Boris Karloff

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Born as William Henry Pratt on November 23, 1887 in Dulwich, England and died in Midhurst, Sussex, England on February 02, 1969.

The youngest of the eight children of a civil servant in the British foreign service, he was intended for a diplomatic career but in 1909 emigrated to Canada, where he found employment as a farmhand. Attracted to the stage, he joined one touring company, then another, and for the next decade played supporting parts in plays all over Canada and the US.

In 1916, during a brief stay in Los Angeles, he made his screen debut as an extra in "The Dumb Girl of Portici" starring Anna Pavlova. Out of a job three years later, he returned to Hollywood and began appearing regularly in films, in extra and bit parts. Unable to support himself as an actor, he alternated as a truck driver until the mid-20s, when his screen roles became more substantial. He was typically cast as a stock villain and failed to gain much recognition through the rest of the silent era, although he appeared in no less than 40 silent films.

Despite a pronounced lisp, Karloff's stage-trained voice became an asset during the transition to sound. He scored his first success in "The Criminal Code" (1931), in which he repeated a previous stage role. But the real turning point in his career came later that year, when he was cast by James Whale in the role of the Monster in "Frankenstein", a role that had been turned down by Bela Lugosi, the star of an earlier horror classic, "Dracula" (1931). Even the heavy makeup applied by Jack Pierce to Karloff's face could not hide the nuances of his performance. The film was a great success and assured Karloff a permanent niche in the horror film genre.

During the Universal horror cycle of the early 30s and in many such films to follow, he and his now frequent screen partner Lugosi formed the most formidable duo of the macabre in film history. Karloff also played many supporting parts out of character, notably as a religious fanatic in John Ford's "The Lost Patrol" (1934), but he remained identified in the public mind exclusively with his roles as a scarred, tormented, humanely vulnerable monster or a deranged scientist.

In contrast, Karloff was known as a mild-mannered, amiable gentleman who performed many acts of charity for needy children. He narrated a Mother Goose kiddie story record and played the kindly Colonel March of Scotland Yard on TV. He also hosted and occasionally starred in a suspense TV series called "Thriller." Throughout his busy screen career (some 140 films in all) Karloff continued to return to the stage. He scored a great success in 1941 as Jonathan Brewster in the Broadway production of Arsenic and Old Lace and another in 1950 as Captain Hook in Peter Pan. He gave one of his best performances in one of his last screen roles, virtually playing himself, as an aging star of horror movies, in Peter Bogdanovich's "Targets" (1968).

After battling emphysema for a number of years, Boris Karloff died from its complications at his home in Midhurst, Sussex, England on February 2, 1969 at the age of 81.

"When I first started acting on the stage I liked 'heavy' roles, and later in pictures I always sought them."
Boris Karloff
1887 - 1969

Trivia

"My wife has good taste. She has seen very few of my movies."
~Boris