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DARK CORRIDORS VOL. 1, NO. 21 HALLOWEEN SPECIAL |
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WHAT'S A NICE GIRL LIKE YOU DOING IN A BIG HAIRY PAW LIKE THAT? |
By
RON MILLER
of TheColumnists.com
YOU
DIDN'T READ much about "Nabonga" in the obituaries
for sultry Julie London
when she died earlier this month. Like most stars of her generation,
she probably wasn't too keen about reminding the public she once
ran around with a gorilla in a schlock horror movie, so left
it out of her bio.
I'm guessing today's starlets probably are more realistic about the "stepping stones" an actress takes on her way to the top. In fact, today's young actors seem to have a much more playful attitude about such things, which is why I think you'll always find Wes Craven's "Scream" in Drew Barrymore's bio, even if she wins an Oscar someday and matures into a great screen dowager of drama. The same probably goes for Demi Moore, who has "Parasite" in her youthful portfolio, and Meg Ryan, who spent part of her youth in "Amityville 3-D."
Horror pictures aren't looked down upon as much as they used to be in Hollywood's past. Today's Hollywood is all about the bottom line--and horror pictures became respectable as soon as they started racking up impressive box office returns.
Yet I imagine there still are some people who find it appalling that Ava Gardner once worked with Bela Lugosi and the East Side Kids in "Ghosts on the Loose" (1943) or that two-time Oscar winner Jessica Lange is the blonde in the big hairy paw in the 1976 remake of "King Kong."
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Here are a few examples of female screen stars who went on to much better things after paying some dues in horror movies:
1. JULIE LONDON
The sultry singer of "Cry Me A River" and many other albums earned strong reviews as a dramatic actress in films like "The Red House" (1947), "The Great Man" (1957), "Man of the West" (1958) and the "Emergency" TV series, but she made her screen debut in 1944's "Nabonga," playing a girl whose father dies, leaving her alone in a remote jungle district in Africa. When she nurses an injured gorilla back to health, the big hairy creature becomes her loyal bodyguard. That's really cool when you're surrounded by nobody but superstitious natives because pretty soon she's regarded as a "witch" and is ruling the jungle. That sets up what I consider to be one of the great opening lines of any romance in the history of the movies. It comes when jungle guide Larry "Buster" Crabbe encounters the gorgeous, sarong-clad, teenage Julie London in the jungle and tells her, "You must be the white witch I've heard so much about."
2. JANE WYMAN
Only seven years before she won the Oscar for "Johnny Belinda," Jane Wyman was a ferociously cute Warner Bros. starlet who appeared in "The Body Disappears" (1941), a goofy comedy about an invisible man (Jeffrey Lynn). Along the way, Jane also imbibes some of the formula and vanishes, which immediately decreased my appetite for that part of the film. In his book, "The Warner Bros. Story," Clive Hirschorn says of the invisibility formula, "The only thing not injected with the stuff was the film itself--which, in the circumstances, was an oversight not easily forgiven." To her credit, Wyman wasn't too humiliated by this early film. When I asked her about it once, she laughed and said, "You silly man!"
3. LORETTA YOUNG
Long before her Oscar for "The Farmer's Daughter" in 1947, Loretta Young played a Chinese girl who was the unfaithful wife of Edward G. Robinson, the official assassin for a Chinese Tong society, in Warner Bros. "The Hatchet Man" (1932). As the title implies, Robinson discharged his duties in gory fashion by flinging his hatchets into the skulls of the Tong's enemies. Rarely seen today because it's not very "PC," this is a rousing thriller, directed by Oscar-winner William Wellman, in which Loretta looks absolutely beautiful in her long, slinky gowns. It also has one of the greatest endings you'll ever see in a film. It comes when the hatchet man, who has pursued his wife and her lover all over the globe, seeking vengeance, finally reaches the end of the line in a bar where he's challenged to show his prowess at hatchet-tossing. Broken-down and derelict, he still can hit the eye of that tapestry dragon on the wall--and guess whose head is leaning against the thin wall on the other side of that tapestry?
 Rare Poster Art from Julie London's first film |
 Randolph Scott with Carole Lombard in her 1933 horror film |
4. GINGER ROGERS
Just one year before RKO teamed her with Fred Astaire in "Flying Down to Rio" and created the greatest dance team in the history of movies, Ginger Rogers starred in "The Thirteenth Guest" (1932) for Monogram, a "poverty row" studio. Now considered a classic "old dark house" picture, it was about the bringing together of all the guests who had attended a dinner party 13 years earlier at which the host had dropped dead. They're trying to find out who the host had planned to leave his estate to, but somebody keeps bumping off all the guests. Rogers didn't look back much at those days after winning the 1940 best actress Oscar for "Kitty Foyle."
5. MYRNA LOY
Before she became a big star at MGM and familiar to millions as the sophisticated Nora Charles of the "Thin Man" series, Loy played the slinky Chinese daughter of the insidious villain Dr. Fu Manchu in "The Mask of Fu Manchu" (1932). This is one of the most colorful horror pictures of the 1930s--and not just because of Boris Karloff's wild-eyed performance as Fu Manchu. Loy's wickedness is truly memorable.
6. CAROLE LOMBARD
In her early days, before she became one of the screen's top sexy comediennes in "Twentieth Century," "My Man Godfrey" and "Nothing Sacred," Lombard starred in one of the most unusual horror films of the 1930s--Paramount's "Supernatural" (1933). In that film, she was possessed by the soul of a murderess (Vivienne Osborne) who's just been executed. Her director was Victor Halperin, who just one year earlier had directed Bela Lugosi in "White Zombie."
7. SUSAN HAYWARD
Susan Hayward spent years in "B" movies before she reached the level she attained in her Oscar-winning film "I Want To Live!" (1958). One of the earliest was a rare horror film from 1941 called "Among the Living," in which she was the primary "woman in jeopardy" when Albert Dekker's maniacal twin, kept locked up for years, breaks loose and seeks revenge.
8. JOAN CRAWFORD
After seeing Faye Dunaway play a mean-spirited Joan Crawford in "Mommie Dearest," you may be thinking, "Of course, she did horror movies!" But that phase of her career really didn't come until late in life when she did all those crazy characters in low-budget thrillers like "Strait-Jacket" (1964). However, she did do one real doozy very early in her long career--so early, in fact, that it was a silent picture: "The Unknown" (1927). In that one, she was the leading lady to the original Lon Chaney, a creepy character hiding out in a circus and posing as an armless man. This is a real shocker with a spectacular ending, directed by the great Tod Browning, who directed Chaney in nine films, including "The Unholy Three," and also directed the original "Dracula." Browning came back to the same themes of "The Unknown" a few years later in the immortal "Freaks" (1932).
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9. ANNE BANCROFT
The Oscar winner for "The Miracle Worker" (1962) had an inauspicious start in movies in the 1950s where she was a starlet at 20th Century-Fox. That's where she had the dubious honor of playing the female lead in "Gorilla at Large," a 3-D horror film about mysterious killings in an amusement park, and got to wear lots of skimpy outfits. She was in good company, sharing the screen with another future Oscar winner: Lee Marvin.
10. KIM HUNTER
Before she created the role of Stella on Broadway in Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire" and won the Oscar reprising the role in the 1951 movie, Kim Hunter made her screen debut in one of the great horror movies of the 1940s--producer Val Lewton's "The Seventh Victim" (1943). Hunter, who was barely 21, played the young woman searching for her missing sister in a sinister New York City, unaware that her sister had fallen in among a group of devil worshippers. This is a genuinely spooky film and director Mark Robson included a shower sequence that provides an uncanny preview of what Hitchcock was to do nearly two decades later in his "Psycho."
© 2000 by Ron Miller. The "King Kong" photo is courtesy NBC. The "Supernatural" photo is © 1960 by EMKA Ltd. Photo from "The Seventh Victim" © 1960 by RKO Home Video.
Ron Miller is the author of "Mystery! A Celebration" and lifelong fan of horror films. Learn how you can obtain an autographed copy of his book by clicking on SHOPPING MALL below.
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