James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters

Shortly before his death, film director James Whale admitted that he'd looked in the mirror and realized that he'd launched ""this horror"" into the world that he couldn't stop. Was he referring to his creation of the classic film Frankenstein (1931) or its inferior off-shoots? Was he alluding to his inability (despite succeeding in mainstream genres) to transcend his reputation as a specialist in monster movies? Curtis (Between Flops: A Biography of Preston Sturges) narrates in seamless detail how this innovative son of a West Midlands coal man rose from obscurity to acclaim as a British theater and Hollywood director. Trained as a West End actor and stage manager, Whale gained recognition for his rendition of the WWI war drama Journey's End. He traveled to Broadway and finally Hollywood to adapt Journey's End (1930) to the movies. Curtis charts Whale's triumphs as well as his failures, lending insight into the convoluted collaborative world of moviemaking in the days of Hays Office censorship. Many of Whale's mainstream films (Waterloo Bridge; One More River; etc.) disappeared while Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein never went out of circulation. Showboat (1956) marked the pinnacle of Whale's career and was followed by a gradual decline and slide into suicide. One comes away from this quixotic and compelling biography with the feeling that Whale, who was homosexual, not only reinvented the monster movie but also himself, and that his particular genius was often ill appreciated except in the one genre he disdained. 60 b&w photos. (May)