The Sinister Gentleman

     Born in London on Nov. 23, 1887, William Henry Pratt was the youngest of nine children. His father, Edward Pratt Jr., was, oddly enough, the deputy commissioner of Customs Salt and Opium, Northern Division, Indian Salt Revenue Service, and his mother was Eliza Sarah Miller, his father’s third wife. Interestingly enough, his father’s mother was the sister of Anna Leonowens, whose writings formed the basis of the musical The King and I.

    William Henry Pratt studied at London University with an eye on possibly becoming a diplomat like his brother (Sir John Henry Pratt). Instead, he moved to Canada in 1909, where he joined a company of actors and took the stage name Boris Karloff. He chose the name Boris, he said, because it had an exotic ring. Where the name Karloff came from is unclear. He performed in theaters in the United States for more than 10 years before landing his first silent-film role in The Dumb Girl of Portici (1916).

    As Boris Karloff, he went on to roles in The Deadlier Sex (1920), Omar the Tentmaker (1922), Dynamite Dan (1924) and Tarzan and the Golden Lion (1927), as well as in a number of serials. When he wasn’t acting, he drove a truck.

    In 1931, he became a bona fide movie star at age 44 when he played the monster in the Universal Studios release Frankenstein, which billed him as “?” in the opening credits. It was a role Bela Lugosi turned down because it had no speaking parts and the actor’s features would be unrecognizable beneath layers of studio makeup. Still, within those confines, Karloff portrayed the monster as a figure that elicited both fear and empathy, and went on to portray the creature in two sequels, 1935’s Bride of Frankenstein and 1939’s Son of Frankenstein.

Like Lugosi, Karloff  gladly bore the image of the sinister character apt to be lurking in the shadows, but, in reality, was well-liked and admired by fellow actors, a dedicated father, and known for his humor and amiability.

    Besides his iconic role in the Frankenstein movies, he starred opposite Warner Orland in Charlie Chan at the Opera (1936), and played Im-Ho-Tep in The Mummy (1932), an executioner named Mord the Merciless in Tower of London (1939) (with Basil Rathbone), and many other roles on the silver screen and television. On Broadway, he starred in Arsenic and Old Lace, and as Captain Hook in Peter Pan.

    While many of his roles were in less-than-memorable movies, he enjoyed a surge in popularity when he starred in such 1960s classics as Roger Corman’s The Raven (opposite Vincent Price).

    Though largely remembered for his parts in horror films, he took on many other types of movies. For instance, he played a soldier in The Lost Patrol (1934), and narrated the holiday cartoon classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

    After an acting career that spanned 60 years and 160 feature films, Karloff died Feb. 2, 1969, of emphysema.