Frankenstein 1931

The story

Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive) is a young scientist who has left town and shut himself in an old watchtower with his hunchbacked assistant, Fritz. There they assemble a body from the dead. Fritz is sent to fetch a brain and, in a gag the film is fond of, drops the good one and brings back a criminal's. Henry's fiancée Elizabeth and his friend Victor come looking for him, and so does his old teacher, Dr Waldman. On a stormy night the body is raised to the lightning on a table, and Henry shouts that it is alive.

The Monster, played by an actor the opening credits show only as a question mark, is not evil at first. He is tormented by Fritz, locked up, and drugged. He kills Fritz and, in a scene that was long cut, a small girl, Maria, who plays with him by a lake. The villagers hunt him with torches and he ends in a burning windmill. The ending was changed so that Henry lives, which left the way open for a sequel.

From a novel to a play to a film

Mary Shelley published Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus in 1818. The film is not taken straight from it. Its immediate source is a stage play of 1927 by Peggy Webling, adapted for the screen by John L. Balderston. The credits still name "Mrs. Percy B. Shelley", and the screenplay is by Garrett Fort and Francis Edward Faragoh, with Robert Florey and John Russell contributing without credit. Russell is credited by the AFI Catalog with the device of the criminal brain set beside a normal one.

The studio's reason for making it was Dracula. That film opened in February 1931, and by one account sold 50,000 tickets in 48 hours and made a profit reported at $700,000. The head of production, Carl Laemmle Jr., announced more horror at once. Florey, who wrote an early outline, was set to direct, and Bela Lugosi was in line for a part. The AFI Catalog says James Whale then took the project over, replacing Lugosi and the cameraman Karl Freund, who moved with Florey to Murders in the Rue Morgue. Why Lugosi left is disputed: the usual story is that he refused to play a "scarecrow", while recent evidence is said to suggest he was removed along with Florey.

Making the Monster

Whale cast Boris Karloff, an English actor who had already made dozens of films without being noticed. Karloff was not Universal's first choice, and the studio billed him in the opening titles with a "?". His name appears at the end.

The face was the work of Jack Pierce, Universal's make-up chief. One reference work says he spent three months studying anatomy first. The head was built up with cotton, collodion and gum, and green greasepaint, chosen to read as pale on black-and-white film, went on the face and hands. The neck "bolts" were electrodes. How long it took depends on the account: five hours to put on and two to take off in one, four hours a day in another. Whale's own part in the design is described as controversial.

The laboratory belongs to Kenneth Strickfaden, who is credited with "special electrical properties". The sparks and arcs of the creation scene came from equipment he built, some of it reported to include Tesla coils.

Cuts and warnings

Universal knew it had a shocker. The film opens with a speaker stepping from behind a curtain to warn nervous viewers; the cast list credits Edward Van Sloan as Waldman and as the announcer.

Censors cut it in several places. Kansas removed a hypodermic close-up and the moment Maria is carried in her father's arms. Quebec rejected the film whole. It was banned in Northern Ireland, Sweden and Italy in 1932, and in Czechoslovakia in 1935. Henry's line "Now I know what it feels like to be God!" was reported to have offended several American states. For the 1937 reissue Universal agreed to remove dialogue using God's name, and the scene in which the Monster throws Maria into the water.

That footage was lost for decades. By the AFI Catalog, three lost segments were found in 1986 and the film ran to 72 minutes; another reference work says 1987. Universal put them on video as the restored version.

Opening and reception

The AFI Catalog gives the release date as 21 November 1931. The film is reported to have opened at the Mayfair Theatre in New York on 4 December, taking $53,000 in its first week. The New York Times put it among the ten best films of 1931. It was a hit: a budget of about $250,000 against earnings given as about twelve million dollars, a total over many reissues and not a first-run gross.

The sequels began with Bride of Frankenstein in 1935. In 1991 the Library of Congress added the film to the National Film Registry.

Copyright, and what Universal still holds

Two questions are easily mixed up. The first is the film itself. A work of 1931 published with notice is protected in the United States for 95 years, which on Cornell Library's duration chart means it enters the public domain on 1 January 2027. Until then it is under copyright, so this page links to no copy.

The second is the Monster. Shelley's novel is free to everyone. But it gave the creature little look, and the flat head, bolts and green skin were invented for Universal, which copyrighted Pierce's design quickly, by one account, and is said to have enforced that claim against close copies. A film leaving copyright does not by itself end rights of that kind, so anyone who wants Karloff's look should take advice.

Why it matters

It gave the Monster his face. The flat-topped head, neck bolts and heavy boots are Pierce's and Karloff's, not Shelley's, and they are still what people draw when asked for Frankenstein's monster.

It made the mad scientist a type. The lightning, the lever and the cry from the laboratory became a standard scene, and Strickfaden's sparks were reused for decades.

It made horror a studio line. After Dracula and this film, Universal had a cycle of monsters to build on.

It outlived its copyright date. On 1 January 2027 the film itself is due to be free to reuse in the United States, while its most famous face may not be.