[Column] My Queer Education: James Whale

On July 22nd, 1889 in Worcestershire, England, furnaceman William Whale, and nurse Sarah Whale birthed their sixth child, James, who would eventually direct some of the most iconic monster movies of the 1930s. However, James Whale would go through several careers before reaching Hollywood. As a teenager, Whale dropped out of school to become a cobbler in order to help support his family. A decade later, as a young adult, he joined the British Army to serve as a second lieutenant in World War 1. In 1917, Whale was captured by Germany and held in a prisoner of war camp.

This is where his interest in theater began, as in the camp Whale would act, write, produce, and design sets for the theatrical productions. Whale’s first career endeavor after the end of the war was as a cartoonist, however, this didn’t last long and Whale soon turned back to stage productions. In 1928, Whale was given the opportunity to direct the play Journey’s End, which was a hit, leading Whale to be noticed by Hollywood movie producers. In 1931, Whale signed a five-year contract with Universal Studios and, after working on several war films, he finally found his way to directing his first monster movie, Frankenstein (1931).

While Whale worked on films in other genres, he is best remembered for the classic horror films Frankenstein, The Old Dark House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), and Bride of Frankenstein (1935), all of which I watched for this deep dive along with his later adventure film Green Hell (1940). Whale was an admirer of German Expressionism and enjoyed mixing elements of gothic horror and comedy.

This can be seen throughout his famous horror films, but one of my favorite examples is the beginning scene of The Old Dark House. The film opens with a couple arguing as they drive through a downpour. Their whole argument is filled with hilarious sarcasm, but one of the funniest parts is when the wife pulls out their map, which is soaked to unusability, looks at it for a moment before throwing at her husband saying, “Oh you look, Phillip. I can’t see anything. It’s all a stupid puddle!” As if her husband could miraculously make the map usable again.

Whale’s ability to blend comedy and horror so seamlessly isn’t the only thing he is remembered for. James Whale is known for living as an openly gay man throughout his career, something that wasn’t usual at the time. There is some debate on how this affected him. While some people claim that homophobia ended Whale’s career and that he was disparagingly referred to as “The Queen of Hollywood,” in an interview with Films in Review, Whale’s long time friend Curtis Harrington claimed that no one made a big deal of Whale’s sexuality. H

arrington also says in the same interview that Whale had no intention of making his films queer and that the stasis of his films as queer icons has little to do with their original inspiration. However, regardless of Whale’s inspirations or intentions, many queer people throughout generations have felt connected to his work and the monsters he brought to life. While the most obvious reason why Whale’s horror films connect to a queer audience is because of the otherness shared by both monsters and marginalized identities, I found some other queer-leaning trends through my deep dive.

“It sounds silly, but I think he doesn’t quite fit into these times.”

— The Old Dark House

In my introduction article to this column I wrote about the documentary Do I Sound Gay? and how it’s filmmaker, David Thrope, spoke about his desire to adopt a persona of the “witty, aristocratic, homosexual,” when coming out. Imagine my shock when I discovered that this phenomenon extended to James Whale and his work as well. Whale grew up in a large blue-collar family, yet by the time he became a filmmaker he had molded himself to fit the image of an English gentleman. The slightly effeminate (aka queer-coded), witty, aristocrat can be found throughout his films as well. While these characters aren’t adverse to romantic relationships with women, they stand out from other men in the film for several reasons: they are more feminine, more witty and charming, more likely to serve in a friendship role to women characters, are unmarried and unattached at the beginning of the film, and are more likely to be thought of as “a fish out of water” amongst their fellow men. For these reasons, I refer to them as “the misunderstood gentlemen” of Whale’s films.

Mr. Penderel, from The Old Dark House, is my favorite of the misunderstood gentlemen. We are introduced to him in the back of his friends' car where he talks and sings gaily despite the heavy rain. Later in the film, Penderel lounges on a bench with the two young women characters of the film, while the rest of the men sit opposite them, visually placing Penderel as one of the girls. The women then speak of their “feminine intuition” which they specifically say can tell them a lot about Penderel. They determine that he is unlike other men. Another prominent misunderstood gentleman is Forrester from Green Hell. Just like Penderel, Forrester sings during his introductory scene. As he sits with Tex at the back of the boat they are traveling on, Forrester’s mannerisms immediately mark him as more feminine than the other men. He gently touches Tex’s knee, before pointing with a limp wrist to some alligators gathering in the water.

Later in the film, Forrester is set up as a potential romantic rival to the film's leading man, the masculine adventurer Keith Brandon. Forrester spends more time with Brandon’s love interest, Stephine Richardson, than Brandon does, and is seen making her laugh often, yet it is still Brandon who wins her heart in the end. This trend of the misunderstood gentleman falling into the role of a best friend to the leading man’s love interest is also seen in Frankenstein with Dr. Frankenstein’s fiancee Elizabeth and her friend Victor Moritz and in The Invisible Man with Dr. Griffin’s fiancee Flora and her friend Dr. Kemp.

“It is interesting to think, Henry, that once upon a time we should have been burnt at the stake as wizards for this experiment.”

— Bride of Frankenstein

Many of Whale’s characters challenge religion; from Dr. Frankenstein - who proved man can create life - to Dr. Pretorius - who is more talented and fabulous than Dr. Frankenstein could ever be - to Horace Femm - who mocked his sister's religious streak. Both Dr. Pretorius, from Bride of Frankenstein, and Horace Femm, from The Old Dark House, are played by actor Ernest Thesiger, however, these characters share more than just the same actor. In addition to their disdain for religion, both characters are also what some would call “sissified,” or coded as queer men mainly through being very effeminate. While having drastically different characterizations and actors, both Dr. Frankenstein’s and Dr. Pretorius’s journey to challenge God has queer overtones.

Dr. Frankenstein’s desire is to build a perfect man. If you don’t see why that’s kinda gay, you can always watch The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) , which parodies this idea perfectly. Dr. Pretorius’s challenges of God, however, seem to directly involve the manipulation of relationships between man and woman. Beyond wanting to build a woman to pair with Frankenstein's monster, when Dr. Pretorius shows off his own creations, he chooses to keep the king and queen separate. Science, ungodliness, and queerness seem to be related in Whale’s films. The science experiments of both Dr. Frankenstein, and Dr. Griffin, of The Invisible Man, keep them from their beautiful, female fiances and instead place them in the company of men such as Fritz and Dr. Kemp.

“You’ve driven me near madness with your peering through the keyholes and gaping through the curtains, and now you’ll surfer for it. You’re crazy to know who I am aren’t you.”

— The Invisible Man

Dr. Jack Griffin rants about the desire to be unseen by the spying judgmental masses. In The Invisible Man, the theme of finding pleasure in being unseen is obvious, but this theme also comes up more subtly in one of the other Whale classics. One of my favorite scenes out of everything I watched for my James Whale deep dive is when Frankenstein’s monster briefly lives with a blind hermit in Bride of Frankenstein. While unseen by the hermit, the monster is no longer a monster. He is able to become friends with the hermit and live briefly like a normal person. It isn’t until the seeing villagers burst into the hermit's cabin that the relationship between the monster and the hermit is perceived as wrong. The villagers’ beliefs about who the monster is and what it means to be monstrous is then forced upon the situation.

The monster was able to live in peace and happiness with another man until these villagers ruined it by telling the hermit that the situation was wrong. Unseen by the society that the villagers’ eyes represent, the monster was allowed to no longer be monstrous. While representation and visibility is, rightfully, talked about a lot in marginalized communities, sometimes when one’s identity is looked down upon or politicized it can feel relieving to just spend time unperceived by the dominant culture.

“I don’t know if your man explained the situation to you.

”He did his best, but I’m afraid I couldn’t understand him.”

— The Old Dark House

From the iconic groans and grunts of Frankenstein's monster, to his unfortunate bride - who could only communicate with screams, screeches, and hisses despite her perfect brain - to the silent and stern Morgan from The Old Dark House, similar to his theme of being unseen, Whale created a theme of being unheard in many of his classic horror films. Perhaps these characters’ inability to communicate is just another way to other the monsters and make them seem more frightening. However, it is tempting to think that the inability of these characters to communicate is symbolic of something deeper, such as the feeling of being unable to articulate one's experiences of queerness to others. Both when trying to tell cishet friends and LGBTQ+ acquaintances how I experience my gender and sexuality, I feel like I could be speaking in an alien language, not understood by anyone else. For many, especially in the past, the feeling of being unable to communicate one’s experience of queerness is often related to a lack of widespread information on identities that are not heterosexual or cisgender.

While the internet and increased visibility of queer people in popular media has given more people the opportunity to learn about the LGBTQ+ community, in some states it is still a fireable offense to teach students about queer history and identities. I was not given the language to describe my feelings of genderqueerness until 20 years old despite first experiencing the feelings in elementary school. Furthermore, just because one has the terminology to label their feelings doesn’t automatically mean it is easy for them to express themselves. There is also a fear of not having one’s identity believed by others. The struggle to find confidence in one’s ability to declare their identity to others feels closely related to the struggle of Whale’s monsters to communicate with the masses.

“If I were a man I could help.”

”I wish you were. I mean I wish you could.

’What? Be a man?’”

— Green Hell

One of the most pervasive trends I found throughout Whale’s films was the theme of male intimacy, community, and the unwanted woman. This is perhaps easiest to see in Green Hell, when a group of men set up camp deep in the South American jungle, only to have their life together interrupted by a woman. The desire for the lack of a woman’s presence is established early in the film when the head of the expedition, Keith Brandon, tells late comer David Richardson that the expedition is better suited for bachelors without a family. The community the men create in the jungle is not one devoid of what some consider feminine traits. There is physical intimacy between the men. They hug, pat each other on the back, grab hands, and comfort each other when someone breaks down crying. Despite these displays of emotion and affection, one of the men, Hal Scott, mentions that it is weird to have a woman in their community, even for a few days, when love interest, Stephanie Richardson, makes her way into their town.

This isn’t the only time Scott expresses his disapproval of Stephanie’s presence. He argues with Brandon, who has fallen in love with Stephanie, later in the film about why she is still there. Her presence strains their relationship, but they make up later in a touching scene where Scott seems to want to express his affection for Brandon, but is unable. In Frankenstein, Dr. Frankenstein leaves his fiancee, Elizabeth, to hide away in a village with his male assistant Fritz in order to do his experiments on the creation of life. In this film, the village is strangely absent of adult women, which contrasts starkly with Bride of Frankenstein. In Frankenstein, the crowds that chase the monster are a sea of male faces, and it is a sobbing father who brings the girl the monster kills into the village with no mother in sight, whereas in Bride of Frankenstein both men and women are present in the mob. During his absence, Elizabeth speaks to Dr. Frankenstein’s former teacher, Dr. Walden, about going to see him in the village. Dr. Walden tells Elizabeth she won’t be welcome there. The Invisible Man and Bride of Frankenstein, while less community-centered, also have a man who leaves his female counterpart only to find community with a man who becomes his confidant in experimentation.

To conclude my look into the work of James Whale: Just like the theory that the Mona Lisa is a disgusted self-portrait of Da Vinci, it is easy to believe that Whale’s films could be a subtle self-portrait of his queer experience, but difficult to prove. I will never know whether or not Whale intended to include so many trends that connect to the queer experience throughout his work. I will never know how much of these trends could be attributed to Whale versus the choices of screenwriters and actors, but it seems hard to believe that an openly gay man creating movies that align with the queer experience is just a coincidence.