Dinner with Steven McNicoll and his fragrant fiancee Fran, actors, and fellow guests Ricky Callan, actor, and Colin McLaren, boy genius. Much hilarity, and a screening of THIS meisterwerk:
From the TV show Tales of Tomorrow. A retelling of Frankenstein, with a seriously inebriated Lon Chaney Jnr. as the Monster (and note how Lon, always credited as simply “Lon Chaney” during his career, as gone back to being “Jnr.” as time passes and his father’s clear superiority assumes its rightful place in our consciousness).
Set for some reason in a cosy domestic castle, with Ed Wood-style drawn-on flagstones and a wife and kid and servants running about (seems like SON OF FRANKENSTEIN must have been the model), this half hour of nonsense is notable for the fact that poor Chaney, very much befuddled by booze, didn’t realise he was going out live. He believed he was simply running through another rehearsal, which is why, lifting chairs high above his head, he then gently places them on the ground to avoid damaging them. And then mimes the act of smashing an invisible chair. It’s subtle, but noticeable. He’s saving them for the real show.
(There’s also that nice moment as he gently deposits a chair on his way out the door, looks to camera, and mouths the words “I’ll leave it there.”)
During the commercial break, somebody had a word with him and he comes back in full-on monsterhood, determined to smash everything in sight to matchwood. Even then, the monster’s inability to pass a chair without lifting and smashing it is faintly hilarious. Where does it come from, this hatred of furniture?
Despite this, Chaney apparently believed his performance was every bit as good as Karloff’s. I suppose that’s what alcoholism is FOR.
My other favourite thing in the episode (I think the rest of it’s in YouTube) is the way the Doctor’s son, little Willie Frankenstein, makes his own monster at the dinner table, out of fruit. Pineapple body, banana arms… it’s a terrifying, unnatural homunculus, a mockery of God’s will, and more alarming than Lon Jnr. by a country mile.
I don’t mean to be nasty about poor Lon, whose wolfman I always enjoyed, and whose acclaimed perf in OF MICE AND MEN I’ve been meaning to run. And I think you’ll agree this stuff is at least as tragic as it is funny.
But it’s pretty funny.
shadowplay 