the peace to be himself
by Douglas Messerli
Bill Condon (screenplay,
based on the book Father of Frankenstein by Christopher Bram,
and director) Gods and Monsters / 1998
James Whale (Ian
McKellen)—the often forgotten director of the highly successful World War I
drama Journey’s End (1930), four of the greatest comic horror
films of all time Frankenstein (1931), The Old Dark
House (1932), The Invisible Man (1933), and The
Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and what I believe to be the
best cinematic adaptation of the musical Show Boat (1936)—has
just been released from the hospital after having a stroke that has left his
mind with overwhelming waves of interruptive memories that permit him little
sleep as well as affecting his tastebuds which make it almost unpleasant at
times to eat.
His housekeeper, Hanna (a wonderful Lynn
Redgrave) who, having worked for him now for 15 years, has always been
protective but now behaves like a motherly-nurse in the manner of Elsa
Lanchester to Charles Laughton in Witness for the Prosecution,
scolding him about his forgetfulness of taking pills, expressing her dismay for
inability to properly eat, and—as he peeks out the window at the new lawn boy,
Clayton Boone (Brendan Fraser) she has hired in his absence—fearing that
he might regress to his old ways of hosting pool parties where he serves
as voyeur to the dozens of gay boys he invites over each Sunday—a subliminal
attempt, perhaps, to compete with director George Cukor’s notorious gay boy
Sunday pool parties held regularly for several decades. Hanna is a devout
German Roman Catholic, and is terrified that her beloved Jimmy will not be able
to meet up with her in Heaven.
Perhaps
she needn’t worry. The hunky somewhat surly-looking lawn boy—endowed with
Fraser’s muscular body, thick neck, and oddly proportioned head topped with a
1950s-style flat-top haircut that makes him look vaguely like Whale’s version
of Mary Shelley’s monster—does not appear to be terribly friendly.
Another fussy friend, Whale’s former lover David Lewis (David Dukes)
stops by just to look in on him, reminding Whale also to live a more discreet
existence and, of course, to take the pills which make him feel numb to his
sensually-perceived life and, even when they are regularly ingested cannot slow
down the overload of memories of his childhood, wartime, and directing days.*
It also appears that despite their long relationship, an open secret in
Hollywood during their time together, that Lewis has grown much more closeted
and, given the current success of his film career, is terrified of being
publicly outed. Clearly, it was far easier to be gay in the semi-public eye of
Hollywood during the 1920s and 30s than it is in the 1950s, the fact of which Whale
has not quite yet assimilated and perhaps, given his reclusive life, doesn’t
care to take into account.
Besides, he has an interview scheduled with a young nerdy horror
film admirer, Edmund Kay (Jack Plotnick), a figure perhaps based on
Whale’s real friend whom he met in the late 1940s, Curtis Harrington, who along
with his own mutual friends Kenneth Anger, Gregory Markopoulos and others
represented a new gay wave of homosexual filmmakers. It was Harrington who
recovered Whale’s seemingly lost film The Old Dark House and
promoted Whale’s works at time when he was largely forgotten.
In
the film however, Kay is a creepily giggly gay boy who’s more than willing to
go along with the director’s flirtatious advances, playing strip tease with
him, giving up an object of his clothing for every honest question answered. By
the time their interview is nearly finished—their conversation interrupted by a
small medical episode which requires the sudden appearance of Hanna who
speedily sends the visitor away—Whale has stripped him down to his underpants.
Surely he knows, as do we, that the all-too compliant kid, is not the man
for him. And the director turns his attentions for the rest of the film upon
Clayton Boone, a slightly homophobic straight boy with an eager mind but a dumb
innocence. And we know almost from the beginning, as Roger Ebert notes, that he
will never completely engage in the gay sexual game that Whale willingly and
sometimes unknowingly attempts to trick him into.
It’s
not that the hunky young man doesn’t fall for the most obvious of ruses. Before
we can even get adjusted to the idea if their communicating with one another,
Whale has already whisked the ex-marine off to his art studio to engage him in
a sitting for a drawing, head only of course, assuring the dim-wit that he has
utterly no interest in his body while quickly covering up a beefcake magazine
on a nearby table.
Ebert bemoans the fact that it is unlikely that the two will ever wind
together in bed: “We never ever believe there's a possibility that anything
physical will occur between them—and we should, I think.” But that simply
reveals what I often have observed as Ebert's lack of understanding about gay
life. For as any gay man of a certain age realizes, it is the witty art of
verbal seduction that is far more important to someone like the central
character of this movie than is their mutual ejaculation or even a good-old
fashioned fuck. How close can he get to sexual contact without endangering his
life is the issue at hand. Straight boys are generally more attractive than gay
ones who go to bed with older men out a myriad of reasons that has nothing at
to do with attraction of even the possibility of love—financial or social gain,
a father compulsion, sexual compulsiveness, or simple pity—most of which would
never draw someone like Clayton Boone into the fantasy of Whale’s sexual
web.
Quite
often Boone, played beautifully by the shape-shifting Fraser, has utterly no
clue to what is happening. And he himself becomes fascinated with simply
rubbing up with someone he might have imagined meeting in Los Angeles when he
first moved there from Joplin, Missouri. And Whale, the perfect blender of pop
culture and high art, is the ideal figure to attract the basically uneducated
“monster.”
Boone
watches the Frankenstein films with the original wonderment and accepting humor
of the early audiences as opposed to his mocking and anxiety-ridden 1950s
friends who have replaced the movie’s explicit monsters with far vaguer ones
such as the Communists or faggots, which Boone’s girlfriend and male drinking
partners all immediately recognize Whale to be—not because they have any
knowledge of him or of his films, but because anyone who is an artist seeking a
male model just has to be a queer.
Suddenly the adult child still cutting lawns for a living finds himself on the
outside of his tough-talking bar friends such as his supposed girlfriend Betty
(Lolita Davidovich) who suddenly rejects his sexual advances. He finds himself,
for the first time, in the role of a cinema critic, attempting to speak about
something of which he has never imagined he might. He still doesn’t have the
words, but he’s already done some research at the local library about Whale
himself. He has become a student of a world he can only grasp at, without ever
fully comprehending. If he still can’t describe the art he observes, he knows
what he likes.
Yet
Whale, through his trance-like verbal expressions of his past—a
poverty-stricken childhood in the British midlands, the stinking trenches of
World War I, and his work on the Frankenstein films—all further engage the slow
learner with a world he has never before even imagined. Particularly moving is
Whale's description of his lover and his death to German shelling in the
no-man’s land just a few yards away from him and fellow soldiers who are now
all forced to watch his body spiked up against the barb-wired tangle for weeks
before their transfer (in real life Whale was captured by the Germans and
imprisoned in Holzminden Officers' Camp).
And
of course Whale is very much interested in his lawn boy’s body. Invited,
surprisingly, to a lawn party by George Cukor given in honor of Princess
Margaret, the director at first sees the event as nothing but a hoot, but
eventually realizes that by asking Clayton to become his chauffeur he can
finally best Cukor. The party is perhaps the most comic scene in the movie,
moving close to camp when the Princess, standing beside Cukor, mistakes Whale
for Cecil Beaton; Whale brilliantly allays her apologies by introducing her to
his gardener (Clayton), suggesting that “he has never met a Princess, having
known only queens,” simultaneously diminishing the Princess’ royal status while
jabbing Cukor directly in the gut with evidence that he can still attract the
likes of such a handsome young lad as Clayton.
But
Cukor’s current male “secretary,” it turns out, is none other than Edmund Kay,
the creepy horror fan, who in fact has been behind Whale’s invite, mostly for
the opportunity a photographing Whale with both Boris Karloff and Elsa
Lanchester, the creator with his monster and the bride. One can only wish that
such events happened in real life!
In
the film, a sudden winter rain wipes away the Beverly Hills sun, and Whale and
his still mystified driver are forced to return home, Clayton now so wet that
he has no choice but to don a loose sweater from his host’s closet and remain
with a towel around his waist.
Finally
having his prey almost nude while caught up once more in his youthful memories,
the creator of Frankenstein attempts to do away with his
monsters by forcing Clayton once again to pose, this time in a gas mask from
World War I, totally covering up what Whale has proclaimed to be the perfect
head. Finding it difficult to breathe in the mask, and beginning to truly fear
for Whale’s sanity, the young man demands the mask be taken off, as Whale moves
in for the metaphorical kill, putting his hands upon Clayton’s naked shoulders
and grabbing for his suddenly exposed cock.
Predictably, his young friend explodes into
violence pushing the old man to the floor, jumping upon him, and preparing to
slug him into unconsciousness—precisely what Whale is seeking, someone to help
him into death.
The
boy, however, is no longer the ex-marine he used to be, having admitted just
previously that he never served in Korea, his appendix bursting in camp, after
which he was sent home. At the moment of this battle, Clayton pulls back and
breaks down into the tears of a horrified child, even the slightly bruised
Whale describing him as being simply a pussy-cat.
To
calm him and to help explain his situation, Whale shows him all the drawings he
has “done” over the weeks of Clayton's “modeling.” The large sketching pads
contain nothing but broken lines. Just as he can no longer eat or sleep, Whale
can no longer draw or paint, or, most importantly, coherently think. He seeks
death since nearly of the pleasures of this sensualist’s and intellect’s life
have been diminished, lost in the electrical storm in his brain recreating his
past.
Clayton,
like the monster, picks up his friend, his would-be creator and tucks him into
bed.
In
the morning, Clayton, who has stayed the night on a living room couch, awakens
to find an envelope addressed to him, inside the original drawing of
Frankenstein by the head designer of the film, a gift from Whale to his beloved
lawn boy.
A
few moments later, Clayton discovers Whale’s body in the swimming pool, face
down, where he has apparently drowned himself in the night. Clayton attempts to
rescue him, removing the body from the pool to no avail, Hanna running toward
him to protest, knowing that her Jimmy in fact is dead. She suggests that
Clayton leave immediately before she calls the police so that he will not
become a suspect. But he observes that they will surely wonder how she got his
body out of the pool.
Accordingly, in grand Guignol manner, they are forced to toss their Jimmy
back into the water, where this time his body floats into position face
up.
In
real life, the police actually did seek out whether there might have been foul
play, but ultimately listed his death as accidental. In truth, Whale had left a
suicide note, but ex-lover Lewis, obviously truly nervous at this point about
public scandal, withheld it, revealing the message only near his own death
decades later. The note read, according to Kenneth Anger:
“To ALL I LOVE,
Do not grieve for me. My
nerves are all shot and for the last year I have been in agony day and
night—except when I sleep with sleeping pills—and any peace I have by day is
when I am drugged by pills.
I
have had a wonderful life but it is over and my nerves get worse and I am
afraid they will have to take me away. So please forgive me, all those I love
and may God forgive me too, but I cannot bear the agony and it [is] best for
everyone this way. The future is just old age and illness and pain. Goodbye and
thank you for all your love. I must have peace and this is the only way.
— Jimmy”
I
wish this otherwise moving film might have ended with that quote instead of a
scene decades later with Clayton Boone is his living room with his wife and
child, the boy watching Frankenstein for the very first time
before being sent off to bed. In the film, Clayton leaves the house and stomps
through puddles of a rainy backstreet in the manner of Boris Karloff’s monster
as if he were performing the dance without music from Singing in the
Rain.
I’d
like to imagine, even if it may be unlikely, that Whale might have changed
Boone’s life in ways far more significant than such a campy gesture to the
still neglected giant.
But
ultimately I see this film as being not centered upon the education of a
straight bumpkin nor Whale’s flirtation with him, but about a gay man who
refused—no matter what the decades of his life put up as barriers before him—to
lose his sense of sexual and intellectual difference. If his parents sent him
off the work in a factory, he found a way to escape it through art. If the
Great War, as he put it, wiped out nearly an entire generation, he found love
in the trenches and survived its destruction. If the public sought out larger
than life moral fables to demonstrate man’s folly in imagining himself to be a
god, Whale managed to have his homosexual geniuses create monsters than
revealed man’s inhumanity far more than their monstrosities. When age made him
no longer as attractive to others, he brought beauty into his own backyard,
enjoying it from the vantage of an unabashed voyeur. When his body began to
fail him, he engaged in an imaginary romance with a man who finally did in fact
hold him in something that at least gestured toward love. When there was
nothing left he straightforwardly greeted death. The peace to be himself was
all he ever sought.
*In real life Whale
broke up his 22-year romance (1930-1952) with Lewis when—after a tour of
European museums and visit to a Paris gay bar where he met a young gay
“hustler” (as director Curtis Harrington described him), Pierre Foegel and
hired him as his chauffeur—he determined to bring Foegel to the US to live with
him. He did so, eventually installing Foegel as an attendant at a gas station
he owned. Indeed Foegel seems very close to the character played by Brendan
Fraser in Bram’s fiction and in the film.
Los Angeles, November
11, 2022
Reprinted from World
Cinema Review (November 2022).
