Legendary Frankenstein actor Karloff got his start in Kamloops

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

A promotional photo of Boris Karloff from The Bride of Frankenstein as Frankenstein's monster.

More than two decades before legendary British actor Boris Karloff cemented the legacy of Universal Pictures' most infamous monster, he started his career as an actor at a theatre in Kamloops.

Karloff, who died in 1969, won a Grammy for the titular role in the animated television special How the Grinch Stole Christmas in 1966 and has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

But he is best remembered for his performance as Frankenstein’s monster in the classic 1931 film and two subsequent sequels.

Speaking with Castanet Kamloops, daughter Sara Karloff said her dad's time in Kamloops more than a century ago was “very exciting for him.”

“It was his, so to speak, debut into the business that he wanted to spend the rest of his life doing, and ultimately ended up spending the rest of his life doing,” she said.

From London to Kamloops

According to an article written by West Kootenay historian Greg Nesteroff, Karloff, born William Henry Pratt, left the London suburbs in 1909 at the age of 21 as an aspiring actor.

His future was decided by a coin flip — heads meant he would leave for Australia, tails meant Canada. It landed tails.

He arrived in Montreal, went to Toronto and eventually made his way to the west coast through Banff, planting himself in Vancouver.

According to Nesteroff, Karloff worked a variety of jobs including realtor, surveyor and ditch digger. He finally landed his first acting gig in 1910.

“I was off on a survey party in the brush about 70 miles from Vancouver when I got this letter from an agent I had called in Seattle, Walter Kelly I think his name was, representing myself as an experienced English actor in Canada on a visit, who might be available,” Karloff recounted to biographer and friend Cynthia Lyndsay.

“I’m sure the agent saw through the story, but actors were hard to get by at the time. He referred me to the Jeanne Russell stock company in Kamloops. … I left my axe in the middle of a tree and got the first train to Kamloops.”

Monster on Victoria Street

It was on that train to Kamloops that Karloff said he thought up the stage name he’d go by for the rest of his life.

“Karloff came from relatives on my mother’s side. The Boris I plucked out of the cold Canadian air,” Karloff is quoted as saying.

As cinematic as that sounds, Nesteroff said the name most likely came from a novel called The Man on the Box, which included a Count Karloff. The story was adapted to the stage and the play was performed by the Jeanne Russell company.

Karloff was likely in Kamloops between Sept. 19 and Sept. 28, 1910, when the Jeanne Russell company was performing at the Kamloops Musical and Athletic Association community hall in the 100-block of Victoria Street — which doubled as an opera house.

“They were rehearsing plays for the new season and all I had to do for the few days I was there before we moved on to the next stand was to watch the rehearsals,” Karloff told Kamloops optometrist Dr. Wilson Knowlton in correspondence during the 1960s, letters that are in the possession of the Kamloops Museum and Archives.

Karloff told Knowlton he was a "green raw amateur" and didn't know "right from left so far as the stage was concerned."

"His salary was $30 a week when he first stepped on the stage for his first performance, and it was $15 a week when he stepped off the stage," Sara Karloff told Castanet.

Karloff and the Jeanne Russell company quickly moved on from Kamloops, where he most likely performed for the first time in Nelson or Fernie, according to Nesteroff. Karloff played the elderly husband in a play called The Devil by Hungarian playwright Franz Mola.

“I had a year of the most intensive training for which I am very grateful but for which I got paid practically nothing and very irregularly,” Karloff wrote to Knowlton.

“P.P.S. Does the CPR still run down the Main Street?”

A legacy performance

Dr. Brittany Reid, an adjunct professor at Brock University who wrote her PhD on Frankenstein, told Castanet that Karloff and every subsequent depiction of Frankenstein’s monster are inextricably linked.

She said while Mary Shelley’s novel was first adapted to the stage in 1823, the iconic look of Frankenstein’s monster all originated from Karloff.

“The bolts … the sort of jar-headed look, the expression, the dead yet very piercing eyes — all Karloff,” Reid said.

“On every dollar store mask or every treat bag, he's there, and it's not Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, it is Boris Karloff’s likeness.”

She said every monster that came afterwards is "indebted" to Karloff’s portrayal of the creature.

“When you see the Hulk, you do see Boris Karloff again. It became so popular, it is impossible to overstate how just absolutely genre shifting it was. He changed everything with that representation,” she said.

Reid said part of Karloff’s impact was due to the emotion he brought to the character, adding a layer of “humanity under the monstrous” and was one of the few adaptations that contributed a new critical reading of the story.

She said while there have been depictions since, including Robert De Niro in the 1994 Kenneth Branagh film and Benedict Cumberbatch on stage, Karloff’s hold on the character remains insurmountable.

“Nothing has been able to take over as that iconic image,” Reid said.

“He is so iconically Frankenstein, I can't imagine anything ever surplanting that, because it's just… it is him. He has become one in the same with this character, it doesn't exist outside of him anymore.”

‘Just one picture’

The Jeanne Russell company would eventually disband in 1912 and Karloff made his way to Hollywood after the First World War. Sara Karloff said her father was 44 when Frankenstein was filmed.

She said the film made such a “pivotal difference in his life” that he was “eternally grateful” for the role and would often refer to the character as his best friend.

“It was his 81st film, and he laughingly said, hardly anyone saw the first 80,” she said.

When asked by the Associated Press in 1960 if he had concerns about being typecast following Frankenstein's success, Karloff said “good heavens, no.”

“What is typing? It is a trademark, a means by which the public recognizes you," he said. "Actors work all their lives to achieve that. Companies spend a million dollars to establish trademarks. I got one with just one picture.”

Photo: Kamloops Museum and Archives photograph #5574

Legendary British actor Boris Karloff joined the Jeanne Russell company in Kamloops in 1910 at the the Kamloops Musical and Athletic Association community hall, which doubled as a theatre. The hall, at 168 Victoria St., burned down in 1932.