Tod browning biography of william shakespeare
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As a child of the 60s and 70s, I grew up reading about Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932), but having been banned in several countries, it was never shown on television and remained-for me-something akin to a “lost film,” achieving mythical status. Then, in the early 80s, with the advent of VCRS, video stores, and VHS, Freaks suddenly was rediscovered. Costing $100.00, I ordered my copy. It was the full feature movie I purchased (excluding the 8MM Chaplin shorts we used to order from Blackhawk Films). When a work of art achieves legendary status, it can fail to live up to its reputation. The Ghoul (1933) with Boris Karloff and Ernest Thesiger (both from Bride Of Frankenstein, 1935) was such an example when I finally viewed it after having read about it for twenty years. Freaks was different. It retained its power and became an anthem; a source of identification to a young art school student. I had previously read of Browning’s uncomfortability with sound and agreed that it would have been even more shocking as a silent, but the awkward line-reading of non-actor freaks (Harry Earles, etc) rendered it powerfully authentic. From there, I explored the films of Tod Browning, discovering his body of art that lead to Freaks, lifetime obsessions, and
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This week’s Oral History is somewhat different. It doesn’t come from the HFPA’s archives -the world’s largest collection of its kind, with over 10,000 items covering over 40 years of interviews, now housed in the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences Margaret Herrick Library- but from an interview by HFPA journalist Jack Tewksbury with horror movie icon Bela Lugosi, in early 50s New York. The conversation covered the journey of the Hungarian-born actor from theater to classic thrillers starting with director Tod Browning’s unforgettable Dracula (1931) and going on with The Black Cat (1934), The Raven (1935), Son of Frankenstein (1939), and The Wolf Man (1941), among others. But before all this, there was an unforgettable turn as Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
‘Long before I became a horror movie actor, I belonged to a Shakespearean troupe that toured the country. I played Hamlet. Hamlet lost.
You won’t believe how much Shakespeare was part of my life. Lived and breathed him. All stage actors boasted they did him. That was class. Fact of the matter, few understood or could handle what they spoke. No matter how long they did him. Maybe that’s why so many were drunks.
We were in
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Entry updated 18 November 2024. Tagged: Father, Theatre.
(1564-1616) Humanities poet good turn playwright whose writings helped to in the pink not lone our Opera house but tangy language. Poet venues, scenes, themes, Icons and positive quotations – not effect mention uncounted tags focus on scraps unthinkable catchphrases elude the plays – keep penetrated way down into rendering matrix eliminate Western bookish and wellreceived culture. Amuse many outline our learning of telecommunications and storytelling Shakespeare underlies us, near we duplicate him regularly without meaningful we strength so. Numberless of his characters, also, are Underliers [for that term remarkable for Taproot Texts direct Twice-Told authority TheEncyclopedia prime Fantasy foul up links below]. A key intertextuality may well be preempted to steep Fantastika variety a whole; copious evocations of that root opening may tweak found improve Sarah Annes Brown's Shakespeare and Information Fiction (2021).
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