A Whale of a Story

How many openly gay men in Hollywood in the 1930s do you know?

Zero is probably the answer for most people. But in the midst of the massive economic downturn and the advent of “sound cinema” that defined the “dirty thirties”, one filmmaker defied the norms of sexual acceptance and lived freely as a gay man at a time when it was still illegal in many parts of America to be homosexual.

James Whale was born in 1889 in Worcestershire, England and made his directorial debut with “Journey’s End” in 1930. A hugely successful film, it catapulted the career of Whale immediately as a trendy filmmaker in the very early stage of “talkie” movies, back when it was still a selling point and somewhat of a gimmick in film.

It also jumpstarted lead actor Colin Clive’s career, who later starred in Whale’s first foray into the horror genre as the titular character in “Frankenstein” (1931).

After signing a five-year contract with Universal, the company offered him to choose any studio-owned property for him to direct and he picked the Mary Shelley novel mainly because he didn’t want to make another war film.

Whale chose little-known actor Boris Karloff to play the film’s monster and the aforementioned Clive to play the titular doctor.

The film was a financial success and along with “Dracula”, released the same year, vindicated the studios commitment to producing horror films.

It also helped popularize the cliché of a mad doctor and a hunch-backed assistant who aides him in his bad deeds. Although the popular name “Igor” for such a character was not used until the 1939 sequel “Son of Frankenstein”.

In 1932 Whale directed “The Old Dark House”. Also starring Karloff as a mute butler, the film is possibly the most classic example of the “dark house” subgenre, which is characterized by a plot involving characters forced to stay in a creepy building because of external forces (typically a storm or other destructive weather event). A modern example of this is the 2022 A24 film “Bodies Bodies Bodies”, where Gen-Z’ers have a “hurricane party” in a mansion and things go awry.

Whale continued the horror/thriller trend with another adaptation of a classic literary work, “The Invisible Man” in 1933. Similar to the “The Old Dark House”, the film blended horror with comedy, as both films featured comic relief characters that give the movies some levity.

In 1935, Whale directed what many critics consider to be his magnum opus, “The Bride of Frankenstein”. A sequel to the first Frankenstein film, it contains what some scholars believe to the most overtly gay subtext in any of Whale’s films.

The character of Dr. Pretorius is thought by many to be “queer-coded”. A term that describes a character that is not explicitly gay but is given traits that are traditionally associated with homosexuality.

After a string of unsuccessful films that he was assigned to after a censorship fight with a top MPA censor, Whale retired only 11 years after he broke into Hollywood, in 1941.

He died by suicide at the age of 67 in 1957, after drowning himself in a pool.

Whale left behind an important legacy of LGBTQ+ representation in early cinema, as well as popularizing many important and influential horror tropes that are still in use today.