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A slightly built but electrifying actor appeared in the first two classic horror flicks ever filmed in the US--and made an indelible impression on movie audiences. And his name was not Lugosi or Karloff. He was Dwight Frye, an accomplished actor who made his madman appearances so memorable that audiences never forgot him in those roles--and, unfortunately, casting offices didn't, either. But he's much better remembered today than many of the matinee idols of his period, and you'll learn why as we take a squint at...
By JOE WINTERS He was strangled by Lugosi…hanged by Karloff… thrown from a roof (again by Karloff)…leaped from a high wire…tumbled off a 50 foot ledge… was burned… poisoned…and was shot numerous times…and all within a 15-year film career. Born in 1899 in Salina, Kansas, Dwight Frye was raised in the Christian Science religion and developed a background in music while still a child.
The acting bug bit the future fly eater as early as his teens. Following graduation from high school, he went on to stage work and Broadway success. In 1928 he married stage actress Laura Bullivant and soon after, together with Dwight’s mother they opened a popular tearoom. The 1929 stock market crash took a toll on their business and on theatre. The Fryes moved to Los Angeles where Dwight’s film career soon started.
After only a couple pictures in the early 1930s, he won the role of Renfield the real estate man who fell under the spell of Dracula (Bela Lugosi) in Universal’s groundbreaking horror talkie of 1931. Combining menace, humor and tragedy, Frye was the very model of a modern mad henchman. At first normal upon arrival at Castle Dracula ("I thought I was in the wrong place." "It’s just a scratch."), he made the transition to maniacal manservant by the time we saw him aboard the ship bound for England ("Master…we’re here…we’re safe!").
We’re introduced to his laughter, as much a mad sobbing and with his new diet of flies and spiders, ample cause to be locked away in Dr. Seward’s sanitarium. One moment calm ("Isn’t this a strange conversation for men who aren’t crazy.") and other times venomous ("You know too much to live, Van Helsing!") Renfield met his end on the winding steps inside Carfax Abbey. His pleas ("I can’t die with all those lives on my conscience…all that blood on my hands!") were of no use as the pitiless Dracula throttled him and hurled him down the stairs.
A happy ending of sorts occurred shortly after filming Dracula when the Fryes celebrated the birth of their son, Dwight David Frye the day after Christmas 1930. But on screen just as Dwight Frye had unwittingly paved the way for the bloodthirsty Count to invade London in 1931, so too would Frye help unleash another legendary monster the same year. As Fritz, the dwarfish hunchbacked assistant of Dr. Henry Frankenstein (Colin Clive), he engaged in the not-so-delicate art of body snatching. Next on a solo mission Fritz had to steal a normal brain to be placed inside the head of Frankenstein’s creation. Fritz got the right one first, dropped it, and then substituted a criminal brain and the rest is history.
While Dwight didn’t have as much juicy dialog in Frankenstein as he did in Dracula, he made the most of his own scenes, whether bungling the great brain robbery or pausing to pull up his sock as he scuttles up the steps to Frankenstein’s lab. Tormenting the monster (Boris Karloff) at every chance, Fritz’s luck ran out and he wound up hanging from a rafter. Not upside down like Dracula might in his battier moments, but by the neck and with his own whip. In between Dracula and Frankenstein, Frye appeared in the bit role of the butler in the Charlie Chan mystery The Black Camel (Fox, 1931). Anyone fortunate enough to have seen this knows whether the butler did it or not, and that among the suspects was Bela Lugosi himself. In the first talkie version of The Maltese Falcon (Warner Bros., 1931) Frye was the gunsel Wilmer, the fall guy played in the more famous 1941 remake by Elisha Cook Jr., who interestingly would go on to play many of the types of roles that Frye had been cast in.
Though an accomplished character actor, it was for his work in the two landmark monster movies that Frye would be most remembered. This proved to be a bit of a curse throughout his film career. His next horror role was as the village idiot Herman in The Vampire Bat (Majestic, 1933). Amid rented settings from Universal’s Frankenstein, The Old Dark House, and The Cat And The Canary, and with co-stars including Lionel Atwill, Fay Wray and Melvyn Douglas, there was Frye. As a wide-eyed simpleton with a love for the winged night fliers ("Bats good… they not hurt Herman."), Dwight was an obvious suspect in a series of nocturnal deaths. He got some laughs, too, in his scene with comedienne Maude Eburne who faints when Herman declares, "You give me apple… Herman give you nice, soft bat." But angry villagers always have to have somebody to blame, and so Herman was chased into a cave where he fell fifty feet and, later we learn, had a stake driven into his heart for good measure. Shortly after, the deaths continued.
Poor Herman, and poor Dwight Frye, who only had a brief appearance as a reporter in Universal’s The Invisible Man (1933) but at least he wasn’t killed in that one. The film’s director James Whale was a bit more generous when he cast the actor in the sequel to an earlier triumph. The Bride Of Frankenstein (1935) reunited Karloff (as the Monster), Clive (as the Baron) and Dwight Frye as murderous assistant Karl. While scenes pointing to Karl killing his aunt and uncle and pinning the crimes on the Monster were deleted, Frye still had some great moments. Whether helping Dr. Pretorious (Ernest Thesiger) rob a grave ("This is no life for murderers"), on an errand to secure a fresh heart ("I’ll hold her down, and there she’ll be."), or thrown to his death by an angry Monster from atop the lab tower, Dwight was memorable. He might have appeared in Son Of Frankenstein, but his reputed scenes didn’t make the finished cut.
When not doing more stage work, Frye at times found film work in uncredited bit parts, as in Universal’s The Great Impersonation where familiar surroundings included The Old Dark House living room and the Frankenstein watchtower staircase. Dwight played insane Roger Unthank, the screaming "ghost from the black bog." Much better in stature and in billing was Dwight’s role in Republic’s Crime Of Dr. Crespi, loosely based on Poe’s "The Premature Burial," with Erich Von Stroheim in the title role and Frye in a rare good guy role as a younger doctor who tumbles on to Crespi’s crime.
Dwight got roughed up a bit, knocked out, bound and gagged, but still helped foil the villain and even found romance at the end. Most remaining roles got considerably smaller. In Sky Bandits (Monogram, 1940) he was tenth-billed as Speavy, a mean inventor who fell in with some crooks downing planes with a ray gun until Sergeant Renfrew of the Royal Canadian Mounted foiled the scheme. Speavy and his white rabbit only got about halfway through the picture before being bumped off.
Back at Universal, it was Frye who urged fellow villagers to blow up the castle in the early part of Ghost Of Frankenstein (1942). The following year as villager Rudi, Dwight made his final horror film appearance in Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man In between, Frye was heinous hunchback Zolarr in thrall to vampire Elwyn Clayton (George Zucco) in Dead Men Walk (PRC, 1943). "You’ll pray for death long before you die!" hissed Zolarr at Elwyn’s good twin brother.
A bit in a chapter of the Republic serial Drums Of Fu Manchu was among a handful of roles remaining before heart failure ended Dwight Frye’s life on November 7, 1943. He was only 43. Greater success on stage and in film might have been his had he lived longer. As it was, his acting was supplemented by a job as a tool designer at Douglas Aircraft during World War II.
Years later his son, Dwight D. Frye, would see a renewed appreciation for his father’s work. The younger Frye, in fact, attended conventions and gatherings such as the annual Monster Bash to share memories. He shared co-author credit on the book Dwight Frye’s Last Laugh with Gregory William Mank and James T. Coughlin. Dwight David Frye died in 2003. As for Dwight the elder, his career was one of fabulous highs and lamentable lows. He still has a place among the immortals of horror cinema. To many he was, and quite simply remains…part of the team. Thanks, Joe! Of course, yours truly was dubbed Renfield years ago, because, well, we are a little loony here at Doc Seward's sanitarium, but we're the first to say that no one else could ever be Renfield--or Fritz, for that matter--after Dwight Frye essayed the role. It's great to know that this marvelous but often misused actor is well remembered today and will likely live on forever in the hearts of classic horror fans. Article copyright ® Joe Winters |
THE BALLAD OF DWIGHT FRYE I was gone for fourteen days, |
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