William Henry Pratt, better known by his stage name Boris Karloff, was an English actor.
Karloff is best remembered for his roles in horror films and especially for his portrayal
of Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, and Son of Frankenstein,
which resulted in his immense popularity. His best-known non-horror role is as the Grinch,
as well as the narrator, in the animated television special of Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole
Christmas!. He also had a memorable role in the original Scarface. For his contribution
to film and television, Boris Karloff was awarded two stars on the Hollywood Walk of
Fame.
Early years Karloff was born at 36 Forest Hill Road, Honor
Oak, London, England where a blue plaque can now be seen. His parents were Edward John
Pratt, Jr. and Eliza Sarah Millard. His paternal grandparents were Edward John Pratt and Eliza
Julia Pratt, a sister of Anna Leonowens. The two sisters were of Anglo-Indian heritage.
Karloff grew up in Enfield. He was the youngest of nine children, and following his mother's
death was brought up by his elder siblings. He later attended Enfield Grammar School before
moving to Uppingham School and Merchant Taylors' School, and went on to attend King's College
London where he studied to go into the consular service. He dropped out in 1909 and worked
as a farm labourer and did various odd jobs until he happened into acting. His brother,
Sir John Thomas Pratt, became a distinguished British diplomat. Karloff was bow-legged,
had a lisp, and stuttered as a young boy. He conquered his stutter, but not his lisp,
which was noticeable all through his career. Career
In 1909, Pratt travelled to Canada and began appearing in stage shows throughout the country;
and some time later changed his professional name to "Boris Karloff". Some have theorized
that he took the stage name from a mad scientist character in the novel The Drums of Jeopardy
called "Boris Karlov". However, the novel was not published until 1920, at least eight
years after Karloff had been using the name on stage and in silent films. Another possible
influence was thought to be a character in the Edgar Rice Burroughs fantasy novel H.
R. H. The Rider which features a "Prince Boris of Karlova", but as the novel was not published
until 1915, the influence may be backward, that Burroughs saw Karloff in a play and adapted
the name for the character. Karloff always claimed he chose the first name "Boris" because
it sounded foreign and exotic, and that "Karloff" was a family name. However, his daughter Sara
Karloff publicly denied any knowledge of Slavic forebears, "Karloff" or otherwise. One reason
for the name change was to prevent embarrassment to his family. Whether or not his brothers
actually considered young William the "black sheep of the family" for having become an
actor, Karloff himself apparently worried they did feel that way. He did not reunite
with his family until he went back to Britain to make The Ghoul, extremely worried that
his siblings would disapprove of his new, macabre claim to world fame. Instead, his
elder brothers jostled for position around their "baby" brother and happily posed for
publicity photographs with him. Karloff joined the Jeanne Russell Company
in 1911 and performed in towns like Kamloops, British Columbia and Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.
After the devastating tornado in Regina on June 30, 1912, Karloff and other performers
helped with cleanup efforts. He later took a job as a railway baggage handler and joined
the Harry St. Clair Co. that performed in Minot, North Dakota for a year in an opera
house above a hardware store. Due to the years of difficult manual labour
that Karloff had had to perform in Canada and the U.S. to make ends meet whilst he was
trying to establish his acting career, he was left with back problems from which he
suffered for the rest of his life. Because of his health, he did not fight in World War
I. Hollywood
Once Karloff arrived in Hollywood, he made dozens of silent films, but work was sporadic,
and he often had to take up manual labour such as digging ditches or delivering construction
plaster to earn a living. A number of his early major roles were in film serials, such
as The Masked Rider, in Chapter 2 of which he can be glimpsed onscreen for the first
time, The Hope Diamond Mystery and King of the Wild. In these early roles he was often
cast as an exotic Arabian or Indian villain. A key film which brought Karloff recognition
was The Criminal Code, a prison drama in which he reprised a dramatic part he had played
on stage. Another significant role in the fall of 1931 saw Karloff play a key supporting
part as an unethical newspaper reporter in Five Star Final, a film about tabloid journalism
which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Stardom His role as Frankenstein's monster in Frankenstein
made Karloff a star. The bulky costume with four inch platform boots made it an arduous
role but the costume and torturously administered makeup produced the classic image. The costume
was a job in itself for Karloff with the shoes weighing 11 pounds each. Universal Studios
was quick to acquire ownership of the copyright to the makeup format for the Frankenstein
monster that Jack P. Pierce had designed. A year later, Karloff played another iconic
character, Imhotep in The Mummy. The Old Dark House and the starring role in The Mask of
Fu Manchu quickly followed. These films all confirmed Karloff's new-found stardom.
The 5'11" brown-eyed Karloff played a wide variety of roles in other genres besides horror.
He was memorably gunned down in a bowling alley in the 1932 film Scarface. He played
a religious World War I soldier in the 1934 John Ford epic The Lost Patrol.
However, horror had become Karloff's primary genre, and he gave a string of lauded performances
in 1930s Universal horror films, including several with Lugosi, his main rival as heir
to Lon Chaney's status as the top horror film star. Karloff reprised the role of Frankenstein's
monster in two other films, Bride of Frankenstein and Son of Frankenstein, the latter also featuring
Lugosi. Karloff revisited the Frankenstein mythos in several later films as well, taking
the starring role of the villainous Dr. Niemann in House of Frankenstein, in which the monster
was played by Glenn Strange. He reprised the role of the "mad scientist" in 1958's Frankenstein
1970 as Baron Victor von Frankenstein II, the grandson of the original creator. The
finale reveals that the crippled Baron has given his own face to the monster.
Karloff appeared at a celebrity baseball game as Frankenstein's monster in 1940, hitting
a gag home run and making catcher Buster Keaton fall into an acrobatic dead faint as the monster
stomped into home plate. Norman Z. McLeod filmed a sequence in The Secret Life of Walter
Mitty with Karloff in the Frankenstein monster make-up, but it was deleted from the finished
film. Karloff donned the make-up for the last time in 1962 for a Halloween episode of the
TV series Route 66,. While the long, creative partnership between
Karloff and Bela Lugosi never led to a close friendship, it produced some of the actors'
most revered and enduring productions, beginning with The Black Cat. Follow-ups included Gift
of Gab, The Raven, The Invisible Ray, Black Friday, You'll Find Out, and The Body Snatcher.
During this period, he also starred with Basil Rathbone in Tower of London as the murderous
henchman of King Richard III of England. From 1945 to 1946, Karloff appeared in three
films for RKO produced by Val Lewton: Isle Of The Dead, The Body Snatcher, and Bedlam.
In a 1946 interview with Louis Berg of the Los Angeles Times, Karloff discussed his three-picture
deal with RKO, his reasons for leaving Universal Pictures and working with producer Lewton.
Karloff left Universal because he thought the Frankenstein franchise had run its course.
The last installment in which he appeared—House of Frankenstein—was what he called a "'monster
clambake,' with everything thrown in—Frankenstein, Dracula, a hunchback and a 'man-beast' that
howled in the night. It was too much. Karloff thought it was ridiculous and said so." Berg
continues, "Mr. Karloff has great love and respect for Mr. Lewton as the man who rescued
him from the living dead and restored, so to speak, his soul."
During this period, Karloff was also a frequent guest on radio programmes, whether it was
starring in Arch Oboler's Chicago-based Lights Out productions or spoofing his horror image
with Fred Allen or Jack Benny. In 1949 he was the host and star of Starring Boris Karloff,
a radio and television anthology series for the ABC broadcasting network.
An enthusiastic performer, he returned to the Broadway stage in the original production
of Arsenic and Old Lace in 1941, in which he played a homicidal gangster enraged to
be frequently mistaken for Karloff. Although Frank Capra cast Raymond Massey in the 1944
film, which was shot in 1941, while Karloff was still appearing in the role on Broadway,
Karloff reprised the role on television with Tony Randall and Tom Bosley in a 1962 production
on the Hallmark Hall of Fame. Somewhat less successful was his work in J. B. Priestley's
play The Linden Tree. He also appeared as Captain Hook in the play Peter Pan with Jean
Arthur. He was nominated for a Tony Award for his work opposite Julie Harris in The
Lark, by the French playwright Jean Anouilh, about Joan of Arc, which was also reprised
on Hallmark Hall of Fame. In later years, Karloff hosted and acted in
a number of television series, most notably Thriller, Out Of This World, and The Veil,
but the last of these was never actually broadcast, and only came to light in the 1990s. In the
1960s, Karloff appeared in several films for American International Pictures, including
The Comedy of Terrors, The Raven, and The Terror, the latter two directed by Roger Corman,
and Die, Monster, Die! He also featured in Michael Reeves's second feature film, The
Sorcerers, in 1966. During the 1950s, Karloff appeared on British
TV in the series Colonel March of Scotland Yard, in which he portrayed John Dickson Carr's
fictional detective Colonel March, who was known for solving apparently impossible crimes.
Karloff, along with H. V. Kaltenborn, was a regular panelist on the NBC game show, Who
Said That?, which aired between 1948 and 1955. Later, as a guest on NBC's The Gisele MacKenzie
Show, Karloff sang "Those Were the Good Old Days" from Damn Yankees, while Gisele MacKenzie
performed the solo, "Give Me the Simple Life". On The Red Skelton Show, Karloff guest starred
along with horror actor Vincent Price in a parody of Frankenstein, with Red Skelton as
"Klem Kadiddle Monster". In 1966, Karloff also appeared with Robert Vaughn and Stefanie
Powers in the spy series The Girl from U.N.C.L.E., in the episode "The Mother Muffin Affair".
Karloff performed in drag as the titular character. That same year he also played an Indian Maharajah
on the instalment of the adventure series The Wild Wild West titled "The Night of the
Golden Cobra". In 1967, he played an eccentric Spanish professor who believes himself to
be Don Quixote in a whimsical episode of I Spy titled "Mainly on the Plains".
In the mid-1960s, Karloff gained a late-career surge of American popularity when he narrated
the made-for-television animated film of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and
also provided the voice of the Grinch, although the song "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch" was
sung by the American voice actor Thurl Ravenscroft. The film was first broadcast on CBS-TV in
1966. Karloff later received a Grammy Award for "Best Recording For Children" after the
story was released as a record. Because Ravenscroft was uncredited for his contribution to How
the Grinch Stole Christmas!, his performance of the song was often mistakenly attributed
to Karloff. In 1968, Karloff starred in Targets, a film
directed by Peter Bogdanovich, featuring two separate stories that converge into one. In
one, a disturbed young man kills his family, then embarks on a killing spree. In the other,
a famous horror-movie actor contemplates then confirms his retirement, agreeing to one last
appearance at a drive-in theatre. Karloff starred as the retired horror film actor,
Byron Orlok, a thinly disguised version of Karloff himself; Orlok was facing an end of
life crisis, which he resolved through a confrontation with the gunman at the drive-in theatre. It
was Karloff's last film shot in the United States before his death in 1969.
In 1968 he played occult expert Prof. Marsh in a British film called The Crimson Cult,
which was the last of Karloff's film to be released during his lifetime.
Karloff ended his career by appearing in four low-budget Mexican horror films: The Snake
People, The Incredible Invasion, Fear Chamber, and House of Evil. This was a package deal
with Mexican producer Luis Enrique Vergara. Karloff's scenes were directed by Jack Hill
and shot back to back in Los Angeles, California in the spring of 1968. The films were then
completed in Mexico. All four were released posthumously, with the last, The Incredible
Invasion, not released until 1971, two years after Karloff's death.
Cauldron of Blood, shot in Spain in 1967 and starring Karloff and Viveca Lindfors, was
also released after Karloff's death. While shooting his last films, Karloff had
only one half of one lung and required oxygen between takes.
Spoken word recordings and horror anthologies Karloff recorded the title role of Shakespeare's
Cymbeline for the Shakespeare Recording Society. The recording was originally released in 1962.
A download of his performance is available from audible.com.
Karloff is also heard as the narrator of Sergei Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf with the Vienna
State Opera Orchestra under Mario Rossi. The performance from the LP era is still available
as a CD. Records Karloff made for the children's market
included Three Little Pigs and Other Fairy Stories, Tales of the Frightened, Rudyard
Kipling's Just So Stories and, with Cyril Ritchard and Celeste Holm, Mother Goose Nursery
Rhymes, and Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark.
Karloff also edited several horror anthologies, commencing with Tales of Terror(compiled with
the help of Edmond Speare). This wartime-published anthology went through at least five printings
through Sept 1945. It has been reprinted recently. Karloff's name was also attached to And the
Darkness Falls; and The Boris Karloff Horror Anthology, though it less clear whether Karloff
himself actually edited these. Tales of the Frightened, though based on the
recordings by Karloff of the same title, and featuring his image on the book cover, contained
stories written entirely by Michael Avallone; the second volume, Boris Karloff presents
More Tales of the Frightened contained stories authored entirely by Robert Lory. Both Avallone
and Lory worked closely with Canadian editor and book packager Lyle Kenyon Engel, who also
ghost-edited a horror story anthology for horror film star Basil Rathbone. [1]
Personal life Although he is best known for playing many
sinister characters on screen, Karloff was known in real life as a very kind gentleman
who gave generously, especially to children's charities. Beginning in 1940, Karloff dressed
up as Father Christmas every Christmas to hand out presents to physically disabled children
in a Baltimore hospital. Despite living and working in the United States
for many years, Karloff never became a naturalised American citizen, and he never legally changed
his name to "Boris Karloff." He signed official documents "William H. Pratt, a.k.a. Boris
Karloff." Karloff was a charter member of the Screen
Actors Guild, and was especially outspoken regarding working conditions on sets that
actors were expected to deal with in the mid-1930s, some of which were extremely hazardous. In
1931, Boris Karloff took out insurance against premature aging that might be caused by his
fright make-up. He married five times and had one child, daughter
Sara Karloff, by his fourth wife. At the time of his daughter's birth Karloff was filming
Son of Frankenstein, and reportedly rushed from the movie set to the hospital while still
in full makeup. Death
Boris Karloff lived out his final years in England at his cottage, 'Roundabout,' in the
Hampshire village of Bramshott. After a long battle with arthritis and emphysema, he contracted
pneumonia, succumbing to it in King Edward VII Hospital, Midhurst, Sussex on 2 February
1969 at age 81. He was cremated, following a requested low-key service, at Guildford
Crematorium, Godalming, Surrey, where he is commemorated by a plaque in the Garden of
Remembrance. A memorial service was held at St Paul's, Covent Garden, London, where there
is also a plaque. However, even death could not put an immediate
halt to Karloff's media career. Four Mexican films for which Karloff shot his scenes in
Los Angeles in 1968 were released over a two-year period after he had died. They were dismissed,
by critics and fans alike, as undistinguished efforts. Also, during the run of Thriller,
Karloff lent his name and likeness to a comic book for Gold Key Comics based upon the series.
After Thriller was cancelled, the comic was retitled Boris Karloff's Tales of Mystery.
An illustrated likeness of Karloff continued to introduce each issue of this publication
for nearly a decade after the real Karloff died; the comic lasted until the early 1980s.
Starting in 2009, Dark Horse Comics started to reprint Tales of Mystery in a hard bound
archive. Legacy
For his contribution to film and television, Boris Karloff was awarded two stars on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 1737 Vine Street for motion pictures, and 6664 Hollywood Boulevard
for television. Karloff was featured by the U.S. Postal Service
as Frankenstein's Monster and the Mummy in its series "Classic Monster Movie Stamps"
issued in September 1997. Filmography
References
External links
Boris Karloff at the Internet Broadway Database Boris Karloff at the Internet Movie Database
Karloff's birthplace Vertlieb's Views: Boris Karloff
Literature on Boris Karloff Lights Out: Cat Wife---Karloff's performance
in the radio horror classic.