October 2, 2016/Frankenstein

===Transcript===
Intro
Hi, I’m Ben Mankiewicz. Thanks for joining us on Turner Classic Movies. This month, we’re bringing you double and triple features starring the most famous monster of them all: Frankenstein’s monster. And naturally, we start with the movie that introduced the character to audiences. From Universal Pictures in 1931, it’s Frankenstein. Boris Karloff plays the monster, delivering the performance that defined the role. It was also the role that made Karloff a star, even though the original credits did not list his name, only a question mark. Universal’s plan was to build the mystery of Frankenstein’s monster. The story of Frankenstein dates back to an 1818 novel by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley. Shelley was traveling through Europe with a group of writers including two prominent English romantic poets, that was Lord Byron, and also Shelley’s future husband, Percy Shelley. They’d stay up late at night discussing writing and storytelling. Eventually, Byron suggested they all try their hand at a ghost story. Mary Shelley thought for a few days, then came up with a story about a well-meaning scientist who experiments with reanimating a corpse, but is horrified when he succeeds as results go badly wrong. Her literary friends were impressed with her work and soon after her short story, with the encouragement of Percy Shelley, was turned into a novel. There were several early attempts to adapt Shelley’s story into a film, beginning with a version by Thomas Edison in 1910. But the movie version we’re about to see broke through, setting the template for a decade of horror movies and giving Universal a genre it would dominate. From 1931, directed by James Whale with Colin Clive as the doctor and Boris Karloff as his monster, here’s Frankenstein.
Outro
That was Mae Clarke as Dr. Frankenstein’s fiancee. James Whale, who had just directed Clarke in Waterloo Bridge, chose Clarke because she was smart and intensely committed and he firmly believed Frankenstein would capture the public’s imagination. Though Clarke was eager to work with Whale again, she had concerns about the part, believing her character didn’t have enough to do. She was also self-conscious about being one of the few Americans in a predominantly European cast. But Whale reassured her and expanded her part, making sure she appeared in the now-legendary creation sequence. Four years after Frankenstein, James Whale and several other cast members, including Boris Karloff as the monster and Colin Clive as Dr. Frankenstein, re-teamed for a sequel, but not Mae Clarke. Instead, Valerie Hobson played Elizabeth and Elsa Lanchester was also on hand to play a new female companion for Karloff. And we have that follow-up film coming up next. Stay with us.
Category:Movie Capsules