Charles Laughton

A versatile English stage and screen actor who made his New York theater debut in 1931's "Payment Deferred" and began a successful Hollywood career the following year. The gifted Laughton became one of the most popular actors of the 1930s and 40s, giving some of his greatest performances playing everything from self-indulgent monarchs ("The Private Life of Henry VIII" 1933) to selfless butlers ("Ruggles of Red Gap" 1935) to modest murderers ("The Suspect" 1945) to "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" (1939). He sometimes displayed a propensity for eye-rolling ham in the later stages of his career, but it was frequently of a delicious variety, and he was always a compelling performer. Late in life he gave two superb performances in "Witness for the Prosecution" (1957) and "Advise and Consent" (1962). His single directorial effort was 1955's "Night of the Hunter"; it has become a critical and cult favorite thanks to Laughton's intriguing combination of expressionism and realism, a fine script co-written by James Agee and compelling performances by an excellent cast headed by Robert Mitchum as a psychotic preacher and Lillian Gish as a resolute farm woman.

Jim McDermott Illustration of Lon Chaney Jr. "The Wolfman"

The Wolf Man was Lon Chaney Jr.'s second horror movie and his first appearance in the role for which he is best remembered--no doubt because his Larry Talbot, the amiable young man controlled by evil impulses he cannot understand, relies on the actor's own character to generate much the same sort of sympathy as his Lennie in Of Mice and Men (1939), the gentle giant who longs to love but is condemned to kill. The intriguing conception of Larry Talbot as hero / villain is successfully achieved by the fact that Chaney is able to inject individuality into his werewolf--incongruously covered in facial fur with fangs and canine snout yet sporting black shirt and trousers, it seems less an entirely separate entity than an extension of his personality.

The film strengthens the rather weak myth of The Werewolf of London (1935) by replacing the Tibetan flower with a silver-topped cane mounted with the head of a wolf and a five-pointed star, whose implications are cleverly woven through the film. The tragic circle begins when Chaney acquires the cane from the girl he is to fall in love with, Evelyn Ankers, and ends when his own father, Claude Rains, is forced to use it to beat him to death with. At its centre is the atmospheric minatory visit to a gypsy camp in the forest where he is bitten by a werewolf (Bela Lugosi, in a minor role after being slated to play the lead), warned by a fortune-teller, and then finds the pentagram symbol mysteriously imprinted over his heart.

The Wolf Man benefits from a literate script and unusually good cast, but its trump card is the superbly suspenseful atmosphere in which Valentine's camera makes virtuoso use of fog and mist to create an eerie fairytale world out of the quaint little Welsh village, the forbidding baronial hall and the gypsy encampment in a forest clearing. Universal lavished care and money on the film and were rewarded by a box-office success that revived their languishing interest in horror and sparked off their second cycle of movies in the genre.

--PHIL HARDY, ed. from The Encyclopedia of
Horror Films, 1986

Boris, Lorre, Bela and Price

Lon Chaney Sr. Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928)

Tito, a clown, adopts a girl whom he names Simonetta. The girl matures into an attractive woman, desired by Luigi, a wealthy nobleman. On the eve of her marriage, Simonetta learns that Tito loves her, and she responds, presumably, to avoid hurting him, by declaring that she returns his love. That night, disbelieving her, Tito falls while practicing a familiar trick--sliding down a tightwire--thus freeing Simonetta to marry the count. In an alternative (happy) ending, Tito survives his fall, Simonetta marries Luigi, and they all remain close friends.

Cast:
Lon Chaney (Tito )
Bernard Siegel (Simon )
Loretta Young (Simonetta )
Cissy FitzGerald (Giancinta )
Nils Asther (Luigi )
Gwen Lee (Lucretia )

Fredric March, 1931 "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde"

Fredric March won an Oscar nomination in 1930 for The Royal Family of Broadway, in which he played a role based upon John Barrymore. He won the Oscar for Best Actor in 1931 for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and again in 1946 for The Best Years of Our Lives. On March 25, 1954, March co-hosted the 26th Annual Academy Awards ceremony from New York City, with co-host Donald O'Connor in Los Angeles.
March in A Star is Born (1937)

March was one of the few actors to resist signing long-term contracts with the studios, and was able to freelance and pick and choose his roles, in the process also avoiding typecasting. By this time, he was working on Broadway as often as in Hollywood, and his screen career was not as prolific as it had been.

March, however, won two Best Actor Tony Awards: in 1947 for the play Years Ago, written by Ruth Gordon; and in 1957 for his performance as James Tyrone in the original Broadway production of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night.

March's neighbor in Connecticut, playwright Arthur Miller, was thought to favor March to inaugurate the part of Willy Loman in the Pulitzer Prize-winning Death of a Salesman (1949). However, March read the play and turned down the role, whereupon director Elia Kazan cast Lee J. Cobb as Willy, and Arthur Kennedy as one of Willy's sons, Biff Loman, two men that the director had worked with in the film Boomerang (1947). March later regretted turning down the role and finally played Willy Loman in Columbia Pictures's 1951 film version of the play, directed by Laslo Benedek. Perhaps March's greatest late-in-life role was in Inherit the Wind (1960), opposite Spencer Tracy.
in Inherit the Wind (1960)

When March underwent surgery for prostate cancer in 1972, it seemed his career was over, yet he managed to give one last great performance in The Iceman Cometh (1973), as the complicated Irish bartender, Harry Hope. Coincidentally, co-star Robert Ryan was entering the final stages of lung cancer, so the film was the last for both March and Ryan.

March has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1616 Vine Street.

Wally Wood

Steve Fiorilla ....A Little Clay and Rubber

Steve Fiorilla (born January 12, 1961) is an American artist born in Paterson, New Jersey, who lives and works in Buffalo, New York. Throughout his career, Fiorilla has emphasized the grotesque and surreal in illustrations, sculpture and fine art. As a sculptor, he's produced a variety of bizarre, malformed creatures.
Print
Fiorilla has illustrated for books and magazines (Heavy Metal, Video Games and Computer Entertainment, High Times), T-shirts, small press journals (Eegah!, Magick Theatre, Moody Street Irregulars), catalog covers (Gregg Press), fanzines (Horror from the Crypt of Fear) and mini-comics (City Scenes). One of his 1985 sculptures was featured 12 years later on a cover for the magazine Bloodsongs (1997).
He created numerous drawings and product designs for Ed "Big Daddy" Roth, including a belt buckle, T-shirts, caps, ads and catalog illustrations. Fiorilla sometimes works in tandem with illustrator Jim McDermott, such as their collaboration for Stephen J. Spignesi's The Complete Stephen King Encyclopedia (1991).
Film and television
Fiorilla's work for films includes sculptural designs for Boston's Olive Jar Animation. The short film Things Never Seen (1989), with creatures designed by Fiorilla, received multiple showings on MTV during the 1980s and 1990s. In addition to special effects makeup for videos (Tennie Komar and the Silencers) and films (Winterbeast, 1991), he's designed masks for Death Studios and horror films, including Saturday the 14th (1981) and Till Death Do We Scare (1982).
The MTV animated logo "Guillotine" featured a sculpted horror by Fiorilla, and he also created the customized skeleton guitar writhing in a popular 1987 Dokken video seen on MTV. EC Comics publisher Bill Gaines owned one of Fiorilla's latex masks depicting EC's Old Witch (The Haunt of Fear). In the second season of HBO's Tales from the Crypt anthology television series, a photo of this Old Witch mask was a prop in the June 26, 1990 "Korman's Kalamity" episode, adapted from the EC story "Kamen's Kalamity." Illustrated by Jack Kamen, the original self-satirical story is set in EC's offices where the EC editors have a meeting with Kamen about his artwork.
Miscellaneous work
Buffalo's Low Down Dirty Low Brow Art Show was a 2002 group exhibition "inspired by the artwork of Steve Fiorilla," although he didn't participate in the show. Fiorilla's articles and reviews appear regularly in the online magazine, Flickhead. He also does film reviews under the pseudonym Jacques Corédor (a pun on Samuel Fuller's film Shock Corridor).
Watch

Three Stooges

SHEMP HOWARD. Nationality: American. Born: Samuel Horwitz in Brooklyn, New York, 17 March 1895. Family: Married Gertrude Frank, 1925, one son. Military Service: U.S. Army during World War I. Career: Worked as comic in vaudeville; 1922—worked with Ted Healy; 1938–49—made a number of solo films. Died: 23 November 1955.

MOE HOWARD. Nationality: American. Born: Moses Horwitz in Bensonhurst, New York, 19 June 1897. Family: Married Helen Schonberger, 1925, two children. Career: In show business from age 12: ran errands at Vitagraph studios; worked in various comic and singing acts with Ted Healy. Died: 4 May 1975.

LARRY FINE. Nationality: American. Born: Louis Feinberg in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 5 October 1902. Family: Married Mabel Haney (died 1967), two children. Died: 24 January 1975.

CURLY HORWITZ. Nationality: American. Born: Jerome Lester Horwitz in Brooklyn, New York, 22 October 1903. Family: Married 1) unknown marriage (annulled); 2) Elaine Ackerman, 1937 (divorced 1940), one daughter; 3) Marion Buxbaum, 1945 (divorced 1946); 4) Valerie Neman, 1947, one daughter. Died: 18 January 1952.

Moe, Larry, and Shemp teamed with Ted Healy in mid-1920s for early Stooges act; 1930—film debut in Soup to Nuts; 1932—Shemp replaced by Curly in the act, and Healy dropped: long series of shorts and features, for MGM, 1933, and Columbia, 1934–57; 1946—Curly retired from the act for health reasons, and was replaced by Shemp; 1955—Joe Besser joined the act after Shemp's death; 1959—Curly Joe DeRita replaced Joe Besser in the act; 1965—made a series of five-minute TV cartoons.

The Dog

Well... let me start by saying, I think we all have a friend like this.

Margaret Hamilton

A kindergarten teacher in her native Cleveland, Margaret Hamilton began her acting career there in community theatre and with the prestigious Cleveland Playhouse. In 1933, Hamilton was invited to repeat her stage role of the sarcastic daughter-in-law in the Broadway play Another Language for the MGM film version. Though only in her early '30s, the gloriously unpretty Hamilton subsequently played dozens of busybodies, gossips, old maids, and housekeepers in films bearing such titles as Hat, Coat and Glove (1934), Way Down East (1935) and These Three (1936). She proved an excellent foil for such comedians as W.C. Fields (in 1940's My Little Chickadee) and Harold Lloyd (in 1946's The Sin of Harold Diddlebock). Her most famous film assignment was the dual role of Elvira Gulch and the Wicked Witch of the West in the imperishable 1939 gem The Wizard of Oz -- a role which nearly cost her her life when her green copper makeup caught fire during one of her "disappearance" scenes. She played several smaller but no less impressive roles at 20th Century-Fox, including the first-scene plot motivator in People Will Talk (1951) and Carrie Nation in Wabash Avenue (1950). She alternated her film work with stage assignments in the 1950s and 1960s, frequently returning to her home base at the Cleveland Playhouse. Achieving "icon" status in the 1970s by virtue of The Wizard of Oz, Hamilton sometimes found herself being cast for "camp" effect (e.g. Robert Altman's Brewster McCloud), but also enjoyed some of her best-ever parts, including the role of professorial occult expert in the 1972 TV movie The Night Strangler. Despite her menacing demeanor, Hamilton was a gentle, soft-spoken woman; she was especially fond of children, and showed up regularly on such PBS programs as Sesame Street and Mister Rogers. In the 1970s, Margaret Hamilton added another sharply etched portrayal to her gallery of characters as general-store proprietor Cora on a popular series of Maxwell House coffee commercials -- one of which ran during a telecast of The Wizard of Oz! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Frankenstien Pencil Sketch

Vincent Price 2

Vincent Leonard Price was born on May 27th, 1911 in St. Louis, Missouri. He went to Yale and travelled all over Europe before making his screen debut in 1938. It was in a small movie called "Service De Luxe". But it wasn't until his next movie that Vincent really got notice. It was a movie called, "The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex" and it was 1939. Price played Sir Walter Raleigh, and it was a great movie for him. This is because it featured big names such as Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Olivia De Havilland, Leo G. Carroll, Donald Crisp, and Henry Daniell. That same year, Price had a role in "Tower of London". Although the movie isn't very good, Vincent became interested in its genre. . .horror! In 1940, Vincent starred in another disappointing movie, "Hudson's Bay". But also featured in the movie was Gene Tierney, who would be in later movies with Vincent. In 1943, Vincent starred in one of my favorite movies: "The Song of Bernadette". He played hard-hearted Vital Dutour, the Imperial Prosecutor. The film also features magnificent performances by Jennifer Jones, who won an Oscar for her portrayal as Bernadette Soubirous, Gladys Cooper, Charles Bickford, and newcomer Lee J. Cobb.

In 1944, Vincent played Shelby Carpenter in Otto Preminger's classic noir, "Laura". The film also starred Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, and Judith Anderson. This movie is absoultely wonderful! It features a great cast and a perplexing story. If you've never seen this movie, I think it's Vincent's best!

Also in 1944, Vincent starred with Gregory Peck in the critically acclaimed "Keys of the Kingdom." In 1945, Vincent and Gene Tierney were again co-stars in "Leave Her to Heaven", in which Vincent played Russell Quinton. In 1952, he starred along with Jane Russell in "The Las Vegas Story".


Vincent became known as the horror movie king after this 3-d thriller. He had many successful (and some downright strange) movies for years after this.

100 Yards of Horror!

Illustration by my good and very Sensitive Friend Shawn McManus.
I headed back from the convenience store through the forest. I could see them lurking in the bushes. Who were they? My imagination began to expand. The Mobile, Alabama Leprecaun was descending from his tree and coming after me. Yee-OW! I tried to go faster, but the gout sent pain radiating through my legs. Now they huddled back into the shadows behind the trees. Were they wearing propellor beanies, or did I imagine that? Could it be... yes, no... gremlins? I was piloting a P-40 for Lt. General Chennault and the Flying Tigers, yes, World War II Flying Tigers, that's the ticket, and the gremlins were on the wing, oh my God, no, NOOOOOooooooo! Get a grip, man. Now they emerged from the shadows... and I saw... that they were only children. Kids holding rocks and branches and metal objects. Batteries? They took aim and began throwing. I wanted to run but I could not. I pulled the hood over my head and continued walking as the hurled objects whizzed past. Only 100 more yards to the house. Could I make it? I limped... only ten feet to the door and safety. Hand on doorknob. Home at last!

You no what? "Troubles don't melt like lemon drops! Little Bastards!