Boris Karloff — Please Scare Us, Mr. Karloff! (1934) 🇺🇸
He wouldn't produce half so many chills if he used his real name of Charles Edward Pratt instead of the more sinister and compelling Boris Karloff.
The "Karloff" comes from a Russian ancestor somewhere on the feminine side of his family. He has a distinctly Mongolian or Tartar complexion which increases his mystery and makes people wonder. He refuses to have a fly swatter in the house because he does not believe in taking life, even that of a fly. A peculiar thing for a "Monster" to admit, if you ask me.
During the fourteen years that Boris was spending in his climb from obscurity to fame, he did many things such as digging ditches, sleeping on park benches, hoisting heavy barrels of nails and driving a truck. He admits that he didn't like it but so what? He now occupies the dressing room of the late Lon Chaney on the Universal lot and he hasn't forgotten that it was Lon who gave him the first boost up the ladder.
Karloff had been driving a truck and working extra in pictures during his spare time. That day he was working at Universal. As he drove his one lung Ford out of the lot on the way to town, he was hailed by a shabby looking individual who wore a plaid cap pulled down over his eyes. The man wanted a ride to Hollywood. Boris told him to climb in and discovered that it was Lon Chaney. On the way home Boris told him that he was about to throw picture work to the winds and get a steady job at some refined work like washing dishes. Lon took him up on a high hill and showed him the kingdoms of the earth. He made him promise not to throw up the sponge. Boris didn't and look what happened.
He did his first sinister role in make-up as the monster of "Frankenstein." He followed this with The Mummy, "Old Dark House," The Ghoul, "Fu Manchu" and others in which he hid behind some sort of weird make-up. In Five Star Final, "The House of Rothschild," "The Lost Patrol" and other straight parts, he has proven to be what he is, a fine actor who does not need the art of the makeup man to put him over.
Boris Karloff is every inch a gentleman. He is intensely interested in all sorts of sports. He is a member of the Hollywood Cricket Club and plays regularly. He is also an expert rugby player and is equally adept at field hockey. His associates are the other English gentlemen of the picture colony, Ronald Colman, Clive Brook, C. Aubrey Smith, Ralph Forbes and the others.
He has been married twice. He and his second wife seem as happy as two bugs in a rug. Despite his success in pictures, he still drives a battered old Ford coupe.
Many strange stories are told of Karloff. During the making of Fu Manchu at Metro studio the script called for him to crush a great hairy spider beneath his heel. He firmly refused.
"I can't, I simply can't," he insisted. "Even that ugly thing has a right to live."
He is a fanatic on the subject of taking life, even that of an insect. The country around his home is literally alive with game but he would no more think of taking a gun and killing a rabbit or a deer than he would of killing a man. He is fond of dogs and has two at the present time, wire-hairs whom he calls Whisky and Soda. Once a dog of his gave birth to pups beneath his house during a driving rain storm. Boris, in his nightgown, crawled under the house and brought mother and pups into the house, sitting up all night to feed the pups milk from an eye dropper. If while he is reading, a fly or other insect strays past the screens, he will patiently put aside his book and pipe and with the care of a mother herding her child, he will gently shoo the insect out doors. He once tried to get up a petition to have drinking fountains for dogs installed in the streets of Hollywood.
One of the funniest stories told on Karloff is of that Hallowe'en Eve when a group of children came to his home. Mrs. Karloff went to the door. They asked if the Monster was at home and would he come out and frighten them. Karloff came out but instead of frightening them, he brought them into the house and gave them cake and chocolate and played games with them. That's the kind of a guy he is.
Karloff loves his native England but Hollywood is his home. He has created there a little England of his own. On his Coldwater Canyon estate he feeds his ducks, prods in his garden and walks with his dogs. He smokes his pipe filled with English tobacco, dines comfortably on roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and listens to Noel Coward records. On Sundays he indulges in his passion for cricket and rugby. England is never very far away.
He has just finished "The Black Cat" and Universal has other roles waiting for him. He has no intention of losing his foothold as the horror master of the screen.
Photo by: Roman Freulich (1898–1974)
Collection: Hollywood Magazine, July 1934