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Actor

DWIGHT FRYE’S LAST LAUGH

(GREGORY WILLIAM MANK, JAMES T COUGHLIN, DWIGHT D FRYE; 320 pages; LUMINARY PRESS/MIDNIGHT MARQUEE PRESS; 1997)

I grew up watching (and loving) the Universal Monsters movies; a very vivid memory was seeing ABBOTT AND COSTELLO MEETS FRANKENSTEIN (sort of a 1948 Monsters-adjacent free-for-all with Bela Lugosi, Lon Chaney Junior and Glenn Strange co-starring with Bud and Lou) on a Saturday afternoon. It wasn’t such a big leap to THE WOLFMAN, THE MUMMY, THE INVISIBLE MAN and the dynamic duo that launched Universal’s monster franchise, DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN. Then, of course, there were the numerous sequels. Many of those films featured a manic young man named Dwight Frye; I was fascinated by Dwight’s characters and he became an instant favorite. Why? Was it the four-note laugh that his DRACULA character, Renfield, used to chill the marrow? Was it the fact that my favorite band, Alice Cooper, featured a six-and-a-half minute tune on their third album, LOVE IT TO DEATH, called “Ballad of Dwight Fry?” (Fry, by the way, was Dwight Frye’s real name… the “e” was added by Dwight early in his acting career to give it a more continental, distinguished flair.) Whatever the reason, Dwight Frye became “The Man” for me, at least as far as horror movies were concerned. I didn’t know anything about the man himself and found that there wasn’t really a lot of information out there about him (this was the pre-internet, “dinosaurs-still-roamed-the-Earth” late 1960s and early 1970s). The fascination waned, as it is wont to do, and I moved on to other things. Oh, I still watched DRACULA, FRANKENSTEIN and the rest any chance I got and Dwight’s Renfield and Fritz were still fun to watch. It wasn’t until the late 1990s that I heard about a book co-written by Dwight’s son, Dwight David, that my interest was once again piqued. And so, I started haunting (pun fully intended) various book stores and other venues for a copy… with no luck! It wasn’t until very recently that – after watching DRACULA for, maybe, the millionth time that I renewed my quest to acquire DWIGHT FRYE’S LAST LAUGH. Things have become so much easier now, with search engines like Google and a website called ThriftBooks to find those hard to find items. So, now, thanks to that very same ThriftBooks, I have my very own copy of DWIGHT FRYE’S LAST LAUGH. Was it worth the wait, the time and trouble to hunt down? Absolutely!

DWIGHT FRYE’S LAST LAUGH (DRACULA, 1931: Helen Chandler, Bela Lugosi, Dwight Frye) (UNIVERSAL STUDIOS promotional photo)

To call the book exhaustive is sorta like saying that there’s some water in the Pacific Ocean. The second book review I ever wrote was a critique of Fred Kaplan’s THE SINGULAR MARK TWAIN, a 655 page biography with an additional 70 pages of notes and explanations of the main body of work. I was not a fan! The same cannot be said of DWIGHT FRYE’S LAST LAUGH; it is filled with minutia, but it’s presented in such a way that you really don’t mind. The biography portion of the book ends with Chapter 10 (even though Frye dies in Chapter 8). Those eight chapters are chock full of minutia regarding Dwight’s early life, his stage career – from stock productions in Denver, Spokane, Seattle and Pittsfield, among other towns and cities with theaters (the most common form of entertainment in the 1910s and ‘20s, just about every small city or medium-sized town had one) to his successes on Broadway – where he met Laura (using the stage name Laurette) Bullivant, whom he would marry. Chapter Five, titled “Dreams To Nightmares: The Horror Classics of 1931,” begins the chronicle of Frye’s career in the relatively new film industry and his eventual downfall. As Renfield in DRACULA and Fritz in FRANKENSTEIN, his over-the-top, rather psychotic performances led to Dwight being typecast as lunatics, with hunchbacks and wild eyes. Soon, he found himself relegated to bit parts (often uncredited) in a variety of B movies of varying quality. No matter how small the role, Dwight threw himself into the character as if his part was the most important. FRANKENSTEIN director James Whale was so taken with his portrayal of the sadistic, hunchbacked dwarf, Fritz, that in later years, he reached out to Frye, offering him roles in nearly every movie he worked on throughout the actor’s lean years in the ‘30s and ‘40s up to Dwight’s death in 1943; For THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, Whale famously combined three separate roles into one for his to-to ghoul; the actor delivered a tour-de-force performance as Karl, another in a string of hunchback dwarfs.

DWIGHT FRYE’S LAST LAUGH (THE MALTESE FALCON, 1931: Dudley Digges, Ricardo Cortez, Dwight Frye) (WARNER BROTHERS STUDIOS promotional photo)

Between DRACULA and FRANKENSTEIN, Dwight portrayed Wilmer Cook in the first film version of THE MALTESE FALCON, a grittier, pre-Code offering that wasn’t as pretty as the 1941 version with Humphrey Bogart; when Warner Brothers tried to re-release the flick in 1935, the request was denied by the office of the Motion Picture Production Code for “lewd content.” It may have been Dwight’s last big role in which he wasn’t typecast as some sort of twisted, maniacal, deviant toady for whatever the Monster-du-jour was for a particular film (the vampire, Count Dracula, or the man-who-would-be -God, Henry Frankenstein). DWIGHT FRYE’S LAST LAUGH mentions numerous occasions where the studio would severely edit or completely cut the actor’s performances. As he struggled to provide for his family, he took on any role offered, no matter how small (or how ludicrous). Dwight Frye was the consummate actor, but first and foremost, he was the consummate family man.

DWIGHT FRYE’S LAST LAUGH (THE VAMPIRE BAT, 1933: Dwight Frye, Maude Eburne) (MAJESTIC STUDIOS promotional photo)

By the fall of 1943, Dwight Frye had been working an overnight shift at Douglas Aircraft (it was his way of contributing to the war effort, as he was too old to serve) for a year or more, looking for movie roles during the day. He had heard about a new movie being produced by 20th Century-Fox called WILSON, a biography of President Woodrow Wilson. With the help of a friend at the studio, he tested for and was given a fairly important, meaty role in the film, Secretary of War Newton D Baker. To celebrate the part, Dwight took Laura and their son, Dwight David, to a double feature. After the movie, the family caught a bus; before the bus even pulled away from the curb, the actor had collapsed in the aisle. He died about an hour later, at 11:15, of coronary thrombosis.

DWIGHT FRYE’S LAST LAUGH (THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN, 1935: Dwight Frye, Valerie Hobson) (UNIVERSAL STUDIOS promotional photo)

Chapter 9, titled “Milestones,” highlights turning points (mostly deaths) in the lives of the people in the life of Dwight Iliff Frye, everyone from Tod Browning to Bela Lugosi, Lionel Atwill and James Whale to Boris Karloff. “Immortality” called in Chapter 10, as the authors recount the efforts of – not only Dwight’s son, Buddy (his father’s nickname for Dwight David) – but leading members of fandom like Warren Publishing’s James Warren and Forrest J Ackerman, publisher and editor, respectively, of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND (as well as the comic magazines CREEPY, EERIE and VAMPIRELLA), who invited Dwight David, Sara Karloff (Boris’ daughter), Ron Chaney (grandson of Lon Chaney Junior) and Bela Lugosi Junior as guests of honor to the 1993 Famous Monsters Convention. The chapter ends with the death of Dwight David Frye on March 27, 2003. Until that time, he worked tirelessly to keep the memory of his father alive to new generations of fans.

DWIGHT FRYE’S LAST LAUGH (Laura Bullivant Frye, Dwight David Frye, Dwight Frye) (family photo, 1933)

The actual biography of Dwight Frye – including a lot of great pictures and a couple of pages of notes – ends on page 202. The remainder of the book’s 320 pages features four appendices listing all of Dwight’s acting credits (“Filmography,” 60 pages with production information, cast and notes regarding Frye’s work; “Early Theatre Work: Stock, Vaudeville, Repetory,” 20 pages with much of the same information as Appendix A; “Broadway Plays,” 20 pages of his work there; “Regional Theatre,” 8 pages, including his last role, reprising Renfield in a stage production of DRACULA) and more photos. A bibliography and biographies of the authors make up the last few pages.

EASY STREET (THE HARD WAY): A MEMOIR

(Ron Perlman with Michael Largo; 297 pages; DE CAPO PRESS/PERSEUS BOOKS GROUP; 2014)

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I’ve always liked Ron Perlman’s quirky choices of roles… especially HELLBOY. His voice is immediately recognizable, with a depth of emotion and a sonorous quality that defines the man every bit as much as his character studies… maybe more. When I saw that he was writing his memoir, I was stoked to wander around through the noodle of one of the most adventurous actors of the past 35 years. I wasn’t disappointed with the journey. Well, not much.

SONS OF ANARCHY (Ron Perlman) (photo credit: Prashant Gupta/FX)
SONS OF ANARCHY (Ron Perlman) (photo credit: Prashant Gupta/FX)

Like many of us, Ron Perlman grew up in a home where the Dad went above and beyond to give his kids the kind of life that he didn’t have; like many of us, Ron Perlman was not an exceptional child and was bullied and abused at school; like many of us, Ron Perlman’s parents made him a better person (not just a more successful person); like many of us, Ron Perlman has taken what he learned from his parents and made a better life for his children. Unlike most of us, Ron Perlman did everything in front of the world. The story he tells is poignant, funny and irreverent; it’s the story of a young kid dealing with a nearly crippling lack of self worth and how, as an adult, he has learned to live with – even embrace – these feelings of inadequacies.

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (Ron Perlman, in costume, with co-star Linda Hamilton) (publicity photo)
BEAUTY AND THE BEAST (Ron Perlman, in costume, with co-star Linda Hamilton) (publicity photo)

A young Perlman was infected by the acting bug in high school when, as a member of the swim team, his coach picked him to try out for the school play because they needed bodies and his body wasn’t getting a lot of time in the water at swim meets. In college, he was offered an internship as a production assistant with a very, very off-Broadway company that would occasionally take their show on the road. Ron was on the road when his girlfriend and his cousin came to deliver the word that his father had died; he immediately went home to help his mother with his older brother, a man incapacitated by manic depression (years later, at 39, Les Perlman committed suicide). So, like his father before him, Ron Perlman put his dreams and aspirations on the back burner because that’s what families do. All of this is told in a forthright, warts-and-all narrative in Ron’s inimitably… uh… flowery turn of phrase.

SONS OF ANARCHY (Ron and Opal Perlman at the 2011 season premiere) (uncredited photo)
SONS OF ANARCHY (Ron and Opal Perlman at the 2011 season premiere) (uncredited photo)

Perlman (ably assisted by Michael Largo) is fearless in his assessment of his career (and, for long spans of time, lack thereof). When he was cast in the 1981 movie QUEST FOR FIRE, he was certain he was on his way to being a household name; his next job didn’t come until three years later, when he was cast in the STAR WARS spoof, THE ICE PIRATES. That has seemed to be Ron’s career trajectory: A defining moment in front of the camera followed by long lulls when the actor was doubting his choice of career followed by a job he would take to put food on the table. He seemed to be getting typecast in an odd sort of way, also; as varied as most of his early roles were, nearly all of them buried Ron’s face in makeup and prosthetics, including his next big role, as Salvatore in THE NAME OF THE ROSE. The role that defined him for quite a few years, Vincent in the highly successful CBS television series BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, was one he told his agent to pass on because he was tired of his face being an artist’s canvas for four hours every day. When things weren’t happening in front of the camera, Perlman started getting work behind a microphone, doing voice-overs and cartoons.

PACIFIC RIM (Ron Perlman with director Guillermo del Toro at the 2013 premiere) (uncredited photo)
PACIFIC RIM (Ron Perlman with director Guillermo del Toro at the 2013 premiere) (uncredited photo)

A life-long working relationship and friendship was formed in 1992 when Ron was told that a guy named Guillermo del Toro wanted him to star in a movie called CRONOS and was anxious to meet the actor. As fate would have it, that meeting led to the two working together several more times, including BLADE II, PACIFIC RIM and, of course, HELLBOY and its sequel (another is rumored to be in the works). His work as the lead character in the HELLBOY movies directly led to his being cast in the FX series, SONS OF ANARCHY. Guillermo has had a great calming effect on Ron, helping him to keep his feelings of inadequacy in check (Perlman has been diagnosed with clinical depression, a lesser form – though equally as debilitating – than his brother suffered from). The other calming effect in his life has been his family; he’s been with his wife, Opal, since 1976 (they married in 1981) and they have two kids, Blake and Brandon. Opal was by his side through some of the leanest of Perlman’s lean years and continues to be a solid pillar for him to lean on. When he speaks of Opal and his children, you can tell he has a deep and abiding love for his family and an undying respect for the woman who has stayed with him through thick and thin.

HELLBOY (Ron Perlman in make-up and costume to fulfill a MAKE-A-WISH request, 2012. This is why we love you, Ron) (publicity photo)
HELLBOY (Ron Perlman in make-up and costume to fulfill a MAKE-A-WISH request, 2012. This is why we love you, Ron) (publicity photo)

EASY STREET (THE HARD WAY) is a wild ride through the life of one of Hollywood’s true characters and, as mentioned, Perlman does not pull a single punch. The only problem I find in the book is in the final two chapters, in which Ron does the standard Hollywood political stance thing. I’m not gonna tell you which side I come down on as regards the last few residents of the White House, but I do find it disingenuous and more than a little unfair to label everyone who didn’t vote for our President a racist; I don’t agree with that assessment. I think my real objection here is that, unless I’m reading a biography or autobiography about a political figure, I don’t particularly want to read about someone’s political leanings. Nothing personal… I feel the same way about political statements coming from the stage of a nightclub, too… or from the pulpit. It seems to me that a celebrity making their political thoughts known is well on the way to alienating half of their audience. And, with Ron Perlman, that would be a shame because I believe that he really is one of the good guys.