Mysteries Scandals James Whale
Mysteries Scandals James Whale
Transcript
00:00On the afternoon of May 29th, 1957, the body of 67-year-old director James Whale, fully
00:11dressed in a suit and tie, was found floating face down in the pool of a specific Palisades
00:15estate.
00:16James Whale was the director of some of Hollywood's classic horror films, including Frankenstein
00:21and The Bride of Frankenstein.
00:22In the 1930s, Whale was one of Tinseltown's most respected and highly paid directors.
00:28But this Englishman's private life was shrouded in secrecy, and his puzzling death was as
00:32eerie as any film he ever made.
00:34During the course of the police investigation, lurid details about homosexual escapades in
00:39the same swimming pool shocked his Hollywood friends and colleagues.
00:43But how did James Whale end up dead?
00:45Was it an accident?
00:46Suicide?
00:47Or was it murder?
00:48James Whale, as we know, had an invented past.
00:51When he became so prominent after the making of Frankenstein, he would tell interviewers
00:55sometimes that he had tutors when he was a child and came from a very aristocratic
00:59background.
01:00And we'll examine the sordid stories about Whale's personal life.
01:04The rumors arose that Whale was hosting orgies at a specific Palisades home.
01:10Finally, we'll sort through the theories surrounding his mysterious death.
01:14There had been poolside parties, mainly with hustlers, and that he'd gotten to a row with
01:22one and been pushed into the pool by accident and the whole thing was a cover-up.
01:27Rumors beyond suicide circulated, death by homosexual rage of another lover, that kind
01:32of thing.
01:33I'm A.J.
01:34Benza.
01:35Join me as we unravel the mystery behind the death of director James Whale.
01:39Did he create a monster that destroyed his life?
01:52The morning of May 29th, 1957 began like any other for retired film director James
02:07Whale.
02:08But at 2.25 that afternoon, a member of Whale's household staff made a startling discovery.
02:13Whale biographer Jim Curtis.
02:15The body was found by a maid who had called down to him over the intercom because lunch
02:20was ready.
02:21When he didn't respond, she went down, saw the body, panicked.
02:25Film historian Greg Mank continues.
02:26And of course, she was amazed to see him in the pool because he didn't swim.
02:30Of course, he was fully clothed as well.
02:32And she realized that something terrible had happened.
02:35Within minutes, the police were there along with his business manager.
02:38The body was fished out of the pool.
02:40The only noticeable injury was a bump on Whale's forehead.
02:44Because of the blow on the head, that led to some of the rumor that perhaps he had been
02:48beaten or killed or something the night before and actually thrown into the pool.
02:54Now the question became, how did James Whale end up in the pool?
02:57Well, not so fast.
02:58See, to fully understand the man and his story, we really have to take a look at his intriguing
03:02past.
03:03James Whale was a man who kept many secrets, not the least of which was the truth about
03:08his ancestry.
03:09In America, Whale presented himself as an English aristocrat.
03:12But in reality, the Whale family was not likely to be found sipping tea with the queen.
03:17More likely, they were serving it.
03:19James Whale came from a very poor background.
03:22He was born in the black country, which is in England.
03:26He came from a mining family.
03:27His father was a blast furnace man.
03:30He was born in July 22nd, 1889.
03:33James Whale was very much part of the Victorian era.
03:35The Sherlock Holmes stories were just being written.
03:39Jack the Ripper was still at large.
03:40He was a very sensitive young man.
03:42He had artistic talent, dramatic ability, and was really something of a fish out of
03:46water in his surroundings.
03:47He had no right to expect anything other than a life of hard labor.
03:52Film historian Anthony Sly.
03:54The First World War really marked a major turning point in Whale's life.
04:00Here was a working class boy who suddenly was able to go to officer training school
04:05for the first time.
04:06He was mixing with a class that he had never met before.
04:10There was this intense awareness in a young Englishman with ambition to be a gentleman.
04:16Oddly enough, the First World War was the best thing that could have happened to the
04:2025-year-old James Whale.
04:22Stranger still is the fact that it was his capture by the Germans in 1917 and his 15
04:27months in a POW camp that inspired Whale to pursue a career in theater.
04:31In the camps, he started putting on amateur dramatics and I think for the first time began
04:37to think that maybe there was the opportunity of a career on stage for him.
04:42When the war ended in 1918, Whale moved to London where for the next 10 years he was
04:46a very successful director and actor.
04:48He had the opportunity to direct a play called Journey's End by R.C.
04:52Sheriff.
04:53The play dealt with men in the trenches during the First World War.
04:57It was almost as if Whale was reading the story of his own life.
05:01Gary Don Rhodes has studied the life of James Whale.
05:05In 1929, Whale's success in England with Journey's End, the stage version, brought him to America
05:11at about age 40 to do the same.
05:13The success of the stage version here led to a film version that really became the linchpin
05:17of his career.
05:19So at 40 years old, James Whale was starting a new life in America.
05:23Whale was immediately embraced by Hollywood's movie elite thanks to his talent, his charm,
05:27and his aristocratic demeanor.
05:29Nobody seemed to suspect the guy was a major phony.
05:33But Whale was very honest about one aspect of his life.
05:36He was openly homosexual at a time when no one was that open in sexuality in Hollywood.
05:42Shortly after moving to Hollywood, Whale met a story editor at Paramount named David Lewis.
05:48The two became lovers.
05:49Lewis was 15 years younger than Whale.
05:51James Whale and David Lewis lived openly in Los Angeles at that time together.
05:55They were always thought of as a couple.
05:57I'm not sure in the early 30s the people really gave a damn about two gay men living together.
06:02Gavin Lambert was a close friend of James Whale.
06:05There was a famous remark that Mrs. Patrick Campbell was supposed to have made,
06:08I don't care what they do as long as they don't frighten the horses.
06:11But James Whale's first hit movie was going to frighten everybody.
06:15The 1931 horror classic Frankenstein, starring Boris Karloff, would change horror films forever
06:21and launch Whale as a big-time Hollywood director.
06:24Straight ahead, the brief glory days of James Whale.
06:27How did the kindly, self-styled English gentleman end up playing host to poolside orgies?
06:32Was it Whale's preoccupation with the dark side that eventually cost him his life?
06:39In the early 1930s, film director James Whale was building a name for himself
06:43as the father of the modern horror film.
06:46Whale, who arrived in Hollywood in 1929 at the age of 40,
06:49had also reinvented himself as an English gentleman.
06:52Surprisingly, Whale's openly homosexual relationship with his young lover
06:56was tolerated at a time when gay still meant happy.
06:59You might ask yourself why Hollywood was so accepting.
07:03Because ticket sales for Whale's first hit film, Frankenstein, went through the roof.
07:07And in this town, nothing breeds tolerance like cash flow.
07:10Frankenstein opened in New York City on December 4th, 1931, and it was show business history.
07:17For Whale, it was an incredible success.
07:19Suddenly, overnight, he found himself really at the peak of his profession.
07:22In two weeks' time, in Los Angeles, over 120,000 people saw it.
07:26Upon its initial release in 1931,
07:29Frankenstein was unlike anything audiences had ever seen before.
07:32But despite the film's success, the story of a man-made monster created controversy.
07:38Morality groups cry out, religious persons cry out.
07:41People are saying we shouldn't watch films like Frankenstein.
07:44They're simply too horrifying.
07:45They're addressing things like man trying to emulate God.
07:48Some suggest Whale had an entirely different interpretation of the Frankenstein story,
07:53one that really would have sent those morality groups on a rampage.
07:56I think a gay man might empathize with the monster.
08:02Here is somebody who doesn't fit in with society,
08:05whom the peasants, the normal, in quote, people, set out to destroy because he's different.
08:11I would say almost an obsessive project for Whale.
08:14The thing that had the most startling possibilities, really, for Whale
08:17was the whole concept of the story of Frankenstein, a man creating another man.
08:23It's alive! It's alive! It's alive!
08:31Whale's next monster hit was the sequel to Frankenstein called The Bride of Frankenstein.
08:36At first, Whale didn't want to do the film because he was worried
08:39that he would be typecast as just a horror film director.
08:42But in 1935, he finally relented and made The Bride of Frankenstein.
08:47That film, I believe, is really where you see all of his interests
08:52come together. So The Bride of Frankenstein really became
08:55probably the most personal vision of Whale's career.
08:59The Bride of Frankenstein, starring Elsa Lanchester as the bride,
09:02was a huge box office hit, even bigger than Frankenstein.
09:06Certainly in the period from about 1933 to 1936,
09:11Whale was at the height of his power as a director,
09:14probably one of the best-paid directors in Hollywood.
09:17Whale began to enjoy the trappings of success.
09:20In 1937, Whale and his companion, David Lewis,
09:23moved into a lavish estate in Pacific Palisades.
09:26The two seemed to live a very sort of quiet existence.
09:31They didn't seem to go out to Hollywood parties.
09:34But Lewis, like Whale, was open about his homosexuality if it came up.
09:40If the subject didn't come up, then obviously Lewis wouldn't discuss it.
09:44For a while, life was good for James Whale, but that was all about to change.
09:48Straight ahead, how did a run-in with the Nazis
09:50eventually destroy Whale's film career,
09:52and what sent him down the hedonistic path to ruin?
09:59Director James Whale was a pioneer in the world of horror movies,
10:02but his real-life story proved to be as ghastly as anything he ever put on celluloid.
10:07I'm AJ Benza from Mysteries & Scandals.
10:09After the success of Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein,
10:13Whale was at the top of the Hollywood food chain.
10:15He was beginning to branch out into other genres as well.
10:18In 1936, 47-year-old Whale helmed the hit musical Showboat,
10:22improving his range as a director.
10:24But Whale's tenure at the top didn't last long.
10:27Things started to go wrong for James Whale
10:29after the Lemley family sold Universal Pictures in 1936.
10:33New owners and new management came in.
10:36They weren't accustomed to giving directors such as James Whale
10:40the free reign that he had had previously.
10:43The Road Back was the first film he was making for the new administration at Universal.
10:47It was crucial that he make it hit.
10:50They proved to them that he was a competent director.
10:53The film starred a young actor named Larry Blake.
10:55His son, Michael Blake, recalled the 1937 production.
10:59It was quite a big thing back then at Universal.
11:03I mean, the whole talk on the whole lot,
11:06James Whale's Road Back, and everybody wanted to be in it.
11:09Everybody wanted to work with Whale.
11:11The Road Back was an anti-war movie about World War I,
11:14which painted the Germans in a very bad light.
11:17Adolf Hitler, not known for being a good sport, started making threats.
11:21James Whale suddenly found himself under siege.
11:24The German government did not want the Road Back filmed in 1937,
11:28and the German consul in Los Angeles sent letters to the cast members warning them.
11:33These are the most outrageous, blatant threats.
11:35James Whale, he refused to meet with the German consul
11:38and proceeded to make a film that was, in some ways,
11:41as uncompromising as any war film ever put on film up to that point.
11:45But although the Hollywood moguls were all Jewish,
11:48their primary concern was selling their films in Europe and in Germany,
11:53which is a big market.
11:54So they were very anxious to compromise with the Nazis in Germany.
11:59Keep in mind, folks, that this was 1937,
12:02a couple years before things got really ugly in Europe.
12:06The Nazi party stepped in and basically sabotaged the film.
12:10They tried to intimidate the people who were in it.
12:12After the film was done, they demanded cuts in the film,
12:15and Universal, amazingly, caved and made 21 cuts
12:20and shot new footage, mostly lame comedy footage.
12:23Did you fight in the war?
12:25Yes, we finished it up last Tuesday morning at 11 o'clock.
12:29He accused the studio of virtually sucking up to Adolf Hitler.
12:32Whale walked, so the studio recut the film without him.
12:36As a result, the film was critically savage,
12:40as well as commercially unsuccessful,
12:42and James Whale's career never recovered from it.
12:45Whale not only lost interest in this film, per se,
12:48in the way it was taken away from him by the studio heads
12:51and the whole problem with the German situation,
12:54but I think it just kind of bled in and spilled into the other films.
13:00The spark that he had was missing from Whale.
13:03James Whale made another seven feature films.
13:05By the time he made his last film in 1941, he was disgusted with Hollywood.
13:09James Whale, now 52 years old, had become a liability,
13:13and Universal studio execs were looking for any excuse to show him the door.
13:17When it came time to try to push James Whale out of the picture,
13:22the homosexuality became another tool that the front offices possibly used.
13:27Funny how Whale's personal life was never a problem when his movies were making money,
13:31but in 1942, James Whale's contract was not renewed.
13:35The extraordinary thing about his career was it was so brilliant and so brief, really,
13:40because he arrived in Hollywood, I think, in 29 or 30,
13:44and really he was almost out 10 years later.
13:47James Whale may have been a proper English gentleman in the beginning,
13:50but he was about to make up for lost time.
13:52When we come back, we'll look at the wild parties and the poolside debauchery
13:56at Whale's palatial Ocean View estate,
13:58and begin to unravel the mystery behind his puzzling death.
14:04By 1942, director James Whale was washed up in Hollywood.
14:08He'd taken on the Nazis and the Hollywood establishment and lost.
14:12So the 53-year-old settled into a quiet life of leisure in his Pacific Palisades estate
14:17with his longtime lover, David Lewis.
14:19The problem was that Lewis was now a successful producer.
14:22That made Whale even angrier about the loss of his own career.
14:26Whale became more and more frustrated with his life,
14:27which obviously didn't help his relationship with Lewis.
14:31Whale seems to be slowly going to pieces.
14:35So he was becoming embittered with the fact that he,
14:39at this stage, he was now a forgotten Hollywood director.
14:42James Whale got the idea to take an extended tour of Europe and England,
14:46and he wanted David to come with him.
14:49David said no, he preferred to stay in California.
14:53In 1952, 63-year-old Whale headed to Paris alone.
14:57Friend and film director Curtis Harrington joined Whale in France.
15:01When we were in Paris, he met a young Frenchman.
15:06And I didn't like this person because he was low class.
15:16And I thought he was just, you know, out for what he could get out of Jimmy.
15:20The young Frenchman was named Pierre Fogel.
15:23Pierre Fogel would have been about 25,
15:26and he brought him back with him from Paris to Pacific Palisades,
15:31and that ended, of course, the situation with David Lewis,
15:34who very understandably moved out at Pierre's arrival.
15:39So after 24 years, Whale and Lewis split up,
15:42and the young Frenchman moved in.
15:44James found a very clever way to explain away his new companion
15:47to his friend, Gavin Lambert.
15:50James, he decided that he wanted me to know the score,
15:53if I hadn't already twigged what it was.
15:57He introduced Pierre to me one day as,
16:00oh, this is Pierre, my chauffeur.
16:03But within months, Whale grew bored with his new chauffeur.
16:07He bought Pierre a gas station to keep him busy,
16:10and then Whale found a few new hobbies of his own to occupy his lonely days.
16:15He became restless, and he became sort of fascinated
16:21with a rather sexual fantasy world that he thought about a great deal
16:25and became somewhat obsessive about.
16:27He put a pool in behind his house for the purpose of entertaining.
16:31The fact that James Whale could not swim and hated pools was not a factor.
16:36He actually used the pool as a way to attract younger men,
16:40and he had men out by the pool.
16:42He threw parties.
16:44He was the decadent Englishman who was hosting these Babylonian soirees
16:50around the pool at night.
16:51James Whale was a man who was leading a hedonistic lifestyle and hating it.
16:55He had men there at all hours of the day and night swimming.
16:58These were nameless, faceless people who would come
17:02because there was free drinks and free food.
17:05Whale was in serious decline, both mentally and physically.
17:08In 1956, the 67-year-old Whale suffered the first in a series of strokes.
17:14He had a second stroke, and that was much more serious.
17:17And he never really got better from it.
17:19Now, James was a perfectionist, wanted everything on his own terms.
17:23The strokes put an end to Whale's poolside romps and left him profoundly depressed.
17:29James Whale got to the point where life was no longer worth living for him.
17:33He was ill.
17:34He was lonely.
17:36And I think he realized that the only thing that really was left for him was a life of
17:42severe illness and possibly being institutionalized.
17:46On the morning of May 29, 1957, he plotted, I think,
17:52very deliberately to have his nurse take the day off.
17:55He put on his most elegant suit.
17:59He did it with wit.
18:00He took the book, Don't Drink the Water, left it on his bed stand.
18:03He wrote a note to his family and friends stating, in effect, that he was being released
18:07from the torment that he had known for the last couple of years and not to grieve for him.
18:12And then he went out to the shallow end of the pool and threw himself in headfirst.
18:18He struck his forehead on the side of the pool.
18:20And when he was found later that morning, he was dead.
18:24I think that the blow to the head, the shallow end of the pool,
18:31would have stunned him but probably did not knock him unconscious.
18:35He then overturned and floated to the top and probably seemed rather mystical,
18:39you know, going back up towards the sunlight, perhaps even somewhat like a resurrection.
18:43As news of Whale's death spread, several people arrived at his home,
18:46including David Lewis, his ex-lover and close friend.
18:49In fact, it was Lewis who made a decision that would later create all the suspicion
18:53about Whale's death.
18:55As for the suicide note not being handed over to the police,
18:58there was a very simple reason for that.
19:02In those days, suicide was a kind of social disgrace.
19:06And David did not want that.
19:08But Hollywood loves a good whodunit.
19:10And the lack of a suicide note, along with the blow to the head, prompted rumors.
19:14Could Whale have been murdered by a jealous lover?
19:16Well, no.
19:17There was never a shred of evidence pointing to murder.
19:19James Whale done it to himself.
19:21However, because David Lewis never released the suicide note until shortly before he died in 1987,
19:27the real cause of Whale's death remained a secret for many years.
19:31There was a coroner's verdict of accidental death,
19:35which I think everybody close to James felt was more dignified.
19:40On that day, he committed suicide.
19:44He did it in the James Whale style.
19:46James Whale was a man who seemed destined to be misunderstood.
19:50One of his favorite stories was that he went to some revival of
19:55The Bride of Frankenstein with some of his friends.
19:58And they were laughing at the humorous moments in the film.
20:11And he said the woman sitting behind him, because they were sort of giggling and laughing,
20:16leaned forward to him.
20:17And she said, if you don't like the picture, why don't you leave?
20:21Well, that's what James Whale did.
20:23He checked himself right out of life.
20:25But you got to admit, he did it with panache.
20:27The consummate directive right to the end.
20:29The shallow end.
20:31I'm A.J. Benza.
20:32Join me the next time our paths cross in a state of mind called Hollywood.
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