November 21, 1931: A film version of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein premieres, directed by James Whale. It changes the perception of the story forever.
In the original story, the Swiss scientist who wanted to cheat death by assembling pieces of corpses into an entire human body and reanimating it was named Victor Frankenstein. In this film, his name is Henry Frankenstein, and he is played by English actor Colin Clive.
The "creature," or "monster," that he assembles, played by English actor Boris Karloff, has no name in the film. Nor did he have one in the original story, although, in that story, he tells Dr. Frankenstein, who has been "playing God" by trying to reverse death, "I ought to be thy Adam."
Even readers of the book, within a few years of its publication, began to incorrectly call the creature "Frankenstein." The movies, with the action moved from the Swiss Alps to the adjoining Bavarian Alps in Southern Germany, deepened that perception, and so, for nearly a century, when people have said, "Frankenstein," they have meant the monster, not the scientist; and when they call something a "Frankenstein," they mean a grotesque creation, not its creator.
This was further confused by Karloff playing the creature in the sequels Bride of Frankenstein in 1935 and Son of Frankenstein in 1939; but also several "mad scientists," including Dr. Frankenstein himself twice. It didn't help that, in 1962, Bobby Pickett had a Number 1 hit titled "Monster Mash," in which he imitated Karloff as the scientist who'd created a monster.
Clive tends to be forgotten: When he's remembered at all, it's for two sentences: The joyous "It's alive!" and the doleful, "I've created a monster" -- which he didn't actually say. A leg injury sustained at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, Britain's version of West Point, kept Clive out of compulsory military service, and led to him to switch to acting as a career. But the pain never left him, and he drank to dull it. This ruined his health, and he died of tuberculosis in 1937, only 37 years old.
Karloff lived until 1969, at age 81. Mae Clarke, who played Elizabeth Lavenza, the doctor's fiancée, but is better known for having James Cagney hit her in the face with a grapefruit in The Public Enemy, lived until 1992. Dwight Frye, who played the doctor's hunchbacked assistant, known as Fritz here but usually remembered as "Igor," and also played Renfield in Dracula earlier in the year, died of a heart attack in 1943, only 44. Director Whale lived until 1957. Marilyn Harris, who played Maria, the little girl who played with the Creature, who then misinterpreted her game and threw her into a lake, unintentionally drowning her, was the last survivor of the cast, living until 1999.
During the Great Depression, as with gangster movies, monster movies preyed on people's fears and anxieties. As I mentioned, the Bela Lugosi version of Dracula had premiered earlier in the year. Later in the 1930s, there would be The Mummy (also starring Karloff), King Kong, The Invisible Man, the Frankenstein sequels, and many more horror movies.
In 1974, Mel Brooks filmed Young Frankenstein, in black & white like the 1931 version, and having lucked out into finding that film's sets intact, available to be filmed again. Gene Wilder, who had worked with Brooks on The Producers, had agreed to appear in Mel's parody of Western movies, Blazing Saddles, on the condition that Mel would then direct the Frankenstein movie that Gene wanted to make. Mel would later say that, while Blazing Saddles was his funniest film, Young Frankenstein was his best.
Wilder played the original doctor's grandson, an American medical school professor. Trying to distance himself from his ill-fated, scandalous relative, he prefers to pronounce the name "FRONG-ken-steen." But, having inherited the family castle in Transylvania, he comes to embrace his heritage, and call himself "FRANG-ken-STINE," and reanimates a corpse played by Peter Boyle.
Transylvania, classically the home of Dracula, has become a stereotype of horror films. It's not where the original story was, nor the classic 1931 version. The real Transylvania is in Romania, and they do not speak German there, or English with a German accent. But, you know, it's Mel Brooks: Being Jewish, he liked to make fun of Germans.
In the original novel, the Monster is highly intelligent, teaching himself to speak by listening to others, and to read with books he finds. In the 1931 film, he doesn't speak at all, merely grunting, and appears to have very little intelligence. In The Bride of Frankenstein, remembering his earlier experience, he speaks one line: "Fire bad!" But Brooks balanced this out, by having the Monster develop his intelligence, until he's a very thoughtful man at the end.
The Monster has appeared, with different portrayers, in many movies, sometimes meeting other monsters, once meeting the comedy team of Bud Abbott & Lou Costello, running into Scooby-Doo and his friends in a cartoon, and being memorably played by Skip Hinnant on The Electric Company (to Morgan Freeman's Dracula and Jim Boyd's Wolf Man) and Phil Hartman on Saturday Night Live. In 1973, Edgar Winter gave the Monster a 2nd Number 1 hit, with the instrumental "Frankenstein."
Remember: The scientist is Frankenstein, not the creature. But, willingly or not, the scientist, Frankenstein, is the villain.
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November 21, 1931 was a Saturday. Baseball was out of season. Basketball barely existed. There were 2 games in the NHL that day: The New York Rangers beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, 5-3, in only the 3rd game ever played at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. And the Montreal Canadiens beat the Boston Bruins, 3-0 at the Montreal Forum.
Among the college football games played that day were these:
* Yale beat arch-rival Harvard, 3-0 at Harvard Stadium in Boston.
* Arch-rivals North Carolina and Duke played to a 0-0 tie at Duke Stadium (now Wallace Wade Stadium) in Durham, North Carolina.
* West Virginia beat Penn State, 19-0 at the old Mountaineer Field in Morgantown, West Virginia.
* The University of Southern California beat Notre Dame, 16-14 at Notre Dame Stadium in South Bend, Indiana. USC would be awarded the National Championship, although not every poll agreed: Some gave it to the University of Pittsburgh, who were idle this week.
* In the battle for the Old Oaken Bucket, Purdue beat arch-rival Indiana, 19-0 at the old Memorial Stadium in Bloomington, Indiana.
* In the battle for the Little Brown Jug, Michigan beat Minnesota, 6-0 at Michigan Stadium in Ann Arbor.
* In a crosstown rivalry, Saint Louis University beat Washington University, 34-0 at Walsh Memorial Stadium in St. Louis. Saint Louis University dropped its football program after the 1949 season. Washington University now compete in NCAA Division III.
* In their annual "Border War," the oldest major collegiate rivalry west of the Mississippi River, Kansas beat Missouri, 14-0 at Memorial Stadium in Lawrence, Kansas.
* In the San Francisco Bay Area's annual "Big Game," the University of California beat Stanford, 6-0 at the old Stanford Stadium in Palo Alto.
* Army beat Ursinus, 54-6 at Michie Stadium in West Point, New York. Ursinus, in the Philadelphia suburb of Collegeville, Pennsylvania, now competes in NCAA Division III.
* Navy lost to Southern Methodist University (SMU), 13-6 at Thompson Stadium in Annapolis, Maryland.
* Previously undefeated Fordham were beaten by still-unbeaten Bucknell, 14-13 at the Polo Grounds. A week earlier, Fordham and New York University played to a 0-0 tie in front of 80,000 at Yankee Stadium. I have a discrepancy as to what NYU did next. According to Sports-Reference.com, on November 21, they beat Carnegie Tech (now Carnegie Mellon), 7-6 at Yankee Stadium. But according to Wikipedia, that game happened 5 days later, on Thanksgiving Day.
* Also in New York City, Columbia and Syracuse played to a tie, 0-0 at Baker Field in Manhattan.
* And among New Jersey's teams, Rutgers finished their season the week before, and Princeton had the week off.
