Today doesn’t mark any special anniversary for James Whale‘s Frankenstein. The 80th anniversary of its commercial debut will happen on 11.21.11. I just happened to come across this faded newspaper ad for its debut at the Mayfair (renamed the DeMille in the late ’50s) on Broadway and 47th.
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For whatever reason I’d never read or understood until today that poor Colin Clive died of alcohol-related tuberculosis in 1937. He was only 37 years old, for Chrissake, so he was only 30 or 31 when he played Dr. Henry Frankenstein in Whale’s film A drinking problem would partly explain why Clive looks no younger than 40 and could even be 45 in Frankenstein.
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