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Classic movie horror (unlike the recent vintage) was more often than not a class act and no act was classier than that of George Zucco. Although he labored in a series of rock-bottom productions as a horror icon, he was always first rate and first class. As a result, his star still burns bright in the horror film firmament, a star he well earned as...
By JOE WINTERS Dark gleaming eyes, a smooth deep voice and an impeccable air of old world charm and sophistication were principal components for one of the favorite bogeymen manufactured by the 1940s Hollywood fear factory. George Zucco was born in Manchester, England on January 11, 1886. A fledgling stage career over 20 years later was briefly interrupted by World War I. Gunfire damaged part of his right arm, and surgery hindered the use of two fingers and a thumb. He resumed his stage work, enjoyed success, later got married and entered motion pictures in the early 1930s.
After a run of small, but good roles in big productions, Zucco landed key supporting parts in several 1939 releases that would define his screen persona in the years ahead. These pictures included Arrest Bulldog Drummond, featuring George as bespectacled criminal mastermind "The Stinger," so named for the poisonous sting in the tip of his cane. The Stinger’s acquisition of a death ray threatened the peace until ace detective Hugh Drummond (John Howard) wrecked the scheme and clobbered the villain. This was a good warm-up for Zucco’s next role, the superbly played Professor Moriarty in The Adventures Of Sherlock Holmes (Twentieth Century Fox, 1939). Launching two schemes simultaneously was part of the plot to distract Holmes (Basil Rathbone) while the Professor made a play for England’s Crown Jewels.
George took a break from villainy to play lawyer Crosby in the 1939 remake of the old dark house comedy-thriller The Cat And The Canary (Paramount), unintentionally setting in motion the murder plot and falling victim to it. And in that year’s version of The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (RKO) Zucco was memorable in another supporting performance, this time as the Royal Procurator eagerly advocating torture on the helpless Esmeralda (Maureen O’Hara).
With these roles established, George Zucco was poised to take on a series of mostly mean roles, ironic since by most accounts he was a very nice man. Acting can be an outlet for anyone’s dark side, though, and George proved it with his first great horror role. As Andoheb the High Priest of Karnak in Universal’s The Mummy’s Hand (1940), Zucco’s job was to preserve the sanctity of Princess Ananka’s tomb with the help of the living mummy Kharis (Tom Tyler). A murder rampage coincides with Andoheb’s intention to immortalize himself and his pretty captive Marta Solvani (Peggy Moran). A bullet ends his plans and the mad priest rolls down the steps of the temple, seemingly to his death.
But like Kharis, Andoheb does not die so easily. He came back much older and with more hair in The Mummy’s Tomb (1942) and The Mummy’s Ghost (1944) just long enough to re-cap the earlier picture and pass the amulet along to Turhan Bey and John Carradine, respectively, with Lon Chaney Jr. wrapped up in the role of Kharis. In between mummies Zucco began portraying eccentric scientists with The Monster And The Girl (Paramount, 1941), a surprisingly poignant blend of mad science and mob drama noir. Zucco’s character wasn’t evil, just dedicated to simply transplanting the brain of a wrongly-accused execution victim (Phillip Terry) into the head of a gorilla (Charles Gemora, who expertly played so many screen simians).
Well, if George’s character in that film seemed to have a conscience, this would be remedied the next year when Poverty Row studio PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation) gave Zucco (wearing a toupee) star billing as Dr. Lorenzo Cameron in The Mad Monster. With a wolf-serum Cameron turns his dimwitted handyman (Glenn Strange) into a wolf-man and plots revenge on scoffing colleagues. Cameron himself is killed before he can create an army of wolf-men for the Allied war effort. He may have been a mad scientist, but he was a one-hundred percent patriotic mad scientist!
George was at it again that same year in Dr. Renault’s Secret (Twentieth Century Fox). Appearing kindly at first, then revealed as sinister, Renault (Zucco) had surgically transformed an ape into a man (sympathetically played by J. Carrol Naish) with tragic results. As in The Mad Monster, Zucco took a whip to his creation, and likewise met his demise (and almost identically depicted in shadow) at the hands of that creation. Zucco’s career busily consisted of small, well-played roles in a variety of big movies, big roles in a variety of smaller mystery and horror movies, and with radio performances.
During the war boom, there was work for most and profits for the major studios, the mini-majors (including Universal and Columbia) and even the so-called poverty row studios (including PRC), where Zucco continued to get star billing in such films as Dead Men Walk (1943). Here he played twin brothers, one good (with a hairpiece), the other evil (and a vampire), with such dialog as "You’ll know that I’m no intangible figment of your imagination when you feel the weight of my hatred."
He played another decent sort, though with a checkered past, as the proprietor The Black Raven (PRC, 1943), a murder mystery re-uniting Zucco with Glenn Strange, again as a dimwitted handyman and occasional butt of George’s insults such as "It’s too bad you weren’t born without a tongue instead of without a brain." Back at Universal, George was up to no good as an enemy agent up against Sherlock Holmes In Washington (1943) and more memorably as Dr. Morris in The Mad Ghoul (1943). In that one he finds the secret of life in death through a combination of chemical gasses and human hearts, the latter necessary to keep his assistant (David Bruce) from becoming a zombie-type creature.
Nasty George, meanwhile, has romantic notions on the assistant’s girlfriend (Evelyn Ankers), herself in love with another man (Turhan Bey). In the end, the dying Morris is reduced to digging desperately with his hands at the grave of a much-needed heart donor for himself. 1944 brought more, though mostly lesser horror roles to Zucco. While he may have been a top dog at PRC, George fared less well at likewise impoverished Monogram Studios, where Bela Lugosi was undisputed master of the macabre. In Voodoo Man, Zucco was not exactly at his most credible as a gas station attendant who doubles as the paint-faced and feather-headed priest of the cult of Ramboona.
Bela presides, George chants, and John Carradine slaps the bongo drum in an ongoing attempt to revive Lugosi’s zombified wife. When an entranced female subject responds to their mystical summons, George himself seems surprised but rebounds with a confident "Ramboona never fails." Had George not claimed to be ill, his title role in Return Of The Ape Man (1944) would have been an even lower point in the distinguished actor’s career. As it turns out, Zucco’s only appearance seems to be in a production photo, while the part itself was played on screen by less refined Frank Moran. Zucco still got co-billing for the role in the credits.
"It’s a doubting world, kind sir, as I, Lampini, have reason to know," bellowed George who made the most of his short time in Universal’s House Of Frankenstein (1944) as Professor Bruno Lampini, whose traveling show is taken over by deadly Dr. Niemann (Boris Karloff) and hunchbacked friend Daniel (J. Carrol Naish). They bump off the poor professor about ten minutes into the picture. George was back in charge on Fog Island (PRC, 1945) as wrongly accused stock manipulator Leo Grainger, out of prison and ready for revenge on former associates. Among them Lionel Atwill who got the drop on George, but in the end Zucco and Death had the last laugh on the double-crossers with an elaborate doom trap.
At Paramount, George was on the loose in a wax museum after killing and robbing a man in the opening minute of Midnight Manhunt (1945). A pair of rival reporters along with East Side Kid Leo Gorcey get caught up in the chase. In 1946 PRC re-worked their plot from The Devil Bat (1942) as The Flying Serpent and cast Zucco as a greedy madman protecting a hidden treasure with the aid of the throat-tearing, blood-drinking title creature, possibly the Aztec God Quetzalcoatl or a prehistoric creature so named by an Aztec priest. In either case, George plucks one feather too many and is hoist on his own perilous petard.
As horror films became quite scarce in the late 1940s, Zucco still found plenty of work in other pictures. His only terror genre film of 1947 was Scared To Death in Cinecolor and co-starring Bela Lugosi among the suspects in the death of a malicious woman. Also in 1947 Zucco teamed with Lucille Ball, George Sanders and Boris Karloff, among others in the murder drama Lured for United Artists. That same year "Our Gang" comedy producer Hal Roach unleashed a new gang of kids, Curley and his gang.
No, George didn’t play Curley, but he did play the title role in the un-funny Cinecolor 1948 sequel, Who Killed Doc Robbin? Equally undistinguished was the role of a phony high priest in Tarzan And The Mermaids (RKO, 1948), the last of the Weissmuller Tarzan pictures before Johnny hung up the loincloth for a pair of pants to play Jungle Jim. As for George Zucco, he did nearly another dozen pictures before suffering a stroke in the early 1950s. He was reportedly offered the role of the mad scientist in 1957’s Voodoo Woman, but opted not to, due probably to declining health. His remaining years were said to be peacefully lived out in a nursing home. George Zucco died of pneumonia on May 28, 1960 at the age of 74.
Today, George Zucco’s career continues to be celebrated by fans and film historians alike. Among them, Gregory William Mank whose excellent book Hollywood’s Maddest Doctors is recommended to those eager to read more about Zucco as well as chapters on Lionel Atwill and Colin Clive. George Zucco’s classy presence and theatrical training brought quality and distinction to what might have been the slightest of films, and thanks largely to him those films are, for many, cherished treasures. Thanks, Joe! 'Tis true, George Zucco added a touch of class to any production he graced and managed to create his own brand of movie malevolence. Always regarded as a dependable workman actor by mainstream Hollywood, Zucco was more than that. Thanks to the horror genre, he was able to demonstrate that fact a fair number of times. And, thanks to home video and DVD, he will likely never be forgotten as moviedom's mannered master of menace. Article copyright © Joe Winters |
