James Whale : a new world of gods and monsters

James Whale directed some of the most stylish and unusual movies of the 1930s but he was most successful in a genre he virtually invented. For it was Whale who, in 1931, took a lanky, middle-aged actor and sometime truck-driver named Boris Karloff and cast him as the tragic, patchwork creature of the original Frankenstein. But Whale's success was short-lived. His career faltered and, being openly gay, he found work increasingly hard to get. He quit just ten years after the triumph of Frankenstein, and died a suicide only months before the film's eventual release on television. James Curtis has written the definitive account of the life of this innovative and stylish director.