n Boris Karloff's star-making turn as the Monster in the 1931 film Frankenstein may have opened the floodgates for many more movie monsters, but his performance was quite unlike those of subsequent actors who dabbled in horror. As the lumbering, lurching, cobbled-together mass of human remains, Karloff managed to inject a trace of humanity and a measure of pathos into his performance. Frankenstein's status as an instant classic was entirely down to Karloff - through his complex performance he gave the film an extra dimension by making it much more than simply a story of good versus evil.
n Born William Henry Pratt, in London in 1887, Karloff was the youngest of nine children of a civil servant. After a studying at London University, he was meant to pursue a diplomatic career, but, at the age of 21, went to Canada and USA. The next decade was spent working as an actor all over North America with small theatre groups. At the tail-end of the silent era, Karloff turned his attention to movies, making his screen debut as an extra in 1916.
n Through the 1920s, Karloff didn't graduate beyond supporting roles and was more or less resigned to working as a character actor when the Frankenstein role - which had been turned down by Bela Lugosi because he knew he would be unrecognisable under the make-up - came along. With the success of Frankenstein and the emergence of the horror genre, Karloff was typecast as a ghoul for the rest of his career.
n In the 1940s, Karloff played a pastiche of himself in the hit Broadway version of Arsenic and Old Lace, but his most famous Broadway role was as the misunderstood Captain Hook in the 1950s revival of Peter Pan, opposite Jean Arthur. He remained active in the 1950s and 1960s, working in TV and in horror spoofs by the likes of Roger Corman.
n Boris Karloff stars with Vincent Price and Peter Lorre in The Comedy of Terrors (Scottish, 12.05am; Grampian, 11.00pm).
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