Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein - 1948

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) is an example of that minor genre – sub genre – miniscule or microscopic genre generally known as horror/comedy. I don’t know if any film critic or historian has ever compiled a list of them, or waxed philosophic on this kind of movie. But we know it when we see it, and Abbott and Costello fans seem to consider this movie one of the duo’s best.

This is our entry in the Universal Pictures Blogathon hosted by the Metzinger sisters at Silver Scenes.

I confess to not being a diehard Abbott and Costello fan myself – I’ve always found them less witty than other knockabout duos like Laurel and Hardy, and though I probably saw this film as a child (Universal monster movies were a favorite then) my most recent reintroduction to this film was this candid publicity photo taken on the Universal lot at the time the movie was in production.  We posted it here a couple years ago as a preview to the Year of Ann Blyth series.

Here we see Glenn Strange as the Frankenstein monster transporting Ann as her mermaid character in Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid (1948) covered here, which was also filming at the same time. This photo is really a kind of tribute to the work of Bud Westmore, head of the studio’s makeup department, who was responsible for these, and so many other imaginative creations.

Universal, as pretty much any old movie buff can tell you, cornered the market on monster movies. It gave us Dracula, Frankenstein, a slew of wolfmen and their victims, sequels, and progeny. It is interesting to have Universal turn their cash cow on its ear by putting their most famous monsters in a comedy feature to play second fiddle to Abbott and Costello.

To be sure, Bud and Lou were huge stars in the 1940s, top box office draws, and perhaps the studio felt it could give the monsters a little more exposure, a new life, by hooking them up with the new kids on the block.

Some monster movie purists feel this destroyed the genre when all the bullets, burning windmills, and stakes to the heart could not.

Then again, with the atomic age and a host of new “sci-fi” creatures coming to a theater near you, perhaps the days of patiently waiting for the mummy to lumber close enough to get to the horrified archaeologist was as good as – you’ll pardon the expression – dead.

Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein is an homage to the genre, even if it exploits it. Bud and Lou are freight delivery guys who attempt to deliver the crated monsters to a wax museum, and when the monsters get out, and Bud spends most of the movie trying to get someone to believe him that he saw them. There are some mildly amusing gags, but it is the monsters and their actors – Bella Lugosi’s Dracula, and Lon Chaney Jr as the Wolfman that bring an unusual panache and dignity to the proceedings. Lon Chaney Jr, bearing the burden and angst of morphing into a werewolf treats this less as a curse and more as an affliction. It strikes me as a very modern perspective.

Glenn Strange is the newbie as the Frankenstein monster. Taking over from Boris Karloff, he has big shoes to fill.

Sometimes I just crack myself up.

He has the most arduous makeup and the least amount of lines and acting to do. Most of Mr. Strange’s roles throughout his career were uncredited. He had a bit part in All the Brothers Were Valiant (1953), covered here, also with Ann Blyth – the only time they worked in the same film, despite taking a stroll around the Universal sound stages with the mermaid in his arms.

One delight of the film, for me anyway, is seeing dependable Frank Ferguson as the wax museum gallery owner, perpetually in a state of having a nervous breakdown because Bud and Lou haven’t delivered his monsters.

My other favorite part was the animated cartoon opening title and credits.

And a special treat (run screaming in the night from the Spoiler) is the voice of Vincent Price as the invisible man behind Bud in the rowboat as the boys row frantically away from the burning dock on which the Frankenstein monster is meeting his demise.  Again.

Bud and Lou were not done with monsters. They would run into more of them from time to time including Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff in the following year 1949, but by then nobody took a curse seriously anymore. Not with flying saucers, ray guns, and giant radiation-infused insects on the horrible horizon.

Universal has done its own magical morphing through the decades – the theme park, of course – and the vault – or crypt – where so many movies, from Universal and Paramount studios, are held back from us. Truly horrific.

Please check out the other great posts participating in the Universal Pictures Blogathon at Silver Scenes.

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"Lynch’s book is organized and well-written – and has plenty of amusing observations – but when it comes to describing Blyth’s movies, Lynch’s writing sparkles." - Ruth Kerr, Silver Screenings

"Jacqueline T. Lynch creates a poignant and thoroughly-researched mosaic of memories of a fine, upstanding human being who also happens to be a legendary entertainer." - Deborah Thomas, Java's Journey

"One of the great strengths of Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. is that Lynch not only gives an excellent overview of Blyth's career -- she offers detailed analyses of each of Blyth's roles -- but she puts them in the context of the larger issues of the day."- Amanda Garrett, Old Hollywood Films

"Jacqueline's book will hopefully cause many more people to take a look at this multitalented woman whose career encompassed just about every possible aspect of 20th Century entertainment." - Laura Grieve, Laura's Miscellaneous Musings

"Jacqueline T. Lynch’s Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. is an extremely well researched undertaking that is a must for all Blyth fans." - Annette Bochenek, Hometowns to Hollywood

Ann Blyth: Actress. Singer. Star. 
by Jacqueline T. Lynch

The first book on the career of actress Ann Blyth. Multitalented and remarkably versatile, Blyth began on radio as a child, appeared on Broadway at the age of twelve in Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine, and enjoyed a long and diverse career in films, theatre, television, and concerts. A sensitive dramatic actress, the youngest at the time to be nominated for her role in Mildred Pierce (1945), she also displayed a gift for comedy, and was especially endeared to fans for her expressive and exquisite lyric soprano, which was showcased in many film and stage musicals. Still a popular guest at film festivals, lovely Ms. Blyth remains a treasure of the Hollywood's golden age.

The eBook and paperback are available from Amazon and CreateSpace, which is the printer.  You can also order it from my Etsy shop. It is also available at the Broadside Bookshop, 247 Main Street, Northampton, Massachusetts.

If you wish a signed copy, then email me at JacquelineTLynch@gmail.com and I'll get back to you with the details.

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My new syndicated column on classic film is up at http://go60.us/advice-and-more/item/2047-everybody-comes-to-rick-s, or check with your local paper.

The Singing Cowboy - 1936

“The Singing Cowboy” (1936) didn’t exactly invent the genre, if we can call it that, of the singing cowboy kind of B-westerns, but it certainly cemented it.

Gene Autry, ever afterwards called The Singing Cowboy, starred as himself. Like Roy Rogers a few years later, Gene almost always played a character called Gene Autry, though unlike King of the Cowboys, Mr. Rogers, Autry was really his last name. I suppose if you just always play you in the script, you don’t have the aggravation of trying to remember your character name.

This is a Republic B-western in the grand old sense, meaning rustlers, happy-go-lucky ranch hands, a hero, a stupid sidekick, the hero’s horse who is smarter than the stupid sidekick, a certain amount of lassoing, shooting of cap pistols, and saving pouty virginal ingénues on runaway horses. You can’t beat that for entertainment. At least not for 10 cents at a matinee.


Gene and his stupid sidekick Smiley Burnette, who co-wrote the songs in this movie, live with a bunch of happy-go-lucky and very musical ranch hands. Their boss’s daughter, a moppet who adores Gene is something of a cross between Jane Withers and Jane Withers, only played by Ann Gilles (also billed as Gillis). We see a cathedral-style radio in the bunkhouse, which seems quaint when we consider the more futuristic technology to come later on in the plot.


The ranch boss has a partner, played by Lon Chaney, Jr. who is the villain of the piece. Mr. Chaney, Jr. will have a better break in his career playing the sadly tormented wolfman in a few years, and the tragic Lennie in “Of Mice and Men.” Right now, he doesn’t have too much to do. Except steal horses from his partner. It’s the Great Depression and Lon, Jr. has to pay his bills.

The boss catches him, and throws us a heap ‘o plot exposition with the line, “So, it’s my old partner who’s been stealing the stock! Figure you could bankrupt me, make me sell off my share of the ranch to you! Is that it?”

Yeah, that’s it. This is one of the fun things about B-westerns. We don’t have to wait too long for the plot to unfold. They just spill it in first few minutes, like an ansty little kid bursting with a secret.


There is a fight. (“You’re nothing but a double-crossing skunk!”) The boss gets shot (dies in Gene’s arms and gives him guardianship of the moppet). A fire starts in the barn. The moppet runs inside to save kittens, and gets trampled by panicked horses.

So, let’s see. In the first ten minutes you’ve got a villain out to get the ranch, a murder, arson, and a moppet totally paralyzed from the neck down (except when she forgets and moves her arms), who needs a $10,000 operation. YE GADS! And the healthcare bill is still being debated in Congress!

But in lieu of national healthcare, Gene has another idea. He and the ranch hands are going on the radio and get rich and famous!

It doesn’t work. Radio doesn’t want them. They start on Plan B. Television.

Keeping in mind this is a 1936 movie, it’s really quite charming to see what they imagined television would be, if were there such a crazy thing. In some ways their idea of the future medium was really remarkably…stupid. Like the broadcast station inside the chuck wagon they haul from town to town. There are a couple of antenna on the floppy canvas chuck wagon roof that look like either leftovers from some Crash Corrigan serial, or maybe some old Christmas decorations. You could do better with aluminum foil and a wire coat hanger.

The other really interesting, really stupid, aspect is the apparent fact that you do not need television cameras to broadcast on television. There are never any cameras on Gene and his singing ranch hands while they perform their shows everywhere the broadcast chuck wagon stops. They just magically appear on television screens. Nor does television apparently require electricity.


The screens, large flat things mounted on the walls of everywhere, from the sponsor’s office (Chuck Wagon Coffee), to the moppet’s hospital room, look almost like our flat screens today. Well, they got something right, anyway.




Their sponsor (another thing they got right about future television), has a runaway daughter, played by Lois Wilde, who wants to be a singer. She is the pouty virginal ingénue whom Gene saves from a runaway horse. She joins the troupe of contestants on the amateur hour TV show on which Gene stars. Another group trying out for the show is a trio of black cowboys headed by Fred “Snowflake” Toones. Though they are as silly and cartoonish as everybody else on this TV show, it is one of the few times during this era where African-American performers are not demeaned, though there is some coy banter about referring to these cowpokes as being very sunburned. “Snowflake” gets to be a musical cowboy in this movie. In just about all his other many films, he was a porter or a bootblack.

Speaking of complexions, one can’t help but notice that Gene Autry’s lip makeup is just a tad too heavy. In some scenes he could give Pola Negri a run for her money.

In one funny scene, the ingénue is hiding from her rich daddy’s henchmen who want to bring her back so she can marry a drip. Gene helps her hide. She dons cowboy clothes and starts smearing shaving cream all over her face, pretending to be one of the boys shaving when they interrogate Gene. Hiding in plain sight is always a good gag. After they leave she of course exclaims in relief,

“Gee, that was the closest shave I ever had!”

Yes, I laughed, and I’m not ashamed.

Gene also makes a funny remark when he fails to earn enough for the moppet’s operation and doubts he can borrow it, “Banks don’t loan money on bad risks.” Sure they don’t.


Lon Chaney, Jr. pops back around with his mean hombres to sabotage the show, but Gene performs various acts of courage, like leaping off his horse, Champion (who gets his own screen credit), onto moving autos, driving the runaway broadcast chuck wagon over treacherous mountain roads, and a dangerous amount of yodeling.

This being a move about The Singing Cowboy, Gene or somebody else bursts into song about every minute and a half. By the end of the hour, he saves the ingénue (not only from bad guys, but from her drippy fiancé and mostly from herself), gets the cash for the moppet’s operation, and sings another song.


One aspect of this movie, and movies like it, is the fond familiarity with the kind of dialogue used. You’ve heard it before. Remember where? It sounds like the kind of dialogue we used as children when mimicking these scenarios. It was always “they got me!”, “reach for the sky,” or “say your prayers” (which Yosemite Sam also used to warn Bug Bunny he was about to shoot him).

I can recall rather elaborate backyard plots of make believe mayhem, complicated by sudden and previously unknown patches of quicksand at the bottom of the back stairs, or interrupted by kid brothers who didn’t die like they were supposed to (or forgot to count to 10 before getting up), the dog who ran away with somebody’s red felt cowboy hat in his mouth, or mom hollering for us at suppertime.

I’ve watched children play these days with various space toys, like the light sabers from the Star Wars franchise, and mostly what they do is slash at each other and run around, laughing and running, and whacking each other. There is very little dialogue. I can remember seeing some kid with a Harry Potter getup, carrying a wand and I thought, ah, now we’re going to see some real daytime drama. But no. All he did was run up to the other kids and whack them on the head with the wand, and run away, laughing.

Our games, back in the day, were so drawn out (sometimes over the course of an afternoon, sometimes over the course of the summer), because we had so much dialogue we had to make up. (“No, you don’t say that! I say that! You fall down! Then you take Joey to jail!”)

There was a protocol to those B-movie or television serial pantomimes that required justice being somehow served, and there was a solemnity to the proceedings. We carried this playacting to the very edges of what we knew as reality, like pet funerals. I don’t think there was anything more solemn as a child-orchestrated pet funeral. Especially the part where the guests step up to “say a few words” as Henry Fonda put it in “The Grapes of Wrath” (1939) when they buried Charley Grapewin on the side of Route 66.

(Boy takes off his ball cap, puts it over his heart. “He was a good turtle….”) and then perhaps a sloppy and off-key rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” or humming “Taps” through kazoos.

Maybe those silly B-westerns taught us the protocol of consequence. “The Singing Cowboy” was slim on plot, but had bucketsful of consequences. For every action, good or bad, there was an almost immediate consequence.

That Gene Autry actually would get his own real television show in the early 1950s, and sell a prodigious amount of merchandise to kids, may or may not have been coincidental. I don’t think even Gene, as canny as he was, could have predicted that in 1936. But he made a huge impact on kids, and maybe the money he made off them evened everything out.

Consider that in response to children who were his biggest fans, Gene Autry took the rather kindly responsibility to draw up a code of conduct for them, if they really wanted to be his special hombres. It was called The Cowboy Code:

The Cowboy must never shoot first, hit a smaller man, or take unfair advantage.

He must never go back on his word, or a trust confided in him.

He must always tell the truth.

He must be gentle with children, the elderly, and animals.

He must not advocate or possess racially or religiously intolerant ideas.

He must help people in distress.

He must be a good worker.

He must keep himself clean in thought, speech, action, and personal habits.

He must respect women, parents, and his nation's laws.

The Cowboy is a patriot.

Gene joked about himself, that he was not the best singer, or a very good actor or even horse rider. Some movie stars take themselves way too seriously. Some, like Gene, take their stardom seriously.

The Wolf Man (1941)

By the time “The Wolf Man” was released in 1941, the monster movie genre had found its momentum and worked like a well-oiled machine. Monsters were being put to death in one film, and then always efficiently resurrected for the next sequel. Lon Chaney, Jr., plays Larry Talbot, who returns home after many years abroad to the English estate of his father, played by Claude Rains.

The film begins without lightning storms, dark shadows, or any gloom at all. It is sunny and cheerful, and Larry is welcomed home by his father and by old friend Ralph Bellamy, now a police inspector in the village. Pretty soon there are Gypsies and a lot of fog, and then trouble starts.

We are given a glance at an encyclopedia entry which explains that lycanthropy, or werewolfism, has been known to happen at places like Talbot Castle. This gives us the standard believe-it-or-not challenge to enjoy the film.

Bela Lugosi plays a very different role as a Gypsy who is also a werewolf. He is almost unrecognizable from his Count Dracula role, now with a walrus mustache, his Gypsy native attire, and his bushy hair with no courtly manners and no Brylcreem in sight. His role is brief, however, when he gets clubbed by the sliver-headed cane of Larry, who kills what he thinks is a wolf attacking his new lady friend’s best friend.

His new friend, who is affianced to Patric Knowles in another small role, recites the now famous werewolf poem:

“Even a man who is pure in heart
And says his prayers by night,
May become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms
And the autumn moon is bright.”

If you didn’t catch it the first time, that’s okay because it gets repeated a few more times and you’ll know it by heart by the end of the movie.

The wonderful Maria Ouspenskaya plays the Gypsy mother of Bela Lugosi, who mourns her son but is comforted that his torment is over. Larry will eventually turn to her for help. Whenever she is around it gets very foggy.

We know who the next victim is going to be because a pentagram always appears in the palm of the next victim. This, and the dissolve shots which show transformation of Mr. Chaney into a werewolf are the main special effects of this film.

When Larry is first bitten, he heads home and checks his hands and arms. So far, so good. Not too much hair, and he does not need a shave yet. But when he checks his feet and pulls up his trouser legs and shows us his gams, we see it’s too late. Time lapse photography shows his feet turning into monstrous paws.

There are debates among his father, the cop, and the local doctor about werewolfism being a kind of schizophrenia, that it is more psychological than physical, more about, as his father tells Larry, “The good and evil in every man’s soul.” This is 1941, and the film was released just after Pearl Harbor, so there is a bit more being tossed around here than the literal transformation of a man to a monster.

When they are off to church, his father tells the anguished Larry, “Belief in the hereafter is a very healthy counterbalance to all the conflicted doubts man is plagued with these days.”

In Larry’s last transformation into a werewolf in the foggy woods, all the principle characters chase him there, either to kill or to help him, his father, the doctor, the cop, his girlfriend, and the Gypsy woman. There is a brief, but fine showdown between the elegant actors Miss Ouspenskaya and Mr. Rains as he interrogates her but she displays only a fatalistic and calm superiority. When Larry takes the form of a wolf, his own father clubs him to death, and when Larry resumes his peaceful, but now dead, human form, the townspeople assume he died protecting the young woman from a wolf. Neither his grieving father nor the sympathetic Gypsy woman speak the truth. Who would believe them? There’s no such thing as werewolves.

Mr. Chaney is not the actor his father was, but he carries the role of the doomed Larry Talbot with a kind of sad dignity. As Patric Knowles says of Talbot, “There’s something very tragic about that man.”

The Undersea Kingdom (1936)

“The Undersea Kingdom” (1936) - Chapter 10, to be precise, is a sliver of a serial produced by Republic in the days when kids would have to come back the next week to see if the hero got free of the mine shaft explosion or the train wreck. He always did, and it was usually by showing how, in re-capping last week’s episode, that he had jumped clear of the train before it crashed, or was never even in the mine when it exploded. One feels glad, but just a little cheated.

Ray “Crash” Corrigan starred in “The Undersea Kingdom,” which also featured a rather down and out Monte Blue, former romantic lead in silent movies, now reduced to playing Unga Khan, the villain of the piece who wants to rule the world. Villains always seem to want to rule the world, despite what a bother it is.

Also featured are Lon Chaney, Jr., and Smiley Burnette, but B-movies were nothing new to them, and Crash Corrigan would never do better for himself than B-movies and serials, where he did have a following. Mr. Corrigan started as what was called a physical culturalist back in day, a physical trainer to the actors. He got his name Crash because once he got into small roles, he did his own stunts. Known for a great physique, he spends much of this serial bare-chested, in what looks like a bathing suit, boots, a cape, and a helmet on his head that resembles a hood ornament. Anyone else would probably have gotten a headache from wearing it after a while, but our man Crash was in good shape, as we are continually reminded.

Crash is assisted by Diana, girl reporter (there are always girl reporters in these things), and Billy, a young boy who wears a dark tie and shirt, and a sailor cap making him look a little like an American Hitler Youth, and young Billy’s father, the Professor, who has been hypnotized and is under the power of Monte Blue, the bad guy.

The acting could be called forgettable, except you can’t forget it, with lines like, “If they see you, it’ll be just too bad.” In this episode, a horse-drawn chariot race occurs on hillsides of California scrub. It doesn’t look very much like Atlantis, unless perhaps Atlantis had a terrible drought that year. There are enough horses to make this seem like a Western, except all the villain’s army are dressed like they’re performing in “Lysistrata.”

There is no blood in the clashing of soldiers, perhaps because we can see that they stab each other with swords under the arm, the way we did as kids with sticks.

What is fascinating about the series is the prescient references to things that were just on the horizon for us as a nation. An attack on a fortress brings retaliation in the form of cannon-like contraptions built into the walls called “flame-throwers.” Unga Khan keeps track of his enemies by viewing them on what looks like a television set. The whole taking over the world scheme is reliant upon Unga Khan’s being able to use the Professor’s experience in harnessing the atom, and a nuclear submarine. This was still 1936. It seems as if we’d heard of these modern marvels, and we couldn’t wait for them to happen to us.

At one point, when Crash is told, “My son, on your shoulders likes the safety of Atlantis,” and he responds by making what looks for all like a “Heil Hitler” salute.

The only aspect of “Undersea Kingdom” that truly is realistic is the bit about a villain wanting to take over the world. Perhaps because of a steady diet kid’s adventure serials and science fiction plots about mad scientists and their evil plans, we reacted too slowly when we saw the mad men wanting to take over the world in real life. It seemed too unreal to be real. It was laughable, until it wasn’t anymore.

And, besides, even though the hero gets crushed by a falling wall at the end of Chapter 10, we somehow think everything will be all right anyway. We’re told, are we not, to come back next week and catch the next exciting episode? Chapter 11 is called, “The Flaming Death.”

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