Classic Horror Behind the Scenes: Boris Karloff and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas!
The beloved holiday classic turns 56 this year, and may very well feature horror icon Boris Karloff’s most widely-known performance.
By Bill Fleck, author of the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Awards-nominated book, Chaney’s Baby, available here.
Arthur Kennard laughingly refers to himself as “The Spooks’ Agent.” And with good reason.
The 40-year-old Hollywood agent—and former U.S. Army paratrooper—represents Vincent Price, Lon Chaney Jr., and Peter Lorre at various times in his career.
But his favorite client is William Henry “Billy” Pratt…better known, of course, as Boris Karloff.
“He looked at you when he spoke to you,” Kennard will tell biographer Scott Allen Nollen years later. “He listened to you when you spoke…He was warm. He was the most gentle man I’ve ever known in this business.”
The year is 1966. Karloff—who had initially gained fame for playing The Monster in Frankenstein (1931) and two of its sequels—will turn 79 on November 23, long past the age that most people retire.
But Karloff is not most people.
True, he’s been battling emphysema—the disease that will eventually kill him—since 1958. He’s also crippled by arthritis, a condition that is exacerbated by his always-bowed legs…so much so, that he is noticeably shorter than his once five-eleven, walks with a cane, and will eventually need a wheelchair.
But his dark brown eyes and snow-white hair and moustache—once jet black—are beautifully offset by his still olive skin, the result of the Indian ancestry he never speaks of. [1] He has also recently celebrated his wedding anniversary to his sixth and final wife, Evie. [2] The two have been together for twenty happy years.
And then, there’s his voice. His absolutely marvelous voice.
A voice that, as a child, was plagued by a stutter…and a lisp. A voice that other kids made fun of, forcing the painfully shy Billy even further into his shell.
A voice that he worked on tirelessly as a young actor, eventually mastering the stutter, and learning how to use the lisp to maximum effect—though he still sometimes has lines modified to accommodate it.
A voice that now—in 1966—will get him what might actually be his most popular role.
[Above. The Grinch may be the role for which Karloff is best known today. His unique voice—a liability that got him teased as a child—captured the attention of animator Chuck Jones, the force behind the perennial and beloved holiday special.]
I taught high school English for thirty years. For fifteen of those, I had an elective for seniors called Cinema. I often showed Frankenstein (1931), of which the kids were generally unfamiliar.
But they all knew The Grinch.
[Above. HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS was published in 1957. It was the seventeenth book by Ted Geisel…Dr. Seuss.]
October 12, 1957. Redbook magazine publishes How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss. The following month, Random House puts it out in book form.
The feedback is overwhelmingly positive. Kirkus Reviews claims that the Grinch is “easily the best Christmas-cad since Scrooge.” [3]
The Grinch is Dr. Seuss’ seventeenth book, and the immediate follow-up to The Cat in the Hat. And of course, Dr. Seuss isn’t his real name.
Theodor Seuss “Ted” Geisel is 53 when the book comes out. He has already had a long career in advertisement and illustration. During World War II, he’d served as a Captain, writing and producing films for the U.S. Army. [4] He has used the pen-name “Dr. Seuss” since college—Seuss is his mother’s maiden name…and his father had always wanted him to be a doctor.
As for the Grinch? In addition to the obvious Scrooge parallels, the development of the character has also been influenced by a stressful time in Geisel’s life—specifically, the minor stroke suffered by his wife, Helen. Though she’d recovered enough to help him edit The Cat in the Hat, his worries about her health—and his concern about what he considered to be the over-commercialization of Christmas—had him feeling, in his own words, “very Grinch-ish.” [5]
The success of the book obviously eases some of these issues.
[Above. Ted Geisel—Dr. Seuss—in 1966. Geisel had conceived The Grinch story during a rough patch in his life. He was feeling “very Grinch-ish.”]
Summer, 1965. Producer Lee Mendelson is working like mad to get the animated special A Charlie Brown Christmas ready in time for its December 9th premiere.
This catches the attention of Chuck Jones.
Charles Martin Jones is 53. He’s a gifted animator who’d started work at Warner Brothers in 1933 alongside the likes of the legendary Tex Avery.
By 1965, Jones is something of a legend himself—he’s taken over the Loony Tunes franchise, which features majorly popular characters like Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.
Hearing about the Mendelson project intrigues him. See, Jones and Ted Geisel go back…’way back to the U.S. Army, where they worked together on cartoon shorts.
Hmmm, Jones ponders. Maybe one of Seuss’ books would make for a good animated special?
He settles on The Grinch, and seeks out his friend to talk it over.
Geisel is reluctant at first. He’s been the victim of copyright violations, and is wary of films and TV. In particular, he’s been burned by a very bad experience working on The 5000 Fingers of Dr. T (1953). But Jones is able to talk him into it.
And we’ll get Boris Karloff to narrate it! Jones enthuses.
Geisel is taken aback.
Boris Karloff? Isn’t he a horror guy? Won’t the kids be too frightened of him?
Jones smiles.
November 21, 1931. Frankenstein is released.
It’s a huge hit—in fact, it’s the Number 1 box office attraction of 1931, raking in $12 million…three times as much as Ingagi, the runner-up. [6]
[Above. FRANKENSTEIN was 1931’s biggest hit, and Boris Karloff became its biggest star. In spite of The Monster’s frightening appearance, Karloff received many fan letters from kids, who understood what The Monster was about.]
The star of the film is ostensibly Colin Clive, the brilliantly troubled, 31-year-old actor who plays the brilliantly troubled Henry Frankenstein, well, brilliantly.
But the true star turns out to be Boris Karloff, who turns 43 two days after the picture comes out—and becomes “an overnight sensation after twenty years,” as his daughter Sara Jane would later put it.
His performance as The Monster—still touching to this day—touches off a whirlwind of film activity for him, culminating in his billing as simply KARLOFF.
As such, he receives a ton of fan mail. Surprisingly, much of it comes from children.
“I’ve been working for years on horror films,” he’ll say later, “and I know that children love them. It really isn’t horror to them, you know. It’s exciting adventure.”
[Above. HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS wasn’t Karloff’s first brush with holiday performances. In the 1940s, he dressed as Father Christmas and gave out presents to children at a hospital in Baltimore. Karloff was very charitable…but never wanted credit for it.]
But by 1936, horror films are on the wane. KARLOFF’s The Raven (1935)—co-starring his sometimes friend, sometimes rival Bela “Dracula” Lugosi [7]—causes such a stir that it is unfairly blamed for causing a horror film ban in Britain. [8] With the lucrative overseas market seemingly out of play—and censorship on this side of the pond tightening—Hollywood basically stops producing scary flicks. As writer Jim Ivers asserts, the studios, “began to view the horror genre as more trouble than it was worth.”
But by 1939, horror films and Karloff (billed again as Boris Karloff) are back, thanks to the hit flick Son of Frankenstein.
But Karloff—who reprised The Monster in Son—isn’t thrilled by the film, nor of how he feels The Monster has been treated: “He was becoming a clown.” Follow-ups such as Black Friday don’t thrill him either. He fears he’ll be trapped in such roles forever.
Until…
He takes the stage for the first time in years as Jonathan Brewster in Joseph Kesselring’s comic-horror, Arsenic and Old Lace (1941). Brewster is a psychotic killer whose face is changed from time to time with plastic surgery in order to keep him under the radar.
His latest look? Boris Karloff. And his latest victim has been butchered for injudiciously pointing that out…
[Above. Unhappy with the direction of his career in Hollywood, Karloff took a chance and appeared on stage for the first time in years in the horror comedy ARSENIC AND OLD LACE (1941). The play was a massive hit, and a joy for Karloff.]
The play is a hit bona fide on Broadway, and Karloff couldn’t be more pleased.
He finds the show to be “a great joy.”
Sure, he’ll continue in films. But he gets into TV as well. And increasingly, he works on stage—as Captain Hook in Peter Pan (1950), and as Pierre Cauchon in The Lark (1955), for which he receives a nomination for a Tony. He also becomes a greater presence on radio, and by 1950 is hosting a weekly children’s show on WNEW.
[Above. Karloff continued to have success on stage as Captain Hook in PETER PAN (1950).]
Also increasingly, he narrates stories for children on records as well. It’s one of these records—a sampling of works by Rudyard Kipling called “Just So Stories”—that gets Jones’s attention.
[Above. Karloff loved kids and enjoyed reading stories for them. He eventually hosted his own radio show on WNEW. Here, he reads to a little girl at Children’s Hospital in New York City (1948).]
And so, by the time Jones and Seuss begin putting together How the Grinch Stole Christmas for television, Jones simply can’t hear anyone else in the part.
This is excellent news for Karloff, who simply loves to work.
“I am never really alive unless I am at work,” the actor once admits, “merely recharging for the next spell. To know that I was never to act again would be something akin to a death sentence for me.”
[Above. Karloff read many stories on LP. It was JUST SO STORIES that convinced Chuck Jones that he needed Karloff for HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS.]
It’s also great news for Arthur Kennard, because he knows his client is functioning with only half of a lung—this, at least, should be a gig Karloff can handle with no problem.
But once Karloff hits the mic—playing both narrator and Grinch—he does much more than just handle the gig. He knocks it out of the park. Kennard will later say that Jones “was in awe…when we recorded that, absolutely in awe—sketched pictures of Boris [9]…It was a wonderful relationship.”
[Above. Geisel, Karloff, and Jones enjoyed working together. Jones insisted that THE GRINCH would become a holiday staple, largely thanks to Karloff’s narration and performance.]
Surprisingly, the special garners mixed reviews after its debut on December 18, 1966. [10] Sure, Clay Gowran in the Chicago Tribune praises both the cartooning and the “old meany Karloff” who is “just right” in the part. But Jack Gould in the New York Times writes, “It may just be that the Grinch creation should be left undisturbed on the printed page…this literal representation of the Grinch in animated form fell a trifle short of expectation.” Hal Humphrey of the Los Angeles Times piles on, describing The Grinch as “a disappointment.”
Still, Jones knows a good thing when he sees it, and he believes that the show, “will be a Christmas feature on television for as long as anyone can envision.”
“Children for many generations will find joy and a deeper understanding of Christmas through your husband,” he’ll write Evie Karloff.
Of course, Jones proves to be absolutely correct.
[Above. Karloff won a Grammy (Best Album for Children) for the LP version of the story. He provided all voices.]
How the Grinch Stole Christmas holds up marvelously well today. Geisel’s script expands on the book, but effectively…and only to a length of twenty-six minutes. [11] The songs are catchy, particularly “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” (sung by Thurl Ravenscroft, the original voice of Tony the Tiger). And the expanded action for Max, the Grinch’s ever-suffering dog, is brilliant.
Jones, meanwhile, fills the screen with colorful, lively, Seussian images and moves the story along at an excellent pace. His look for The Grinch also cleverly alters Seuss’s original just a tad around the eyebrows and lips, giving the character Karloff’s face, further cementing the actor’s enduring connection to the part. [12]
[Above. Karloff as Hjalmar Poelzing in THE BLACK CAT (1934) and Jones’s version of The Grinch. Subtle touches around the eyebrows and lips helped stamp Karloff all over the latter character.]
But as Jones would often say, it’s Karloff’s voice that provides the magic. He communicates the range of The Grinch’s behavior perfectly— the early anger, the evil joy in stealing Christmas, the deception of Cindy Lou Who, the surprise as the Who’s welcome Christmas anyway despite the loss of material things, and The Grinch’s ultimate conversion.
In short, Karloff is stamped all over The Grinch…to the point that it is arguably the role for which he is best known today.
Writer Tim Grierson put it best in 2021:
“Fifty-five years later, How the Grinch Stole Christmas remains a yuletide staple, even if most modern audiences don’t know that Frankenstein’s monster is at the center.”
Notes
[1] “[B]y the prevailing standards at the time of his birth, Boris Karloff would not have been considered white,” writes WB Reeves in The Daily Kos. “By providing a romanticized story of a young, aspiring actor rebelling against family traditions and expectations, Karloff obscured the fact that his parents, Edward John Pratt, Jr. and Eliza Sarah Millard, were both of Anglo-Indian descent…According to Karloff’s daughter Sara, he seldom spoke of his childhood but she had the impression that it wasn’t a particularly happy time for him. While his ancestry was no secret within the family, he would deflect remarks about his deep tan by outsiders with casual references to his passion for gardening or otherwise laboring outdoors. He never, as far as can be determined, spoke about it publicly…What is certain is that Karloff’s recasting as the epitome of the English gentleman, and the consequent concealment of his mixed-race status, allowed him a success that the racism of the time would have otherwise rendered unlikely. To confirm this one need only consider that the career of Merle Oberon provides another case in point.”
[2] Modern scholarship has listed his wives as follows: Grace Harding (1910-1913), Olive de Wilton (1916-1919), Montana Laurena Williams (1920-1922), Helene Vivian Soule (1924-1928), Dorothy Stine (1930-1946), Evelyn Hope Helmore (1946-his death).
[3] There are, of course, many similarities between the two characters.
[4] In recent times, Geisel has come under fire posthumously for some of this work, which features undeniably racist—and disturbing—imagery. Brian Jay Jones, one of Geisel’s biographers, says in his book Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination…[he drew some] “racist stereotypes in his early work. As I say in the book, it’s not a great look for him. But he evolves.”
According the website www.drseussart.com, “By the end of the 1950s, Geisel had written Horton Hears a Who!, which is dedicated to a Japanese friend and is seen by scholars now as an apology for the earlier cartoons. He’d written Yertle the Turtle, an anti-fascist send-up of Hitler, and he’d penned a magazine story that would become the anti-discrimination book The Sneetches.”
“I don’t think you write a book like The Sneetches if you haven’t evolved,” Jones explains.
“Dr. Seuss’s later works show an evolution of values and beliefs,” drseussart concludes. “Those who knew him believe that if he were alive today, he would have jumped at the chance to be a part of the country’s evolving dialogue about diversity and inclusion.”
[5] Interestingly, How the Grinch Stole Christmas isn’t the character’s first appearance—he’d been featured in a poem called “The Hoobub and the Grinch” in 1955. But his later adventures are what put him on the map.
[6] At this writing, $12 million is the equivalent of $221 million when adjusted for inflation.
[7] The actors were always friendly on the set, but were rivals when it came to being cast. Karloff was generally granted bigger roles and was always better paid. He believed that Lugosi—whom he called “Poor Bela”—hadn’t learned English sufficiently. Lillian Lugosi, Bela’s wife of twenty years—and mother of their son Bela George—once claimed that Lugosi’s experience working on Son of Frankenstein was dampened by his co-stars Karloff and Basil Rathbone. “Basil Rathbone was verrrry British,” she said. “He was a cold fish, and Karloff was a cold fish. Bela, who was actually very warm, couldn’t tolerate either one of them!” (See Mank, Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, p. 352.) That said, the Karloff-Lugosi “rivalry” is more the stuff of legend than of fact.
[8] Ivers has provided an excellent analysis on this subject. According to Ivers, objections to horror films in Britain were overplayed by censor Joseph Breen because he—Breen—didn’t like them. A gullible press repeated Breen’s claims. Studio battles with the Production Code Administration over Dracula’s Daughter, The Walking Dead, and The Devil-Doll in 1936 caused Hollywood to throw in the towel. See “The Horror Film Hiatus of 1936-1938.”
[9] The Grinch as presented visually in the show has been altered from Seuss’s original slightly to better resemble Karloff, particularly around the eyebrows.
[10] An LP version is released the same day, and wins a Grammy for Best Album for Children. Karloff did all the voices. Allegedly, the actor gave his Grammy to his agent to use as a door stop!
[11] Unlike other versions since that have gone on too long, particularly Ron Howard’s 2000 film starring Jim Carrey. “When’s he gonna steal Christmas?” my then five-year-old son James wailed in the theater after the first thirty—seemingly endless—minutes.
[12] I think The Grinch most resembles Hjalmar Poelzig, Karloff’s demented, Devil-worshipping character in The Black Cat (1934).
Sources
Andres, Holly. “Well-Known Agent Dies at 77.” L.A. Daily News, June 26, 2004. Web.
Fensch, Thomas. The Man Who Was Dr. Seuss. Woodlands: New Century Books, 2001. Print.
Grierson, Tim. “How Frankenstein’s Monster Came to Be the Grinch.” www.mel.com, 2021. Web.
Ivers, Jim. “The Horror Film Hiatus of 1936-1938.” April 27, 2014. www.spookyisles.com. Web.
Jacobs, Stephen. Boris Karloff: More Than a Monster. Sheffield, England: Tomahawk Press, 2011. Print.
Jacobs, Stephen. “How Boris Karloff Voiced Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas.” December 17, 2016. www.spookyisles.com. Web.
Mank, Gregory William. Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. Jefferson, NC: MacFarland and Co., Inc., 2009. Print.
Nel, Phillip. Dr. Seuss: American Icon. Continuum Publishing, 2004. Print.
Nollen, Scott Allen. Boris Karloff: A Gentleman’s Life. Baltimore: Marquee Press Inc., 1999. Print.
Reeves, WB. “Trick or Treat?” Boris Karloff’s Secret History.” Daily Kos, October 3, 2020. Web.
Witter, Brad. “Who Was Dr. Seuss’ Inspiration for the Grinch? Himself!” www.biography.com. November 7, 2018. Web.
The pictures used herein are for educational purposes only. I do not own the copyrights.