Flashback Friday Remembers Frankenstein Director James Whale, Born This Week

July 26, 2024
HANK ORSO

Flashback Friday Remembers Frankenstein Director James Whale

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Full disclosure, yer boy Hank here is a raging horror fan. More importantly, the Mary Shelley novel Frankenstein which created the science fiction genre in 1818 is one of my favorite novels of all time. So it's with fond remembrance that for Flashback Friday (because I was too sick the other day to write a Throwback Thursday!) we take a brief look back at the work of openly gay James Whale, director of the 1931 classic film, born this week on July 22nd.

James Whale was born in 1889 in Dudley, Worcestershire England. Born into a large family, he found his solace in art. He enlisted and became an officer when World War I broke out, and was eventually captured by the Germans as a POW. It was during his time as a prisoner that he found his appreciation for theater. Hey, the boys have to entertain themselves somehow! Upon his release at the end of the war he made his way to London and became an actor, set designer, and stage director. His direction of the 1928 play Journey's End brought him and the show to Broadway success, and from there he moved to California where he remained until the end of his life.

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He directed the film version of Journey's End (1930, Tiffany Films), and Hell's Angels (1930, United Artists), but it was the horror films and thrillers he directed for Universal Pictures between 1931-1937 that brought him his most endearing fame, if not his most personal joy: Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935) among others, all considered classics. He would direct a dozen films for Universal including other genres as he was irked by the idea of being only known for horror, such as the first all-music 1936 film version of the musical Show Boat. He is credited with solidifying the cinematic gothic horror style of film set designs, lighting, and direction using large cavernous spaces, long and pronounced domineering shadows, and a mix of horror and humor borrowed from early German expressionism. He also notably pioneered the use of a mobile camera to capture 360° panning shots.

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Throughout this time, he lived with his longtime partner of 23 years, the producer David Lewis, in an uncharacteristically open manner which was quite rare for the time. While he wasn't flamboyant or political about his sexuality, he was open about who he was with people he knew and worked with. Filmmaker and friend Curtis Harrington said Whale was out "not in the sense of screaming it from the rooftops or coming out. But yes, he was openly homosexual. Any sophisticated person who knew him knew he was gay."

Years after his death when his personal life became more widely known and discussed, a "queer eye" was trained on his art and characters, examining themes and creative elements with a gay sensibility to find ways Whale might have been expressing his homosexuality through his films. Many look to his most famous creation, Frankenstein's Monster and later his Bride, with this queer theory focus. They site the camp elements in Bride... and the homosexuality of its two male stars and possibly their characters as "queer coding." But it's the character of the Monster that gets the most attention, society's outcast, an abomination of nature that sits outside looking in with tender longing, wants, and a deep need to be "normal." Or as celebrated gay film historian Vito Russo once said of The Monster and The Bride, they are "...an antisocial figure(s) in the same way that gay people were 'things' that should not have happened." His partner Lewis eschewed such analysis though. "Jimmy was first and foremost an artist, his films represent the work of an artist, not a gay artist, but an artist."

Whale and Lewis ended their long relationship when Whale insisted on bringing his chauffeur Pierre Foegel whom he met in France while directing in London into their home. Lewis moved out and purchased a small home nearby, remaining close to Whale until Whale's death. Foegel remained with Whale through his last years following a series of debilitating strokes.

James Whale died by drowning in his pool at his Pacific Palisades home in May 1957 at the age of 67. While initially regarded as an accident, it wasn't until shortly before his death in 1987 when his former partner Lewis released the contents of his suicide note that the world learned the truth.

The stunning 1998 film Gods and Monsters, based on the 1995 novel Father of Frankenstein by Christopher Bram, is a fictionalized account of Whale's last months. While not true to actual details, it examines his life, work, and possible mental state in thematic ways through a relationship between Whale and his hunky gardener played with lumbering sensitivity by Brendan Frasier. Sir Ian McKellan earned an Academy Award nom for his role as James Whale.