BORIS KARLOFF

The Gentle Man Behind the Monsters

There are actors who play monsters, and then there are actors who become so closely connected with one that generations later it is almost impossible to separate the two.

Boris Karloff belongs to that very small club.

Mention his name and most people immediately see the heavy eyelids, flattened head, enormous boots and bolts in the neck of Frankenstein’s Monster. It is one of the most recognizable faces in movie history.

The funny thing is, the man underneath all that makeup was about as far removed from a rampaging monster as you could imagine.

Soft-spoken, thoroughly English, respected by his fellow actors and possessed of a wonderfully dry sense of humor, Karloff spent much of his career terrifying audiences while apparently being one of the nicest men on the set.

And Frankenstein, remarkable as it was, tells only a small part of his story.

Before There Was Boris Karloff

Boris Karloff entered the world on November 23, 1887, in South London with the considerably less sinister name William Henry Pratt.

He was the youngest of nine children in a respectable family where government service was practically a family profession. Young William was expected to follow the same sensible path.

He had other ideas.

Instead of settling into a respectable government career, he left England and went to Canada, where life was considerably less glamorous than Hollywood would eventually become. He took whatever work he could find and eventually began appearing with touring theatrical companies.

There were no red carpets. No screaming fans. No makeup artists waiting with eight hours to spare.

There was simply an aspiring actor working his way from company to company, town to town and role to role.

For years.

By the time Hollywood finally noticed him, Karloff was not some overnight newcomer. He had already spent years onstage and had appeared in dozens of films, usually playing supporting characters, villains, heavies and assorted suspicious-looking gentlemen who probably should not be trusted with the silverware.

Then came 1931.

And everything changed.

The Monster That Changed His Life

Universal Pictures was preparing Frankenstein, directed by James Whale and based on Mary Shelley’s famous story.

Karloff was cast as the Monster.

He was 44 years old.

Think about that for a moment.

In an industry that has always been fascinated with youth and sudden discovery, Karloff spent decades working before the role that would make him immortal finally arrived.

And when Frankenstein opened in November 1931, audiences had never seen anything quite like him.

The Monster was frightening, certainly. Jack Pierce’s legendary makeup transformed Karloff into an enormous, unnatural creature assembled from the dead.

But makeup alone does not explain why the performance survived.

Karloff gave the Monster something far more important.

He gave him a soul.

Look beyond the bolts and scars and watch his eyes. There is confusion there. Fear. Curiosity. Loneliness. Even innocence.

The Monster does terrible things, but Karloff never allows us to forget that this creature has been thrown into a world he does not understand and almost immediately rejected by it.

That humanity is what separated his Monster from countless movie creatures that followed.

The film turned Karloff into a star almost overnight. The man who had spent years appearing in small parts suddenly became one of the most recognizable actors in Hollywood.

Not bad for a fellow whose character was identified in the opening credits simply with a question mark.

The Monster Returns

Karloff returned to the role in Bride of Frankenstein in 1935.

For many classic-horror fans, it is the rare sequel that actually surpasses the original.

This time the Monster speaks.

Not much, admittedly. He was unlikely to be invited onto a radio quiz program. But those few words made the creature even more human.

He wants companionship. He wants acceptance. He wants someone who will not run screaming the moment he enters the room.

A reasonable request, really.

Unfortunately, being Frankenstein’s Monster means reasonable requests rarely end well.

Director James Whale mixed horror, strange humor, tragedy and fantasy into something unlike almost anything Hollywood was producing at the time. Karloff again found the sadness beneath the makeup, and the result helped cement the Monster as one of cinema's permanent icons.

He would play the Monster once more in Son of Frankenstein in 1939.

Three films.

That was all it took.

Karloff the Uncanny

Hollywood quickly realized it had something valuable.

Very valuable.

After Frankenstein, Karloff became the screen's reigning master of the macabre.

In The Mummy (1932), he played the ancient Egyptian Imhotep, resurrected after thousands of years and searching for the reincarnation of the woman he loved.

Karloff spends surprisingly little of The Mummy wrapped head to toe in bandages. Most of the film finds him as the mysterious Ardath Bey, staring from beneath heavy eyelids with the sort of expression that would make any sensible person suddenly remember an appointment somewhere else.

By this point, he had become such a recognizable star that Universal advertised him simply as:

KARLOFF

The studio even promoted him as “Karloff the Uncanny.”

Very few performers reached the point where audiences needed only a surname.

When Karloff Met Lugosi

Classic horror fans eventually received something they desperately wanted:

Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi in the same movie.

It happened spectacularly with The Black Cat in 1934.

Despite borrowing its title from Edgar Allan Poe, the film has very little to do with Poe's original story. What it does have is Karloff, Lugosi, bizarre Art Deco architecture, revenge, murder, psychological torment and enough sinister atmosphere to supply several ordinary horror pictures.

Karloff plays the chilling Hjalmar Poelzig opposite Lugosi's tortured Dr. Vitus Werdegast.

The two stars could hardly have been more different.

Lugosi brought theatrical intensity, that unmistakable voice and tremendous presence.

Karloff could sometimes frighten you by barely moving.

Together they were marvelous.

The success of The Black Cat led to additional pairings, including The Raven, The Invisible Ray, Son of Frankenstein and later The Body Snatcher.

Popular culture sometimes paints Karloff and Lugosi as bitter rivals. The reality was considerably less dramatic than Hollywood legend likes to make things. They were professional colleagues who worked together repeatedly, and accounts from their productions do not support the great lifelong feud that later publicity sometimes imagined.

Apparently two horror stars could occupy the same room without attempting to drive a wooden stake through each other.

More Than a Monster

One of the dangers of becoming extraordinarily successful at something in Hollywood is that Hollywood then asks you to do it again.

And again.

And again.

Karloff certainly played his share of mad scientists, killers, mysterious foreigners, grave robbers and men living in houses where sensible people should never spend the night.

But he was a far more versatile actor than the monster label suggests.

He appeared in adventure films, historical pictures, crime dramas, mysteries and comedies. He worked on radio and television. He returned repeatedly to the theater.

One of his greatest stage triumphs came in the original Broadway production of Arsenic and Old Lace.

And the joke was irresistible.

Karloff played Jonathan Brewster, a murderer whose face had been altered by plastic surgery.

The other characters complain that Jonathan now looks like...

Boris Karloff.

So Boris Karloff spent night after night onstage playing a murderer who was annoyed because everyone thought he looked like Boris Karloff.

There are not many actors who can claim that particular achievement.

The production became a major Broadway success and demonstrated that Karloff could command an audience without a single neck bolt in sight.

The Body Snatcher

By the 1940s, Hollywood's first great wave of monster movies was fading.

Karloff's career, however, was far from finished.

Producer Val Lewton, whose atmospheric RKO horror films favored shadows and suggestion over armies of monsters, gave Karloff some of his strongest later roles.

Among them was The Body Snatcher (1945).

Karloff plays John Gray, a cabman with a profitable sideline supplying corpses to a doctor.

Exactly where those corpses come from is best not examined too closely.

Karloff is wonderful in the picture because the performance is not built around elaborate makeup. Gray can smile, speak politely and appear perfectly civilized while leaving absolutely no doubt that something deeply unpleasant is lurking underneath.

It was proof, if anyone still required it, that Karloff never needed Frankenstein makeup to be frightening.

From Frankenstein to the Grinch

Then came one of the strangest and most delightful turns in Karloff's career.

Children who might never have been permitted to stay awake for Frankenstein suddenly knew his voice.

In 1966, Karloff narrated the animated television special How the Grinch Stole Christmas! and also supplied the voice of the Grinch.

That warm, wonderfully expressive voice proved perfect for Dr. Seuss.

And there is something fitting about it.

The actor forever associated with one misunderstood creature ended up giving life to another.

The Grinch looks frightening. He behaves terribly. He isolates himself from everyone around him.

And eventually we discover there is something more underneath.

Sound familiar?

Karloff's narration became part of the special's enduring appeal, introducing yet another generation to an actor who had already been frightening their parents and grandparents for decades.

One Last Great Performance

Karloff continued working into old age despite increasingly serious health problems.

His back had caused trouble for years, and decades of smoking eventually damaged his lungs severely. During his final productions, an oxygen tank sometimes accompanied him to the set.

Yet he continued acting.

One of his most fascinating late performances came in Targets (1968), directed by a young Peter Bogdanovich.

Karloff plays Byron Orlok, an aging horror-film star who believes the monsters he represents have become old-fashioned.

The role deliberately plays with Karloff's own image.

Orlok is a gentlemanly relic of Gothic horror confronting a frightening new world in which real violence has become more disturbing than anything movie monsters could provide.

There are no neck bolts required.

Just Karloff.

It remains one of the most intelligent uses Hollywood ever made of an aging screen legend and showed, near the end of his career, just how fine an actor he really was.

DID YOU KNOW?

Boris Karloff wasn't really Boris Karloff.

He was born William Henry Pratt. The stage name came much later, after he had left England and begun his acting career.

Frankenstein didn't make him famous until he was 44.

Karloff had spent years working in theater and movies before Frankenstein transformed his career in 1931. His success is a rather comforting reminder that occasionally the "overnight sensation" has been working for decades.

He only played the original Frankenstein Monster three times.

Those films were Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and Son of Frankenstein (1939).

Considering the enormous shadow the character cast over the rest of his life, three performances seem almost impossible.

He played the original Mummy only once.

Although Karloff's image became forever associated with Universal's mummy movies, his only appearance as the character came in the original The Mummy in 1932. Later entries used other actors and different mummy characters.

Karloff and Lugosi made several movies together.

Their collaborations included The Black Cat, The Raven, The Invisible Ray, Son of Frankenstein and The Body Snatcher.

The scary man had a famously gentle side.

Karloff understood the enormous contrast between his screen image and his actual personality and was happy to joke about it. His offscreen reputation was that of a courteous, professional and soft-spoken man—a particularly amusing situation when your livelihood depends on convincing audiences that you belong in a locked laboratory during a thunderstorm.

ESSENTIAL BORIS KARLOFF VIEWING

If you're just discovering Karloff—or rediscovering him after many years—these films offer a wonderful trip through his career.

Frankenstein — 1931

The obvious starting point, but obvious for a reason. Karloff turns a movie monster into something tragic, frightening and strangely sympathetic.

The Mummy — 1932

Moody, romantic and eerie. Karloff proves he can dominate a film while hardly raising his voice.

The Old Dark House — 1932

A wonderfully strange James Whale horror comedy in which Karloff's presence adds another layer of menace to an already very peculiar household.

The Black Cat — 1934

Karloff and Lugosi together amid some of the strangest, darkest atmosphere Universal produced during the 1930s.

Bride of Frankenstein — 1935

Funny, beautiful, bizarre and heartbreaking. For many viewers, this is the high point of Universal's classic horror cycle.

Son of Frankenstein — 1939

Karloff's final performance as the Monster, joined by Basil Rathbone and Bela Lugosi.

The Body Snatcher — 1945

Forget the makeup. This is Karloff showing just how disturbing he could be with nothing more than a smile and a quiet voice.

Targets — 1968

An extraordinary late-career performance that lets Karloff examine his own screen image while proving there was always a serious actor behind the monster.

The Man Behind the Monster

Boris Karloff died on February 2, 1969, at the age of 81.

By then his career had stretched across roughly half a century and through nearly every form of popular entertainment: stage, silent movies, sound films, radio and television.

Yet the Monster remained beside him.

Some actors spend their careers trying to escape the role that made them famous. Karloff seemed to understand something perhaps wiser.

There was no reason to run from Frankenstein.

It had given him immortality.

And Karloff had given something equally important in return.

Without him, Frankenstein's Monster could easily have become nothing more than a frightening figure stumbling across the screen.

Karloff made us look into the creature's eyes.

He made us wonder what it felt.

He made us pity it.

And somehow, beneath layers of makeup, scars, heavy boots and all those famous bolts, Boris Karloff found something unmistakably human.

More than ninety years later, we're still looking.

And we're still watching.

Explore More Boris Karloff

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Explore More Boris Karloff

Love Boris Karloff? Step beyond Frankenstein and discover more of the films and television work that made him one of the most fascinating performers in classic horror.

The Man They Could Not Hang (1939) – Collector Edition DVD
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The Man Who Changed His Mind (1936) – Collector Edition DVD
A rare British Karloff thriller built around mind transfer, scientific obsession and the dangerous temptation to play with human identity.

The Veil (1958) – Boris Karloff Classic Horror TV Series
See Karloff bring his unmistakable presence to vintage television in this eerie anthology of supernatural mysteries and unexplained events.

Colonel March of Scotland Yard – Boris Karloff TV Mystery Collection
Karloff trades the laboratory for Scotland Yard as the brilliant, eye-patched Colonel March, investigating bizarre crimes, apparent hauntings and mysteries that seem to defy explanation.

Discover the many faces of Boris Karloff—and see why there was far more to this legendary actor than Frankenstein's Monster.

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