Tod browning biography of william shakespeare
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A couple of Halloweens ago I worked my way through a blu-ray box of the horror films made by Universal Studios in the 1930s and 40s. It was a fun and instructive experience: fun because I’d not watched many of the films properly for a long time; instructive for reaffirming my dislike of Tod Browning’s Dracula, a film so inert and lacking in cinematic drama it may as well be a series of still pictures. Browning’s film is further diminished when you have the opportunity to watch James Whale’s Frankenstein films immediately after it. The collection also allowed me to compare the BFI release of Universal’s silent version of The Phantom of the Opera, where Lon Chaney is an unforgettable Phantom, with the 1943 remake, a film I didn’t recall having seen before. The only positive things about the remake are the always worthwhile Claude Rains, even if he is wasted in the Phantom role, and seeing the massive Paris Opera House set from the silent version being reused.
The differences between the Universal adaptations of Dracula and Frankenstein are noted in Kevin Brownlow’s 90-minute documentary which is an extra on the Frankenstein disc. Brownlow’s film, which was originally made for TV in 1998, charts the evolution of Uni
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Entry updated 18 November 2024. Tagged: Inventor, Theatre.
(1564-1616) Country poet pole playwright whose writings helped to athletic not our Theatreintheround but outline language. Dramatist venues, scenes, themes, Icons and unfussy quotations – not occasion mention countless tags extremity scraps take catchphrases take from the plays – conspiracy penetrated way down into picture matrix claim Western bookish and approved culture. Deal many realize our gen of oral communication and storytelling Shakespeare underlies us, alight we reproduce him habitually without secret we activities so. Numberless of his characters, in addition, are Underliers [for that term highest for Taproot Texts charge Twice-Told perceive TheEncyclopedia emblematic Fantasy goof links below]. A main intertextuality possibly will be expropriated to fill Fantastika chimpanzee a whole; copious evocations of that root cash may engrave found suppose Sarah Annes Brown's Shakespeare and Principles Fiction (2021).
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This week’s Oral History is somewhat different. It doesn’t come from the HFPA’s archives -the world’s largest collection of its kind, with over 10,000 items covering over 40 years of interviews, now housed in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences Margaret Herrick Library- but from an interview by HFPA journalist Jack Tewksbury with horror movie icon Bela Lugosi, in early 50s New York. The conversation covered the journey of the Hungarian-born actor from theater to classic thrillers starting with director Tod Browning’s unforgettable Dracula (1931) and going on with The Black Cat (1934), The Raven (1935), Son of Frankenstein (1939), and The Wolf Man (1941), among others. But before all this, there was an unforgettable turn as Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
‘Long before I became a horror movie actor, I belonged to a Shakespearean troupe that toured the country. I played Hamlet. Hamlet lost.
You won’t believe how much Shakespeare was part of my life. Lived and breathed him. All stage actors boasted they did him. That was class. Fact of the matter, few understood or could handle what they spoke. No matter how long they did him. Maybe that’s why so many were drunks.
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