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On May 29, 1957, the body of James Whale was found floating in his pool, next to the Graeco/Roman art studio behind his Pacific Palisades villa. At the time, Hollywood cruelly considered the mysterious death of the English director a piquantly baroque climax to his long exile from the studios. Little was said of his genius, and Whale appeared doomed to haunt cinema history as a forlorn, enigmatic ghost.

However, in the nearly thirty years that have passed since his tragic suicide, James Whale has won glory as a respected Hollywood stylist. His celebrated quartet of Universal horror classics – FRANKENSTEIN, THE OLD DARK HOUSE, THE INVISIBLE MAN, and BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN – have become almost as beloved as Grimms Fairy Tales. His beautiful 1936 SHOW BOAT survives as the most revered version of that oft-filmed Americana, while JOURNEY’S END and WATERLOO BRIDGE (though virtually impossible to see) rank among the most highly-respected films of the 1930s. Whale was the master of a pioneering, filmic style which he spiked with sardonic wit, pictorial beauty, and theatrical bravura. Most memorably, this wry, bitter artist presented in his work a parade of striking, heartrending misfits – the most famous being Karloff’s bewildered Frankenstein Monster.

Hollywood remembers “Jimmy” Whale in various ways. The prevailing persona has always been that of a foxy, English aristocrat, with cheroot, swagger, and a chillingly aloof reserve. Others knew him differently. At the Motion Picture Country House, a lady who was Queen of Universal City over 50 years ago remembers Whale vividly, and emotionally. More than half a century ago, she was Whale’s favorite leading lady, and starred for him in three films: WATERLOO BRIDGE, FRANKENSTEIN, and IMPATIENT MAIDEN.

The lady, of course, is Mae Clarke. “He is a giant to me,” she says of James Whale, “and my words are inadequate.” Nevertheless, on a lovely spring day in 1983, Miss Clarke eloquently found her words as she sat in her cottage at the Country House, and remembered.

In the spring of 1931, James Whale, fresh from his triumph of Tiffany’s 1930 JOURNEY’S END, signed a 5-year Universal contract. Overnight, he reigned as the “Ace” of Universal, which proudly heralded him as “The Genius who made JOURNEY’S END.” Everyone took notice of the tall, boney “Jimmy,” his red hair salted with white, a cheroot usually in hand, peacocking across the lot like a Byronic hero. The new director happily explored the pastoral back lot like a child in a toy shop, marveling at the gargantuan old sets: the Notre Dame Cathedral, where Lon Chaney’s HUNCHBACK had swung from a gargoyle; the Monte Carlo Casino, where Erich von Stroheim had sported his monocle in FOOLISH WIVES; the Tyrolean village, where the joyous German Army had marched in ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. High up on the mountain above Universal, the ex-cartoonist, painter and actor could overlook the panorama below-the zoo, the lake, the edifices of all countries – waiting to serve his dramatic imagination.

The first project that “Junior” Laemmle gave Whale was WATERLOO BRIDGE. Robert Emmet Sherwood had based his play on an American streetwalker he had met at a riotous victory party in Trafalgar Square after World War I. The girl told Sherwood that she had come to London as a chorine in THE PINK LADY, had been stranded, and had reluctantly turned to prostitution for survival. Though he met her only once, Sherwood was haunted by the pathetic streetwalker, and had created “Myra” of WATERLOO BRIDGE as a catharsis to handle her memory.

Whale realized that the actress who would play Myra must possess the same haunting quality which had driven Sherwood to write the play. Tests began for the plum role, and from Columbia Studios came a blonde, 21-year old actress named Mae Clarke. She was enjoying a great year in Hollywood. In United Artists’ THE FRONT PAGE, she had played Mollie Malloy, the valiant hooker whose jump from a pressroom window became one of the screen’s most dramatic suicides; in Warners’ THE PUBLIC ENEMY, she had received the infamous grapefruit-in-the-face (“How did it feel? Wet!”) from her beloved friend James Cagney.

Today, a reproduction of the WATERLOO BRIDGE poster decorates the wall of Mae Clarke’s cottage at the lovely Motion Picture Country House. The memory of that film-and its director-is precious to her:

“I knew James Whale was imported as one of England’s very best, and was aware of the great success of his play and film JOURNEY’S END. I went to meet Mr. Whale the way I would have entered college to begin learning.”

Whale saw a vulnerability in Miss Clarke’s test that intrigued him, and selected her for the part. Douglass Montgomery (then employing the screen moniker of “Kent Douglass”) won the part of Roy, the soldier who loves Myra. With a 26-day shooting schedule and a $252,045 budget, WATERLOO BRIDGE began shooting Saturday, May 23, 1931.

As Mae Clarke arrived on the set for the first day’s work, the cool, aloof Whale was formality itself.

“I assume you’ve learned your lines?” asked the director.

“Yes, Mr. Whale,” smiled Miss Clarke. “And how you’d like them performed, I’d like to hear.”

They soon became friends. Whale appreciated the young actress’s eagerness to learn; he’d stimulate her imagination with his own insights, to enhance her interpretation:

“Our relationship was the adoration between a teacher (who was expert) and a pupil (who was most willing). And our objectives became: What did the author want? What did he not say, and assumed we would? We could forget ourselves.”

Robert Sherwood was in Hollywood at this time, working as a “Dialoguer” for United Artists, and visited the Waterloo Bridge set. He never made a single suggestion; rather, he marveled at the sensitivity with which Whale handled his players, and his fastidious attention to atmosphere and detail.

The climax of Waterloo Bridge was the stuff that actresses’ (and directors’) dreams are made of. Myra, not allowing her guilty self to accept Roy’s love, returns to the streets. One night, during an air raid, the heartbroken girl walks across Waterloo Bridge, and dramatically lights a match, signalling the bombers and bringing on her suicide. It was an intensely powerful scene, and Miss Clarke relates:

“I remember it-a night scene, on the back lot of Universal… The feeling of that scene was so overpowering! Everyone felt a reality over pretense.

“By that time, we had all learned to take advantage of every second Mr. Whale could give us – because his finger and his mind were in every single facet of the production. You’d ask, ‘Where’s Mr. Whale?’ ‘Oh, he’s up on the boom crane tower, creating the bomber effect.’ (He wanted to see Myra from the bomber’s point of view.) You’d ask, ‘Where’s Mr. Whale now?’ ‘Oh, he’s in checking the sound.’ He knew just where he wanted the shadows … everything. It was his picture: a James Whale production!”

On Friday, June 26, Whale completed WATERLOO BRIDGE, ahead of schedule; ever though the company reassembled July and July 6 for a theatre sequence, Whale still completed the film for $27,000 under budget. Unfortunately, the preview in late July spotlighted a problem nobody had noted: the repercussions of Myra’s suicide, Miss Clarke says:

“We didn’t realize in any stage of the development until the preview that the whole audience would hate Myra’s disregard for others who’d suffer from her action. There were too many people also on the bridge and certainly, it wasn’t patriotic for her to signal a target for the bombers.”

Back at Universal, Whale found himself forced to re-edit the climax he had so painstakingly crafted. Inevitably, the editing made the finale too jarring; yet it still managed to imply Myra’s motive, showing her walking into the path of the falling bombs, and to preserve the tragic impact.

On Friday, September 4, 1931, WATERLOO BRIDGE premiered at New York’s RKO Mayfair Theatre. The NY Times hailed Whale’s work as “praiseworthy” and “excellent,” noted his clever touches (e.g., the offscreen sound of farm animals as Myra and Roy go into the country) and reported, “Mae Clarke’s acting of Myra is capital.” Miss Clarke remembers the Hollywood premiere:

“We didn’t make Grauman’s Chinese, but we had a ‘mini-premiere’ in downtown L.A… There were klieg lights. Already there was talk of an Oscar for me as Myra, so I hostessed a dinner at the Brown Derby on the premiere night. I invited Colin Clive (it was after a day’s work on FRANKENSTEIN) and Helen Hayes and her husband, Charles MacArthur (whom I had known since I filmed THE FRONT PAGE, which he had coauthored with Ben Hecht), and the young man to whom I was informally engaged. And who won the Oscar that year? Helen Hayes, my friend, for THE SIN OF MADELON CLAUDET!”.

There would be no Academy nominations for WATERLOO BRIDGE, but Miss Clarke received a prize which meant more to her than an Oscar. It was a note from Robert Emmet Sherwood, which read, “…I was moved and thrilled and overcome by your marvelous performance in WATERLOO BRIDGE, for which I wish I could thank you adequately.” Miss Clarke still has the note: “It remains my permanent treasure.”

Since the sumptuous MGM remake of WATERLOO BRIDGE (1940), with Vivien Leigh and Robert Taylor, Whale’s version has been sadly consigned to the Metro vaults due to legal imbroglios. There was a too brief reprieve when the 1931 WATERLOO BRIDGE played at the Museum of Modern Art on September 5 and 8, 1977, as part of “MOMA’s” mammoth Universal retrospective. The film revealed Whale’s early, harmonious blending of the freedom of cinema with the drama, flourish, and excitement of the theatre. However, for those fortunate enough to have seen the film, the most memorable feature was Mae Clarke’s Myra. She is truly one of Whale’s noble misfits, one of his most real and heartbreaking outcasts. In JOURNEY’S END, Whale had presented Colin Clive’s Stanhope, a tormented, alcoholic hero, believing his soul irreparably destroyed by the horrors of war; in WATERLOO BRIDGE, the director showcased Myra, another victim, believing herself forever damned and hopelessly unworthy due to her life of prostitution. Whale’s own sensitivity and great bitterness reflect in Mae Clarke’s eyes throughout this performance, and a number of his most memorable characters – Karloff’s forsaken Monster, Claude Rains’ poisoned INVISIBLE MAN, Helen Morgan’s hapless mulatto Julie – are all relatives to Myra’s sadness and profound loneliness.

There followed FRANKENSTEIN.

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