Not very GREEN, I guess.
How BLUE is my Christmas?
ORANGE you curious what the OP was about?
Frankenstein’s monster is not described as green in Shelley’s book. In fact, I think he’s actually very pale, almost white, “leprous”. Even in the 1931 film he wasn’t green (the film, like the 1910 Charles Ogle film, was black and whaite, of course. But I mean that Karloff wasn’t wearing green makeup).
The first color Frankenstein’s monster I know of, Chris Lee in the circa 1957 Hammer film, wasn’t green. In fact, none of the color Frankenstein films I know of feature a green frankenstein’s monster.
Frankenstein himself wasn’t green, either.
The Aurora plastic model that came out in the 1960s was supposed to be painted green, though. In various cartoons and gag panels the monster was often (although not always) green. Pumchline to a B. Kliban panel: “Since when do we use red thread on a green monster?” I suspect it’s an attempt to suggest dead flesh, maybe invoking the color of blue veins seen under yellow skin.
Of course, it’s just more likely that I’ve been whooshed. That makes me BLUE.
You’d think so, wouldn’t hue?
Color me GRAPEly confused.
Wrong. He was wearing green make-up. I remember reading in an interview (in an issue of Famous Monsters) with Jack Pierce (who created the makeups for most of the 1930s Universal monsters), that green was specifically used because it was the best colour to translate on the screen the monster’s livid skin.
The poster for the 1931 Frankenstein movie shows the monster with a greenish face. It’s not bright green, and looks more like a dramatic light effect, but there is a green cast. This may be where the idea came from. Even though people couldn’t tell he was green in the movie, it somehow made it into the poster, and that’s how they came to associate the color with the character.
Most of the green Frankenstein’s monsters I’ve seen have been comical or cartoonish: Herman Munster (in the color movie Munsters Go Home), the Groovy Ghoulies, etc.
That’s weird, *detop[/]–I remember reading that the makeup was a silvery-gray color.
IIRC, the monster didn’t become green until Don Post Studios put out their Frankenstein mask in the early 60s. They figured green would sell better than gray.
Interesting, we seem to have three different and conflicting interpretations. Anybody else has the Straigh Dope[sup]TM[/sup] on this subject ?
FWIW, the IMDb, discussing the 1931 film under “alternate versions” says:
A few early original prints are color-tinted in green (hyped as “the color of fear” in publicity releases).
If I recall correctly, the makeup for Glenn Stange in the latter movies in the Universal series was the silver-grey you mention. I believe it was used in Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein–the last film of that original series. But my question concerns the makeup Pierce used on Karloff
According to an interview makeup rtist Jak Pierce gave he New York Times in 1939, “I covered Karloff’s face with blue-green greasepaint, which photographs gray.” (in Frankenstein: The Original hooting Script, MagicImage Filmscripts, 1989, p. 34). I recalled him using gray, which is my misremembering of this – but the makeup was blue-green, not green. The movie poster reprinted in color on the cover shows a very pale yellow Frankenstein’s monster. Definitely not green.
The Warner Brothers cartoons that featrd the monster in the 1930s and 1940s (the first appearances of the creature in color, to my knowledge) show him in a sallow yellow.
Horror Comics from the 1950s I’ve seen show a flesh tone-to-yellow creature. The Classics Illustrated adaptation of the book shows a very Universal-looking monster, but he’s gray, not green.
Herman Munster was in black and white in the TV series. The movie Munster, Go Home!, as noted above, was in color. But my recollection was that he was blue-gray, again, not green.
Even into the 1960s, Frankenstein monster depictions an imitators avoided green. Milton the Monster (a cartoon) was flesh-colored. The “Frankenstein loses his pnts” toy sold in the back pages of Famous Monsters was flesh-toned. Even the monster as depicted on the cover of Famous Monsters of Filmland, Monster World, and Castle of Frankenstein was usually not green.
The first places I recall seeing a green-toned Frankenstein were the depiction Universal started merchandising in the 1960s – the aforementioned Aurora Plastic model, its box cover, and its advertisements. The Frankenstein paint-by number kit. Frankenstein jigsaw puzzles and iron-on transfers. In a lot of these cases, they clearly waned to make the monster as garish as possible. After all, they depiced the Phantom of the Opera in green, too, and he’d never ben green before this point (there had been two color versions of the film by the early 1960s).
Frankenberry wasn’t green, of coure, but more and more depictions started to become green. IIRC, in the Rankin-Bass movie Mad Monster Party he’s green. He started getting green in humor/horror collecting cards drawn by Mad artist Jack Davis. The Frankenstein monster started showing up on color TVs in greenish. It became convenient shorthand for the monster an an accepted convention, like the hunchbacked assistant.
But, as far as I can tell, the monster wasn’t regularly seen as green until the 1960s.
I can’t really speak to the first Frankenstein film (altough the quote from Jack Pierce seems pretty definitive). However, there do exist some color home movies that were made on the set of the second sequel, Son of Frankenstein, made in 1939. They turn up on TV specials from time to time. As far as I know, they’re the only existing color footage of Karloff in the monster makeup. His skin looks quite green to me. I don’t really see any blue in it, but if Jack said so, I guess I have to take his word for it.
There was, as a matter of fact, some discussion of filming Son of Frankenstein in color. Ultimately, they decided against it, precisely because Karloff’s makeup looked too clownish when seen in color.
I have the VHS tape and the soundtrack CD; the creature is flesh-colored in both.
Here’s an original poster that looks a bit green…
Better still. Another non-green Frankenstein.
The rubber masks that came out in the 1960s (Don Post Studios and others) may have been green.
Archiove Guy’s poster doesn’t look particularly green to me – it looks like the normal effect of shadow making things “blue”, while the other side’s sorta yellow. I think the poster referred to much earlier might be the one that showed up on the cover of the DVD. If so, it does look pretty green. But, again, it’s a spooky half-light. In other posters, the monster looks surprisingly normal, if pale.
Then it must have been the Glenn Strange version I recall reading about.
Damn, I love those movies.