Fact 99: Lon Chaney knew Boris Karloff when he was a struggling actor and gave him some advice - “Find something no one else can or will do and they’ll begin to take notice of you.” A few years later, Karloff got the role of Frankenstein’s monster.
Fact 98: Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1998) is considered Bud Abbott and Lou Costello’s all-time greatest film, but originally, Costello fought the idea because he didn’t think it would be funny.
Monday Mar 3 @ 10:36pmFact 97: The Phantom of the Opera (1925) introduced the first torch-wielding mob, which would become widely used in future Universal Horror films, most notably in the Frankenstein films.
Fact 96: After the death of Lon Chaney, Conrad Veidt was among the actors Universal considered to play the part of Count Dracula in Dracula (1931).
Thursday Feb 2 @ 06:01pmFact 95: Unlike many of the other Universal Monsters, The Invisible Man movies have a new invisible character in each film. The series does not cover a continuous story line.
Pictured on top is Claude Rains as Jack Griffin in The Invisible Man (1933). Pictured on the bottom is Vincent Price as Geoffrey Radcliff in The Invisible Man Returns (1940).
Fact 94: The Mummy was Lon Chaney Jr.’s least favorite character to play because the costume was uncomfortable and he was allergic to the latex rubber mask.
Wednesday Feb 2 @ 11:59pm
Fact 93: Two of Dwight Frye’s most well-known roles are Renfield in Dracula (1931) and Henry’s assistant in Frankenstein (1931). But he also played small roles in many other movies including, The Invisible Man (1933), The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), and Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943). He also supposedly filmed scenes for Son of Frankenstein (1939), but they were edited out.
Monday Feb 2 @ 01:05amFact 92: Gloria Stuart, Valerie Hobson, and Evelyn Ankers were three of Universal’s most famous “scream queens.”
Gloria Stuart acted opposite Boris Karloff in The Old Dark House and opposite Claude Rains in The Invisible Man. Years later, she made a comeback in Hollywood by playing the 100-year-old Rose in Titanic.
Valerie Hobson was the wife of Henry Hull in Werewolf of London and Baroness Frankenstein in The Bride of Frankenstein.
Evelyn Ankers was known as “the queen of screamers.” She played opposite of Lon Chaney Jr. in The Wolf Man, and also appeared in Ghost of Frankenstein, Captive Wild Woman, Son of Dracula, The Mad Ghoul, Weird Woman, Jungle Woman, The Invisible Man’s Revenge, and The Frozen Ghost, along with many other non-horror Universal movies.
Fact 91: In the mid-40s, a monster named “The Creeper” was introduced. Rondo Hatton, who played The Creeper, was called “The Monster Without Makeup.” He didn’t have have to sit in a makeup chair to become the monster because he had a disorder called acromegaly that enlarged and deformed his face and body.
Creeper movies: The Pearl of Death (1944), House of Horrors (1946), and The Brute Man (1946).
Wednesday Feb 2 @ 08:23pm
Fact 90: Jack Pierce’s first makeup job for Universal Studios was to create the permanent grin for Conrad Veidt in The Man Who Laughs (1928).
Tuesday Feb 2 @ 06:04pm