David Selznick was born on the 10th of May, 1902 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, adding the O in later life to distinguish himself from an uncle. He worked his way up the movie industry, starting at MGM before moving to Paramount and then RKO. As producer on King Kong (1933), he helped realise the combined vision of Edgar Wallace, Merian C Cooper, Ruth Rose and Ernest B Schoedsack. His high-profile output included The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), A Star is Born (1937) and Academy Award winners Gone with the Wind (1939) and Rebecca (1940). He died on the 22nd of June, 1965. Discover the King Kong 193 ..read more

Born on the 16th of January, 1901 in Coahuila, Mexico, Marcel Delgado was persuaded at the age of 21 to take a job at First National Pictures by special effects designer Willis O’Brien. He worked on The Lost World (1925), his use of skeletal armatures making animation more effective than ever before. Marcel Delgado (right) working with his brother Victor on the armature for the full-scale hand in King Kong (RKO 1933) His work with O’Brien on King Kong (1933) revolutionised the industry, and he also worked on The Son of Kong (1933) and Mighty Joe Young (1949). He died on the 26th of November ..read more

Bruce Cabot was born Étienne Pelissier Jacques de Bujac on the 20th of April, 1904 in Carlsbad, New Mexico. He studied at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee without graduating, and drifted from job to job before arriving in Hollywood in 1931 and making his uncredited screen debut in the same year’s Heroes of the Flames. A chance introduction to David O Selznick at a party served to launch his career proper; Selznick was at the time RKO’s central producer and therefore in charge of many key studio decisions, and the young actor received roles in Lady with a Past and The Roadhouse ..read more

Robert William Armstrong was born on the 20th of November, 1890 in Saginaw, Michigan. He studied law at the University of Washington, but abandoned his studies just a few months before graduation, in order to manage his uncle’s touring vaudeville companies. At the outbreak of World War I he enlisted in the US Army, heading to London after his return from duty and spending a season in the city before touring the US. An appearance in 1927 silent drama The Main Event marked the beginning of a massively prolific screen career which reached its peak of productivity in the late 1920s and early 30s ..read more

Considered by many to be the greatest adventure movie ever made, King Kong had anything but a straightforward beginning, almost never seeing the light of day at all. Its co-creators and joint adventurers Merian Caldwell Cooper and Ernest Beaumont Schoedsack had met in Vienna in 1918 and, sharing a passion for keeping things ‘distant, difficult and dangerous’, quickly became firm friends. A potential battle between Kong and a stegosaurus, but a scene that was vastly different in the final print of King Kong (RKO 1933) Both went on to work together at The New York Times before embarking on a mi ..read more

When Night of the Demon hit British cinema screens in 1957, it was part of a double-bill with Nathan Juran’s 20 Million Miles to Earth, and made relatively little impression on either audiences or critics despite its cast-iron reputation today. Basing it on Montague Rhodes James’ short 1911 ghost story ‘Casting the Runes’, screenwriter Charles Bennett had initially commenced his quest to bring the dark fable to the big screen in 1954. Bennett, who had previously worked with Alfred Hitchcock on the likes of The 39 Steps (1935), had long been a fan of James’ tale of alchemy and occultism and, co ..read more

By the early fifties Bud Abbott and Lou Costello had already faced off against the likes of Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, the Wolf Man and assorted ghosts – with 1951’s Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, they entered the world of H G Wells. Fresh from their success with Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff in 1949, Hugh Wedlock Jr and Howard Snyder were engaged to blend Bud, Lou and invisibility. Their outline – which they had originally conceived back in 1948 as an Invisible Man film, The Invisible Man Strikes Back, rather than an Abbott and Costello comedy – was h ..read more

Louis Francis Cristillo was born in Paterson, New Jersey on the 6th of March, 1906. Though a gifted athlete, he was determined to become an actor and hitchhiked to Hollywood in 1927 to find acting work, later returning east to become a burlesque comic in the early 1930s. In January 1934 he married dancer Anne Battler, with whom he had four children. The following year, he shared the stage with producer, performer and established straight man Bud Abbott, marking the beginning of one of comedy’s most beloved partnerships. Camille (Joan Davis) and Ferdie (Lou Costello) encounter ghostly goings-o ..read more

Franz Waxman was born Franz Wachsmann in the southern Polish city of Chorzów on the 24th of December, 1906. In 1930, he wrote the score for The Blue Angel, but fled Nazi persecution in 1934 and eventually settled in Hollywood. His complex, motif-driven work for Bride of Frankenstein (1935) is widely regarded as one of horror cinema’s greatest scores, but it was his haunting composition for 1940’s Rebecca that cemented his place in movie history. He died on the 24th of February, 1967. The post Franz Waxman appeared first on Classic Monsters ..read more

Maximilian Schreck – best known to film fans as Max Schreck – was born on the 6th of September, 1879. Passionate about the theatre from an early age, the young Schreck was discouraged from his thespian ambitions by his father and held down a ‘respectable’ job as an apprentice, his mother funding his acting lessons in secret. After the death of his father, he enrolled in drama school and spent two years travelling around Germany. Key engagements in Berlin for Max Reinhardt, and later in Munich for Otto Falckenberg, enabled him to make connections with prominent figures in the theatre industry ..read more