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“FRANKENSTEIN was a sensational story,” said Whale of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s 1818 classic, “and had a chance to become a sensational picture.” After Robert Florey had fumbled a 2-reel test with Bela Lugosi ludicrous as a Golem-‘sque Monster, Whale took the property. He sent to England for Colin Clive, his cadaverous, nearly insane Stanhope, to play Frankenstein, and chose gaunt, doe-eyed Boris Karloff-found sipping tea in the Universal commissary – for the Monster, and Whale wanted his leading lady, Mae Clarke, for the heroine, Elizabeth:

“When we had our first rehearsal meeting, I said, ‘Really? British Lady Elizbeth?’ Mr. Whale said, ‘I think so. We won’t have to go in for the broad ‘A’ – just word here and there for flavoring.’ I warned about the English accent, but finally Mr. Whale said, ‘When you speak-remember to cross your ‘f’s.”

On Monday, August 24, 1931, FRANKENSTEIN began shooting, with a $262,007 budget and a 30-day schedule. The adventure of making this most famous of all horror films was unforgettable for Mae Clarke. She is still in awe of her leading man:

“Colin Clive was the dearest, kindest (in he real meaning of ‘kind’) man, who gave you importance. He was so wonderful, so clever. When he started acting in a scene, wanted to stop and just watch and think, ‘Here I am, playing scenes with this marvelous actor!’ Mr. Whale would say, ‘Colin’s voice is like a pipe organ… I just pull out the stops, and he produces his music.’”

“Colin was electric. I was mesmerized by him – so much so that I hoped it didn’t show! When he looked at me, I’d blush. He had a wife, back in England, and I had my young man (of the WATERLOO BRIDGE premiere). In fact, I was glad my fiancé was at the premiere that night – to be my good anchor against my stormy waves of fancy for Colin.”

Clive had a tragic life; a terribly sensitive artist, he died alone in Hollywood in 1937, victim of consumption and alcoholism. He was only 37 years old. As Miss Clarke remembers:

“He was the handsomest man I ever saw – and also the saddest. Cohn’s sadness was elusive; the sadness you see if you contemplate many of the master painters’ and sculptors’ conceptions of the face of Christ-the ultimate source, in my view of all sadness.”

“…One man crazy-three very sane spectators!” cackled Clive in the great creation sequence, as Frankenstein and his hunchbacked dwarf assistant (Dwight Frye) sent Karloff’s Monster up to the tower roof to receive the life-giving lightning. John Boles, Edward Van Sloan and Miss Clarke were the “very sane” trio who were the in-scene audience. Whale staged the spectacle magnificently, and Miss Clarke says:

“We had nothing to do or say, but just watch, and I believe we actors experienced exactly what future audiences would feel as the film rolled on the screens. We stopped short of fainting, which many ticket buyers did do, but I, for one, felt all of the awe, terror, and disbelief that our theatre audiences did. As we became inured to its drama, since we did it several times from different angles and many close-ups, we were able to enjoy the pyrotechnics and mechanicals as if it were one great and special 4th of July Fireworks Display-just for us! My, but it was noisy!”

Miss Clarke’s eyes glow as she remembers Boris Karloff’s Monster:

“I thought Karloff was magnificent. That scene with the skylight! When he looked up and up and up, and waved his hands at the light, it was a spiritual lesson: Looking at God! It was like when we die, the Beatific Vision, which makes people understand the words: ‘Eye has not seen, nor ears heard, the glories that God has prepared for those who love Him.’

The 4-hour make-up (by the great Jack P. Pierce) and 48-lb. costume were a torture in the summer heat. For Karloff, the only pleasantries were the daily tea break, and hiking up into the Universal hills, like a lost shepherd, enjoying a cigarette and seeking a merciful breeze. Yet the actor never complained. Miss Clarke remembers:

“Observing Boris taking director instructions: towering over the tall Mr. Whale, listening meekly as an obedient, child, both so softly spoken I couldn’t hear a word, then he’d nod his head and Whale would give him an affectionate push at his enormous hanging arms and call out, ‘Ready for camera.’ Boris was unbelievable patience and endurance and, as the world now sees, ha gave an incredible performance. He made that Monster understandable and painfully pitiable.”

Whale completed FRANKENSTEIN Saturday, October 3, 1931, 5 days over schedule. After some notorious previews, FRANKENSTEIN premiered at New York’s Mayfair Theatre Friday, December 4, 1931. The result was a sensation and one of the Screen’s enduring classics. Whale’s genius made a tragic hero not only of Clive’s dynamic “Modern Prometheus,” but also of Karloff’s pathetic Monster. In FRANKENSTEIN, Male, an “outsider,” who had created his own public “self” from an early background of poverty, took a Monster created from graves and charnel houses and made him hauntingly pitiful, strikingly sympathetic, and far more human than the torch-bearing villagers who pursue him. This twist has served as the special charm of Frankenstein, which seems to grow in its charm and beauty each decade.

There would be one more film collaboration for James Whale and Mae Clarke: the anticlimactic IMPATIENT MAIDEN (from he quite racy Donald Henderson Clarke novel Impatient Virgin). It began shooting Wednesday, December 2, 1931, just before the premiere of FRANKENSTEIN. Whale had accepted the project, with its $225,000 budget and 24-day schedule, just to keep busy; he resented the tepid script and the casting of Universal’s Lew Ayres, who had scored so memorably in ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT. As Mr. Ayres wrote to me:

“Mr. Whale had a reputation as an outstanding director, but I feel he was more or less accustomed to actors with considerably more polish than I possessed at the time. Yet I was the young lad under contract to the studio, and he had me thrust upon him … I tried to do my job, and he said little if anything to me one way or other. Frankly, I don’t think he thought I was correctly cast for the part.”

Whale amused himself on IMPATIENT MAIDEN with clever camera techniques (e.g., “dolly” shots through walls) while completing the film Tuesday, December 29, 1931 – 1 day under schedule and more than $13,000 under budget. The little drama opened March 3, 1932, and the NY Times reported, ” . . . there seems nothing James Whale, the talented director of FRANKENSTEIN and JOURNEY’S END, could have done about this one.” Recently revived (Jan. 7, ’84) in a UCLA series, IMPATIENT MAIDEN held its audience primarily by the bright snappy scenes between Mae Clarke and Una Merkel.

Mae Clarke never worked with James Whale again. She joined MGM, while Whale stayed at Universal to create some of his finest films: THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1932), the romantic farce BY CANDLELIGHT (1933), the elegant ONE MORE RIVER (1934), his gloriously misanthropic BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (1935), SHOW BOAT (1936). As Miss Clarke’s career wound down in the late ’30’s (though she kept working into the 1970’s), so did Whale’s. The sale of Universal by the Laemmle’s to a new and ignorant management, unhappy misadventures at other studios, and tales of scandal (which Miss Clarke believes to be “unfounded and untrue”) caused the director to retire to the wealthy, isolated world of his Pacific Palisades house in 1941. Little was heard of him in Hollywood until his tragic death in 1957; indeed, in his exile and death, he became like a character in one of his films, a fascinating, dramatic outcast.

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