I have many things about which I feel thankful this year.  I’m thankful for the love of my wife, for the gift of my two children, for the continued health of my family through some trying times, for my circle of close friends, cohorts and cronies, for an interest in something that has sustained me (except financially) for most of my life, for running water, for gravy, for Honeycrisp apples, for white socks, for California sunshine, for Johnny Mercer, Johnny Ramone and Johnny Cash, for more things than I could ever list given all the time and all the bandwidth.  And last but not least,  I’m thankful for Boris Karloff… and I’d like to take this opportunity, as part of the ongoing “Boris Karloff Blog-a-thon” being hosted at Pierre Fournier’s Frankensteinia: The Frankenstein Blog, to get down to specifics.

Thank you, Boris Karloff, for taking such a long time to be famous. Young William Henry Pratt sailed from Liverpool to Canada on May 7, 1909, with the express purpose of becoming an actor.  He dug ditches, he sold real estate, he worked for a haulage company, he drove trucks and between all these back-breaking and/or soul-sucking occupations he tried to be an actor.  He once traveled 250 miles with a faked resume to have a shot at joining a theatre troupe with such a bad reputation that no one else wanted to join them, and the pay was £4 a week.  In his time in North America, Karloff (as he called himself for the purposes of acting) traveled from Ontario to Banf to Vancouver to Kamloops to Chicago to Los Angeles.  The years went by and he got older.  He had landed on Canadian soil at the age of 22 and he didn’t even step foot in Hollywood until he was 36.  And although he had a few good roles prior to 1931, he didn’t hit it, he didn’t achieve his goal of being a constantly working actor until he was in his 40s.  Knowing this story, that he wasn’t cast in FRANKENSTEIN until he was 44, is such an inspiration to anyone who has spent many fruitless years shooting for the same goal.  Nobody wants to hear about gradual, measured accomplishments anymore; our culture turns on overnight success, instant fame, branding, networking.  Imagine the loneliness of plying your unsuccessful trade 100 years ago, before cell phones, before social networking sites, before blogs and chatrooms  – well, you can’t, can you?  How many times was Boris Karloff discouraged, turned away, turned down?  How many times did he want to give up and sail back to England?  I can’t tell you those numbers.  I can only say thank you, Boris Karloff, for never giving up.

Thank you, Boris Karloff, for helping to create the horror genre. Sure, there were horror stories told and written for centuries before Boris Karloff came to town.  Sure, Tod Browning’s DRACULA was made before James Whale’s FRANKENSTEIN back in 1930 but it was this one-two combination that convinced Universal Studios that there was gold in them thar horrors.  Karloff occasionally acted in macabre-themed plays and played something of a demonic character (albeit ultimately on the side of the angels) in the silent THE BELLS (1926) but he had no aspirations to be a horror guy.  There was no such job description back then!  Nevertheless, the success of FRANKENSTEIN proved that DRACULA was no fluke and all sorts of terror tales were given the green light as movie entertainment… and Karloff the Uncanny was cast in most of them.  The succession of monster movies streaming out of Universal in the 1930s – THE MUMMY, THE OLD DARK HOUSE (all 1932), THE BLACK CAT (1934), THE RAVEN, THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN (both 1935) and THE INVISIBLE RAY (1936), all starring Karloff – was a pop culture juggernaut and prompted other studios to try their hands at horror (MGM’s THE MASK OF FU MANCHU, Columbia’s THE BLACK ROOM, Warner Brothers’ THE WALKING DEAD) with Karloff in the lead.  Karloff even returned to London in 1933, more than twenty years after having left home, to make THE GHOUL for Gaumont-British in a bid to get some monster mojo working over there.  The legacy left to the Western world by Karloff’s portrayal of the Frankenstein Monster alone is the stuff of legend and needs no explanation from me.  Thank you, Boris Karloff, for the gift of horror.  I use it every day.

Thank you, Boris Karloff, for doing everything. Of course, he worked up a sweat as a day laborer and a farm worker but once Karloff got his foot in the door of the entertainment industry he just kept on working, in films, in radio, back on the stage and on television.  Movie stars seem so lazy these days, so pampered and indulged, and with so little actual return for all that fuss.  Not Boris Karloff.  He brought it.  I particularly love his radio work, because his voice is so plummy and distinctive and so evocative.  In his 1972 biography of Karloff, Peter Underwood alleges that the actor was so scary during a 1937 broadcast of the Chase & Sanborn Coffee-sponsored Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy Show that entreaties for an official investigation were heard on the floor of the United States Senate.  To paraphrase Norma Desmond in SUNSET BLVD. (1950), “they had voices then!”  Karloff’s voice was key to his success but unlike Bela Lugosi (who also had a distinctive way of speaking), Karloff’s voice worked a charm even on its own.  The man could weave tapestries with his voice, take you to far off lands, drop you into bottomless pits, fill you with dread and terror and show you a great time while doing it.  Karloff did a number of story albums when I was a kid and I still listen to An Evening with Boris Karloff and His Friends, Tales of the Frightened Volume 1 and Volume 2, Tales of Mystery and the Imagination and a recording of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf narrated by You Know Who.  So, thank you, Boris Karloff, for doing all that.

Thank you, Boris Karloff, for helping to establish the Screen Actor’s Guild.  Politics were not Boris Karloff’s forte.  For all the larger-than-life characters he created, natural and supernatural, Karloff was a private man, quiet, a homebody, reserved and intensely polite.  But he had his own ideas, he had earned them with sweat labor and a life lived, and he knew wrong from right… so he could not stand by when actors were being run into the ground by controlling home studios and autocratic directors.  In 1925, Karloff had joined The Masquer’s Club, a sort of unofficial labor union who hoped that there would be strength in their number to negotiate with the studios.  In 1933, a subset of that club broke off and became the first pod of what we know know as the Screen Actor’s Guild.  Early members included Alan Mowbray, Leon Ames, C. Aubrey Smith, Lyle Talbot and Charles Starrett, as well as Ralph Morgan and Eddie Cantor, the guild’s first and second presidents respectively. One of the defining principles of the Screen Actor’s Guild was their loyalty to all actors, not just movie stars.  It took another four years for the studios to recognize, much less bargain, with the Screen Actor’s Guild (it helped immeasurably when Ralph Morgan’s more famous brother Frank got on board) but actors today still benefit immeasurably from the relentless lobbying of of jobbing actors who would have preferred to be working but chose to take a stand.  So thank you, Boris Karloff, for sticking up for your brothers and sisters.

I could go on and on… but lastly, thank you, Boris Karloff, for HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS! (1966).  Dr. Seuss’ immortal 1957 Yuletide fantasy is timeless and in its own right would surely be as famous and beloved now even if an animated version hadn’t been made… but Karloff’s vocal prowess gave the tale three dimensions.  Animated by Chuck Jones and with Karloff providing narration and “the sounds of the Grinch” himself, HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS! was first broadcast by CBS on December 18, 1966.  Pushing 80, in spotty health, and just a little over two years shy of his own death, Karloff nonetheless delivered a deliciously florid vocal performance that was both formidable and inviting.  Kids still thrill to the tale and it is nearly impossible to read the original story to your children and not emulate Karloff’s singular inflections.  It’s nice, really, raised as I was on the make-believe villainy and not infrequent pathos of Boris Karloff that I think of him when I read this story to my children.  So thank you, Boris Karloff, for that.  And for everything.