THE TRAGIC LIFE OF COLIN CLIVE

Heralded in his day as a gifted performer, Colin Clive was nevertheless plagued with enough personal demons for several people. He was pathologically insecure and suffered from severe stage fright. As a result, he turned to alcohol to deal with his fears. He was also in mortal fear of losing a bad leg due to several injuries.

As the years went on, his alcoholism became worse. He would often be seen sleeping on the set between takes and more than once needed to be held up to deliver his lines. He finally succumbed to alcoholism and tuberculosis on June 25, 1937 at the age of 37.

Mae Clarke remembered him fondly:

Colin Clive was the dearest, kindest (in the real meaning of the word 'kind') man, who gave you importance. He was so wonderful, so clever. When he started acting in a scene, I wanted to stop and just watch... I'd think, 'Here I am, playing scenes with this marvelous actor!' (James) Whale would say, 'Colin's voice is like a pipe organ... I just pull out the stops, and he produces the music.' Colin was electric. I was mesmerized by him; so much so that I hoped it didn't show! When he looked at me, I'd flush. He had a wife back in England, and I had my young man . In fact, I was glad my fiancé was at the premiere that night, to be my good anchor against my stormy waves of fancy for Colin. He was the handsomest man I ever saw, and also the saddest. Colin's sadness was elusive; the sadness you see if you contemplate many of the master painters' and sculptors' conceptions of the face of Christ, the ultimate source in my view of all sadness."

From a book of United Artists actors bios.

Picture Play, July 1935.

MONSTER GALLERY NO. 2

I've got a ton of movie stills from various horror, fantasy and sci-fi films that I've archived over the years. Today, I'm trotting out just a mere few from B-movie drive-in and theater fare. Lots of favorites here.

How to Make a Monster.

The Time Machine.

GLORIA STUART BY ROMAN FRUELICH

Roman Freulich (1898–1974) was born in Poland to Jewish parents. He immigrated to the United States in 1912 at the age of 14 to live with family who had immigrated there earlier. It is reported by at least one source that the rest of his family in Germany later died in the Holocaust.

Following in the footsteps of his brother, Jack, Roman became interested in photography as a career and studied under professional portrait photographer Samuel Lumiere in New York.

In the 1920s, he moved to Hollywood, where Jack was already working for the Laemmle's at Universal Pictures in their portrait department. After recovering from tuberculosis in the early 1920s, Roman was hired at Universal where he worked alongside his brother. Jack continued to work mostly on portraits while Roman expanded his talents to include still photography.

Roman left Universal in 1944 and worked at Republic studios as head of the stills department until Republic closed its doors in the 1950s. After that, Freulich freelanced for United Artists and other studios until he retired.

The following photographs of Gloria Stuart were taken by Roman Freulich in the early 1930s, around the time she starred in THE OLD DARK HOUSE (1932) and THE INVISIBLE MAN (1933).

Roman Freulich in his studio.

LUGOSI'S PRIVATE PHOTOS

Bela Lugosi saved a considerable amount of memorabilia from his career and even amassed at least three large scrapbooks which sold at auction on August 10, 2013 for $5,000.

The two photographs below were sold separately last week by Heritage Auctions headquartered in Dallas, Texas. The WHITE ZOMBIE photo sold for $275.00 and THE MYSTERIOUS MR. WONG photo sold for $154.00. Lugosi's Mr. Wong (a villain) was a different character than Karloff's Mr. Wong (a detective).

The stamp on the back indicates they were given to Lugosi by the Don Marlowe Agency. Marlowe had the reputation as an unscrupulous and downright flaky talent agent. For example, in September 1970 he placed an ad in CLASSIC FILM COLLECTOR that read:

Bela Lugosi – For Sale: Screen test Bela Lugosi made for the original Frankenstein. 35mm sound, running time 21 minutes; same scene is shown twice with change in lighting, etc. Between scenes camera was left running and Carl Laemmle Junior, James Whale, Colin Clive and Lugosi can be seen and heard discussing test and wardrobe Lugosi was wearing. Film can be examined and screened before purchase is made. Price: $4,000. Don Marlowe. Hollywood, Calif. 90028

What really makes this stand out as specious is that James Whale was out of the picture when this test shot is made under the direction of Robert Florey. One wonders if this was a flim-flam on the part of Marlowe.

Marlowe is nevertheless is credited with reviving Lugosi's career in the late 1940s. Among other jobs, in one roadshow, before a screening of DRACULA, Lugosi would perform a live reading of Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart".

TOPLESS TOPSTONE

The story goes that the young Judy Crowder had dreams of being a painter, but when a photographer saw her work and then met the artist in person, he had other ideas for her career. With a little coaxing, he talked her into a photo session, the results which appeared in SCENE, December 1960. She was 18-years-old. As a result, Miss Crowder became one more in the long line of glamour models posing for pinups and magazine pictorials in the 60s. The feature also mentions that "she wants to follow her sister, actress Louise Stewart, to Hollywood" (another article names her as Ann Stewart).

During her relatively brief modeling career, Crowder was featured in numerous men's magazines such as FIGURE QUARTERLY Vol. 32 (1961), NUGGET, KNIGHT, HI-LIFE and PICTURE SCOPE.

There is scant biographical information about her and it's mostly found within the pages of said magazines. It was a common practice that the text accompanying the photographs would be largely made up to further titillate the reader. If any of the information is accurate several magazines boasted of her 37-24-36 figure and that she hailed from Taylorville, Illinois. Another magazine went on about how she loved clam chowder (!) and claimed she had 20 different recipes. This is likely made up, all so the writer could use the tagline of her name rhyming with New England's favorite soup (see below) .

Her sister's acting career appeared to have fizzled, and Judy's didn't fare much better. She did guest on an episode of Boris Karloff's THRILLER, so that qualifies her as a THH, a tangential horror hottie! Other than that, her acting career was over. I'm guessing that she went back to painting.

You're probably wondering about now where I'm going with all this. Well, what got Judy Crowder as the topic of this post today is a photo identifying her as wearing one of Keith Ward's Topstone masks sometime in the 1960s. If there's any doubt about the claim, while I was preparing this post, I unearthed a second photo of her with the mask pulled up over her head. No doubt, it's Judy Crowder under it.

From a Topstone mask collection.

Most of her photos are in considerably better taste than many models who posed unabashed in their birthday suits. In this gallery, you can see that she was nevertheless talked into showing a little more.