Jack Pierce - The Man Behind the Monsters (5 page)

werewolf of london

Following the wild success of
Dracula, Frankenstein,
and
The Mummy,
Universal put several follow-up horror showcases into development in the early 1930s. Junior Laemmle had long wanted to produce sound re-makes of
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
and
Phantom of the Opera,
previous Lon Chaney-driven successes for the studio in the 1920s, but neither project came to fruition during the Laemmle reign. Finally, in the early 1930s, Laemmle approved a film of The Werewolf, the classic story that had its origins in France as the tale of the “loup-garou.” Karloff was pre-cast as the title character, and Pierce went as far as designing an extensive lycanthrope makeup for him. However, the project was again put off until 1935 when it was reconfigured as
Werewolf of London
starring Henry Hull (above and opposite). Though Hull rejected a complete masking of his face by the makeup, Pierce devised a strategically frightening likeness which included no less than five facial stages of man-into-wolf transformation on film.

bride of frankenstein

Though it took Universal four years to bring the long-rumored sequel to
Frankenstein
to the screen, the second film in the cycle, first called “The Return of Frankenstein” when it was in development, introduced one striking new Jack Pierce creation to Mary Shelley’s world. In addition to a new frontallyburned version of the monster, Pierce brought a “bride” to the screen in the form of actress Elsa Lanchester. Only appearing at the end of the film, and then for only a few minutes, the image of Lanchester as the Bride of Frankenstein remains as iconic as the 1931 visage of the first Monster. With augmented lips, eyebrows, and eyelashes, plus her amazing shock of hair — ostensibly put up in a wire cage with asymmetrical electric wisps of gray — the Bride, with her birdlike motions and subtle chin scars, manages to simultaneously attract and repel. Both beautiful and horrifying, Lanchester’s brief, quirky appearance on film as the Bride is one of Pierce’s simplest but most clever manifestations.

Colin Clive as Henry Frankenstein with Lanchester and Ernest
Thesiger as Dr. Praetorius