Chandler Helen - The very witching time of night: dark alleys of classic horror cinema

Frontispiece: Ariel Heath, RKO starlet of the early 1940s, welcomes you to The Very Witching Time of Night.

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina

Also by Gregory William Mank and from McFarland

Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff: The Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration, with a Complete Filmography of Their Films Together (2009; main title first edition, Karloff and Lugosi)

Women in Horror Films, 1930s (1999; paperback 2005)

Women in Horror Films, 1940s (1999; paperback 2005)

Hollywood Cauldron: Thirteen Horror Films from the Genres Golden Age (1994; paperback 2001)

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e-ISBN: 978-1-4766-1543-1

2014 Gregory William Mank. All rights reserved

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On the cover: Poster art for the 1942 film Cat People (RKO Radio Pictures/Photofest)

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For my beautiful Barbara.
We thought this would be an easy one, didnt we?

Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn, and Hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world. Now could I drink hot blood
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on.
Hamlet, Act III, sc. ii

Most of my books on film history have had a definite dramatic focus. The first, Its Alive! The Classic Cinema Saga of Frankenstein, way back in 1981, presented the backstage story of Universals eight classic Frankenstein filmsthe talent, the studio politics, the phenomenon. The most recent, Lugosi and Karloff: The Expanded Story of a Haunting Collaboration, published by McFarland in 2009, focused on the eight films the two horror superstars made together, the Hollywood in which they worked, and the rivalry and sadness that plagued their personal relationship.

While working on these books and the others, I frequently found fascinating tangential materialoften striking, sometimes bizarrethat cried out for its own focus and attention. It was colorful, wide-ranging stuffdynamic theater and cinema historyand I became determined that one day, all this material would receive its own worthy and well-deserved book.

Hence, The Very Witching Time of Night. The chapters are as follows:

1.A Very Lonely Soul: A Tribute toDraculas Helen Chandler. The story of the tragic actress whose real life became a pitiful saga more gruesome than her one classic horror film, Dracula, as intimately told by her best friend and sister-in-law, Geraldine. Accompanying the story are wonderful (and at times heartrending) family photographs provided by Helens great-nephew, Kevin Chandler.

2.Mad Jack Unleashed:SvengaliandThe Mad Genius. John Barrymore, hailed by Warner Bros. as The Worlds Greatest Living Actor, gave back-to-back 1931 film performances so brilliantly grotesque that his adoring public rejected both him and the films. The account includes the memories of Marian Marsh, leading lady in both movies, and revealing production information from the Warner Archives.

3.Paramount Horrors:Murders in the Zoo. When it came to spicing horror with sexand vice versano studio did it better than Paramount. The chapter analyzes Paramounts kinky house style and focuses on the deliriously erotic, exotic Murders in the Zooincluding coverage of Lionel Atwills daringly depraved star portrayal and the films wild climactic animal free-for-all debacle that ended with the real-life mercy killing of a puma.

4.The Mystery of Lionel Atwill: An Interview with the Son of the Late, Great Horror Star. After Lionels death in 1946, what happened to the Atwill familyhis 29-year-old widow and his six-month-old baby son? For the first time, Lionel Anthony Atwill gives the answers and also provides a delightfully macabre account of rescuing his fathers ashes from Vaultage in a Hollywood mortuary where they sat for over 57 years. Atwill also provides some great family photographs.

5.James Whale, Colin Clive, Lionel Atwill and the Riding Whip: The Real-Life Horror Story of the Censorship of UniversalsOne More River. Between The Invisible Man and Bride of Frankenstein, James Whale directed this 1934 super sex-melodrama, starring Colin Clive as a sadist and featuring Lionel Atwill as his lawyer. Whales defiant insistence on shooting the film his own way and his battles with Joseph Breen and the newly empowered Production Code made this a real-life horror for the director, censor, and studio. The story contains extensive documentation from the Censorship Files of the Academys Margaret Herrick Library.

6.Baby-Scarer! Boris Karloff at Warner Bros., 19351939. In 1935, Karloff signed a non-exclusive contract at Warnersbefore he or the studio fully recognized the severity of the anti-horror factions converging upon Hollywood. The chapter reveals how, over the course of five films, Karloff went from a Triumphant Warner Bros. Star to a corporate liability the studio was desperate to dump. Contracts and correspondence from the Warner Archives tell the tale.

7.Libel and Old Lace. The fully-researched story of the greatest horror comedy hit in theater and (arguably) film history. It includes rich material from the Warner Archives on the production of the film, as well as a full explanation as to why Karloff, who starred in the Broadway play, didnt make the movieand examines how close he came to a libel suit against Warners that would have rocked Hollywood and horror history.

8.Production Diaries:Cat PeopleandThe Curse of the Cat People. A day-by-day account of the shooting of both of Val Lewtons feline masterworks, reporting specific behind-the-scenes events and crises as detailed in the RKO Archives. Here are all the production nuts and bolts for both films, including a meticulous analysis of Lewtons revised ending for Curse and the toll suffered by this hypersensitive producer.

9.Frankenstein Meets the Wolf ManRevisited. Its the most fascinating and obsessive of Universals Monster sagas, and this retrospect in honor of its 70th anniversary presents new discoveries and insights about Bela Lugosis forlorn Frankenstein Monster and that films remarkably troubled production history.

10.Horror Propaganda: Hitlers Madman. In 1942, Hitlers barbaric revenge for the assassination of Gestapo monster Reinhard Heydrich shocked the world. A group of migr Jews in Hollywood vowed to commemorate the atrocity by undertaking something virtually unheard of in U.S. film industryan independent production. This chapter tells the fascinating saga of this doomed but passionate film, its many production challenges, its sale to MGM, the Metro retakes, the censorship battle that almost saw the film scrapped, and its nightmarish content that made it far more disturbing than any actual horror film of the era.