Abbott and Costello Quarterly—7

the“ABBOTT AND

COSTELLOMEET

FRANKENSTEIN” FILe

PRoDUCtIon

#1572

The inspired idea of melding two of Universal’s most famous franchises had been kicking around the studio for a few years, but it was producer Robert

Arthur who got the chance to bring it to life. He gave the concept to a few screenwriters, including

Oscar Brodney, Bertram Milhauser, and the team of Robert Lees and Fred Rinaldo.

“The minute the studio told Fred and I the basic idea,” Lees recalled in Abbott and Costello in Hollywood, “we said ‘This is the greatest idea for a comedy that ever was!’ But that’s all they gave us. We came up with the rest.”

Lees and Rinaldo, who had written Hold That Ghost (1941), came back with a promising treatment. Titled “Ab-bott and Costello Meet Frankenstein,” their first crack at the story was delivered April 21, 1947. It has most of the elements that will be in the final film: the boys are inept baggage handlers who deliver crates to MacDougal’s House of Horrors; the “exhibits” get up and walk away; Larry Talbot, on Dracula’s trail, persuades the boys to help him; there’s a

Part I

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masquerade ball where Chick wears a wolf mask and McDougal is attacked; the Wolf Man and Dracula plunge to their deaths in a fight; the Monster has a fiery end on a pier; and the Invisible Man shows up for the tag.

Surprisingly, however, the plot did not revolve around using Costello’s brain, only the revitaliza-tion of the Monster. Dr. Stevens has a larger role because there is no Sandra character. Stevens is willing to help Dr. Lejos, but has no idea that Lejos is Dracula. The Joan Raymond character—called Jean Butler here—is a local camp counselor swept up in the action. The setting was a resort town like Lake George in upstate New York.

In June, after more story conferences, Lees and Rinaldo de-livered a treatment much closer to the final film, with Wilbur’s brain

as the linchpin, and appropriately re-titled “The Brain of Fran-kenstein.” (Along the

way, there was a version that also included the Mummy and Count Alucard, the son of Dracula!)

Shooting was scheduled to start in October 1947, after Bud and Lou finished their indepen-dent film The Noose Hangs High. But that summer Lou suffered a fall and hurt his leg. He was ordered to stay off his feet for several weeks. Noose was post-poned from August to November, pushing back the start of “Brain” to February 1948.

Charles T. Barton (1902-1981) directed both films. Noose wrapped on December 10, and Barton spent a couple of weeks supervising post-production. On December 30, Universal assigned him to “Brain” and gave him five weeks to prep the film.

For a brief time, it looked as if Lou Costello wouldn’t do the film. He hated the script, according to Robert Arthur. Since Bud and

Lou rarely if ever read the scripts of their films, Costello must have reacted to the notion of shar-ing screen time with not one but three monsters, and that there was no room for any of their classic routines.

“Bud and Lou had quite a chip on their shoulders about doing it,” Barton told Greg Mank in his terrific book, It’s Alive. “They’d fight me like hell. But I stood my ground with them, and so did Bob Arthur.”

Meanwhile, other roles were

“THE BRAIN OF FRANKE

NSTEIN”

PRODUCTION # 1572

START DATE: OCTOBER

1947

FEBRUARY 5, 1948

CAST:

BUD ABBOTT .........

.. CHICK

LOU COSTELLO .......

.. WILBUR

LON CHANEY .........

.. TALBOT

IAN KEITH ..........

.. DRACULA

BELA LUGOSI ........

.. DRACULA

PATRICIA MORISON ...

.. SANDRA

LENORE AUBERT ......

.. SANDRA

GLENN STRANGE ......

.. THE MONSTER

DOROTHY HART .......

.. JOAN

ELLA RAINES ........

.. JOAN

JANE RANDOLPH ......

.. JOAN

CHARLES BRADSTREET .

.. STEVENS

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easily cast. Lon Chaney signed on to play the Wolf Man for the fifth time. He created the role, which no other actor played, in 1941 when Universal sought to link the Chaney name with a new series of horror films. Born Creighton Chaney, Lon always regretted trad-ing in on his father’s name and had difficulty living up to it. In 1951 he told a columnist, “The worst thing that can happen to any actor is to be the son of a great actor.”

Glenn Strange, now Universal’s official Frankenstein monster, was tapped to play the role for the third time, tying Boris Karloff ’s record. Karloff coached Glenn when they both appeared in House of Fran-kenstein (1944).

Other roles, however—includ-ing Dracula—were up for grabs. Bela Lugosi brought Dracula from stage to screen in 1931, and it typecast him. “The only work I could get was monstering,” he lamented to a United Press cor-respondent in 1955. His last film at Universal had been Frankenstein

Meets the Wolf Man (1943). Addicted to morphine and in poor health, he took every poverty row horror film offered to him; it was the only work he could get. Some sources claim that Uni-versal executives were so out of touch with Lugosi’s career that they thought he was dead. At the very least, they thought Bela was too old to play Dracula; he was 65 in 1947.

John Carradine inherited the role in two earlier monster reunions, House of Frankenstein (1944) and House of Dracula (1945), and may have been con-sidered again. But he was now on stage in New York. Chaney had played the Son of Dracula (1943), but he had enough to do in this film as the Wolf Man. (At one point Universal wanted him to play both monsters in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, but wisely reconsidered the logistics.)

What was the studio to do? What it did in 1931 with the origi-nal film: pencil in Ian Keith for the

part (opposite page, in our concep-tion of him in the role with Lou). Keith was 48 in 1947—about Lugosi’s age when he made the original film.

Fortunately, Bela got the part. His casting was announced on January 12, but he wasn’t signed until January 26. For only the second time in his career, Lugosi played Dracula on screen.

The first choice for Sandra was Patricia Morison (above, with the boys, in our conception of her

Opposite page:Ian Keith as Dracula, with Lou; John Carradine as Dracula in House of Dracula. Left: Patricia Morison as Sandra; Below: Lenore Aubert (with Michael Duane) in The Return of the Whistler, the role she had just before Meet Franken-stein.

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in the role). Once promoted as a rival to Dorothy Lamour, Morison (b. 1915) reportedly possessed the longest hair in Hollywood (39 inches). But she was misused in films, cast as villainesses in Univer-sal’s final Sherlock Holmes entry, Dressed to Kill (1946), as well as in Song of the Thin Man (1947) and Tarzan and the Huntress (1947). She apeared with Chaney in Call-ing Dr. Death (1943). In 1948 Morison abandoned Hollywood and went on to Broadway stardom when Cole Porter hand-picked her for the role of Lilli Vanessi, the im-perious stage diva, in his musical Kiss Me, Kate. The show opened on December 30, 1948 and ran for 1,077 performances.

Austrian-born Lenore Aubert (1918-1993), who had shown a fine ability to play a femme fatale opposite a comedian (Bob Hope) in They Got Me Covered (1943), was cast. Lenore brought a genuine accent to the part, which added to her effectiveness. Accord-ing to Greg Mank, Lenore’s career was impeded by Samuel Goldwyn because she rebuffed his amorous advances.

Two actresses were considered for the role of insurance investiga-tor Joan Raymond: Dorothy Hart and Ella Raines. Both were former models.

Hart (above, left) was first signed by Columbia where she made one film, Gunfighters (1947). Universal picked her up and sea-soned her in small roles in The Ex-ile (1947), The Naked City (1948), Larceny (1948), and The Countess of Monte Cristo (1948). She was later considered for a role in Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff. Hart (1922-2004) became the tenth actress to portray Jane when she appeared opposite Lex Barker as Tarzan in Tarzan’s Savage Fury (1952). That year she left the film business, moved to New York, and did occasional guest spots on TV dramas and game shows. She worked on behalf of the world’s children through the United Na-tions.

Ella Raines (above, in our conception of her as Joan) was discovered and, as the euphemism goes, groomed for stardom by Howard Hawks. Thanks to Robert Siodmak’s Phantom Lady (1944),

Raines (1920-1988) became one of film noir’s most idolized actresses. That year she also ap-peared in Preston Sturges’ Hail The Conquering Hero and Tall in The Saddle with John Wayne. At Uni-versal, Ella fre-quently worked for Siodmak and often appeared in screenplays by Bertram

Milhauser. One of her few light comedies, White Tie and Tails (1946), is notable for its director: Charles Barton. But after she mar-ried Robin Olds, a triple ace fighter pilot, in 1947, Raines became an Air Force wife, and her career slowed down. Olds later became commander of the Air Force Acad-emy in Colorado. By the mid-’50s, Ella was doing network television pilots. She had a short-live series, Janet Dean, R.N (1953-54). Ac-cording to the New York Times, Ella turned down the Joan Ray-mond role because “she felt that she couldn’t stand the competition with Dracula, the Wolf Man and Frankenstein’s monster...”

The Joan Raymond role went to an actress with a similar sounding name: Jane Randolph. Jane had appeared in the horror/noir classic Val Lewton’s Cat People (1942), and its fine sequel, Curse of the Cat People (1944). She also had a recurring role in the Falcon series with Tom Conway. Her last picture before “Brain of Frankenstein” was Anthony Mann’s noir Railroaded (1947).

In an interview with Paul Parla

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and Charles P. Mitchell in Clas-sic Images, Jane recalled, “I didn’t think I would like doing a movie like [Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein], but I loved it. I enjoyed it very much.”

She continued, “It was fun. Abbott and Costello were very funny every day, and they were always very nice to me. Everybody was always in a good mood. There wasn’t any strain, and nobody seemed upset...A lot of the crew worked with them before, so they were used to them. ”

One of her fondest memories was working with Bela Lugosi. “He was quite a gentleman. He really liked doing Dracula. He did not hint that he felt trapped by the character. He seemed proud of it.”

In one sequence, Jane danced with Lugosi at the masquerade ball; their scene was trimmed from the film. “He was a very good dancer. He was dressed in full vampire costume, but he moved very well.”

Randolph recalled that “It is Lugosi himself who drives the boat

away [from the masqerade party] after he hypnotizes Costello and me.”

Jane’s memories are less dis-tinct about Aubert and Chaney. “She was always ready and on time and very pleasant. Chaney played the wolf man, of course, and that involved plenty of make-up. We re-ally only had a few scenes together. I remember mostly seeing him from the distance.”

She also enjoyed working with Glenn Strange. “We did a lot of publicity poses together. We did some of them out in front of the studio. In his make-up as the Fran-kenstein monster, he was so tall. It was fun doing poses with him. He would pick me up and carry me for some shots. He didn’t carry me in the film, just for publicity shots. He was very nice, interesting and amusing.”

Randolph admired Barton for keeping things going and being efficient on such a wild produc-tion. “The whole thing was very interesting. I found this film very exciting. It was exciting being in it,

and it was exciting even just reading the script. There were a lot of visitors to the set too. They were always coming and going. There were children of Abbott, children of Costello, children of Lugosi. I met and spoke to them all. It was a very busy set. It was a wonderful picture and fun.”

It was one of Jane Randolph’s last films. Her final picture was Open Secret (1948), with John Ire-land. Shortly after, she retired from show business when she married Jaime del Amo, and she spent most of her time in Spain.

The role of Dr. Stevens, which was whittled down with each new draft of the screenplay, went to Charles Bradstreet (1918-2004). According to his bio on the In-ternet Movie Database (supplied by Tom Weaver), Bradstreet got his start when he accompanied his brother to try-outs for a play and got the lead role himself. Later, while managing a bar called Billingsley’s (frequented by Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby et al.), he was offered a contract at Columbia, but studio boss Harry Cohn, who knew that Bradstreet had once tossed Cohn’s nephew out of the bar, nullified it.

Bradstreet landed at MGM, playing a series of small roles. His latest was The Unfinished Dance (1947), starring Margaret O’Brien.

Opposite page: head shot of Dorothy Hart; Ella Raines (in our con-ception of her as Joan Raymond); left: Lou and Jane Randolph.

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Aerial view of Universal in 1943. The stages were re-numbered in the 1960s. Stage 6 is now Stage 3; Stage 14 is now Stage 20; Stage 15 is now Stage 19; and Stage 19 is now Stage 22 (sounds like an A&C routine, doesn’t it?). Today the tour tram passes right to left between the Phantom Stage (28) and old Stage 19 (now Stage 22) and follows the road that curves past the old Concrete Tank to the back lot sets. The tank was later replaced by production bungalows.

Phantom Stage Dance pavilion

Stage 6 London hotel room; castlecellar stairs & secret room.

Stage 17Castle laboratory, library, hallway, staircase, Sandra’s bedroom; exterior bayou for close-ups; exterior pier for monster fire close-up

Stage 15Chick and Wilbur’s hotel room and hallway

Stage 19 Baggage room; house of horrors

ConCRete tanK WIth SKY BaCKDRoPBayou, cove and cave entrance

Stage 10Scoring stage

“ T he Bra i n of Fra nkenste i n” Produ ction #1572 - Sta ge a ss ig n m e nt s -

Stage 14gardens and woods

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When he was approached to play Dr. Stevens, Bradstreet thought it was a step backwards career-wise, but accepted because of his friendship with Charles Barton. It was easily his best-known role, and also one of his last. Accord-ing to Bradstreet, he was offered the chance to play Tarzan and the lead in TV’s Gunsmoke, but turned down both offers. When, in his words, “the glamour went out of” acting for him, he got into real estate.

Meanwhile, Lees and Rinaldo’s screenplay was passed on to Abbott and

Costello’s head writer, John Grant. A renowned burlesque straight man and producer, Grant had known and worked with Bud and Lou even before they teamed up. When the boys needed material for their weekly appearances on The Kate Smith Hour, they hired Grant, who remained with them into the 1950s.

To the frustration of Lees and Rinaldo, Grant peppered the film with dozens of little bits. “John Grant was a problem for us,” Lees told Jim Mulholland in Quarterly #39. “After we’d work very hard to get a story together, Grant would come in with something and they’d put it in just because it was from Grant.”

Examples of Grant’s additions include Wilbur’s exchanges with McDougal in the baggage office, like the “I belong to two unions” bit. He also inserted the photog-rapher bit with McDougal at the masquerade ball. Yet many of the

film’s biggest laughs were authored by Lees and Rinaldo, like the tug of war between Dracula and the Wolf Man over Wilbur’s gurney, or when the boys barricade a door with furniture only to have the door open the wrong way. And let’s not forget Wilbur’s classic line, “You and 20 million other guys,” written by Fred Rinaldo.

The film depended on three of Universal’s classic monsters, and the demands of their specific make-up. Lugosi required only forty-five minutes to an hour to be made up and costumed. For the Monster and the Wolf Man, Bud Westmore, the new head of the de-partment, streamlined the process by using foam rubber appliances. These cut the time in half. Glenn Strange’s make-up and wardrobe now took two hours. However, be-cause his molded rubber headpiece was sealed tightly against his skin, perspiration collected inside it. When the headpiece was removed at the end of the day, half a cup of water poured out. Glenn also wore boots that were built around his own shoes. The four inch plat-forms were featherlight because they were made of cork. Still, they

were treacherous: even before he fractured his ankle attempting to toss stunt woman Helen Thurston through the lab window, Glenn twisted it by stepping on a cable.

Chaney’s full make-up could now be applied in an hour, and was more comfortable. But his transformation scenes were only achieved through arduous time-lapse photography, requiring him to remain unnaturally still for eight hours. Although he transforms twice on camera, Lon actually endured three of those lengthy make-up sessions: the London hotel room sequence, originally filmed on February 16, was re-shot on March 13. In addition, on March 16, Chaney volunteered to sub for Strange after Glenn frac-tured his ankle the previous day. Lon shot his scenes with Bud and Lou in the locker room that morn-ing, (“You and 20 million other guys!”), reported to make-up, and then tossed Thurston through the window in the afternoon.

Ron Chaney, Lon’s grand-son, explained in Quarterly #25,

Right: Chaney has his new Wolf Man make-up applied. This may have been

taken during one of the two tests he did, either Jan. 31 or Feb. 6, 1948.

Courtesy of Bob Furmanek.

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“Gramps was usually willing to do whatever it took to get the job done. He was a real professional when it came to his craft.”

Unfortunately, Chaney’s private life was not as disciplined. A month after completing Meet Fran-kenstein, Lon took 40 sleeping pills and was rushed to a hospital in Burbank. His 19-year old son from his first marriage told authorities that Lon and his present wife had argued a lot recently. Another story blamed his attempted suicide on exhaustion from playing the Wolf Man.

The film’s sets were as impres-sive as its monsters. The art director, Hilyard Brown,

was on one of his first assign-

ments at Universal. (Bernard Herzbrun also has a screen credit because he was the studio’s supervising art director—Brown’s boss. Herzbrun is acknowledged on virtually every Universal film

between 1947 and 1955.)

Born in Ne-braska, Brown (1910-2002) studied archi-tecture at USC and entered the film industry in 1937 as a draftsman at Warner Broth-ers. His first screen credit and Oscar nomination was as an assistant art director on Citizen Kane (1941). He

later shared an Oscar for Cleopatra (1963), and was inducted into the Art Director’s Guild Hall of Fame in 2006.

Brown brought much of the gothic gloom of Kane’s Xanadu to Meet Frankenstein’s castle. The interior of the castle, includ-ing the hallways, laboratory, and library, was built on Stage 17. Jane Randolph recalled, “The castle and everything was so incredible. Even when I saw it on film, I thought it was incredible.”

Lugosi’s 10-year-old son, Bela Jr., (above, left) visited the set a few times. In Quarterly #25 he re-called, “The set itself was dark, in the sense that it was gothic. Yet it was a magnificent set! It was hard to imagine that all of the scenes

that took place in this castle was actually built and housed inside a soundstage on the Universal lot.”

In Quarterly #4, Bud Abbott Jr. recalled the cellar staircase and re-volving door set on Stage 6. “That was all one set—the revolving door, the secret room, and the dock. It was really incredible!”

Bud Jr. also had distinct memo-ries of the laboratory set. “It was a pretty awesome-looking set, but when they got ready to shoot, they lit everything up and the lightning and the electricity was just incred-ible! It just froze you when it went off. Those aren’t sound effects you hear—that’s the actual cracking and crackling of the electricity!”

The cinematographer was Charles Van Enger (1890-1980), who had shot Lon Chaney Sr.’s masterpiece, The Phantom of the Opera (1925). (The costume ball sequence was filmed on Stage 28, which had been constructed specifically for Chaney’s film and is still known as the Phantom Stage.) Van Enger worked at Universal for 25 years and shot several Abbott and Costello films, including their most atmospheric: Who Done It?, The Time of Their Lives, and Meet the Killer. In the early 1950s he was reunited with Lugosi for Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, and Chaney for Bride on the Go-rilla and Battles of Chief Pontiac. Van Enger moved to TV, where he worked on Broken Arrow, Lassie and Gilligan’s Island.

Shooting began on February 5, 1948 on the baggage room set. This set, and the House

of Horrors set, was on Stage 19. (Today, the TV series CSI is shot on that stage, which was renum-bered 22.)

To christen the production, Bobby Barber (above, left, with Lou), the boys’ court jester,

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climbed the rafters and dropped an egg on Barton’s head. It was a taste of things to come.

Bud’s niece, Betty, was the script supervisor. “That film was madness, absolute madness!” she recalled in Quarterly #20.

Glenn Strange called it “one of the most enjoyable pictures I ever worked on. We [shot it] in about seven weeks. We should have done it in about five, but if you know Ab-bott and Costello, they play about a quarter of the day and then work the rest of the time.”

Bela Jr. said, “I remember when they weren’t shooting a scene, Bud and Lou and these gag men would start doing these outrageous and hilarious antics. I will be honest in saying that the filming of this picture was very uplifting. It was a happy set to visit.

“Dad liked the humor on the set. He would laugh as hard as any of us when these gags and cut-ups would be going on. It’s sad that that wasn’t ever shown on some outtakes! It would give a whole new twist to Count Dracula, wouldn’t you say?

“But if people were constantly cutting up and a scene being shot was lost or had to be redone, then he might get annoyed or upset.”

This clearly was a reference to Barber, who interrupted takes and

instigated a lot of horseplay on the set. In a famous outtake (above), Bobby trails Bela as he strides down the castle’s grand staircase. Bud, Lou, Lenore and Jane are amused, but Bela is not. According to the production records, this was the first take of the day, and Lugosi had had a rough morning. He was an hour late to the studio, and required seven takes to nail the scene. Who could blame him for scolding Bobby?

According to Barton (quoted in Bela Lugosi: Master of the Macabre by Larry Edwards): “To be honest, there were times when I thought Bela was going to have a stroke on the set. You have to understand that working with two zanies like Abbott and Costello was not the normal Hollywood set. They never went by the script and at least once a day there would be a pie fight. Bela of course would have nothing to do with any of this. He would just glare at those involved with his famous deadly stare and the only emotion he would show physically was one of utter disgust.”

At one point Lugosi remarked, “Vee should not be playink vhile vee are vorking,” and it became a running gag on the set. But Bobby wasn’t the only one clowning

around. Greg Mank reported that Lenore Aubert, wrapped in a mink, put a leash on Glenn and, with Bud, Lou and Chaney (in full Wolf Man make-up) in tow, took a stroll around the Universal lot.

Betty Abbott recalled, “Lon Chaney Jr. was another guy who liked to frighten people. He would stand in his dressing room and watch people come in—because we had visitors on the set all the time—and then just go circle in!”

Ron Chaney said, “My grandfa-ther, though he took his work very seriously and was a consumate professional, really had a very comical side. He loved cutting up! He was a prankster! He was a lot funnier off camera. He was a good storyteller and told a good joke!”

The incongruous behavior of the monsters off camera was not lost on Lou’s daughter, Paddy, then 11 years old. “Glenn Strange was so sweet—‘Frankenstein’ was always walking around with a big smile,” she recalled. “I always got a big kick out of that, seeing the monsters between scenes, read-ing a newspaper, chewing gum, or laughing and smoking like regular people. And then how all of that reality was suspended so this fan-tasy could come to life.”•