Karloff Week

I love living in New York sometimes – it does have its perks – and one of the perks is a joint like the Film Forum. Why? Because they do week-long retrospectives on Boris Karloff.

I have to go see some of these films in the theatre! Peter Bogdonavich wrote a gorgeous essay about working with Karloff (his last film) – and it’s SUCH a touching look at a man who took great pride in his work, had tremendous humility towards his work, and never once dissed the monster who made him famous. He felt lucky to have played that monster – even though it typecast him forever. He felt lucky to have the chance to work – whenever a job came along.

I’ll post some excerpts from Bogdonavich’s essay later. Beautiful stuff. Here’s an excerpt I already posted. It just brings a lump to my throat!!

Listen to this excerpt from the piece in the NY TImes:

But roles like that didn’t come frequently for Boris Karloff, and he managed somehow to avoid being consumed by bitterness himself. In one of his last pictures, Peter Bogdanovich’s “Targets,” he plays an old horror star named Byron Orlok, who is finally, after years of increasingly terrible movies, preparing to hang up his monster suit. That’s something Karloff never did: he worked to the end — which came in 1969, when he was 81 — and remained, to the end, a dutiful and uncomplaining ambassador of horror. A strange fate, perhaps, for an ordinary human being, but Karloff was an actor, with an actor’s peculiar wisdom. You can feel, in the scrupulous craftsmanship and moving correctness he brought to even his most thankless parts, a kind of humble gratitude, a knowledge that he had, at least, managed to dodge the worst horror of his profession.