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The heartbreaking Captain Stanhope of JOURNEY’S END, escaping the horrors of front line carnage via liquor… the modern Prometheus of Frankenstein, madly cackling “It’s alive!” as his charnel house Monster comes to life the hysterical Stephen Orlac of MAD LOVE, fearful that the new hands transplanted onto his mangled limbs are those of a knife murderer, the insanely jealous Bruce Vail of HISTORY IS MADE AT NIGHT, shooting himself beneath an oil portrait of his wife, these are some of the characters portrayed by the willowy Englishman, Colin Clive. His Hollywood career was principally a parade of villains, madmen, and neurotics, played with a haunting aura miraculously transcending melodrama.

There was much in Clive’s own life to aid him in his portrayals of the spiritually tortured. His own personal demons tormented him into alcoholism. At 37 years of age he was a corpse, on display in a gaudy Hollywood mortuary, eulogized by the press as “the actor who made $500,000 playing characters the public wouldn’t like.”

Colin Clive-Greig was born in St. Malo, France on Saturday, January 20, 1900 – the scion of a glorious military ancestry. His family proudly traced its roots to Robert Clive (1725 – 1774), “Clive of India,” and his father was distinguished Col. C.P. Clive-Greig of the British Army. From childhood Colin’s dream was to become a soldier; after studying at Stonyhurst College, he entered Sandhurst, the Royal Military College at Woolwich. There was an accident. In cavalry training, Colin’s horse fell, fracturing his master’s knee and ending Colin’s military future. Heartbroken, the young man resigned from the Academy and – to his family’s shock – drifted into the “depraved” world of the stage.

Training at the Royal Academy Of Dramatic Art, Colin made his London bow in ’19 at the Greenwich Theatre, playing Claude in The Eclipse. Thereafter, he toured the provinces in such plays as The Love Divine, Brown Sugar, What Might Happen, and Paddy the Next Best Thing; spent three seasons with the Hull Repertory Co., performing the works of Shakespeare, Shaw, Galsworthy, et al; and sometimes joined the chorus line of West End musicals. He became a seasoned actor, and also an alcoholic.

Colin’s family’s attitude toward the theatre caused him great pain, and so did his bisexuality, a “weakness” agitated by his marriage to actress / playwright Jeanne de Casalis* whose female lovers and career ambition left little time for her very sensitive spouse. Liquor became Colin’s solace – and, ironically, the strange cause of his major career break. In ’28, an insurance office clerk named Robert Cedric Sherriff had penned Journey’s End, a moving saga of death in the WWI trenches. The play opened at the Apollo Theatre in Dec., ’28, produced by the London Stage & Society Organization, staged by offbeat actor/cartoonist/director James Whale, and starred Laurence Olivier as the bitter, liquor soaked Captain Stanhope. Critics and audiences cheered, and a West End production was prepared, retaining Whale and the original cast – save Olivier. (He opted to star in a stage version of Beau Geste, which flopped.) A search began for a new Stanhope. Meanwhile, Colin was playing the tiny role of Steve in Show Boat at the Drury Lane. Whale attended one evening, spotted Colin and invited him to audition because he thought Colin “looked the part” of Stanhope. “Although we tried dozens of other,” remembered Sherriff, “Colin’s rendering of the script was so full of understanding and conviction that we all felt he was the only one who could fill the part.” Another strange factor was involved. Whale, learning Colin was addicted to the bottle, was fascinated by the prospect of having Stanhope played by a true alcoholic. Sherriff recalls Colin as “highly strung and temperamental;” after one poor rehearsal, the actor, in tears, told Whale he was giving up the role. But he stayed, and when Journey’s End opened at London’s Savoy on Jan. 21, ’29, Colin’s Stanhope was magnificent; he painted a heartrending portrait of a spiritual victim of war. Nobody who ever saw Colin’s Stanhope can forget his raw-nerved hysteria as he rants of the arrival of Raleigh, his sweetheart’s brother and hero-worshipper of prep school days:

“… You know! You know he’ll write and tell her I reek of whiskey all day…
– He’s not a damned little swine who’d deceive his sister man awful fool. I’m Captain of this company. What’s that bloody little prig of a boy matter? D’you see? He’s a little prig. Wants to write home and tell Madge all about me. Well he won’t . . . Censorship! I censor all his letters . . . Cross out all he says about me. Then we all go west in the big attack – and she goes on thinking I’m a fine fellow for ever – and ever – and ever….”

As Colin neared his 400th performance in the SRO hit, his now-intimate friend Whale (also a homosexual) was amidst the palm trees of Hollywood. Following the director’s success with the play in NYC and Chicago, he was preparing the cinema version of JOURNEY’S END at the Tiffany Studio. After over 200 actors tested for Stanhope, Whale announced that only one man was worthy of the role – Colin Clive. Taking a leave of absence from the play, Colin arrived in Hollywood on Dec. 1, ’29, and as production supervisor George Pearson wrote in his memoir Flashback, “Colin’s entry on the set, as Stanhope, seemed in some miraculous way to turn make-believe into sudden stark reality.”

Making his screen bow as young Raleigh was David Manners, who recently wrote me of the tragic, Jekyll & Hyde nature of the picture’s leading player: “To me, his face was a tragic mask. I know he was a tortured man. There seemed to be a split in his personality: one side that was soft, kind and gentle; the other, a man who took to alcohol to hide from the world his true nature.

“Today he would find help. Everyone of us wanted to help then, but when he was on the bottle, which was most of the time, he put on the mask of a person who repelled help and jeered at his own softness.

“He was a fantastically sensitive actor – and, as with many great actors, this sensitivity bred addiction to drugs or alcohol in order to cope with the very insensitive world around them.”

JOURNEY’S END premiered at NYC’s Gaiety on Tuesday evening, April 8, ’30. Colin’s haunting Stanhope, full of fear and liquor and honor in that rat-infested dugout, fascinated cinemagoers and won laurels. The L.A. “Times” praised the film’s climax, in which Stanhope tenderly cares for the dying Raleigh before meeting his own death, as being “endowed with a feeling seldom caught by screen actors; “Photoplay” awarded the star a Best Performance citation; and the NY “Times” reported of Colin, “…one almost forgets that what one sees are but photographs of the actor . . . Mr. Clive’s performance is magnificent.”

Other applauded WWI films followed JOURNEY’S END in ’30: Warners’ DAWN PATROL, stirring in its depiction of honor among warring aviators; UA’s HELL’S ANGELS, sensational in its dogfights and Harlow’s platinum vamping; and, of course, Universal’s ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT, ringing with Remarque’s anti-war message. However, as splendid as Lew Ayres is in that Academy Award winning picture as butterfly-petting Paul Baumer, who loses his innocence to war, he is never as pitiable as Colin’s Stanhope, who loses his soul to it. JOURNEY’S END remains the most moving of Hollywood’s WWI sagas, and it is nothing less than a tragedy that this classic film has fallen almost completely into oblivion. Only one complete print and one edited print are known to survive today.

Immediately upon completing this engagement, Colin had returned to London, where he resumed playing Stanhope on the stage. While still in the play, he appeared in special performances of Forty-Seven (Feb., ’30), a drama of Irish turmoil, and in an all-star Hamlet (April, ’30), as Laertes. After Journey’s End closed, Colin starred in an opulent production of Molnar’s The Swan, opening in July, ’30. As “the Professor,” Colin was acclaimed as “so powerfully romantic” that audiences were disappointed when “Princess” Edna Best resisted his allure to caress her “Prince,” Herbert Marshall.

Returning to the U.S., Colin made his Broadway bow on Dec. 6, ’30 as Karl Ritter in Overture, William Bohitho’s attack on Communism. His co-star was Pat O’Brien, who remembers Colin in his memoir The Wind at my Back as “a beautiful actor and a grand guy.” A critical triumph, the play ran only 41 performances, and Colin returned to London for a cinema romance, Gainsborough’s The Stronger Sex (’31).

James Whale meanwhile had become the “Ace” director of Universal City. On Valentine’s Day, ’31, that studio released DRACULA, which proved to be the season’s top-moneymaker, and Universal happily vowed to unleash Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein Monster amidst the hills and lakes of the picturesque back lot. When producer Carl “Junior” Laemmle reputedly laughed aloud at the test reels of original director/adaptor Robert Florey (especially amused by Bela “Dracula” Lugosi’s Golemesque, mugging Monster), Whale whisked into the front office and snared the property. Laemmle consoled Florey with MURDERS IN THE RUE MORQUE (’32), and in the ensuing bitterness, Whale spitefully succeeded in removing Florey’s writing credit from the domestic prints.

Revamping FRANKENSTEIN, Whale provided two master strokes. He picked out of the Universal commissary a gaunt, calf eyed Englishman named Boris Karloff to play the Monster (“Monster indeed!” smiled Karloff at the offer), providing ample time for make-up master Jack Pierce to create the infamous disguise. Also, he rejected Universal’s choice for the title role. Leslie Howard was too passive a player for Whale’s theatrical style. Again, he sent for Colin, then completing a London engagement in the satirical play, A Crime at Blossoms.

“I chose Colin Clive for FRANKENSTEIN,” Whale said later, “because he had exactly the right kind of tenacity to go through with anything, together with the kind of romantic quality which makes strong men leave civilization to shoot big game. There is also a level-headedness about Clive which keeps him in full control of himself in his craziest moments in the picture.”

The role of Dr. Henry Frankenstein, who scavenges the churchyards and gallows “to create a man after his own image without reckoning upon God,” fascinated Colin. His major attraction to the part was a rather morbid one: “I think FRANKENSTEIN has an intense dramatic quality that continues throughout the play and culminates when I, in the title role, am killed by the Monster that I created. This is a rather unusual ending for a talking picture, as the producers generally prefer that the play end happily with the hero and heroine clasped in each other’s arms.” Ironically, a happy ending, with “Baron” Frederick Kerr mirthfully toasting his “son’s” recovery from the mill fall, was tacked on by Whale at the last minute, much to Colin’s displeasure.

FRANKENSTEIN was filmed in the summer of ’31, and the set was a happy one. The sight of Karloff in his hideous guise, sprawled in a beach chair, enjoying a cigarette and a cup of tea, was always cause for levity. And Colin, caught up in the picture, stayed on the wagon for the most part, his free time devoted to sports and coffee. When asked if he enjoyed this Hollywood sojourn, Colin exclaimed, “Oh, crikey! I should say that I did. It was marvelous . . . I had no trouble in getting golf and tennis games.”

There was one ugly incident. The strange Whale, reportedly “jealous” of all the attention Karloff’s Monster was reaping on the lot, took egomaniacal vengeance by shooting the scene in which the Monster races up the mountain to the windmill with Frankenstein over his shoulder literally dozens of times. Colin, feeling sympathy for his exhausted co-player, suggested to the director that Karloff hoist a dummy in the future shots. Whale archly refused, and Karloff stoically bore Colin’s 6′, 154 lb. frame up the hill for many succeeding takes.

Universal premiered FRANKENSTEIN in seaside Santa Barbara on Sunday evening, Dec. 6, ’31. Colin was in England, where, on the day of the premiere, he tried to ride his horse over a high gate and fractured a hip. FRANKENSTEIN of course, proved a sensation, becoming the most celebrated horror film of cinema history. The NY “Times” awarded the “Stirring grand guignol kind of picture” the # 7 spot of its ’31 “Ten Best,” noting, “Mr. Clive adds another fine performance to his list. He succeeds in impressing upon one the earnestness and also the sanity of the scientist, in spite of FRANKENSTEIN’s gruesome exploits.” Both Colin and Karloff won “Photoplay” Best Performance citations. Universal has blissfully re-released the picture over the decades, eventually earning a reported $14,000,000 (on its original $275,000 investment).

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* b. Jeanne de Casalis de Fury of French parents Basutoland. South Africa. 8/2211896. As an actress she played Broadway in THE TIDINGS BROUGHT TO MARY (‘2/ and Colonel Sten 131); performed in many London plays and acted in such British films as NELL GWYNN (35) JAMAICA INN (39) and THE GAY INTRUDERS (’46). As playwright she co-authored, (as well as co-produced an’ co-starred) with Colic in Lets Leave (tat That, staged in London in 26 and revived (with other players) in 29, an’ collaborated with P.C. Sherriff on St. Helena, presented on Broadway in ’36 with Maurice Evans as Napoleon Miss de Casalis received her major celebrity on English radio as ”Mrs. Feather’ of the batty, comic telephone monologues. She died of cancer in London, 8/18/66.

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