
The five foot eleven, brown-eyed Karloff played a wide variety of roles in other genres besides horror. He was memorably gunned down in a bowling alley in the original version of
Scarface. He played a religious WWI soldier in the 1934
John Ford epic
The Lost Patrol. Karloff gave a string of lauded performances in 1930s Universal horror movies, including several with his main rival as heir to the horror throne of
Lon Chaney, Sr.,
Bela Lugosi, whose rejection of Karloff's role in
Frankenstein made Karloff's subsequent career possible. Karloff played Frankenstein's monster three times; the other films being
Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and
Son of Frankenstein (1939), which also featured Lugosi as the demented Ygor. Karloff would revisit the Frankenstein mythos in film several times after leaving the film role of the creature. The first would be as the villainous Dr. Niemann in
House of Frankenstein (1944) where Karloff would be famously contrasted against the then more popularized
Glenn Strange who became the standardized interpretation of the Monster during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.
Karloff returned to the role of the "mad scientist" of Frankenstein mode in 1958's
Frankenstein 1970 as Baron Victor Von Frankenstein II, the grandson of the original inventor. The final twist reveals the crippled Baron has given his own face (for example, "Karloff's") to the Monster. The actor appeared at a celebrity baseball game as the Monster in 1940, hitting a gag home run and making catcher Buster Keaton fall into an acrobatic dead faint as the Monster stomped into home plate. For a fantasy sequence in
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, director
Norman Z. McLeod filmed a sequence with Karloff in the Monster make-up, but it was deleted. The final time Karloff donned the headpiece and neck bolts was 1962, for a Halloween episode of the TV series
Route 66, but he was playing "Boris Karloff" who, within the story, was playing "the Monster."
While the long, creative partnership of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi never led to a close mutual friendship, it produced some of each actor's most revered and enduring productions, beginning with
The Black Cat. Follow-ups included
Gift of Gab (1934; not horror, but a whimsical comedy featuring cameos from contract stars),
The Raven (1935),
The Invisible Ray (1936),
Black Friday (1940),
You'll Find Out (also 1940), and
The Body Snatcher (1945), which many believe contains Karloff's greatest performance. During this period he also starred with
Basil Rathbone in
Tower of London (1939).
In contrast to the characters he played on screen, Karloff was known in real life as a very kind gentleman who gave generously, especially to children's charities. Karloff was also a charter member of the
Screen Actors Guild, and was especially outspoken regarding working conditions on sets (some extremely hazardous) that actors were expected to deal with in the mid-1930s. He married six times.
An enthusiastic performer, he was able to return to the
Broadway stage in the original production of
Arsenic and Old Lace in 1941, in which he played a homicidal character enraged to be frequently mistaken for Karloff. Although
Frank Capra cast
Raymond Massey in the
1944 film, (which was shot in 1941, while Karloff was still appearing in the role on Broadway) Karloff reprised the role on television with
Tony Randall and
Tom Bosley in a 1962 production on the
Hallmark Hall of Fame. Somewhat less successful was his work in the
J. B. Priestley play
The Linden Tree. He also appeared as
Captain Hook in the play
Peter Pan with
Jean Arthur, and in the process revealed a surprisingly good singing voice. He was nominated for a
Tony Award for his work opposite
Julie Harris in
The Lark, by the French playwright
Jean Anouilh about
Joan of Arc, which was also reprised on
Hallmark Hall of Fame.
In later years, Karloff hosted and acted in a number of television series, most notably
Thriller,
Out of This World and
The Veil, the latter of which was never broadcast and only came to light in the 1990s. In the 1960s, Karloff appeared in several films for
American International Pictures, including
Comedy of Terrors,
The Raven and
The Terror, the latter two directed by
Roger Corman, and appeared as the very brave "retired horror film actor" Byron Orlok (a lightly-disguised version of himself) in
Peter Bogdanovich's critically acclaimed 1968 film
Targets, which was one of Karloff's final film appearances.
During the 1950s Karloff appeared on British TV in the series "
Colonel March of Scotland Yard", in which he solved apparently impossible crimes.
On
The Red Skelton Show, Karloff guest starred along with horror actor
Vincent Price in a parody of Frankenstein with Red Skelton as the monster "Klem Kadiddle Monster". Karloff also appeared with
Robert Vaughn and
Stefanie Powers in the spy series
The Girl from U.N.C.L.E. in the episode, entitled, "The Mother Muffin Affair" in which Karloff performed in drag.
In the mid-1960s, Karloff gained a late-career surge of American popularity when he narrated the made-for-television animated film of Dr. Seuss'
How the Grinch Stole Christmas and provided "the sounds of the Grinch". (The song "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" was sung not by Karloff, but by American voice actor
Thurl Ravenscroft, the voice of
Tony the Tiger.) Karloff later won a Grammy award in the spoken word category after the story was released as a record.
Death
Boris Karloff lived out his final years at his cottage, 'Roundabout', in the
Hampshire village of
Bramshott. After a long battle with
arthritis and
emphysema, he contracted
pneumonia, succumbing to it in the King Edward VII Hospital,
Midhurst,
Sussex,
England on
February 2,
1969, at the age of 81. He was cremated, following a requested low-key service, at Guildford Crematorium,
Godalming,
Surrey, where he's commemorated by a plaque in the Garden of Remembrance. A memorial service was held at
St Paul's, Covent Garden (The Actors' Church),
London, where there's also a plaque.
However, even death couldn't put an immediate halt to Karloff's media career. Four Mexican films for which Karloff shot his scenes in Los Angeles were released over a two-year period after he'd died. They were dismissed as undistinguished efforts by critics and fans alike. Also, a few years prior to his death, he lent his name to a
comic book for
Gold Key Comics titled
Boris Karloff's Tales of Mystery. An illustrated likeness of Karloff continued to introduce each issue of this publication for nearly a decade after the real Karloff died.
Legacy
For his contribution to film and television, Boris Karloff was awarded two stars on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 1737 Vine Street (for motion pictures) and 6664
Hollywood Boulevard (for television) (Lindsay, 1975).
In 1998, Karloff (as Frankenstein's Monster and The Mummy) was featured in a series of "Monster Stamps" issued by the U.S. Postal Service.
A new authorised biography
Boris Karloff: More Than a Monster by Stephen Jacobs is scheduled to be published by Tomahawk Press.
Filmography
Trivia
- In 1931, Boris Karloff took out insurance against premature aging from his fright make-up.
The 1931 Frankenstein 6-sheet movie poster, featuring Karloff as the monster, is considered to be the most valuable movie poster in the world. There is only 1 copy of the poster known to exist.
Despite his great performances in many classic horror movies, there's reason to think he never took such roles seriously. He once said, "My wife is a woman of very great taste. That's why she's never seen any of my films."
In the 1940s, Karloff was frequently on the radio program "Information Please", which showed his incredible knowledge for facts and trivia, as well as his pleasant personality, something never seen in his films.
Boris Karloff made numerous appearances on the CBS television program Suspense. The episode titled "The Yellow Scarf" was broadcast June 7, 1949 and "A Night at an Inn" was broadcast April 26, 1949. They are not yet available commercially on DVD. There was a public film showing at the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention in September 2007 in Aberdeen, Maryland.
Karloff always credited film star Lon Chaney with giving him the best advice of his career, when the elder Chaney told the then-struggling Karloff to "find something that no one else can do, and do it better than anyone else can do it, and you'll leave your mark."
Karloff was bow-legged, had a lisp and stuttered as a young boy. He conquered his stutter, but not his lisp, which is noticeable all through his career. Due to the years of difficult manual labor in Canada and the U.S. while trying to establish his acting career, he suffered back problems all of his later life.
Karloff had been considered to have a very soft and warm voice. A line from the play "Sir Henry at Rawlinson End" by Viv Stanshall describes a character as being "Karloff soft spoken”.
He had one daughter, Sara Karloff, by his fifth wife (b.1938).
Guitarist Kirk Hammett from the band Metallica has a custom ESP KH-2 M-II guitar featuring a drawing of Karloff as The Mummy.
Beginning in 1940, Karloff dressed up as Santa Claus every Christmas to hand out presents to physically disabled children in a Baltimore hospital.
Karloff's picture wasn't published when news of his passing was announced in newspapers. Glenn Strange's photo appeared instead. The same thing happened to Lon Chaney Jr. when actor Mark Willis's photo as a werewolf was published instead.
Notes and references
Further Information
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